INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 02, FEBRUARY 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 5484 IJSTR©2020 www.ijstr.org The Existence Of Tamils Civilization In Medan Septy Denso Damanik, Risnawaty Sinulingga, Agustrisno, Rizabuana Ismail, Henry Sitorus Abstract: This paper shows how the existence and the culture of the Tamil tribe in the city of Medan. Given the city of Medan is known for its diversity with various tribes and religions and one of them is the Tamil Tribe community. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through interviews with informants who are Tamil tribes in the city of Medan. The results of this paper indicate that the existence of the culture of the Tamil tribe can be described from several cultural elements that they have, namely language, kinship system, knowledge system, life equipment, arts, livelihood, and religious systems. Through this cultural element, Tamil people residing in the city of Medan began to adapt and adapt to the environment and cultural diversity in the city of Medan. This can be seen from the shifts and changes that occur in the cultural elements of the Tamil tribe. These changes are influenced by several factors which in this paper are divided into internal factors and external factors. Index Terms: Existence, Tamil tribe, Social exchange, cultural element —————————— ◆ —————————— 1 INTRODUCTION Indonesia is a multicultural country, which has a lots of varieties of ethnic and varieties of vernacular language spread all over the place in Indonesia [1]. Every area in Indonesia has its culture and its own characteristic [2]. One of the region in Indonesia which is well known as a multi ethnic city is Medan. Aside Malay as the local in Medan, there were also many ethnic whose lived before Malay occupied Medan such as Java, Bataknese, Chinese, Mandailing and Aceh [3] [4]. One of the culture which is well known in Indonesia especially in Medan is Indian culture. It shows from the element which has an interesting and unique along with their characteristic have profound impact across Indonesian and around the world. The arrival of Tamil community from South India to Indonesia started in 1873 as a tobacco farm workers built by Dutch Colonial Government in Tanah Deli, East Sumatera. The first Tamil labor came to Indonesia was around 25 people through Penang and Singapore. At that time, this communities occupied an area around Babura River and they built Shri Mariamman Temple in 1884, which is well known as the oldest temple in Medan, followed by Shri Subramaniam Temple in 1892 and Shri Kaliamman temple in 1905. In 1917, Dutch government finally set this area into a settlement area for Tamil Community based on a concept called ‘quarter system,’ the concept divided the residential area based on their ethnicity. Ever since, this area has been so popular and synonymous with the placement of Tamil Community which then was named Kampung Keling [5]. Historically, it shows that Indian especially Tamil had done culture exchange with people in Sumatera especially North Sumatera. They came here with purpose such as a merchant, spreading their belief alongside with their culture. In the past, Tamil was used to know as a laborer in so many field such as construction worker, coachman, farm workers and others that need labor as their jobs. This happened due of their difference from other group with low education in India. However, it’s different from Tamil whose came to Medan independently. In general, their job is basically selling textile and herb in market. Aside from that, selling food became their bread and butter regularly [6]. Being a part of Indonesia is one their choice which is set by them in Medan generally. _____________________________ • Correspondence author: rizabuana@usu.ac.id and: Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia They are persistent with their belief and they do realize about the importance living in Indonesia and they also fight along with the colonizer when Indonesia were still under the reign of Imperialist. They also had their chance to be civil servant as their jobs. But one of their challenge in this era when the young generation became unaware with their identity as Tamil. Half of them do not speak Tamil anymore even the old generation barely talked with their own language within their family. In other hands, there is also a challenge they face this time, where Tamil is divided with their opinion to choose living in Indonesia which is based on their cultural universal such as religion, language, economy, technology, social, education and arts. Their ability to adapt and survive against the exchange that happened inside their culture will be explained in this journal. 2 METHODOLOGY 2.1 Review Stage This journal uses qualitative method to understand and explain the existence of Tamils Cultural in Medan. The topic itself will be conceived by their cultural universal which had happened in eighteenth century as yet with their experience, acknowledgement by people and reality in society. Through interview, we will collect the data from Tamils in Medan. Sources will be chosen effectively based on the criteria. As for the sources, we will use purposive sampling which use the source based criteria and the source is determined by their adequate knowledge in Tamils. The conception of the sources starts with deepening on research area, especially regions with Tamils as the biggest society within and general people who live side by side for a long time in Medan. Then, the sources will be the key of information is Tamils and any public figure which are the most important in existence of Tamils’ cultural, meanwhile the main sources is one of the leader in society and spiritual leaders of Tamils in Medan. Based on their type of jobs of the informer who got chosen in this journal can be seen below.