Prof. Dr. P. Ramasamy s/o Palanisamy (; born 10 May 1949) is a Malaysian politician who has served as the Deputy Chief Minister of Penang II and Member of the Penang State Executive Council (EXCO) in the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Pakatan Harapan (PH) state administrations under Chief Ministers Lim Guan Eng and Chow Kon Yeow and Member of the Penang State Legislative Assembly for Perai (MLA) since March 2008. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Batu Kawan from March 2008 to May 2013. He is a member of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), a component party of the PH and formerly PR coalitions. His vocal opinions on Zakir Naik, support of Hindu Nationalism policies in India during Narendra Modi regime and reforms of the civil service in Malaysia due to its Malay dominance have been controversial. Ramasamy was elected to the Malaysian Parliament and Penang State Legislative Assembly in the 2008 election, defeating former Penang Chief Minister Koh Tsu Koon. He became Deputy Chief Minister of Penang after the election, serving under the new Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, making him the first person of Indian origin to hold the post of deputy chief minister in any Malaysian state. Before entering politics, Ramasamy was a professor at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), from which he officially retired in May 2005. He later took up teaching positions in Germany and Singapore. Background Ramasamy was born on May 10, 1949. His father Palaniyammal Palanichany and his mother worked in the fields of Malaya in 1920 and migrated from Tamil Nadu. He has six siblings. Ramasamy attended the Anglo-China Primary School in the late 1950s. He earned his early education in Teluk Intan, Perak, then obtained a First Degree in Journalism in New Zealand then continued his studies in Political Science at Indian University United States (1977) and at master's degree in McGill University, Canada (1980) then obtained a PhD at University of Malaya in 1991. He served as a lecturer from 1981 to 2005 at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in Political Science. Career He has served as the University of Singapore's Visiting Professor in Southeast Asian Political Education. From the beginning, he has been involved as an activist working on issues of labor beginning in the 1980s through INSAN (Institute of Social Analysis) Kuala Lumpur. He has had 25 years of experience as a political science lecturer, who has