Domestic Violence and the Subaltern Reality of Indian Women in Malaysian Tamil Folk Songs

This study examines the domestic violence endured by Indian women in colonial Malaya as reflected in Malaysian Tamil folk songs. These songs function as cultural archives that document the lived realities, emotional pain and silenced voices of women within the exploitative British rubber plantation system. Drawing on 23 purposively selected songs from major documented collections, the analysis identifies two dominant forms of abuse which were violence committed by intoxicated husbands and violence perpetrated by sober husbands. Across these songs, domestic violence appears through multiple dimensions such as physical assault, marital rape, humiliation, psychological intimidation, emotional neglect, infidelity, abandonment and economic deprivation. Historical, descriptive and explanatory research designs were employed to interpret women’s experiences in their socio-cultural context. Thematic analysis guided by Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework enabled the identification of recurring patterns of oppression. Narrative and discourse analyses were also used to uncover symbolic meaning, linguistic choices and emotional tone within the lyrics. A translation process was incorporated using Tamil lexical resources to preserve cultural nuances, idiomatic expressions and metaphors while rendering them into English. The findings reveal that domestic violence was deeply rooted in patriarchy, economic dependency, caste norms and the structural conditions of plantation life, leading some women to express death as a final escape from relentless suffering and subaltern existence.