As a voter who has been keenly observing the fast evolving political scenario, especially since the tsunami of 2008, in which Hindraf played a pivotal role and not merely as a catalyst as some reckon, I was truly appalled at the latest salvo fired against Hindraf by those who can quite reasonably be referred to as ingrates.

Ingrates because it comes from the very people who benefitted the most by the sacrifice of not only Hindraf's leaders, who spent 18 months in prison without trial, but the thousands of Hindraf supporters who braved the [water] canons and batons of the authorities and suffered not only unjust prosecution but bodily injuries too.

I am referring to the opinion piece on March 11, 2013 at Malaysiakini titled ‘ Hindraf is no longer the force they were’ written by prominent opposition lawmaker from the DAP, Mr M. Kulasegaran, the honorouble MP of Ipoh Barat.

Reading his opinion piece carefully confirmed my initial suspicion that it was indeed a deliberate attempt at confusing Malaysians about the true meaning of Hindraf's struggle which has always been centred on changing the political landscape such that a new era of justice could ultimately usher in a meaningful life for all Malaysians living at the bottom of the pile, especially Malaysian Indians who have, without doubt, been the worst hit.

Kula (left) gives a litany of excuses that just doesn’t cut it with thinking voters. All over the democratic world it is a common occurrence for political combatants to engage in name-calling but Kula, it seems, has found all this too hurtful and wounding to the point that he refuses to even sit down for discussions with Hindraf despite knowing full well that it commands strong grassroots support from Indians especially those from the working class, what with about a hundred thousand Indians attending Waythamoorthy’s meetings over the last six months and still counting.

He doesn’t venture to suggest why the name-calling even occurred in the first place as if it was a pastime of Hindraf leaders to do nothing else.

A cursory glance at the federal opposition’s report card over the last five years only in the states in which they hold power will reveal virtually next to no improvement on almost all the critical Indian issues that prompted the need for Hindraf to even come into existence. And I am talking about those issues that they could have resolved on their own initiative without input from the federal government such as land for Tamil schools, Hindu temples/burial grounds, scholarships by state bodies etc.

It is to highlight these shortcomings that Hindraf has had to go constantly on the verbal offensive.

But Kula in his piece just says “where they happened to be elected as legislators, they render whatever help they can muster to all and sundry Malaysians in need”.

This rings rather hollow and amply shows why Pakatan's report card is so weak because what we need is sufficient efforts to permanently solve the problems of the marginalised and not a "this is the best I can do attitude" from our elected reps.

But the most damning evidence of the lackadaisical attitude of Kula and people of his ilk is when he said “when the cause of the huge numbers of stateless residents – a large proportion of whom are Indians – became urgent in the LAST YEAR or so, it was politicians from PKR, DAP and PAS who coordinated the drive to press the issue in the public domain.”

Now everyone in Malaysia knows that the statelessness issue has been going on for decades. Hundreds of thousands of innocent, mainly Indian Malaysians have been robbed of their dignity/livelihood and forced to live in misery and fear for decades but Kula apparently believes that this problem “became urgent in the last year”.

If one cares to read between all his lines we can conclude that Kula cares little for the magnitude of the problems that so many downtrodden in Malaysia face today.

His disconnect from the misery of the poor explains why he gets so wounded that easily to the point of not even wanting to enter into discussions with the true representatives of the poor.

This aloofness in all likelihood drives him to glorify other characters who have never had any history of fighting for the downtrodden such as Ambiga Sreenivasan.

Kula claims that Ambiga enjoys broad-based support because she is well mannered, reasonable and dignified. He doesn’t tell Msians the full story because Ambiga is not even doing full service for the cause that she fights for. And that happens to be FREE and FAIR elections.

Free and fair elections to me also mean that Ambiga ought to have highlighted the need for Malaysia to provide reserved seats for minority communities or minority community majority seats at all law-making bodies for effective minority representation. Such seats would have provided minorities with strong representatives who can speak without fear or favour especially on minority issues.

This she has very cleverly failed to do, not wanting any controversy on her doorstep giving her an easy pathway to popularity.

My only request to Kula and all other Indian reps at PR is to stop all the wayang immediately and to work with Hindraf at coming into an electoral pact and not to view the latter as a threat to their positions and prestige.

The Hindraf Blueprint endorsal is key to all this, and once that is done, the real work of lifting the downtrodden can get underway.

It would be a tragedy if to protect their own positions Kula and his compatriots fail the very people they claim to want to help once again at GE13. The ball truly lies in Kula's court.

If at the end of the day he feels that Hindraf is not the force they once were, he should be man enough to come out in the open and say that both he and PR do not need Hindraf's support to win at GE13.

The letter above was sent CPI via e-mail by a Hindraf analyst.