“Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.”

- Walter Kirn

A few readers have emailed me asking why I do not write about the “Indian problem” any more. Indian related questions include; (a) do I support P Uthayakumar and of course (b) Indians would be better off supporting the opposition, like the Chinese. This last part is not so much a question but rather a preamble to an overt discussion about the benefits of supporting the opposition using the Indian issue as an enticement of sorts.

I get these sorts of email all the time and have probably written about them over the years. Let me be very clear. Nobody, certainly not most politicians - establishment and opposition - and most definitely a large segment of opposition supporters, cares about the plight of disenfranchised Indians in this country.

This is not to say that certain Indian opposition politicians have not attempted to address certain issues - statelessness, for example - and attempted to navigate the extremely tricky terrain of oppositional racial politics, but rather any "issues" that do not have mainstream appeal with regards to the current Malay-Sino dialectic gets very little attention.

Rest assured that nobody would be interested in this article. Talking about the Indian issue is an invitation to dive headfirst into the rabbit hole of Malaysian politics. It is a place where the Bangsa Malaysia Kool-Aid means never talking about race even though racial politics fuels the rhetoric and policies of the opposition. It is a wonderland of 1Malaysia where the social contract is used as a sword against egalitarian values and an example of harmonious mutual co-existence.

Do I still support former Hindraf leader Uthayakumar? I never stopped supporting him even when I was disagreeing with him. I am planning a series of interviews with Uthayakumar soon and some readers may be interested in discovering what he has to say about the current political scene in Malaysia now.

While I have been at times preoccupied with the Indian issue, the reality is that the issue is far more complicated than what opposition and establishment types would like us to believe.  When I have written about the Indian issue, I have made it clear that I am talking about a specific demographic of the Indian community.

While some have no qualms about self-identifying as “Indian”, many take exception at being lumped in with the general “Indian” community preferring to self-identify along cultural and language lines. I suppose it is part pride and part escaping the homogeneity imposed by the state but whatever the reason, solidarity has always been a problem for the Indian community.

My own thoughts on the plight of the Indian community is scattered through many articles but what got Hindraf’s and Uthayakumar’s hackles raised was my piece ‘The slaying of our sacred cows’ four years ago. Choice bits include this - "It is ironic since this Western-educated section of the Indian electorate who for so long felt alienated from the political process now feels estrangement from the general Indian population because of the rhetoric of P Uthayakumar, which vacillates from sublime race-baiting to the downright bizarre.

“The fact that the movement is a hodge-podge of Indian intellectuals and working-class foot soldiers is a reminder of the class divisions which is endemic in the Indian community. What is it with Indians and blame shifting?”

While I do not presume to know the motivations behind Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman’s latest piece about the Indian community (and have no problem admitting if I am wrong), I would think that it is a seasonal bit of goodwill because of Deepavali.

It is one of those think pieces to remind Malaysians about the diversity of our country and how a specific demographic has been marginalised. It is the political equivalent of a Petronas ad - which this year was abominable, by the way, but indicative of the state of race relations in this country.

It serves no purpose tearing apart a well-intentioned piece (indeed, it would be rather petty) and I will say I do agree with Syed Saddiq where he writes - “While the bumiputera and Chinese bicker among one another, we forget that we aren't the only ones tasked to safeguard Malaysia.”

Both sides not race blind

In fact, post-2008 I said the very same thing [which earned enough online opprobrium that would make anyone vote BN] in apiece about the DAP’s multiracial conundrum - “However, to highlight Indian participation in the DAP would be disingenuous, considering that ethnic relations in this country have always pivoted on the Malay-Chinese axis. All this talk of multiculturalism is, in reality, the state of race relations between the Chinese and Malay community.

“All this safeguarding of ‘Malay' interests, as expressed by the Malay participants in the DAP congress, points to the vacuousness of the Bangsa Malaysia concept, or at least to the futility of cultivating such a concept in the fetid racial swamp that is the present-day Malaysian social and political landscape.”

Indeed, when advocating for a ministry of minority affairs, Lim Teck Ghee, the country’s most insightful public intellectual, wrote:

1. "How do we guarantee that poor and needy members of small minority communities will be scrupulously and fairly targeted for assistance and do not disappear or are lost sight of in our national agenda of development that will be inevitably dominated by the concerns of the dominant Malay, and to some extent, the Chinese community?" and

2. "Also, unlike the Malay and Chinese communities that dominate our public and private sectors, Malaysia's small minority communities lack the resources and clout to compete for the opportunities ostensibly available to all stakeholders in our economy and society."

The funny thing is in the American liberal context, this idea of inclusivity does not mean whitewashing or dispelling the race discourse unlike the right wing (as opposed to conservative) position of making the race discourse verboten.

So, on the one hand we have the establishment agenda of entitlements based on race and on the other, we have the opposition agenda of entitlements and inducements supposedly based on class but in reality is just another dialect of the race dialectic.

Is it any wonder that talking about the “Indian” issue becomes problematic? The reality is that opposition politics is urban. Umno knows this, which is why it coddles its rural voting base. Opposition politics is supposed to be race blind, but the reality is that it only appears race blind because of propaganda not substance. Folks often point to the fact that the opposition has more Indian (for example) representation, but we all know that this means nothing.

What BN has demonstrated is that representation more often than not means acquiesce and political survival. Because politics in Malaysia is race-based and the alternative media (especially the English media) is defined by the crudest partisan expectations, issues like tokenism, appropriation and crypto racism, is subsumed beneath a steady diet of Umno transgression and socio-political red herrings.

Former law minister Zaid Ibrahim is absolutely correct when he references PSM and says “We need to dismantle the privileges of the rich and the corrupt “but as I detailed in PSM and the goliaths that surround it -

“Oppositional discourse is dominated by the three power brokers of Pakatan - PKR, DAP and PAS - and minority voices are expected to conform or be confined to irrelevancy. PSM, which has never hidden it ideological imperatives, has been in the words of its national president Mohd Nasir Hashim, ‘backstabbed’ by Pakatan.”

Ultimately, non-Malays are losing the demographic game. We have no oppositional forces that advocate a truly egalitarian Malaysia.  Opposition parties claim inclusiveness but the reality is that they want obedience, especially when it revolves the contentious discourse of race. 

In other words, because the non-Malays who are in a unique position to advocate something beyond establishment (BN and Pakatan) racial politics, but instead offer more of the same, future generations of Malaysians will have no light to guide them through the darkness.

All I know is that the Indian problem will be the first to go.

Happy belated Deepavali.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.