The Indian community is always left behind or forgotten very easily for the good deeds that they have contributed to the MIC, Barisan Nasional or the government over the last 53 years. Every time when there is a general election or a by-election, the Indian voters are fooled with plenty of promises that are not given seriously.

During the last general election, the awakening of the Indians began when the incumbents in many seats be they Indians, Malays, Chinese from Barisan tasted their worst defeats in their careers for failing the Indians. After  this disaster, we expected Barisan to initiate corrective measures to appease the Indian community by having a concrete plan to improve the welfare of the community.

Surprisingly the ministers for the key performance indicators Idris Jala and Koh TSu Koon have not shown the people the programmes  prepared for uplifting of the Indians.

Then all of a sudden, we had the ‘big news’ in January that our Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak is visiting Chennai for meeting Karunanidhi, the Tamil Nadu chief minister and some glamorous film stars to boost his image amongst the Indians in Malaysia. Next our prime minister visited Batu Caves on the eve of Thaipusam to further enhance his image with the Indian community.

This was followed by S Samy Vellu’s statement that the Indians shall support our prime minister all the way. In the first place, what has Najib done for the Indian community for us to support him or be  obligated to support him? Is it just because he visited Chennai (just meeting with Karunanidhi and some film stars) and Batu Caves during Thaipusam?

Similarly, Samy Vellu, too, has no business to talk about supporting Barisan and Najib on the occasion of Thaipusam as this is a festival for Hindus and Lord Murugan’s devotees - it was not and MIC function.

What pledges were made during the prime minister’s visit that benefited the Indians? A small allocation of RM3.5 million  for the Batu Caves temple so that more tourists could trample around the temple ground. Let me bring to the attention of all Hindus the fact that the Batu Caves temple is the only Hindu temple in the world that allows people to enter the temple compound wearing footwear.

It is simply a disgrace but the management of the temple is more concerned about filling their ‘undiyal’ (donation box) and accumulating more wealth for the office-bearers to benefit. Is this what temples are supposed to do? They must actually do service to the community (where the government has failed) in the field of education, in financing the building of temples, helping the oppressed and sharing their wealth with other poor temples.

But this never occurs to them because they are run by corrupted MIC cronies who swindle the community all the time. Our community must show their united strength at the next general election by voting out many other incumbents from Barisan and the MIC so that our community’s interests and welfare is taken seriously.

All they (Barisan) have to do is to emulate what the National Land Finance Cooperative (NLFC) is doing for the Indian community in a small way. It is time that every Indian chip in to uplift our society instead of begging from the government all the time. Like the Chinese, let us build our temples and improve our Tamil schools so that the future generations can better protect their language and culture.

To the MIC president and leaders, you are living in your past glories and soon you will become redundant if you do not wake up and change your modus operandi of fooling/robbing the poor peasants and farmers of their lifetime savings.

It is my humble belief that the Indian community shall rise and become independent of the ‘crutches’ of MIC/Barisan cronies and they will cause positive ripples across the country like what Hindraf did in the last general elections.

We have the fire to unite and work for the benefit of the Indian community and all Malaysians but we are still looking for a new breed of leaders to arise before the next general elections.