Chapter 15

Teluk Intan Forum at Ghandi Memorial Hall on Saturday 20/10/2007 @ 7. 30 p. m.

Ganabatirau’s hometown is Teluk Intan and he was lobbying the DAP leadership to get to contest the Teluk Intan Parliamentary seat under a DAP ticket. I first
met Gana at the Petaling Jaya Magistrets Court sometime in August 2006 and we merely had a very casual conversation. Sometime in October 2006 I saw Gana again outside Parliament house during a Hindraf public protest at the height of the Setapak Hindu temple demolishment campaign. I had asked him for his handphone number and keyed in the same into my handphone. Gana first came to my office in June 2007 and during the conversation he had expressed his wish to stand for the Teluk Intan Parliament seat as it was his hometown. I gave him a run down on the serious Indian problems in Malaysia and gave him some of the Hindraf and other memorandums on the pressing Indian issues that we had prepared and submitted to the UMNO controlled Malaysian government.

The next I saw him sitting as a participant in the first few rows from the front at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall forum along with two of his brothers. After the Chinese Assembly Hall forum, K. Arumugam, one of the original five speakers had declined to be a speaker at the Semenyih forum (and thereafter)as he may have found our “pace” too fast and highly risky for him and the issues we were highlighting too “hot” for him. After a peaceful assembly demanding that there was no allocation for Tamil schools in the 2008 Budget (outside Parliament house in September 2007), Gana joined Mano and myself for tea at the Seetharam Restaurant in Bangsar. It was then that I had suggested that Gana could take over K. Arumugam’s place as Gana was also Tamil educated like Arumugam. Gana instantly agreed. And he became a speaker at many of the subsequent forums organised by Hindraf. In fact Gana and earlier Arumugam were the only Tamil educated speakers cum lawyers among the six of us.

After having filed the said Public Interest Civil Suit and having set the date for the Semenyih forum, I had asked Gana to organise the subsequent forum after
Semenyih at Teluk Intan. Gana agreed and with the help of his brothers and my Teluk Intan contacts that I had put to him, he booked the Ghandi Memorial
Hall at the Teluk Intan town centre. This hall was on the first floor of two pre war shophouses. As usual the police special branch were dragging their feet by
not wanting to approve the police permit right up to the very last minute. I had asked Gana to print and distribute leaflets. We got the tamil press Malaysian
Nanban and Makkal Osai to carry a small article on this event.