VIM syntax highlighting not working

Take vim
Type :syntax on
Seeing the message ": Not an editor command: syntax on"?

It is very likely that you are having only vim-tiny installed in your machine.

Install vim-runtime , vim-full.
sudo apt-get install vim-runtime vim-full

Type ":syntax on" in vim after the installation, it should work.

For syntax highlighting to be turned on by default, uncomment the 'syntax on' line in /etc/vim/vimrc

OS details:
benoy@palazhi:~$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.27-7-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.3.2 (Ubuntu 4.3.2-1ubuntu10) ) #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 06:42:44 UTC 2008