COMMENT | Let us remember a man whose life was larger than any title he held. A man who believed that communities rise not through rhetoric but through organisation, not through dependency but through enterprise, not through personalities but through institutions.

We are here not merely to remember Selvarajoo Sundram, but to ask what his life still demands of us.

Many will remember him as the founding president of Gopio Malaysia and later, of Gopio International. Others will remember him as a mentor and community leader. But I remember him as something else: a builder, a driving force who built institutions, organisations and people.

Put differently, Selva demonstrated that ordinary people can create history, and that history can be scripted from below, where they can do extraordinary things.

In every society, there are people who complain about problems. There are people who analyse problems. And then there are those rare individuals who dedicate their lives to building solutions.

Selva belonged to that third category.

The great historian Eric Hobsbawm warned against the illusion that history is made solely by heroic individuals. Yet, Malaysian politics often...