Kapar Member of Parliament S Manickavasagam has been getting some prominent news coverage recently in the mainstream media. A couple of Hindraf supporters and some leaders who have left some insignificant BN component parties and who have found their way into PKR, have teamed up with great fervour and opportunism, to test the strength and malleability of its ideology and its leadership base.

For many Indian political opportunists, including Manickavasagam, who do not subscribe to the ideology of PKR, they may find the party a rather difficult one to play around with. PKR was not founded to carry by-lines and rhetoric in the vernacular press.

Many young Indian leaders may not remember the writings of Kalanji Annamalai, who for two decades, was a mega-stalwart of PPP and wrote in impeccable Tamil all kinds of aspersions and dare-devil rhetoric about the late Tun Sambanthan, who was then the MIC President.

As soon as Tun Sambanthan stepped down from the helm of the MIC and paved the way for the late V Manickavasagam, Kalanji left PPP (upon the demise of the late DR Seenivasagam, for whom he was also a political secretary) and joined Koperasi Pekerja Jaya (a co-operative society founded by the present MIC president S Samy Vellu).

No one knows what has happended to the co-operative society and the money invested by its members, but many know that Kalanji was made its first executive secretary and also became a personal political advisor to Samy Vellu. Opportunism at its best.

One should go back to the pages of Tamil Malar , a popular Tamil daily of the seventies and early eighties and to find the political accusations Kalanji had written about Sambanthan and Samy Vellu and also the responses by supporters of these men. I consider this Tamil reading at its best.

As time passed by, Tamil Malar was closed down and Kalanji passed away.

Now P Jenapala has come into PKR with all kinds of rhetoric and this is very amusing for people like me who had founded the party based on the spirit of reformasi, along with people like Ezam Mohd Nor, Azmin Ali, Dr Azizah Wan Ismail, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, Irene Fernandez, Xavier Jayakumar and many others.

Jenapala, Manickavasagam, S Jayathas and even Hindraf leader P Uthayakumar, who is now in detention, did not play a major role in the development of the party’s ideology and its leadership base.

But with all due respect to these leaders, I had sensed that they moved into PKR to use it for their own political agenda. I remember once, Uthayakumar had wanted to create an Indian division within the party and after a heated argument with me and with Dr Chandra Muzaffar, had left the meeting, never to return.

There is a tendency by many Indians and Indian leaders, who are very worried about the political and economic future of the Indian community in the country, to not be able to see the Indian community itself evolving into a Indian Malaysian community. This is real yet surreptitious.

Some are worried about their language, many are worried about their religion and are agitated by the policies of the BN, which appear to many Indians to be anti-Indian, which is not true. The Indian community is today marauded by an ‘ozone-layer’ of political insecurity. Indians look terrified and distraught.

And here comes Manickavasagam and the rest of the opportunists, with selfishness alone to manipulate the social and economic problems of the community at the expense of PKR.

Selangor Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, who has actually prepared a good social and economic agenda for the poor Indians in Selangor, has come under fire. He has been made a victim of circumstances.

Most Indians must realise that PKR was never founded for the Malays, Chinese or Indians. It was founded for Malaysians. After 50 years, there is some hope that this party would eventually pull Malaysians out of their race-based intricacies to strive for a common Malaysian goal.

PKR itself is evolving and the leadership is all out to identify this common goal and mission.

And for those Indians who can continue to wait and enjoy the fruits of this evolvement, if not for themselves but for their children, they should recognise the will of the party with Anwar Ibrahim at its helm and must continue to support him.

But those who believe they would like some new writers to continue the feats of the late Kalanji, they should instantly reckon themselves with Manickavasagam, Jenapala and Jayathas and leave the party for good.

PKR is not an Indian party. It will never be a Malay party. Nor will it subscribe to the Chinese-based DAP. It will be a true Malaysian party. The political spirit of Malaysia is with PKR. You can count on that.