Kadir Jasin, yet another journalist, has asked this: Am I Malaysian just because I am proud to be a Malay?

Kadir isn’t merely challenging the basis for dropping ethnic identification from formal or official documents. More than that, he is actually posing (perhaps without him realising it) an existential question, and a fundamental one. Rephrased, the question in more detailed form means this: given that the Malaysian identity, in its varied guises, has ethnic, cultural and geographic roots that came dispersed from elsewhere, what then qualifies to be Malaysian, as citizen and as a personal identity?

One knows the answers from the likes of Ibrahim Ali, Ridhuan Tee and the latter’s Christian version named Josh Hong of Malaysiakini. They are as varied as their religious, ethnic and political affiliations from which they source their arguments, no matter how inane.

Then, there are the Bangsa Malaysia types, people like Haris Ibrahim, who go round inventing a Malaysian bangsa or race by suggesting that root sources be abolished in order to meld the Harises and the Ibrahims into one. With that, they could extend their argument to include all the things that supply the ingredients to individuality: culture, language, history, tradition, custom and norms. The Bangsa types, without knowing where they are heading, actually want to pawn the memories of their grandfathers in order to make fascism: all must be the same or else die.

KTemoc’s answer to Kadir Jasin is like the Bangsa types; in political terms it is called New Politics or Beyond Race Politics.

But that’s still missing the point in Kadir’s question: what qualifies? Is Kadir not a Malaysian, or even a lesser one, because he insists on being Malay? Or, the same question posed differently: why can’t he be Malaysian by remaining a Malay?

Such questions have their originating problems in the Malaysian constitution where only the Malay is mentioned alongside the idea of Malaysian, others are not. Also, Kadir would have been spared his existentialist angstrom if the Umno Malays hadn’t lent weight to the idea of the Malay as political identification and as a political class. Those purposes have given ammunition to the Ibrahim Alis and the Joshies to attack the Chinese (or Indian) for being un-Malaysian if they were to insist on going with their ethnic heritage. In numerous cases (Chin Peng, for example), such Chinese don’t even qualify as citizen, much less as Malaysian in identity terms.

Kadir is now made to answer the same problem. It is that for 52 years and more, the Chinese were made to suffer from the making of ethnic heritage and national identity as mutually exclusive. It is on this mutual exclusivity that Ibrahim Ali is saying the same thing as the Bangsa Malaysia types – you shouldn’t be Chinese if you want to be Malaysian. Their arguments run in opposite directions, but they turn up with the same conclusion. And Ridhuan’s answer to the exclusivity? ‘Masuk Melayu’ by being Muslim. Joshy’s? Masuk orang putih, becoming a Christian. (Kadir alludes to this in his article.)

Kadir’s existentialist conundrum is in asking, what makes for a Malaysian? Not, who makes a Malaysian.

KTemoc, after the fashion of Bangsa Malaysian inanities, is answering the latter and so misses the entire line of argument. He, a Chinese or whatever he might want to be, begins by declaring, “I am always been proud to be a Malaysian.??? (O? Really? One hardly hears this from a Malay, so why KTemoc’s need?)

This is reinforced by another declaration, “I’m very sure of myself as a Malaysian.??? Then he chides Kadir: “But unlike Kadir Jasin I don’t need to apologise for this??? (being a proud Malaysian). After which he devotes 1,000 words in a verbal diarrhoea to doing exactly the same thing: apologising. He then obfuscates his apology to call Malaysia “Motherland???: where has been his mother, or his mother’s mother, or mother’s mother’s mother? You’d have to ask.

Small wonder, in Malaysia, idiot Anglophiles, the Temocs and Joshies, talk pass each other, all as confused as the Ridhuans and, then, poor Kadir whammed among them. But the Chinese (not the Anglophiles) are with him on the issue. They have asked the same question for 52 years and got, not silence which might been preferable, but Joshy racism, Ridhuan religiosity, Mahathir apartheid and Ibrahim Ketuanan fascism. And now, it’s KTemoc pontificating over his uncles. – http://shuzheng.wordpress.com

 

Related articles:

I wish to remain a Malay - Kadir Jasin

I wish to remain a M’sian – KTemoc replies Kadir Jasin

Seeds of racism: A look at national identity from child developmental perspective  - CT Wong