In a report entitled 'Samy: Attacks smack of organised crime' which appeared in the Sunday Star on March 25, MIC president S Samy Vellu claimed, without offering any proof, that the recent violent attacks against Indians were the result of a conspiracy against Indians because they were staunch Barisan Nasional supporters.

In this, he was merely parroting the views of his boss who, in his perverse creativity in deflecting blame and finding scapegoats, had accused the reformasi types, again without any proof, of fomenting the clashes in Petaling Jaya Selatan.

It seems to be in the character of Samy Vellu to play the role of the groveling court jester who would dance to and amplify the king's every pronouncement. What we are witnessing here is the grotesque caricature of the obedient, servile, and subservient satrap. Samy Vellu himself could well be the reason the Indian community has lost its dignity and self-respect. There is no doubt that the Indians attracted greater respect and they indeed had much more self-respect in the days when the dignified late Tun V Sambanthan was MIC president.

Following the clashes in PJ Selatan, Samy Vellu, supposedly the leader of the Indian community in Malaysia, could have eased the situation by stressing the one-ness and the unity of the Malays and the Indians dating from ancient times, that the Malays and the Indians have close ties of kinship. In this respect, two recent postings in this website's letters column, [#1] Bizarre erasure of the past[/#] (March 21), and [#2] Vandalising our past to rule the future [/#] (March 23), should give us all some perspective and food for thought.

However, to publicly proclaim that the Malays and the Indians share the same ancestry is probably beyond the leadership mettle and political courage of Samy Vellu. By the same token, which Malay politician would risk committing political suicide by publicly admitting that, yes, we came from the same cultural and linguistic roots and yes, we are indeed closely related to that joker Samy Vellu.

And so we continue to attend muhibah parties in our kampongs and flash our forced and contrived smiles when the photographs are taken. And afterwards we retreat into our safe, comfort zones, mindful of steering clear of the forbidden zone in our history and the no-go area in our psyche.