YAP K. H.
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Studied at University of Malaya
Updated Jan 25
MOST Malay Malaysians prefer a perpetuation of the policy for three reasons.
FIRST, they feel it’s their right to rule and to have the lion’s share of everything significant because they consider themselves as the first race to settle in Malaysia.
Being first, in the Malay world view, is to be the owners of the country.
So, right from the start, it seems clear that Malaysians aren’t equal through citizenship, which is the universally accepted yardstick of equality in a nation.
Citizenship is unequal because it is based on a Malaysian’s communal or racial origin.
The Malaysian Constitution spells it out clearly and specifically mandates the assumption of virtually uncontestable favouritism for Malays.
Because of that, racial membership trumps citizenship in Malaysia.
Which is an amazing contrarian reality today if you think about it.
The Constitutional pro-Malay provision, which was meant to be temporary, is a spectacularly bold-faced assertion in this day and age when racial discrimination is regarded everywhere else as a violation of the basic human right of ethnic and often, cultural equality, as well.
But as it’s a reverse of that in Malaysia, more Malay Malaysians than fewer, feel that it’s entirely justified that the Chinese- and the Indian-Malaysians, should live in Malaysia at their permanent pleasure and discretion.
So, it doesn’t matter if more than four generations, or some 200 years (yes, it has been that long ago) of Chinese and Indians had lived in Malaysia, were born and bred, toiled and toughed it out continuously and contiguously side by side with Malays, in growing the land to its cumulative beauty and vitality today.
It doesn’t matter at all, according to this Malay view, that the same Chinese and Indians today think and feel of Malaysia as home and do not regard China and India, the land of their forebears of some 200 years distant, in any way, as home.
They do not because they were born and bred, live, breathe, suffer, celebrate, die and are buried or cremated as Malaysians.
And most Chinese- and Indian-Malaysians are extremely proud to live and be that way as Malaysians.
But these matter less, ultimately, to Malay Malaysians, because they feel at their very core, that as original settlers, they have exclusive, unabridged rights and privileges.
This is the political gospel according to ultra right-wing Malay political party PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia or the Malaysian Islamic Party).
But PAS isn’t alone, which is the nub of the issue if the aim is to realise a multi-racially non-discriminatory Malaysia.
In fact, the PAS stand is fundamentally similar to the official government policy of pro-Malay favouritism codified in the New Economic Policy of 1971.
The difference between the two isn’t one of policy, but of degree.
Seen in this medievally feudal light, Malays may well feel that non-Malays shouldn’t begrudge them the collection of a “toll” through official favouritism.
After all, if Malays are the unrestricted owners of Malaysia, it’s not unreasonable, so this Malay argument goes, to lease squatting rights to non-Malays through an indirect, non-monetary levy such as permanent racial favouritism.
This is what ex-PM Mahathir Mohamad implied in one discussion about his latest book, for example, when he justified official aid only for poor Malays but not for equally poverty-stricken Chinese.
What’s worse, the good Doktor completely ignored the plight of the poorest ethnic Malaysians today - dispossessed Indian Malaysians, the poorest of whom have even less than the poorest Malays.
Mahathir’s justification for Malay exclusivity lies at the core of the predominant Malay mindset.
Otherwise, there will not be the unquestioned imposition of their special rights and privileges; one that’s Constitutionally mandated.
Certainly, the Malays incorporate other “bumis” who run the gamut from the Orang Asli to Portuguese Eurasians, though the reason isn’t so much because Malays think these other bumis deserve it.
There’s a huge dose of Malay self interest at play here because it bolsters the Malay claim of being original settlers by including races who settled the land long before they did, like the Orang Asli in West Malaysia and the native Ibans, Dayaks and Kadazan Dusuns of Malaysian Borneo.
It’s odd, if you think about it, how the words “first” and “original” are stretched beyond their meaning to fit the definition of “bumiputra” .
That’s because “first” and “original” are binary: either you’re first in class or second or last.
If you’re an “original”, there’s no one else who can replace or substitute you.
So, either the Orang Asli, Ibans et al were the first and original settlers in Malaysia or the Malays were.
