NEW year, brand new you? Not if you're inhabitant temperament in Malaysia, it would seem. We ended final year with disputes over Article 153 provisions for bumiputera special privileges as well as began this one with discussions of the Race Relations Bill, hurtfully racialised statements, ethnocentric election strategising as well as accusations of religious subversion.
Said Zahari
Said Zahari's 1969 poem comes to mind: "Once again / Colour, race, religion as well as language/ Become sharp blades/ To use in the carnage."
Here's an idealistic instruct for 2012: which public discuss in Malaysia will stop treating the collective temperament as the communitarian competition. I'm not arguing for the colour-blind multitude colours have been pretty. And with whatever credibility we keep after which final clause, I'll disagree which beauty is not relative. Strength need not come from comparison. Wealth might be limited, though we have enough to share.
Id! entity c onstructs
I refuse to believe which we am the minority in these beliefs. we might represent the minority religion as well as denunciation inside of the minority race, though we grew up with comfortably multicultural social circles in inhabitant schools as well as never felt outnumbered until we left Malaysia for school.
This is not to suggest which those with reduction diverse backgrounds or stronger racial consciousnesses have been any more or reduction Malaysian than we am. Our nation's name honours the roots in Sanskrit-influenced nautical sultanates alongside the complicated transoceanic federation. We don't deserve the title "Malaysian" unless we worth all the ways of being differently Malaysian.
Not which this is easy. Not slightest since temperament is both ancestral as well as immediate, demanding munificence as well as cold to equivocate possibly trivialising or romanticising the past.
Syed Hussein Alatas, 1969 (Wiki Commons)
Like all inhabitant histories, ours is richly messy. I'm still in the routine of guidance about the mess, most recently through the little brilliant books. Syed Hussein Alatas' The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977) taught me about the colonial origins of the racial stereotypes which go upon to haunt us. T.N. Harper's The End of Empire as well as the Making of Malaya (1999) charcterised in prudent item the Emergency-era trauma as well as intergroup independence agreements caricatured in Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) story textbooks.
A book we wish to review next is Charles Hirschman's Ethnic as well as Social Stratification in Peninsular Malaysia (1975). Hirschman's work upon the expansion of Malaysia's racial definitions was cited in Farish Noor's 2008 paper upon the development of racial politics in Malaysia. Even the brief representation of this investigate tempts me to cynicism: meditative constructively about ethnicity becomes the struggle when it turns out which most of the racial perceptions were constructed by domestic opportunists, either colonial or local.
( lusi | sxc.hu)
A confused conversation
No wonder we haven't figured out how to talk about ourselves. I'm no legal scholar, though it doesn't take an consultant to notice which the Constitution infrequently denotes Malaysia's sub-communities as "ras, keturunan atau tempat lahir" as well as infrequently "kaum", all of which have varying linguistic ! as well as ideological foundations.
Official forms today have been more expected to ask for your sold "bangsa", despite the actuality which the tenure "kebangsaan" includes all of us. It's not unlike the tension in between job the inhabitant denunciation possibly "Bahasa Melayu" or "Bahasa Malaysia".
This is an additional difficulty of affirming opposite Malaysian identities: the little of the identities have been founded upon jointly irreconcilable claims. Some of these claims have been primarily unpractical for example, the attrition in between the Islamic heritage as well as the alternative companion religions. Other conflicting claims engage policy problems. Affirmative action stays an open question.
Diversity in inhabitant identity
Thankfully, unity can coexist with disagreement. Understanding as well as with regard to alternative perspectives does not require identical standpoints. we would similar to to consider which the wider operation of views can promote navigation of the unavoidably public though deeply personal territory of inhabitant as well as cultural identity.
My personal high regard of the mystic fashion of Malays in Malaysia has been sensitive by my high regard of the mystic fashion of Israel in Christianity. To some, which matter might be sacrilegious; to others, laughable. To nonetheless others, the parallel will be recognizable though uninspiring I'd felt likewise about the professor's declaration which Arabic abbreviation was similar to geometry.
This form of possible reactions diminishes neither the actuality which most have suffered injustice for as well as opposite Malay as well as Israeli sovereignty, nor my right to call myself Malaysian as well as Christian. But it does have exposing my temperament the risk.
Na tional unity is full with such risks. Choosing to identify the organisation as large as well as extrinsic as the republic is an act of forward trust, especially in the nation which offers the spectrum of smaller as well as thus safer identifications.
Norhayati Kaprawi
But we am encouraged in this certitude by alternative Malaysians' brazen expressions of nationality. Last July, thousands of netizens of all races claimed Anne Ooi as their Aunty Bersih. This past Christmas, Norhayati Kaprawi as well as Harakah Daily editors were among those who publicly advocated for interfaith amity.
In The Spectre of Comparisons (1998), Benedict Anderson notes which Malaysia "arose out of the final large British imperial garage sale". we adore garage sales. There's an energetic authenticity which comes from face-to-face negotiations amid variously used treasures as well as trash. we would pick the exasperating though fascinating disaster of the garage sale precipitated as it was by dispute upon most fronts over the centralised gimmicks as well as careless labelling of the Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia any day.
Here's to us. 
Hwa Yue-Yi is, in reverse in the sequence of the alphabet order, the Malaysian Christian Chinese banana.
More Barisan Nasional (BN) | Pakatan Rakyat (PR) | Sociopolitics Plus |
No comments:
Post a Comment