That ain't cricket, Mister Blunkett
It is safe to say that there is no country in the world that has not faced serious problems and internal challenges when it comes to the thorny question of its own identity.
Malaysia is certainly not immune to these problems, but it is interesting to note that we are not the only ones to live under the long shadow cast by the convoluted politics of identity.
How are nations defined and what is the criteria upon which such definition rests? Traditions inevitably come into play, but as Eric Hobsbawn has shown, most of the so-called traditions that we have around us are in fact recently invented phenomena. Nor would essentialist notions of identity serve any purpose: They often leave us with even more questions than answers, and bring us no closer to knowing who and what we really are.
The question of national identity is even more problematic when it comes to multiracial countries with significant ethnic and religious minorities within them. When, as it is in the case of many contemporary Western societies, those minorities happen to be there as an indirect result of the host country's colonial relations with other colonised societies in the past, the relations in the present can be even more difficult and confounding.
These difficulties were brought to light recently when the British Interior Minister David Blunkett claimed that ethnic minorities in Britain should do away with their customs that were deemed as 'un-British'.
In an interview with the Independent newspaper, Blunkett claimed that in future, Britain's immigration laws might be altered to ensure that immigrants would adapt better to life in their new country by giving up some of their customs and practices "that might be acceptable in parts of Africa but not here in Britain."
The 'un-British' customs he was referring to included the standard menu of stereotypes and cliches related to foreigners in general: female genital mutilation, arranged marriages, polygamy and the like.
But Blunkett's remarks shed no light on what British identity might or should be instead. All it does is define Britishness in terms of what it is not, and here the 'other' against which Britishness is cast refers to nothing less than all that is 'foreign'.
Skewed policies
The British minister did say that he recognised that "racial prejudice is deep seated and we need to face it head on", but his own policy suggestions have done little to enlighten the public about what is to be done and how to go about doing it.
Rather, Blunkett's stand on the matter is more than likely to do the opposite: add to the growing insecurity of minorities in Britain and contribute to the further polarisation of British society along racial, ethnic, religious and now cultural lines.
The real problem here is that the development and evolution of a genuinely relevant and natural British culture is being turned into a matter of government policy. Fearful of the polarisation and ghettoisation of Britain's multicultural society, the powers that be are trying to engineer a common cultural consensus of sorts by eliminating what they regard as the more 'extreme' expressions of cultural identity and difference.
But the mistake in such a policy is that it inevitably becomes the initiative of the powerful and not the ordinary masses. Furthermore it is predicated on the understanding that there is an essential 'British' culture to be defended, even if it is not defined all that clearly.
The fact that 'un-British' cultural practices are being singled out and rejected on the grounds that they do not live up to the moral and cultural standards of mainstream British society also raises many other questions: Who decides these standards, and how and why have they been chosen?
By equating essential British culture with the norm, the politicians have also normalised what is subjective and relative while relegating other cultural norms to the status of the marginal and abnormal. It is clear that in the case of Britain - as it is with many other countries in the world - the project of defining a national culture is littered with numerous pitfalls and dangers.
Fish and chips vs chicken vindaloo
One is tempted to ask around to see what exactly constitutes the norm in Britain and what does not. Is fish and chips a British norm while chicken vindaloo regarded as 'alien'? (Odd if that were the case considering that every supermarket in the country sells the latter.)
It is safe to say that there is no country in the world that has not faced serious problems and internal challenges when it comes to the thorny question of its own identity.
Malaysia is certainly not immune to these problems, but it is interesting to note that we are not the only ones to live under the long shadow cast by the convoluted politics of identity.
How are nations defined and what is the criteria upon which such definition rests? Traditions inevitably come into play, but as Eric Hobsbawn has shown, most of the so-called traditions that we have around us are in fact recently invented phenomena. Nor would essentialist notions of identity serve any purpose: They often leave us with even more questions than answers, and bring us no closer to knowing who and what we really are.
