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I read Helen Ang's bold article and Nathaniel Tan's Why I will walk this Sunday and thankfully cast my lot with them.

Nathaniel Tan articulated every doubt, fear and reservation I held, as a Malaysian Tamil, about this rally. He is right. Indian Malaysians are treated shamefully by the government. When a community has its back against the wall, as Helen Ang puts it, it reaches out for the megaphone. The Hindraf or Bersih rally may be an ill-conceived and desperate strategy to be heard, but I have learned that imploring justice from the Queen of England is a better strategy than asking the King of Malaysia.

Yale law professor Owen M Fiss, in his 'The Irony of Free Speech' wrote that some voices have to be lowered in order for others to be heard. He asks, "How free is the speech of someone who can't be heard?" Bravo! Malaysian Indians are beginning to rise above the traditional fear, shame, oppression and intimidation inflicted on them by the government.

Here is my poem in celebration of our efforts as Malaysians to overcome the silencing effect of Malaysian "free" speech. My poem denies "Malaysian 'free' speech" its power to intimidate, confound and thwart the aspirations and dynamically-evolving identities of underrepresented and disadvantaged voices, be it that of women or minorities.

As of 1963 Of That Indian I am Not

"You are not

Indian, anymore!"

The silk sari that slid of my shoulder

Hissed: and history was suddenly

a snake in the grass, dead in pastures

that had wintered, eating alive in the

padangs that had not. I am of those

green pastures my head walked

before my feet ever touched

the ground

but tell me if I can ever grow

where I am not

that silk sari that slid off my shoulder

hissed: and I reared my angry mane

red as my common blood

and danced like those dragons, shaking

the yellow leaves off

the what you now call a family tree

in my own private storm

and the streets of my Malaysia

talk into my head a sense of those snakes

who slithered

before those who bartered with my fathers

sold them an Indian who was not.

Now I watch my sari sway a hundred ways

And in the spittle of old women

maybe even on the backs of sirih trays

my eyes, round as the new moon,

see the stain

on the streets history made

red with the Indian I am not.

The writer is Malaysian born author of 'Please, God, Don't Let Me Write Like A Woman', Finishing Line Press, 2007.

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