LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
I have observed for many years now that any attempt to discuss an issue which has ethnic connotations in a sane and rational manner in the media often provokes communally tinged reactions that have no bearing upon the matter at hand.
The responses to my “Too sweeping a comparison” (NST: Nov 11) from John Chang “Seek what can bring us together” (NST: Nov 12) and CYF “We are all proud to be Malaysians” (NST: Nov 14) testify to this. Chinese education, Bahasa Malaysia, freedom of religion, and so on are extraneous to the central question of how relevant the Obama victory is to the situation facing the non-Malay minorities in Malaysia.
All that I tried to show in my letter was that Barack Obama— unlike most non-Malays in Malaysia — shares the majority community’s mother tongue, its religion and its culture. In fact, in his campaign he went out of his way to prove that he is acceptable to White America by presenting himself as a candidate he had no special affinity with African-American causes, as someone who transcended his community, unlike say, an earlier Black presidential aspirant, Jesse Jackson. His denunciation of his former mentor, the Rev. Jeremy Wright, was also aimed at endearing himself to the White majority. According to media reports, Obama even refused to meet Muslim groups for fear that it would jeopardize his standing with the majority especially since he has a tenuous link with Islam through both his father’s and step-father’s families.
In Malaysia, on the other hand, most of the leaders of our minorities establish their credentials by standing up to the leaders of the majority community on critical ethnic issues. On the Special Position of the Malays and other indigenous communities, on the NEP, on the use of non-Malay languages for public purposes, and on the role of Islam in society, they often adopt positions that are diametrically different from what their Malay counterparts subscribe to. The interests and aspirations of their own ethnic kind, as they perceive them, take precedence over everything else.
Within the Malay majority too, it should be emphasized, there is an obvious commitment to ethnic causes. It is when there is a non-Malay challenge, real or imaginary, that some Malay leaders succumb to communal posturing. The ethnic hero is also part of the Malay political landscape.
It is partly because ethnic consciousness is so pronounced within the majority and minority communities in Malaysia that integration has not made as much progress as it should. Why ethnic consciousness has such power and potency in our society is a complex question that a short letter like this will not be able to address. Suffice to say that knowing one’s mother tongue or practising one’s faith in itself does not lead to heightened ethnic consciousness. It is when the obsession with ethnic identity goes beyond legitimate boundaries that it degenerates into stark communalism.
Finally, since CYF had asked, “Where did Chandra get the idea that 90 per cent of Chinese send their children to Chinese primary schools”, he may like to know that this is a figure from the Ministry of Education. It was published in the Sin Chew Daily of 13 April 2007 which stated that almost 90 percent of Chinese children between the ages of 7 and 12 enrol in Chinese primary schools.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar.
Kuala Lumpur.
5 November 2008.