The following is from a 1910 article in the Straits Echo. The microfilm is available from NLB here.
Going down town the other day, a splash of vivid scarlet suddenly arrested my gaze, forcing it defiantly as it were from the entrancing book I was reading. The morning was dull and grey ; cold, I had almost written. and a drizzling rain was falling in a half-hearted, hesitating manner. The thoroughfare was a busy one, and very dirty, the only brightness about it being the one patch of scarlet colour alluded to. A piece of the roadway was being re-metalled not a big piece, by any means, yet to accomplish this work some half a dozen Klings had been told off. A cheerful, chattering crowd they were for the most part, moving their “pounders” up and down in their customary festina lente fashion—all save one, who stood apart from the others, looking the picture of misery. His head and trunk were swatched in a brilliant red wrap from which sad eyes peered out at me. Naught else was visible but a pair of thin black legs. Let the pen of the late G. W. Steevens describe a Similar to them. “By his legs you shall know the Bengali. The leg of a free man is straight or a little bandy, so that he can stand on it solidly ; his calf is taper and his thigh flat. The Bengali’s leg is skin and bone, the same size all the way down, with knocking knobs for knees.” The contrast between then the picturesque description of the native which I was in the act of reading in Pierre Loti’s ” L’Inde (sans les Anglais) ” and the type standing before me in the Singapore streets was cruel. Did the man know by intuition what my book contained, and determinedly forced my attention from it to contemplate the Indian toiler in our midst to-day?
Who amongst us has a good word for the Kling? The very name has been diverted from its original meaning, and is now used almost as a term of contempt for any Indian in the Malay Peninsula or Straits Settlements. The European who has been pronounced a failure elsewhere has to-day a chance of of obtaining employment as a manager or assistant on a rubber estate. But the boom has not enhanced the value of the Kling. He is not wanted even as an estate coolie, (vide the Governor’s speech at the recent Show). Statistics prove that Singapore contains at the moment 57,150 Klings. For what purpose did they come to our shores? “So Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation.” The Kling is a Gibeon-ite in the land, and as such an outcast and anathema.
Whether the Kling deserves all the abuse he gets I cannot say ; but, certainly, I would not recommend anyone to choose him as a near neighbour. Once, from necessity not choice, I had him as such for over a year. He was in this case a tongkang coolie. All day long he reposed, but when the rest of the city slept he uplifted his voice. Across the river until early dawn was flung from one tongkang to another a screaming, screeching jargon in that dialect which Hugh Clifford says is “popularly supposed to be the vernacular spoken in Hell.” At first I feared that nothing less than battle, murder and sudden death must be the outcome of this nightly abuse. But I learned in time that the Kling’s arm is as nerveless as his leg, that he fights with his tongue alone. And I have been told by those who know that his language is a particularly flowery one ; and his powers of vituperation even more to be envied than those of the Australian stockman, who is himself a master in the art. Also, that whereas the Australian is content with merely abusing his listener, the Kling digs into the past and lays bare unpleasant truths concerning his compatriot’s forbears.
Has the Kling no virtues? Come with me into the General Post Office when a mail steamer is sailing for India. Upstairs you shall find the Money Order Department lined with Klings three deep, each waiting his turn for attention from the Chinese kranis who, on these occasions, amply earn their month’s pay. How these men, whose clothing is “nothin’ much before, and rather less than ‘arf o’ that be’ind” cand send to their homes (presumably) the astonishing remittances they do, isa problem which I have not yet been able to solve. As a matter of fact, the only solution I can find is that the Kling must be a dusky cousin of the Scot, and afflicted with the same virtue as the man from “ayont the Tweed.” It is doubtful whether he earns more than $10 a month yet from this he will spare 10 to 15 rupees regularly for – well, say Mrs. Kling and the babies in the Kling-land. Is there nothing commendable in this? How many Europeans here remit home one-half or even one-quarter of their salaries?
Neither should we forget that this despised race produced a Gunga Din. – Free Lacne in S. F. P