The Indian dilemma
Doubting Malaysian
Sep 20, 06 7:09pm




The nation we have come to call home has just celebrated its 49th year of achieving independence. There has been a lot of talk on racial unity amidst the simmering undercurrents that has become typical Malaysian life these days.

While the mainstream news boasts of the model multi-racial, multi-religious country that we have become, something else seems to be the message in the alternative, non-government controlled online media and blogs, where most opinions point to a very polarised society.

The euphoria of Merdeka at the time of independence has waned much and most of whom I know take it as just another public holiday. The three major races have been signatories to the document that prevailed independence, suggesting that all races are to be treated equally and fairly. Perhaps, the Chinese and Indian leaders then trusted Tunku as an honourable man, which he has been without a shadow of doubt, and agreed to the special privileges for a limited period of time.

The British had insisted that their view on independence would be considered favourable only if the three major races agree to it with a single voice, especially so after their bitter experience on the way they handled the partition of India and Pakistan. I was a young boy then and the immense spirit of independence that ran through me and the community that I lived in was ecstatic.

I was told by my mother then that we can now live with pride as a free and equal citizen but she never told me, or never knew, that in time to come I would be relegated to a third-class citizen in my own country where one race would prevail over the others and deprive me of the dignity that I cannot be an equal because of my race.

Tunku was not only an honourable man but also a revered man who had the traits unmatched by any other PM who came after him, except a shadow of it was seen in Hussein Onn. Over the years, what seemed as a genuine interest in helping one race became a tool of the ruling polity to entrench it in a way that has become ‘as of right’. Why we have become Malays and non-Malays, depicting the ‘us’ and ‘them’ society?

Many reasons have been cited but the prevailing predominant view is that the fault lies with the leaders of the non-Malay parties, who in the quest to warm their seats and pockets, have paid lip-service and abdicated their responsibility entrusted to them. This, they have been able to do with impunity, largely due to uneducated and unassuming masses and not forgetting the belief that ‘our leaders will never betray us’ mentality.

While the Malays enjoy unabated political clout and the Chinese have the economic strength to comfort them, the sore loser has been the Indians. Displaced and misplaced, the Indians have largely themselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Like my father used to say, no matter what, we should place our trust and faith in Barisan (then Alliance).

Although many have seen it as an irony, it is only Indians who can say that we consider ourselves Malaysians first and then Indians, not even the Malays. This is so even after being battered into a submissive and forsaken race with high crime rates and other malaise generally plaguing them and successive leaders of the Indians made wild speeches to dupe the Indians into believing that the ‘promised’ goodies are coming, but only that they never said when.

It is mastery and crafty that they have led the Indians to believe during every national election that the government has ‘taken care of us’ and with a few handouts here and there, hardly to last even a day, the worship of the leaders as their culture so much encumbers them. Parties which emerged after the MIC claiming to champion the welfare of the Indians have been nothing more than being either formed to ‘save their own skin’ or are ‘looking for greener pastures’ or else when would they ever get their share of ill-gotten wealth.

Are we Indians then at the crossroads? Perhaps yes, but haven’t we reached this pathetic stage a long time ago. What are we to do then to get our acts together? First and foremost, we must believe that, as we all well know by now, that our misfortunes have been created by our own Indian leaders and blaming the other races for our problems in a racially activated society would not be fair.

We also need to believe that not in the past, in the present or ever in the future that they are going to be our saviours. There could be a few handouts to their supporters but the larger section of the society still have to find means to scrape through or build their dreams by themselves.

It has to do with our mindset and if what I read in a blog of what a Johorean had mentioned as getting some vibrant youths there to start the long arduous task of changing mindsets of Indians, then there does seem to be a glimmer of hope.

Without any political inclination, their view is to educate the Indians to divorce the Indians from politics and help Indians to change their mindsets and take a neutral path to Malaysian politics. This, they believe, could pull the chairs of the Indian leaders under them and make them irrelevant to the Indians. They say their focus will be on commerce, business and education.

I do not know whether they will succeed, but I do wish them all the best as, for once, there is a sensible notion to this long-standing problem and the understanding that never in another hundred years would our Indian leaders ever or be able to solve our problems. Trusting them for so long has been the greatest tragedy of the Indians.

source: http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/57075