The question of national identity is even more problematic when it comes to multiracial countries with significant ethnic and religious minorities within them. When, as it is in the case of many contemporary Western societies, those minorities happen to be there as an indirect result of the host country's colonial relations with other colonised societies in the past, the relations in the present can be even more difficult and confounding.
These difficulties were brought to light recently when the British Interior Minister David Blunkett claimed that ethnic minorities in Britain should do away with their customs that were deemed as 'un-British'.
In an interview with the Independent newspaper, Blunkett claimed that in future, Britain's immigration laws might be altered to ensure that immigrants would adapt better to life in their new country by giving up some of their customs and practices "that might be acceptable in parts of Africa but not here in Britain."
The 'un-British' customs he was referring to included the standard menu of stereotypes and cliches related to foreigners in general: female genital mutilation, arranged marriages, polygamy and the like.
But Blunkett's remarks shed no light on what British identity might or should be instead. All it does is define Britishness in terms of what it is not, and here the 'other' against which Britishness is cast refers to nothing less than all that is 'foreign'.
Skewed policies
The British minister did say that he recognised that "racial prejudice is deep seated and we need to face it head on", but his own policy suggestions have done little to enlighten the public about what is to be done and how to go about doing it.
Rather, Blunkett's stand on the matter is more than likely to do the opposite: add to the growing insecurity of minorities in Britain and contribute to the further polarisation of British society along racial, ethnic, religious and now cultural lines.
The real problem here is that the development and evolution of a genuinely relevant and natural British culture is being turned into a matter of government policy. Fearful of the polarisation and ghettoisation of Britain's multicultural society, the powers that be are trying to engineer a common cultural consensus of sorts by eliminating what they regard as the more 'extreme' expressions of cultural identity and difference.
But the mistake in such a policy is that it inevitably becomes the initiative of the powerful and not the ordinary masses. Furthermore it is predicated on the understanding that there is an essential 'British' culture to be defended, even if it is not defined all that clearly.
The fact that 'un-British' cultural practices are being singled out and rejected on the grounds that they do not live up to the moral and cultural standards of mainstream British society also raises many other questions: Who decides these standards, and how and why have they been chosen?
By equating essential British culture with the norm, the politicians have also normalised what is subjective and relative while relegating other cultural norms to the status of the marginal and abnormal. It is clear that in the case of Britain - as it is with many other countries in the world - the project of defining a national culture is littered with numerous pitfalls and dangers.
Fish and chips vs chicken vindaloo
One is tempted to ask around to see what exactly constitutes the norm in Britain and what does not. Is fish and chips a British norm while chicken vindaloo regarded as 'alien'? (Odd if that were the case considering that every supermarket in the country sells the latter.)
Are bowler hats the norm while turbans 'alien'? (Odd, considering the fact that one would be hard pressed to find an Englishman wearing a bowler hat anywhere in Britain today, though one does come across quite a lot of Brits with turbans.)
And who exactly can be said to represent the cultural face of contemporary Britain these days - Elgar, the Beatles or the rap bands of Brixton or Notting Hill?
Like it or not, British society is rapidly turning into a hybrid, poly-nuclear and fluid entity with porous and overlapping boundaries. Britain's exposure to the outside world means that it will inevitably have to deal with the challenges of multiculturalism on its own doorstep and find ways of accommodating these internal differences without having to relegate them to the register of the 'alien' and 'un-British'.
This is a challenge that is not unique to Britain alone, for practically every other multiracial and multicultural country (like Malaysia) will have to face the same questions. But while doing so we need to bear in mind the need to be sensitive to the way in which we frame the differences between 'us' and 'them', the norm and the 'other'.
And it pays to understand and accept that some of our own 'normal' cultural practices that we have taken for granted for so long can be deemed repugnant and unacceptable to others. In the case of Britain, the hallowed tradition of soggy chips and mushy peas comes to mind.
