I had written this for my column, Chiaroscuro, and a version of it appeared today, August 31 01, in Malaysiakini under the heading: The Malaysian - Malaysia's irrelevant minority. - MGG

www.malaysiakini.com

31 August 01

The Betrayal of the Merdeka Generation

CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

The month-long ceremonies, most out of view of or irrelevant to most citizens, ends with Merdeka Day on August 31, this Friday for the 44th time since the first in 1957. If there is a mystical or cultural significance for it, as there once was, it is hidden or ignored. When once we looked upon it as a sign of our coming of age in the world of nations, today we look upon it as an occasion for self-important speeches and parades that had lost its meaning and relevance a long time ago. What lacks these days in our Merdeka celebrations is the nation's soul. The government thought materiel progress could replace it, but without a belief in what independence is about, even that flounders. And without a soul, Malaysia is nothing.

The shared unity of early independence has become fiction, no more now than irrelevant posturing, with a clear-cut division between the cultural worldview and the political. Where once the demarcation was by race, today it is blown open by dialects and language, and split further by inaction.

To those like me, a teenager at that magical moment in 1957, independence brought us of age, an end to a colonial domination and a new life as citizens of an independent country, Merdeka Day this year emphasises, if nothing else, the political betrayal of a nation. What we hoped Malaya, and then Malaysia, would be at its creation is today forgotten, everything reduced to ringgit and sen, with anyone believing in ideals a crank. What held the nation together in 1957 -- the ideal of a shared destiny -- is no more.

The Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, in two decades as prime minister, must take much blame for this. He took office with good intentions, but understood not the Malay content to live in the 18th century world around him, and unwilling to be hurled screaming into the twentieth century.

When he scolded the Malay for his views, and made major cultural mistakes, especially how he treated his deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, the Malays walked out on him. Merdeka Day these days is yet one more way to wean the Malay back into his political clutches, and of relevance to few else. The flagmakers make money, the service providers make money, and the tamasha is yet another soporific to keep the multitude unquestioning and angry.

To compensate, UMNO lurches into outsmarting PAS in using religion to succeed. It is a double-edged sword, as the Shah of Iran found to his cost. To keep it in the Malay loop, UMNO must be seen to more Islamic than PAS; and PAS need do no more than accuse it of being unIslamic for UMNO to dissemble. As we approach Merdeka Day this year, the practical political reality is not to preserve the multiracial state but to ensure the dominance of an UMNO-led Islamic state. The multiracial ideal is all but gone.

So, Merdeka Day is one more occasion for the government to tell the world he can ignore a society's culture and replace it with an economic society sans culture but based on greed and material progress. Lip service is all we get what a nation ought to be. Only UMNO's prescription is acceptable, all others deemed irrelevant.

Malaysia is therefore still an artificial state sans the cultural and intellectual sinews to be considered a nation. The most irrelevant minority in Malaysia is the Malaysian. It would be hard put to find one among our friends. Without him, she moves headless and clueless to a mystical nationhood. This lack of intellectual discourse sets it back. The government decides, usually without thinking, what it should be, and woe betide any who challenges its premise or confront it with ideas of his own.

The past two decades moved away from the ideal, governance concentrated on one man, the prime minister, and now tottering because the Malay cultural ground which was the raison d'etre of UMNO's political theory of Malay Dominance which was packaged as the New Economic Policy. That cannot now be sustained: no effort is made to preserve its intellectual foundations and without that the Chinese business man no longer would help UMNO sustain it.

The genius of the first prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, gave the Indians and Chinese in 1957 a place in the Malayan, and Malaysian, sun; six years earlier they could not even be citizens. Sabah, Sarawak, and for two years, Singapore, joined Malaysia, in this attempt to create a unified nation of different races, tribes, cultures. The Tengku took seriously his belief in the unity of races, and consultation with his coalition partners and racial leaders laid the foundations.

That had its first rude shock in the May 1969 riots, when UMNO to preserve Malay hegemony did what amounts to a coup d'etat on the Malay community with its political policy of Malay dominance. It had the twin plank of keeping the Chinese, Indians and the non-Malay bumiputra tribes politically subservient to the dominant Malay, and ensure UMNO was forever the leader of the Malays.

One important casualty was race relations. What caused the riots was the Chinese-Malay cultural divide. The Indians, instead of staying neutral or side with the Malays, opted to be with the Chinese and factored themselves out of the Malaysian equation. The New Economic Policy and Malay Dominance paid scant reference to Indian needs, long on hope and little of substance. The past 44 years therefore reduced the Indian to that of the underdog he was during the British interregnum. That has worsened, with the belief he has power, as a member of the governing coalition but in reality none at all.

Without this intellectual and cultural underpinning Malaysia, coupled with the single-minded political destruction of its institutions of state, there is little that a citizen can rejoice on August 31. The wrongs are not righted, and with no intention to.

The economic and industrial growth is reduced to a parody: the official desire to be the largest, the biggest, the deepest, the shallowest to be in the record books reflects not confidence in the Malay Dominance Government the UMNO-led National Front government leads, but as an attempt to prove to the people that they still have the moral right to govern.

To further complicate matters, when Malay Dominance lost its hold, UMNO rushed into Islam and tries to dictate the Islamic Agenda, only to play into the hands of theocrats, notably the Parti Sa-Islam Malaysia (PAS). Malay Dominance was re-packaged with a theocratic worldview, but PAS need no more than throw regular spanners in the National Front works for it to dissemble. To prove PAS wrong, UMNO becomes even more Islam in its political policies than PAS. But it destroys willy nilly the Malaysia it created. And PAS plays its cards well. It is UMNO, not PAS, that must now prove its Islamic credentials.

This is probably the worst Merdeka celebrations in the past 20 years, for it is the first in which the ideal of Malaysia is not even in the minds of its leaders. But this would not be admitted. The Malay ground seethes, the Chinese ground grovels, the Indian ground tries to recover lost ground, the tribes of Sabah and Sarawak discuss if they need UMNO or the National Front to survive. The government does not have a clear policy on the eve of its 44th independence day celebrations to prove them wrong. Unpalatable truths that would be ignored while the makebelieve of how good we would take pride of place. But the truth still cannot be masked.