By definition, it can’t be both. And yet, it is because it politically legitimises the Malay claim to ownership.
Next, Malay Malaysians are either indifferent or don’t give a rat’s posterior to the consequences of the communal discrimination which has traumatised their fellow non-Malay Malaysians.
Their reactions range from a shrug-of-the-shoulders “so what?” to belligerent allegations of betrayal to the country that’s nurtured them, and to a self-satisfied affirmation of the convenient Malay stereotype of the disloyal non-Malay.
The surprise in the last point isn’t that it isn’t new, but that it’s been around for so long.
This damaging Malay stereotype of the disloyal Chinese and Indians harkens all the way back to Malaysia’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman.
The Tunku publicly questioned, and declared his doubt in, the loyalty of non-Malays when he was challenging for the presidency of Umno in pre-independent Malaysia.
He took this stand to oppose and beat Umno’s founding father Onn bin Jaafar (OJ) who wanted to open Umno to non-Malays and thereby foster racial integration in preparation for an independent and politically organic multi-ethnic Malaysia.
OJ’s stand was in contrast to the racially antagonistic British colonial policy of dividing the Malays, Chinese and Indians to facilitate British domestic control over Malaysia’s (Malaya then) indigenous multi-racial population.
So, the Tunku, in opposing and defeating OJ, was in effect, perpetuating a neo-colonial policy of divisiveness practised by the British, at the start and in the heart of independent Malaysia.
With such racially jaundiced roots that run so deep and so persistently, it isn’t unreasonable to expect pro-Malay favouritism to be regarded as an unquestioned and permanent Malay right.
That is why we seldom, if ever, come across publicly-acknowledged Malay empathy or effort in understanding the Chinese-Malaysian dilemma.
If the Malays did, they would try to temper the excesses of official discrimination and actively consider, evaluate and arrive at a concrete timeline to achieve non-discriminatory communal behaviour in government and related sectors.
That is the angst felt by non-Malays who are torn between staying and feeling forced to uproot and leave because they see no light at the end of the tunnel after two generations of official racial discrimination.
Having said that, let’s tackle the basis of these two reasons.
First, the claim of being the first-born race and religion (Islam) in Malaysia.
If history is the factual basis of the Malay-Malaysian claim, then the claim isn’t an open-and-shut case in favour of Malay Malaysians.
The historical claim to bumiputraship for Malay Malaysians begins with the Malacca Sultanate in the 15th Century C.E.
The Sultanate didn’t originate as an Islamic state because it wasn’t begun by a Muslim.
Rather, it was begun by a fleeing Hindu prince of what is today modern Indonesia who subsequently converted to Islam and took the title of Sultan Iskandar Shah.
Parameswara (who bears one of the names of Lord Shiva, one of three principal Gods of Hinduism, the other two being Vishnu and Brahma) founded the kingdom after fleeing from the the Buddhist-Hindu Malay kingdom of Singapura (modern Singapore).
Singapura was burnt to the ground by either the Siamese of pre-Thailand Ayuthia or the pre-Islamic Hindu Javanese of Majapahit (Java today, which is the heart of modern Indonesia).
According to a Portuguese account, Parameswara, fled after a failed rebellion, sought, and was given, sanctuary by the Sultan of Singapura.
In return for the latter’s kindness, the renegade prince plotted a successful assassination of the Sultan, and usurped the throne for himself.
In retribution, a vice-roy of Ayuthia, who was related by marriage to the assassinated Sultan, and who was in charge of collecting Singapura’s annual tribute to Ayuthia, attacked and razed the island.
Parameswara fled, and eventually set up a Malay sultanate in Malacca.
That is the historical basis for the Malay claim to being Malaysia’s original settlers.
This history underscores the claim of bumiputraship and outright favouritism from 1971, with the adoption of the New Economic Policy instituted by Malaysia’s second prime minister Abdul Razak, pater of currently imprisoned former prime minister Najib.
But was Malacca - and the Malays - the first?
