Kampung Buah Pala in Bukit Gelugor, Penang is a quiet Tamil settlement located in heart of rapidly developing eastern part of Georgetown.

Being merely a five-minute drive away from the Penang Bridge, 10-minute drive from Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone and 10-minute drive from Komtar, the traditional village on a 2.6 hectare prime land would be a gift for the marginalised Tamil Hindu community in Penang.

However, instead of being a gift, the village prime status has become a curse in recent years.

Hungry developers have long coveted the costly acreage for high-rise development to earn hard cash.

The state government of Dr Koh Tsu Koon (photo) has taken the lead to destroy the traditional identity of a Tamil village by selling the land to Koperasi Pegawai Kerajaan Pulau Pinang in 2005.

Much to annoyance of the villages and despite mass protests, under the cooperative multi-million ringgit project pipeline, the land would be build into a mix-developed township by private company, Nusmetro Ventures (P) Sdn Bhd into four blocks of medium and low medium cost apartments of 740 units, eight units of shop lots, a community hall and a kindergarten.

The cooperative would earn a whopping RM12 million by flushing out 33 village houses and 50 families living in the area.

The villagers, led by the Kampung Buah Pala Action Committee chairman, M Sugumaran, 52, has held protests and written to the authorities to stop the development and preserve the village as a traditional Tamil settlement, which local historians claim had existed for more than 150 years.

Five generation of settlers

According to Sugumaran, the original owner of the once coconut plantation area, David Brown, has presented the land to their villagers' forefathers nearly 200 years ago.

"We have been living here for five generations," he told malaysiakini.

Shortly after the British left, the state government took over the village in the capacity of 'trustee' and began to collect annual Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL) rents.

"However, the state government stopped collecting TOL this year apparently to inform us that we got to evacuate our homes to make way for new township," said Sugumaran.

Nusmetro Ventures have promised a RM75,000 apartment in the proposed township as compensation to each affected household.

What they feared happened when the state land office issued notices last month to all villagers to evacuate with immediate effect.

"Last week we learnt that the state authorities planned to send in excavators and bulldozers to demolish our homes and forcibly evict us from our own land that we had lived for five generations," Sugumaran.

The villagers immediately lodged a police report and sought the help of state executive councillors Koay Kar Huah, the area state assemblyman, and PK Subbaiyah.

The forced eviction was halted, albeit temporarily.

Back in 1999, the villagers have requested the state government to take the initiative to earmark the area as a traditional Tamil settlement to safeguard the interests of minority in accordance of the federal policies to preserve traditional villages as symbol of national pride.

Broken promise

Kampung Buah Pala, popularly known as 'Tamil High Chaparral' to Penangites here due to his traditional background of cowherds, has the features to become a model traditional Tamil Hindu settlement.

A tourist would mistake Kampung Buah Pala for a village in India if one were to witness religious festivities celebrated so passionately and joyously by the villagers.

The festive mood and colourful atmosphere of this area is hardly visible in other areas on the island.

During the last general election campaign, Koay had indeed promised the villagers that he would everything possible to have Kampung Buah Pala listed as a traditional village.

However, the villagers have now lost faith with their government representatives.

"We have formally applied to the BN state government to gazette our settlement as traditional Tamil Hindu village.

"Not only the state government turned down our request, it has now turned on the heat to evaporate our very existence.

"Neither our state assemblyman nor MIC has helped us," said an elder citizen Dravian Arul Pillay, 82.

Another elder villager, M Muniammah, 80, said "it would tear my heart if my forefathers' house to be torn down."

Legal challenge

They have now turned to the DAP to save their homes and Bukit Gelugor member of parliament, Karpal Singh has readily obliged to the villagers pleas.

"I will represent you in court to challenge the state government on the land deal with the cooperative, which had been done illegally," the wheelchair bound DAP national chairperson told the villagers during a constituency visit.

Although the national policy espoused by the Penang-born Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was to preserve traditional villages of all communities in the country, Karpal sadly noted that none of the country's traditional Tamil Hindu-dominated settlements had been gazetted thus far.

He would work closely with state legal aid bureau head and poet Cecil Rajendra, who had applied for court injunction in recent days to stop the development, to earmark Kampung Buah Pala as the first one.

DAP direct involvement in the issue could just would trigger alarm bell in ears of state government and possibly save the landmark Tamil settlement from extinction.