About Us

The Sri Murugan Centre is dedicated to fundamentally transforming the Indian community in Malaysia through the empowering force of education. This involves a dual focus: nurturing academic excellence by providing structured and comprehensive support from primary to tertiary levels, fostering a culture of high achievement as a cornerstone for both individual and community advancement. Simultaneously, SMC is committed to cultivating character development by going beyond academics to instill essential values such as discipline, self-confidence, and social responsibility through holistic programs like motivational camps, leadership training, and cultural initiatives. This comprehensive approach aims to shape well-rounded individuals with strong ethical foundations and a deep sense of social responsibility, understanding that their educational success serves as a catalyst for broader community upliftment, encouraging them to become change-makers who contribute to the well-being of their families and society at large.

The 1970’s was a period of challenge for the Indian community. The New Economy Policy (NEP) implemented in 1971 was a bold measure in affirmative action. However its implementation solved one problem whilst creating others. The Indian intelligentsia who initially supported the rationale of NEP began to have second thoughts upon reviewing its operation. Hence the birth of several NGOs in the 1970s and 1980s to fill the void created by NEP for the Indian community. Sri Murugan Centre (SMC) was one such NGO founded in 1982 by academics and undergraduates in the University of Malaya. As an operational NGO, SMC chose education as the sole vehicle for social and economic mobility of the Indian community. The major challenge in the first decade of SMC was to overcome the feudal mindset of static plantation society. The plantations did not provide the workers or their children market-driven education nor skills to survive outside the estate. The task for SMC was to change the mindset from negative to positive, from complacency to pro-active and from accepting status quo to change. We had to raise the expectation level of themselves, build self-confidence and self-respect to appreciate the unique gifts God has given them. This is the key to the success of SMC. Once a student discovers his self-worth, you can teach him anything and he will learn. SMC became a social revolutionary movement because the community began to recognize that what it was doing is unprecedented. It has merged education for economic success with values for a resilient character. We understand the needs of the ordinary silent Indian family who desire to have a better quality of life and above all give their children a future they did not have. Over the last 4 decades SMC has reached over a million Indians. SMC shall lead in the struggle to bring the Indians in Malaysia to a higher income group. The task of SMC, a program based movement, has become imperative given the lack of leadership in the Indian Community today.