Blame the liberal education and permissive environment in Britain and, to a lesser extent, Germany, which nurtured my academic and spiritual growth, but I have since come to terms with the fact that race as a concept is largely socio-politically constructed rather than biologically determined.

I once met an Ulster student who was a devout Unionist. I challenged him with the question of the province's future, and he defended vehemently the right of the Protestants to remain in the United Kingdom. Fair enough. When we met again years later, he told me he just found to his horror that his great grandfather had been a Gaelic-speaking Catholic, who converted to the Church of England and was rewarded with land and property.

Such scenarios are, needless to say, nothing new in Malaysia. Anyone can tell of someone's conversion to Islam that eventually led to the "bumiputra" status and all the perks that came with it.