By Eugene Chua K.H.
August 31, 2008
Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! This resounding proclamation of joy rang out over the Merdeka stadium fifty one years ago, representing freedom and hope to all the people of Malaya, and subsequently Malaysia. What does this word mean today, after so many years? I think that Merdeka means that we get to call ourselves, Malaysians, a people with a nation of our own. Those of my generation are said to be unmindful of history, unappreciative of the sacrifices made, the struggles faced and overcome, in order to enjoy the freedoms of a democratic country and the economic comforts that the first people during that first Merdeka did not enjoy, nor could they have imagined. Yes, Merdeka!
But what is Merdeka, when a young man and his friends, out for supper at a local stall, receive no service at all, and instead get hostile looks from the other patrons? What is Merdeka for a young boy who gets singled out and called all manner of terrible names by his teacher in front of his fellow young impressionable students, all because his skin colour is darker? What happens to Merdeka, when a student leader from one of our leading universities sends out a memo, vetted by the university’s student affairs department, telling one group of students that they should be prepared to stand against other students and fellow Malaysians?
I thought that Merdeka means freedom, freedom for individuals to have meals with fellow Malaysians without being distanced, freedom to learn and study in school under the care of his teacher. I thought Merdeka means freedom to fulfil our potentials as individuals for ourselves, our fellow Malaysians and our beloved country. So, what is Merdeka then?
I receive Merdeka when I receive kuih raya from family friends who are celebrating their religious festivity. I know Merdeka when my parents were invited to a wedding of someone of a different culture and religion, and where people mingled without thinking that they should avoid each other, and where the best photographer in town, a friend of the groom’s father, thought the couple look lovely together without thinking that they were different from him. I smell Merdeka when I smell all kinds of different styles of food prepared at various food stalls. I hear Merdeka when people who go to temples or churches stand alongside people who go to mosques during the Johor floods. I see Merdeka when two young innocent school children have no fears or worries of falling in love with each other, where two best friends think that the word ‘race’ is about fast cars and not the differences in their skin colour.
But, I had to pause to think again about Merdeka, where after extending a hand of kindness, I was asked incredulously whether I was of their race or another. It hurt slightly, but hurt it did. Because the answer to that question shouldn’t have mattered. Because they did not expect kindness from me, as I come from another race. I wondered about Merdeka when someone is called a traitor of his race by the university chancellor for thinking of inviting a meagrely small number of students of another race to study with fellow Malaysians of another race. I’m no longer sure that there is Merdeka when those painful racial incidents were reported in the papers over the past months. I do not know what has race anything to do with Merdeka, when people cheered together fifty one years ago without thinking of races.
But I do know this, that I will not allow those ugly incidents in the past and those that are likely to happen in the future, to make me retract my hand, because I will continue to extend my hand, in respect, in kindness and in love, to my fellow Malaysians.
Will you hold my hand then,my fellow Malaysian, and help keep Merdeka alive?
