Religion and Colonial Encounters in the Straits Settlements: From Self-Governance to Institutional Regulation

The interface between non-Christian religions in the colonies and the British Empire has attracted considerable scholarly interest and produced by now exciting social science and historical literature from all corners of the globe. In comparison to the rich and nuanced African and Indian material, one struggles to find similar works on the former British colonies in Southeast Asia. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by turning the gaze to the religious landscape of the Straits Settlements, an administrative unit of British colonial initiative under which these rather diverse and scattered geographical entities were united between 1826 and 1945. I demonstrate that the adopted method of dealing with the religious pluralism of colonized populations was an adherence to the broad articulated principles of religious tolerance and non-intervention, but which often could not be followed through in practice. Through the 19^th century, the colonial context in the Straits Settlements was not, by and large, detrimental for expressions of non-Christian religiosity. The absence of restraints and control in this arena, undoubtedly, enabled expressions of non-Christian religions and facilitated their early institutionalization in this region.

I thus argue that from the mid-19^th Century onwards, the colonial context in the Straits Settlements was ‘enabling’ for religious communities in the Straits Settlements. We see in these times a vigorous sense of religious solidarity and community, witnessed in intense institution building and founding places of worship, cultural and religious organizations across Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Sikh communities. However, by the early decades of the 20^th century, this ‘liberal’ attitude was supplanted by a new vocabulary of regulation, supervision and administration of non-Christian religions. With this shift, new institutional structures, laws and mechanisms were established for managing non-Christian religions in the Straits Settlements signaling a move away from self-governance towards greater institutional regulation and supervision.