Last Friday, Toh Puan Umasundari Sambanthan née Subramaniam passed away, at the age of 90. She was an activist, social worker, and a leading figure of the cooperative movement. Toh Puan Uma was one of the founders of the National Council of Women’s Organisations (NCWO) and she worked tirelessly to raise the status of women. Her husband, the late Tun V.T. Sambanthan, was Malaysia’s first Minister of Labour and president of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), and is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Malaysia.

Back in 2011, we had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to Toh Puan Uma, where we got (then) university student Kenneth Ng to interview her. We revisit that interview, where Toh Puan Uma candidly shared her eyewitness accounts of the consolidation of the MIC, the work put into making Merdeka a reality, and those early years of building a new nation. She also talked about her work with the NCWO and her life as an activist, social worker and leading figure of the cooperative movement in Malaysia.