As Hari Kebangsaan or National Day draws near, the media feature many stories and articles about our ability to live together in Malaysia, despite difference and diversity. A discernible thread through all these features is that our harmony is an evolving process.

In terms of analyses and even public policy, however, this capability of the vast majority of Malaysians to live together is a 'given'. Many analyses and policies take for granted this multi-layered and evolving capability, and focus mostly on the problems - such as racial polarisation, or episodes of friction and insensitivity over religion.

There are laws and policies which prescribe our engagement across race and religion in Malaysia - it has to be sensitive, sensible and sane. These prescriptions have been important in enabling our peace.

Unfortunately, one outcome is that the constant warnings against inciting racial and religious violence have driven many Malaysians to retreat from 'dialogue', let alone 'engagement', about race and religion. This process of retreat and abdication has contributed to evolving a generation of Malaysians who don't see the need - let alone the joy - of experiencing diversity.

The ethnic/religious polarisation we see is a retreat to a safe enclave by newer generations (often ushered there by protective parents and teachers) where one cannot be accused of 'insensitivity' or 'incitement'. Or where the 'purity' of cultural and religious edicts are ensured. In a world shrinking by the minute because of technology, this exclusion and purity is neither realistic nor enabling of us as individuals, as a nation or as global citizens.

To safeguard our cherished peace and harmony, we have tilted the balance to focus on the prohibited and the sanctioned, while we often define our co-existence as incidental and occasional: celebrating each other's festivals, Open Houses and eating each other's food.

But even more prevalent is the fact that Malaysians of different races and religions work together in offices and factories, use facilities together, travel together on public transportation, take classes together, shop alongside each other, buy and sell to each other, and seem to have much in common about what constitutes a terrific Malaysian Idol.

Taken for granted

All this means that more than many societies in the world, most Malaysians have constant, real reminders that we are around someone of a different race and religion. Perhaps we are so comfortable with this element of exposure and inclusion that it is simply taken for granted. Why don't we explore how most of us, especially in urban settings, live and enact this interreligious and interracial co-existence and engagement on a daily basis? We are not self-conscious enough, nor explore enough, just how it is we have learnt to live together for 47 years despite some serious episodes of problems. It is not just legislation and leaders who have effected our harmony. The reality is that every Malaysian, on a daily basis, enables and enacts both our particularity or difference, as well as our cohesion.

What we need now is the space (both real and metaphorical) and the latitude to think and talk realistically about our ability to live together without ignoring the problems. We need to talk with civility about irritants and pain without rushing off to lodge police reports and law suits. We need to develop the skills to put these problems in perspective for each other and resolve them amicably. Most of all, we need to identify and discover together the joys, successes and capabilities that we have evolved about living as Malaysians.

Malaysians need to be empowered to engage with each other by dismantling the notion that 'dialogue' across religions should be done only by those educated in religion. That would only be true if we were discussing deep theological issues in public. But if we enable people to understand that this business of 'interreligious dialogue' is also the engagement we live out daily, and at even the most informal level, then we also enable people to be self-conscious about how they already have the ability, the common sense and the experience to enact interreligious (and interracial) engagement.

We need to build on what we already have and know instead of focusing exclusively on the problems, or waiting for prescriptions from authority. But first, we need to figure out just what we have developed in terms of these skills and abilities to live together. We need to involve all sorts of Malaysians in reflecting upon and identifying these capabilities. Together.

DR PATRICIA MARTINEZ is a Malaysian who is Senior Research Fellow at the Asia-Europe Institute of the University of Malaya.