By Farish A. Noor

When it comes to dealing with the grouses of the Malaysian public – many of which happen to be legitimate, mind you – it would seem that the benighted leaders of our blessed country have read every single page of the stupid book.

We recall the period when we, the Malaysian public were told by our – Malaysian – government that we had the right to speak up and that our voices would be heard. We were assured that we had the right to speak, to raise our concerns, to voice our opinions and to even state our differences and disagreements in this new Utopian, idyllic public space that had appeared out of nowhere. But no sooner than had we opened our mouths to utter the first sentence beginning with “But…”, the tear gas canisters were shot in our faces, the batons were raised, the water cannons were put to work. It is hard, as I wrote not too long ago, ‘to listen to the people while you gas them in the face’.

The latest (of many) instances of back-tracking came with the defensive posture taken by the senior leadership of this country in the face of the demands voiced by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) of Malaysia. I write this as someone who is concerned about the poverty and growing income gap among all Malaysians, and not Hindus solely. And while I cannot lend my support to any grouping that is sectarian and exclusive by nature, neither can I deny the fact that many of the complaints raised by Hindraf happen to be real – or at least really felt – by the members and supporters of the movement itself.

As an analyst however my own take on what has happened with the Hindraf issue is one that is coloured by the concerns of a political scientist: Seen purely from an objective point of view, the academic in me is boggled and dumfounded by the response of the Malaysian government to date; the latest being the tear-gassing of Hindraf protesters before the very gates of the Parliament building. One wonders how and why the plethora of other alternatives were not – apparently – given serious consideration at all. Has it come to the point where calling out the riot police is the first response that the government can give to any demand emanating from civil society?

But the list of blunders does not end there: Coming back to Kuala Lumpur by bus the day before the recent Hindraf ‘roses’ protest, I – along with thousands of others – was stuck in an infernal traffic jam of Kafkaesque proportions. Many of us in the bus assumed that a major pile-up was up ahead, and expected to find a mass of mangled cars and bodies at the head of the jam.

But instead it was one – of many – road blocks set up to monitor the traffic heading towards the capital the day before the Hindraf demonstration. As we stopped for a pause and the smokers among us kissed our cancer sticks with relish, I could not help but notice that the cars and vans that were being stopped were those with Malaysians of Indian ancestry in them. Why?

That was precisely the question asked by an irate Malaysian driver whose van was stopped and who was asked to step out of the vehicle with his entire family. Before my very eyes every single one of these Malaysian-Indians – our fellow Malaysian citizens – was asked to produce his or her identity card and to explain why they were driving up to Kuala Lumpur. It struck me as odd that any Malaysian should have to explain why he or she should want to travel in her or her own country – unless of course, we are not even free to do that any longer.

A second car was stopped and three Malaysian-Indian men were asked to step out. They looked as if they were on a fishing trip as fishing rods and nets were in the boot of the car. But likewise they too were asked to walk to the desk, hand over their IDs to the policemen, give their personal details and asked what they were doing on the road that day and why.

Though none of the authority figures present at the road block made specific mention of Hindraf, I was not the only one who noticed that most of the vehicles stopped then were those with Malaysian-Indians in them. It was too glaring, too obvious to avoid and we were all embarrassed by what was happening before us, in broad daylight.

Bumming a kretek from an Indonesian worker who stepped out of his lorry and watching the scene together, my Indonesian fellow-nicotine addict quipped: “Waduh, jelas di Malaysia juga ada rasial profiling ya! Lucu sekali. Seakan Indonesia pada zaman Pak Harto…”

I replied, with more a touch of shame than humour: “Ia, mas- walaupun Suharto meninggal di Indonesia, roh-nya datang ke Malaysia!”

Now here comes the obvious question that begs to be answered: Had no-one, along the entire chain of command and responsibility, thought of the consequences of such actions? By stopping and questioning the passengers of Malaysian-Indian background on the suspicion that some of them might be attending the Hindraf rally the day after, was there not the blatant risk that the authorities would be offending many more ordinary Malaysians who felt that once again, as Malaysian-Indians, they were being singled out for unfair treatment? And if so, what have these road blocks and checks achieved, save to alienate even more Malaysian-Indians and lend weight to the claims of Hindraf? In the book of “A Hundred and One Easy Blunders for Governments to Make”, this case comes under the chapter “How to Stop Cars and Win Enemies”.

In the weeks ahead as election fever sweeps across the country, we will undoubtedly hear more of such stories of road blocks, profiling of suspected dissidents and opponents, traffic redirected, speeches disrupted, permits for assembly denied, etc. And with every single one of these calculated blunders, the critical mass of resentment, alienation, marginalisation piles up and grows higher and bigger. Political analysts are meant to make sense of politics even in the most troubled and complex of contexts, but here I am left with no compass or map to make sense of the situation: Ours has become the reactionary politics of irrationality instead.