COMMENT | Can you imagine a non-Muslim prime minister in Malaysia? Yet Tamil movie superstar Joseph Vijay is a Christian whose party TVK won the election in a state where 87 percent of people are Hindu. He is poised to be the next Tamil Nadu chief minister.

What most impressed me is that he campaigned on “secular” social justice for all, unlike the anti-Muslim fear-mongering of Indian PM Narendra Modi’s “ketuanan Hindu” (Hindu supremacy) ideology.

“Ask everyone in your home… to elect good, trustworthy people who have not indulged in corruption. Don't get the idea of division based on caste and religion,” said Vijay last year.

In this sense, he was like our own “Bollywood” star Anwar Ibrahim, who repeatedly declared that the children of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans and Kadazans “semua anak saya” (are all my children).

Yet many non-Malays are...