The prime archaeological evidence going back to at least 1,000 years before the beginning of historical Malay occupancy in Malaysia suggests that the Tamils of South India had established themselves in the Malaysian peninsula well before Parameswara’s Malacca gambit.
The archaeological evidence is concrete - all 224 sq km of it in Bujang Valley, Kedah.
Bujang Valley, Malaysia’s richest archaeological site, isn’t small - in fact, it’s almost as ironically large as Kota Melaka (Malacca town today), the original seat of the first Malay settlement in peninsular Malaysia.
While Bujang Valley may almost be as large as Malacca town, the valley settlement is far older and bears the ruins of a population identity that was Buddhist, and even older Hindu temple ruins, one of which went back some 2,300 years, testifying to the presence of Hindu settlers.
Who were the Hindu settlers? Likely among them were the sea-faring Tamils of the great South Indian Chola Dynasty whose rulers projected their maritime power beyond their shores to South-east Asia, including Malaysia and parts of Indonesia, notably Sumatra.
The holy grail of the Cholas was trade and interaction especially from the 11th century with the superpower of the ancient world then - Imperial China.
So, the identity of the earliest settlers of Malaysia isn’t as clear-cut as current politics would want it to be to buttress, and for the convenience of, the pro-Malay narrative.
In fact, the word, “Malay”, the English derivative of “Melayu” isn’t likely to be original or native to the Nusantara (the regional archipelago consisting of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo and the southern tip of the Philippines today) by which Malays claim as their sprawling multi-island maritime home and backyard.
It is likelier derived from “Malai”, the Tamil word for “hill” or “mountain” which marked peninsular Malaysia with its massive central mountainous backbone of the Main Range.
For a race that claims to be so cohesively widespread in population over such a massive archipelago, there is virtually no significant geographical name recorded anywhere that bears the word “Melayu” or Malay, bar a remote, politically and culturally unimportant river in Sumatra called Sungei Melayu (Malay River).
One would think that the name Melayu would pop up everywhere like popcorn from the vending machines of movie theatres if the Malays were so numerous and expansive as a polity in the Nusantara.
Yet, what pops up with greater comparative regularity are the older Buddhist pagoda temples and the even older Hindu temple ruins of Lord Shiva in Bujang Valley which were more than a thousand years senior to 15th Century Malacca.
It follows then that if history - the facts - suggest that the racial or communal origins of Malaysia aren’t as clear-cut, what about reason two?
Shouldn’t the second reason justifying permanent pro-Malay favouritism be re-considered as well, especially to facilitate the modern challenges of the nation’s long-term peace, stability and viability: which, in essence, should start with communal equality and the untrammelled primacy of citizenship?
Shouldn’t it be an equality Constitutionally-enshrined, and in the rule of law, that wouldn’t disadvantage any ethnic community?
And if that is the fair and sensible path taken, then the third reason - the acute racial discrimination against the non-Malays leaving them with a sense of hopeless alienation without end, of their second-class status - would be moot and render emigration among them largely unnecessary.
But all isn’t gloom and doom.
There is hope for a non-racially discriminatory Malaysia as last November’s General Election outcome proved with the royal confirmation of Anwar Ibrahim’s multi-party coalition as the new government.
There is now a critical mass of an articulated minority of Malay Malaysians who understand that the continuity of pro-Malay favouritism that’s gone on for the better part of half a century, will, ultimately, backfire.
These are the Malay Malaysians who have enjoyed the fruits of favouritism and risen in economic well being to the same comfortably cosmopolitan level as the sliver of upper middle class Chinese and Indians among the larger and largely less well off Chinese and Indian communities.
The caveat is that these Malay Malaysians remain firmly in the minority and do not reflect the primary and primeval feelings and perception of permanent bumiputaship of the overwhelming majority of their community.
The majority of the Malay vote went to right-wing ultra Malay political parties in the recent General Election.
This tug of perceptions is perhaps the new Malay Dilemma, which sensible Malaysians, regardless of creed and colour may wish to internalise, know and try to resolve: Together in good faith, and peaceably.
For related views, kindly refer to my earlier articles viz…on the new Malay Dilemma and how the Malays and non-Malays are wrestling with it;
