What do Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew and Ridhuan Tee have in common?

Answer: they all suffer from a chronic identity crisis.

Mahathir’s Indian heritage is a well-known fact in both Malaysia and Singapore, much as the old man refuses to face up to it. He has persistently justified his ‘Malayness’ by citing the constitution, and is easily irked whenever the issue is brought up. In short, he is a man who has been haunted, tragically, by his own ethnic origin for much of his life, his ostensibly tough political image notwithstanding.

And the same goes with Lee Kuan Yew, whose inability to converse in any Chinese language - Mandarin, Hokkien or Hakka (allegedly his ancestral tongue) - in his early days as a political rookie created an unprecedented identity crisis in him.

Confronted with the working classes in Singapore that were made up of largely Chinese-speaking crowds, Lee was compelled to learn Chinese in order to compete more effectively with Lim Chin Siong, a Chinese-educated leftist with a mass following in the 1950s and 60s.

To strengthen his “Malay credentials”, Mahathir resorted to an extreme form of racism in which the non-Malays, Chinese especially, became his favourite bogeyman throughout his extraordinarily long career, and the country became more divided as a result for which the so-called economic advancement has failed to compensate.

Across the causeway, Lee began a gigantic social engineering following the consolidation of his power by killing the vernacular schools softly but mercilessly, for making all Singaporeans - the Chinese in particular - speak English as first language was the only way for him to deal with his own dilemma. Of course, the economic values of English cannot be dismissed, but the policy was meant to kill two birds in one stone.

A purely English-speaking Lee was deeply troubled when the Chinese masses once saw him as nothing but an ‘Ang Moh Sai’ (literally ‘a white man’s shit’), not much dissimilar to Mahathir who, legend has it, was taunted as a ‘thambi’ (little brother in Tamil) by other Malay kids back in his kampung in Kedah. Lee's solution to his ethnic conundrum was simple: once everybody begins to speak English as first language, who would have the nerve to call me a ‘banana’ still?

The departure of the British left both Singapore and Malaysia with a colonial legacy: one lives in constant fear of being submerged by other ethnic groups and the siege mentality can be easily identified.

Singapore would welcome Chinese from other parts of the world to settle down in the island state for the purpose of ‘ethnic balance’, while Malaysia under Umno is known to have dished out citizenships readily to Muslims from the Philippines and Indonesia to dilute the non-Malay/Muslim element.

Siege mentality

One unintended consequence is that the siege mentality has made the non-Malays more suspicious of a Malay agenda in general, while those who would want to move up the social/political ladder would not hesitate to hurl insults at others for personal gains, Ridhuan Tee Abdullah being a case in point.

No-one knows precisely how did Tee’s uninhibited hatred of the Chinese community come about, but I would not be surprised if he, as a Muslim convert, was once subject to the ridicules or even insults by some Chinese who might have looked askance at his conversion. There is no disguising that, being a poisonously racist society, the phrase ‘masuk Melayu’ does not take on a positive connotation among the Chinese in Malaysia.

While I am prepared to defend to the death Tee’s right to embrace Islam and to chastise anyone who may see him as a ‘traitor to the Chinese race’, his outrageously racist comments over the last few years have however undermined whatever moral high ground that he might initially have had.

If anything, Tee is not much different from a wounded child who is now bent on seeking public attention as a teenager by hurting others in the class so that his voice may be heard. In a country in which race/ethnicity/religion defines one’s socio-political status, a childish behaviour as such can wreak much havoc nonetheless.

Both Mahathir and Lee are from an older generation whose views of the world and society are shaped by their colonial experiences as well as unhappy interactions with the respective communities to which they were expected to belong, but both countries are still dealing with the consequences of their failure to address their own ethnic contradictions.

I do believe the best way to respond to the provocative statements by people like Tee is not to remind them of their ‘Chinese’ origin, but to tell them firmly and confidently that, while we do not live in a perfect world, anyone is free to be him or herself as long as the rights of others are not infringed.

If a Chinese Muslim convert longs to be a constitutional Malay, so be it, but not to do so at the expense of humiliating others while creating more ethnic problems than Malaysia can solve.

However, if one reacts by calling Tee a ‘renegade Chinese’, one only falls into the racial trap set up first by the colonial authorities and later successfully exploited by Umno.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.