'The non-Muslim minorities have remained ignorant of this despicable injustice and are happy with piecemeal handouts given during elections.'

When 'special position' evolved into 'ketuanan'

Albert_37fb: It is indeed despicable when the special position of the Malays has led to such blatant abuse of Article 153 by the Umno-led government over the past 40 years.

The special position of the Malays has turned out to be privileges of abnormal and obscene proportions. This inevitably led to the systematic discrimination and marginalisation of the non-Muslim minorities under Article 153 by the Umno-led government, especially during the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

MCA and MIC (which are supposed to represent the interests of the Chinese and Indians) have remained completely impotent and allowed this gross injustice to be prolonged. And the non-Muslim minorities have remained ignorant of this despicable injustice and are happy with piecemeal handouts given during elections.

Alan Goh: The trouble is when someone has tasted honey and enjoying easy income from rental collection, it is very difficult to let go of the privileges under the guise of NEP.

Swipenter: The ones engineering and perpetuating the ‘ketuanan' ideology are the political elites who had recently had their political hegemony challenged. This is social engineering gone haywire, breeding racism and religious extremism. The threat of violence is always there to quell opposition and to protect their interests.

Whether by design or by default, this is what we get now; all kinds of inequalities and injustices committed in the name of race and religion. This not unlike apartheid once practiced in South Africa. Religion and race defined a person whether he/she was white, coloured or black, and you live out your life accordingly and not by your merits, ability and worth.

Here it is much more subtle but it is getting quite blatant these days. Perhaps South Africa these days is more like Malaysia; the whites still dominate, along with elitist non-whites who are in control of the country from politics to business.

Gggg: Malays are a minority in Singapore, and this is the provision of Singapore constitution regarding the Malay position.

Minorities and special position of Malays 152:

1) It shall be the responsibility of the government constantly to care for the interests of the racial and religious minorities in Singapore.

2) The government shall exercise its functions in such manner as to recognise the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language.

Compare this with Article 153 in the Malaysian constitution.

Rajm: YB Dzulkifly Ahmad, religion should not be the agenda in Malaysia. We are Malaysians and we respect all religions and we accept Islam as the official religion in Malaysia.

But we are all equal not only in the eyes of all Gods, but also of Allah (peace be upon him). The Malays should understand that their special position is only temporary so that they can be par with the other races. Now their special position has become special privileges.

Babi Sondol: "Since non-Malays got citizenship in exchange, we (the Malays) got privileges - now they are saying if privileges must go, what then happens to the citizenship?" said Shad Saleem Faruqi.

Food for thought.

David Dass: I don't think that the bargain was Malay privileges forever in exchange for citizenship. First, there were already non-Malays who were citizens at the time of Independence - non-Malays in Penang and Malacca were not part of that bargain. Neither were non-Malays in Sabah and Sarawak.

Secondly, privileges under Article 153 are only available to a section of the Malay community - i.e. those Malays who were in Malaya at the time of independence - Aug 31, 1957 and their descendants. New Malays do not qualify. So it was never meant to be a race thing and it was never meant to be permanent.

Citizenship immediately makes one equal under the law and that fact has never been fully appreciated. It is also sad that race-based politics continues to dominate things. It is sad that we cannot conduct our politics and governance on the basis of issues. It is sad that affirmative action cannot be made on the basis of need rather than race.

How then can we make 1Malaysia a reality?

Interlok: 'Do Chinese sell their daughters?'

Faz: It seems that we have to use a fine-tooth comb to search for the offending passages and relate them to the world to gain support. Even if one community is not too fussy about it, they are being woken up to see the injustices done to them. Surely, no fictional literary work can withstand that sort of rigorous scrutiny to adhere to factual correctness.

What amazes me is the group's insistence that 17-year-old pupils will not be able to handle the situation. We seem to be very afraid of the shadows that follow us.

Let us give more credit to the pupils and let them debate out the passages among themselves in the classes with proper guidance from the teachers. Attitudes change with the proper understanding and comradeship.

Gen: Why is such a controversial book chosen as a novel for the school syllabus? Don't they have other books to choose from? What BN is doing shows that they are out to degrade Chinese and Indians while at the same time shouting for their shameless 1Malaysia.

Guest: Dear Coalition of Indian NGOs, I am a Chinese and this is my personal opinion. While I respect the sensitivity of the Indian community and support their fight to right what they consider as an insult, I was not insulted by what was written in the novel.

But I do agree 'P' is a sensitive word from the Indian community's point of view. Even today, TV dramas from Taiwan and Hongkong depict poor Chinese who resort to selling their children. As an 'enlightened' person, I can differentiate between fiction and reality.

Good luck to you if you can get the MCA president to support you. If the MCA and other Chinese leaders want to play 'politics', that's their choice. After all, actions speak louder than words. What has the MCA and the Chinese leaders in Gerakan done for the Chinese in the last 50 years?

Kee Thuan Chye: Please laa, Malaysians, get a hold of your rationality. Not all Chinese sell their daughters. Maybe those in dire need do. And this is not particular to the Chinese race. It happens all over the world.

If in ‘Interlok', a Chinese character says he is apt to do that, that's just a character in a novel saying that. It does not speak for the whole race. Let's get it right - fiction is fiction, and we should regard it as such. It is not fact. It is not real life.

By that token, it is wrong of Niat (National Interlok Action Team) to provoke the Chinese into taking umbrage against what a character says in a novel. All this ‘Interlok' hoo-ha is a storm in a teacup because people don't understand that a novel is a literary work, a work of fiction.

LGuan: The book may be okay for university use as students may critique the stereotyping as a weakness of the book. However, school-level students may take what is written as gospel and I don't have high hopes for the teachers who teach the subject.

Most of the teachers I know, their world view is shaped by one leading Bahasa Malaysia daily and local TV channels. For many teachers, the newspaper that they read is like inscription on stone. The teachers ability to think in an informed and critical manner is in itself highly suspect with such limited reading and exposure.

In such a situation, it would be a disaster to use the book which would create an opposite effect to that which is intended.

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