On the 27th November 2007, Indians, who make up less than 10 percent of the population of about 25 million and are disproportionately poor, led a protest march through Kuala Lumpur, the first large-scale ethnically motivated street demonstration in almost four decades. . After so many years, finally a PM is coming to Batu Caves. Guess what? He has realized the only way to get tiny drop of goodwill for a few Indian votes is by attending this function. But unfortunately he is wrong. The day when the FRU shot tear gas gun into the Batu Caves temple compound on the 26th November, 2007, that was the day the UMNO (BN) government dug themselves into a deep pit of shit. Probably Najib will throw a scrap or two, to buy the Indian votes. He should continue dreaming, only to wake up to see his 1Malaysia in tatters. The Police disrupt S'gor gov't Thaipusam function, to score points with Jibby.

At the function, Selangor menteri besar Khalid Ibrahim (right) will hand out RM1 million to Tamil schools and Hindu temples. “The Gombak OCPD (Abdul Rahim Abdullah) and other top police officers came at 6.30pm and told us it was for safety reasons,” said program coordinator and Selayang Municipal Council (MPS) councilor, George Gunaraj. Najib wants to do a public relations exercise with the biggest losers in the current system, who happen to be Indians, who, according to government statistics, make up 9 percent of the labor force but hold 16 percent of menial jobs and control just 1.2 percent of equity in registered companies in the country.Indians are not aided by the affirmative action program, because it is based on ethnicity, not need.

Look at the slides when the Polices teargas the Indians inside the temple. Need high speed connection.

Indian support for the government is the worst it's ever been in the country's history,it's profound. Indians have traditionally supported the government the highest. With Chinese voters also angry at the government - mainly over its handling of the economy and educational issues. Underpinning the anger of the Chinese and Indians is an affirmative action program in place for 37 years that favors Malays and other smaller indigenous ethnic groups collectively known as bumiputra, literally "sons of the soil." Bumiputra make up 60 percent of the population but have 87 percent of government jobs. They receive discounts of 5 to 10 percent on new homes and have a reserved quota of 30 percent of any newly listed company on the stock market. Newspapers are filled with notices of government construction contracts exclusively reserved for companies controlled by bumiputra.

"It's completely unacceptable that you cannot get awarded a contract just because of the color of your skin," said Lim Guan Eng, now the Chief Minister of Penang a member of the Democratic Action Party, the leading opposition party in Parliament. "That grates tremendously. We are treated as though we are third- or fourth-class citizens." Lim points out that the father of Mohamed Khir Toyo, the former chief minister of Selangor State and currently an unemployed dentist, came from Indonesia. Yet his son is considered a bumiputra, while an ethnic Chinese person whose family has lived in Malaysia for centuries would still not qualify as indigenous.

More than economic issues, said Santiago of the Group of Concerned Citizens, Indians were infuriated by the highly publicized case of a Malaysian soldier, Maniam Moorthy, who died in 2005 and whose body was claimed by the Islamic authorities for Muslim burial. The authorities claimed that Moorthy, who was born a Hindu, converted to Islam months before his death. Moorthy's wife, Kaliammal Sinnasamy, sued in a civil court to obtain the body, but the court ruled that it had no jurisdiction because the matter had already been decided in an Islamic court. A ruling on Kaliammal's appeal has been postponed indefinitely.

The case, one of at least a dozen similar ethno-religious disputes reported recently in Malaysian newspapers, became a cause célèbre among Indians. "You can push us, you can cheat us, you can discriminate against us, but you can't tell us that we're not Hindus after we are dead," Santiago said.