By Farish A.Noor

Well, well, well… . Now it appears as if the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Following the less-than-welcomed but to-be-expected reaction from some Indian politicians and political parties in neighbouring India in the wake of the recent demonstration in Kuala Lumpur organised by the Malaysian Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), it would appear as if some of those who walk the corridors of power in Malaysia have gotten a little flustered and hot behind the ears. But are we really surprised by the global reaction that has come in the wake of the Hindraf rally, and should we be surprised if this spins into a regional, if not international issue that brings into the fray representative groups of the Indian global diaspora?

That the reaction of Hindu groups based in India was so fast should not be seen as novel by anyone. After all, similar reactions were seen when the Chinese minority were singled out in the bloody racial pogroms of Indonesia in 1998, when hundreds of Chinese homes and shops in cities like Jakarta were put to the torch by hordes of racist right wing Indonesians looking for a scapegoat to blame for the economic crisis on 1997-98. (The cause of which, we should remember, was the economic mismanagement and corruption of the Suharto regime between 1970 to 1998.) Then, as now, the minority that was persecuted and victimised turned to the global diaspora for help, and surely it came: Millions of Chinese from China to the United States join in a global campaign to defend the Chinese of Indonesia. Though what this did was offer only temporary respite for the victims of the race attacks then. What it really did was divide Indonesian society even further, pitting the Chinese against the indigenous Indonesians, and worse of all underlining the fiction that the Chinese were somehow a community distinct and apart that were ‘alien’ and ‘foreign’ to the norm. Sadly, what the reaction did was to add to the erasure of the long-term presence of the Chinese in the Indonesian archipelago, many of whom had been there for at least five generations and who were as Indonesian as the next person on the street…

Now to turn to what happened in Kuala Lumpur last weekend, we see some disturbing parallels at work:

It has been raised by others (in numerous blogs and articles available on-line) that the language used in the Hindraf memorandum was somewhat inflammatory and not exactly calculated to endear the group to the other communities of Malaysia. One is struck by how, yet again, a simplistic oppositional dichotomy of ‘Us’ against ‘Them’ was used to galvanise support and mobilise people on the street, on the basis of a singular theme: that the ‘Indians of Malaysia’ are ‘under threat’ from a host of factors that range from Malay supremacy to radical Islamisation. Understandably the hottest issues then appeared to be the recent controversial cases of marriages and divorces between Muslims and Hindus, and the shameful and wanton destruction of so many Hindu temples across the country.

One could, however, argue that there are deeper issues at stake, which are socio-economic, structural and institutional ones, and these should not be re-interpreted and twisted at will to present the matter in ethnic light with racial overtones. The fact remains that the community in question — Malaysians of South Asian origin — remain among the poorest and least represented in fields like education, the civil service, private sector, media and even advertising. It is the economic marginalisation of the community, made worse by structural imbalances in the system and compounded by the divisive communitarian politics of Malaysia, that has made their lot
a particularly sorry one.

But surely to correct these problems that are structural and institutional, we also need structural and institutional remedies? To call on greater Indian-Hindu solidarity may serve as the bonding capital needed to bring a political constituency together, but it also denies them the bridging capital that is vitally required to make theirs a national concern and goal for all of us.

Many prominent writers and activists who reside in cyberspace have stated their reasons for not supporting Hindraf or attending their rally. Primarily most of them have stated that they did not wish to endorse any campaign that further divides Malaysian society along sectarian religio-racial lines, and we can only concur with their opinion on the matter. No, Malaysia doesn’t need more racist politics of this sort, even if it is couched on a vocabulary of collective victimhood.

But let us all note one thing at least: While the leaders and supporters of Hindraf may have resorted to the politics of race and religious-based communitarianism to further a specific goal in mind, we should not really be surprised if they had done so. This is Malaysia, remember: the same multi-culti country that has been run and governed by the same tired and worn-out coalition of ideologically bankrupt right-wing communitarian race and religious-based parties for half a century. Those fellow Malaysians who marched on Sunday are the children of a nation-building project that has failed utterly and miserably, and they merely reflect the racialised mindset of so many Malaysian politicians today who are no better.

So while we may disagree with the tone and tenor of Hindraf’s communitarian political-speak, let us not miss the wood for the trees. Hindraf did not invent racialised communitarian politics in Malaysia, it was the component of the Barisan Nasional parties that did, and continue to do so.

Hindraf did not begin a new trend of race and religious-based political association and collectivism in Malaysia: it was the older race and religious-based parties and movements like UMNO, PAS and ABIM that did, and continue to do so.

Hindraf did not invent the language of racial and religious identification in Malaysia, for these terms were already hoisted on them and the minority communities of Malaysia by the state, the mainstream media and the conservative reactionary forces in this country long ago. It was the politicians, political analysts, media commentators and communitarian activists who referred, for instance, to the Hindu temples of Malaysia as ‘Indian temples’; and who continue to refer to Malaysians of South Asian origin as ‘Indians’ or the ‘Indian community’.

For the information of all and sundry, those temples that were bulldozed were not ‘Indian temples’ but Malaysian temples, built on Malaysian soil, frequented by Malaysians, paid for by Malaysians and they were part of the Malaysian landscape. There are no ‘Indian Temples’ in Malaysia – Indian temples exist in India and if you don’t believe me then fly to India and check them out yourself. Likewise the only ‘Indians’ in Malaysia are the tourists, expats and workers who come from India and happen to be Indian nationals bearing Indian passports. Those Hindus who marched in the streets of Kuala Lumpur on Sunday happen to be Malaysians like you.

For the sake of the Hindu Malaysians, and all other minority communities in this country, one hopes that such simple ground rules and facts would be borne in mind as we try our hardest to win back this country for all of us, the Malaysian people themselves. The gallery of amateurs who make up today’s government may bemoan the fact that significant sections of the Malaysian public have lost all confidence and trust in the system that they have helped to create, but no amount of spin can alter the fact that the Hindraf demo was a symptom of what has gone wrong in this country. If Hindraf is to be accused of communitarianism and exclusivism in its politics, then we need only to look at the mould from which it emerged: a cauldron of racialised, divisive and exclusive politics that clearly bears the made-in-Malaysia stamp, a symptom of the ills of our times and the failure of the state.