Abandoned Daughters: Child Adoption by Indian Families in Pre-Independence Malaya and Singapore

From the late 1920s into 1960s, child adoptions within the diasporic Indian community in Malaya and Singapore revealed a revisioning of what it meant to be “Indian”. Cultural constraints that limited adoption in India lost their impact, and diasporic Indians received girl children, mostly from the Chinese community, into their families, shifting away from a preference for sons. In welcoming these adopted girls into their lives and treating them as family members, they contributed to a reformulation of ethnic group identity.