First published in Selangor Times in July 2011, a topic that always seems to be current in Malaysia.
Last weekend, I was invited to speak at an event organised by the Ministry of Youth and Sports together with the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), “Forum Generasi Muda”, a forum for youth aged between 18 and 40 years. It was a positive sign that panelists with views that were obviously not pro-government were invited to share on a range of issues including economics, culture, gender, and allowed to freely comment on Malaysia’s political situation.
The theme of the 3-day event was, of course, 1Malaysia (what else could it have been?), and how the concept should be developed further in numerous areas. Although the discussion was positive, there is a tendency for such events to end on a fluffy note, where participants and speakers call for unity in diversity, make a grand show of it and end with a warm buzz.
Former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed’s lunch dialogue was particularly provocative in that his analysis of race and politics in Malaysia seemed fairly outdated. His reasoning went as such: that it is because Malaysia has chosen the option of integration and not assimilation that we are as fragmented as we are today.
His example was that of foreign Muslims, like the Indonesians and Arabs, who have no problems assimilating with the local Malay culture in all forms including language, religion and way of life. They then become accepted as part of the “Malay” entity, whereby original Malays themselves have no problems extending such privileges enjoyed to them.
This almost seems like an indictment on those who choose not to be assimilated, such as the Chinese and Indians, for by choosing to maintain distinct cultures, they do not therefore receive those similar privileges as granted to those who do assimilate. I wonder whether this is the sort of logic that can really be applied within a country that encourages ‘unity in diversity’. Or is this diversity that the government stands for one that is qualified?
And that only if his argument is accurate, where Malaysians of different ethnicities grow apart and isolated from the other. His assertion that “race relations are worse today than in the past” may be bolstered by the media hype of it in recent years, but my response is that there is a great deal more assimilation taking place than he would care to acknowledge.
On the same weekend, I watched a play entitled “Parah” by Alfian Saat, based loosely on Yasmin Ahmad’s movie “Talentime” and the novel “Interlok”. The latter is a compulsory text for schoolchildren and has been embroiled in controversy over the last year. The play depicted a multiethnic group of friends in Form 5 whose friendships slowly deteriorate as they uncover their sentiments on race, brought upon by derogatory references in the said novel.
Although the play’s characters were stereotypical of characteristics of each ethnicity (Chinese badminton player, Indian insecurity), one of the points Saat drives home is that there is a great deal more assimilation by the non-Malay communities that is taking place. The Indian boy cannot speak Tamil to save his life, the Chinese cannot speak Mandarin and feels extremely uncomfortable in China whilst on holiday – all feel most at ease in their home Malay language.
The key questions are therefore: One, what is the degree of assimilation? What have the trends been in the past and at present, and has this changed significantly? And two, how should a policymaker approach communities that do assimilate vs. those who do not – and whether it is fair for such discrimination to take place based on this factor alone, given the call for diversity and encouraging a multitude of various cultural heritages to co-exist in the country.
The first question would require some serious sociological research to be carried out, to quantify “assimilation”. To compare and contrast between assimilation rates over the years, data dating from the last several decades would be needed. Some of the factors contributing to assimilation would be, I imagine, the ability to speak in the national language, the sense of national ownership, and subscribing to a fixed set of common values and so on, although the latter is probably non-existent.
However, in the absence of such methodological research, and acknowledging the different cultural and religious norms already in existence today, I would hope for policies that address citizenship. The argument that a particular group has not adopted the culture of the majority race, thereby validating its lack of equal access to the nation’s resources, is flawed. Especially so in the case of Malaysia, the minority ethnic groups of which have existed for centuries, in many cases pre-dating the arrival of other nationalities that did assimilate into the Malay culture.
Far from being able to remove ‘race’ from the national psyche, this last weekend threw in my face the reality that Malaysians have not yet cleansed ourselves from this theme. It is well and good to speak on it, to greater and more deeply comprehend its impact on society, but at some point this discourse has to move on. This is the role individual citizens have to take up, in encouraging ideological debate on class, economics, poverty eradication, income levels, equity and distribution.
