This is not the first time Karpal has been ‘warned’. Last May, a live 9mm bullet was hand-delivered to Karpal’s law firm with the message: “Don’t try to question the special rights of the Malay people. Don’t try to question the Malay rulers’ powers. If you don’t stop, this bullet will be lodged in your forehead. Remember, Bengali, don’t forget. This is your first warning.???

The persons unknown – police were not half as earnest in tracking them as they are investigating Indian detainees – that issued the death threat could not even distinguish between Bengali and Punjabi when they referred to Karpal as the former. Cultural understanding is clearly a one-way street when Malays can’t make a distinction that those with ‘Singh’ in their names are Punjabi.

Adopting the Malay lifestyle

Who best speaks for Malay culture and custom?

Is it the Malay Dilemma-ed Mahathir who institutionalised greed as a national aspiration with his ‘Malaysia Inc.’ drive? Or perhaps someone from the teeming ranks of Penang Umno, for example that guy who famously tore up ex-Chief Minister Koh Tsu Koon’s photo?

Or Zambry Abdul Kadir put up as Umno Menteri Besar in the 28 BN-plus-3 Independents coalition in Perak, which having 27 Umno state assemblymen laments its lack of an ethnic Indian in the line-up.

Like Dr Mahathir famously implied to his interviewer Riz Khan on al-Jazeera, anyone can be constitutionally Malay. The Malays are a warm, welcoming race willing to embrace as one of their own an individual who masuk Melayu or in other words, embraces Islam.

Constitutionally, there are two other markers for Malayness besides the Muslim faith. The first is speaking in Malay and second, practising Malay customs.

The man whose grandfather hailed from Kerala is Malay because the local community are generous in drawing outsiders into their fold.

As I’ve been informed by some proponents on the quality of Malayness, it is not for fellow Malaysians like Chinese and Indians to define who can be Malay, and make fun of Zambry’s looks. They claim Malays themselves are the best judge of whomsoever they wish to accept into the category ... Dr Mahathir’s father, for instance.

They are insistent Malayness is a matter of adopting the Malay lifestyle and ‘Malay religion’, bearing in mind that Malaysian-Malays are the only race in the world decreed 100 percent Muslim by law. 

Baba Nyonya swingback

Quite frankly, I don’t care if they want to make a Malay from a carpetbagger just stepped off the boat from Timbuctoo, or a blond Bosnian. As long as the entitlement and special privileges bestowed upon this recent arrival (by courtesy of his adopted Malayness) do not supercede those of born citizens who pay taxes.

So go right ahead and expand the Malaysian-Malay ‘race’ to encompass as many as you like but don’t let this impinge unjustly on equal citizenship rights.

I find it tiresome that an old Penang Baba-Nyonya family like mine are yet called by the likes of Penang Umno’s Ahmad Ismail as ‘immigrant squatters’ only because we’re Chinese. My maternal grandfather Khor Kok Yeam’s grandfather Boo Aun was a prominent resident of Nibong Tebal, Penang and it’s possible that my forebears landed on these shores even earlier.

On the paternal side, my aunts were typical Nyonyas invariably in sarong teamed with baju pendek or kebaya, who I’d never seen in skirt or pants a single day of their lives. They wore their hair perpetually in sanggul nyonya. They ate with their fingers and spoke Malay (the Penang patois) with ease.

But there has been a swingback by the Baba Nyonyas if we go by the enrolment in Chinese schools. It’s been estimated that between 90 and 95 percent of Chinese children today are in vernacular schools and these pupils, should a fraction of them be Baba-Nyonya descendents, do not have the same facility in Malay that their grandparents had.

National language command aside, the situation now is that minorities are told we have to abide by a national culture which is mainly based on Malay culture. Such was what was taught me in school. Today, kids in the national service programme are still sold a similar story.

In several controversial episodes that have come to light (and many more don’t), non-Malay girls and women have had to adapt to the accoutrements of Malay culture like the tudung during a march past, convocation or for the sake of uniformity during official functions. Non-Malay boys and men meanwhile have donned songkok for an investiture or other ceremonies.

Coercion to conform

It’s a ‘heads you win, tails I lose situation’ for the minorities because they are regarded by the Mat Taib types as being unable to comprehend Malay culture and customs but nonetheless made to adhere to outward practices like donning songkok or tudung. 

Will the real Malay culture, not the window dressing, please stand up? 

The Malay is touted as a cultured race but their public expressions lately, like the gang descending upon an Opposition MP almost 70 years old in a wheelchair alone and who needed to dial an SOS distress, is hardly a model of civility.

Champions of understanding Malay culture like Mat Taib and Umno Youth chief Hishammudin Hussein have backed the angry young men that mobbed Karpal.

Umno has harassed the veteran Parliamentarian not only in the House the other day but with over a hundred police reports, demonstrations both in front of his home in Penang and his office in KL, and by other forms of intimidation and show of force. Should one then be surprised that Karpal might suspect Umno Youth sent him the bullets as a threat?

The communal party wants to be seen as the protector and arbiter of Malay culture. There are those who condone and support Umno’s acts, and hence implicitly agreeing that these reflect Malay behaviour.

It would be terribly sad if a vocal splinter unrepresentative of the silent majority hijacked Malay culture and custom to become synonymous with a bullying credo. Isn’t it time that the quiet Malay who cherishes budi bahasa takes his heritage back?