I refer to the Malaysiakini report Riz Khan to interview Najib, Mahathir live .

In the Al-Jazeera interview where he claimed himself to be a Malay, Dr Mahathir Mohamad openly rejected his Indian ancestry.

By convention anywhere, people of mixed race would usually identify with the race of their fathers, but even though Mahathir’s father is Indian, he prefers to identify with the race of his mother and thus asserts he is Malay.

Politics, or rather political opportunism, seems to dictate Mahathir’s choice on the matter of race. In Malaysia, the Indians don’t hold political power, unlike the Malays.

So Mahathir deems it expedient to identify with the Malays on constitutional grounds in relation to the three main pillars like practicing Malay customs, speaking the Malay language habitually and professing Islam.

That makes Mahathir’s claim to Malay-ness no better than anyone else from anywhere. And Mahathir has stated clearly in his infamous ‘Malay Dilemma’ that for people of mixed ancestry in his category to be accepted into the race of their choice – with all its privileges - he must, while displaying his ‘love and loyalty’ for the targeted race, equally show his ‘resentment’ for the other race perceiving to compete with the targeted race for the same finite power and privileges in a multi-racial society.

Now suppose the Indians were to hold political power in Malaysia, who do you think someone like Mahathir who is both Indian and Malay, would identify with? Your guess is as good as mine.

Mahathir would even be proud to call himself Mahathir s/o of Iskandar Kutty and, of course, rightly justify taking his father’s Indian ethnicity.

Nevertheless, a closer look at the situation has disclosed that the Indians need not necessarily hold political power in the country for Mahathir to be considered an Indian as during his student days at the King Edward VII Medical College in Singapore in the late 1940s when his race was listed as ‘Indian’.

That was the colonial era and the Malays were not politically in charge then. It was only after the federal constitution came into force in 1957 that Mahathir (and others in his position) exploited its provisions pertaining to the definition of Malays to claim themselves as Malays – so as to qualify for the privileges. Such is the astuteness and political chicanery of Mahathir.