Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 7, 2007
Malaysia's Indians don't send home dollars,
don't become CEOs of IT start-ups; they haven't even produced a VS Naipaul.
Consequently, in contrast to the dissertations on the NRI community in the
United States, the formerly east African Indians in Britain and the Indian
diaspora's experience in the Caribbean, there is a paucity of even basic information
on the ethnic Indians living off the Straits of Malacca.
The recent spurt in anti-Indian -- or anti-Hindu, as few would argue that
in Malaysia the terms aren't coterminous -- has, in a sense, forced Indians
to confront a rare species of Person of India Origin: One that does not adhere
to the stereotype of educated, upwardly mobile and socially hip.
Malaysian Indians are predominantly uneducated;
few are white collar professionals, fewer still own property. Drug addiction
is a problem among the young. At the bottom of the heap, they do low-end jobs
and run errands for ethnic Chinese crime syndicates.
Even the belief that all two million Indians in Malaysia are one un-segregated
whole is a simplistic inaccuracy. True, some 90 per cent of the two million
are Tamils, but this includes at least three strands. The majority makes up
the underclass. A sprinkling of educated Tamils man Government hospitals as
doctors or are in the middle rungs of the civil service.
There is a third slice. When the British imported
indentured labour from Tamil Nadu, to maintain "their own system of checks
and balances", they also brought in overseers from among Sri Lankan Tamils.
The latter see themselves as superior to the plantation workers -- yet they
all get categorised as 'Indians'.
That aside, a sprinkling of Christians, largely
of Malayalee descent, also make up the Indian community. A small band of Sikhs,
descended from policemen the colonial Government brought to the Malay Peninsula
in the late 19th century, maintains a strict community structure anchored
by the local gurdwara.
It is interesting that there is an almost
total absence of Muslims in Malaysia's Indian community. From the 1980s onwards,
Malaysia has rapidly turned to Wahaabi-style Islam as a marker of identity.
It has sought to make Malay synonymous with Muslim, marrying ethnicity to
religion in Government-sponsored social engineering.
As such, many ethnic Indian Muslims have chosen
to identify themselves as Malays, either by citing inter-marriage or simply
by emphasising their faith. There is even a word for these Indians turned
Malays -- Mamaks.
It is piquant that Mr Mahathir Mohamad, who
ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, and discovered -- perhaps invented -- its
Arabist Islamic soul, is descended from Keralite migrants. Mr Anwar Ibrahim,
the former Deputy Prime Minister and opponent of both Mr Mohamad and current
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, is of Tamil descent, said to be proud of his
"Iyer grandfather".
At least one Malay Minister has extended family
in Uttar Pradesh and secretly visits his father's grave -- the father was
a Mamak who wanted to be "buried at home" -- near Moradabad.
From Chola-era cultural and trade relations
down to James Brooke, the Banaras-born 19th century English adventurer who
became the 'White Rajah' of Sarawak, India has never been far away from Malay
popular consciousness. To this day, for Malaysia's princelings, yellow is
the colour of royalty, a rajabhishek-style sprinkling of water marks every
coronation.
Given this history, what happened? Malaysia
is today a society in denial. Just as individual Mamaks want to forget their
Indian origin, the Malay leadership, collectively, would rather see themselves
as part of the global Muslim community, as ethnically linked to the Chinese
in the East Asian region -- anything but derived from Hinduism and India.
The domestic and external dimensions of the
situation are not unrelated. When apartheid-period South Africa treated Indians
as second class citizens, it was not necessarily sending a diplomatic message
to the Government of India; it was merely being obnoxious. Malaysia is different.
"Whenever the Malaysians want to hit out at their ethnic Indians, they
snub India," says a veteran diplomat, "this time it is vice versa."
That is why the logic that New Delhi has no
role in Kuala Lumpur's "internal issues", while seemingly persuasive,
is flawed. India is integral to the drama. Anecdotal and empirical evidence
is disturbing and difficult to ignore.
In recent years, officials point out, there
has been a significant increase in Saudi-funded mosque construction in Malaysia.
"It is the easiest way of collecting money from the Saudi Ambassador,"
goes one cynical comment. Many of these mosques have brought in Pakistani
clerics. This has had its impact on Malay perceptions of both India and ethnic
Indians.
That aside, the Chinese and Malaysian Governments
are the closest allies in Greater East Asia. They have argued, so far successfully,
that India is racially different and has no place in the inner circle in East
Asia. Kuala Lumpur has been an obstacle in the path of the India-ASEAN Free
Trade Agreement. Indian foreign policy has to confront the Malaysia question
at some point.
What are India's options? Malaysia merits
a sophisticated response beyond either rhetoric or gunboats. First, there
has to be the recognition that New Delhi has a certain responsibility when
it comes to safeguarding rights of overseas Indians, particularly Hindus.
There are moral as well as practical reasons
for this. Pushed to the edge, where are Malaysia's Hindus going to come? To
Chennai, where some of the richer ones already own houses.
Second, the traditional ethnic Indian party
is the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). The MIC is part of the ruling alliance
and its leader, Mr Sami Velu, is Minister for Works. He uses his "Indian-ness"
to promote business in the mother country, win Malaysian companies infrastructure
contracts. Yet, the degree of community dissension against Mr Velu and the
MIC now cannot be ignored. One insider describes him "as an old-style
Bihar politician who thrives on keeping his supporters poor and badly educated".
Another diplomat is blunt: "Mr Velu is the Indians' Uncle Tom."
Finally, India needs to revive a proposal,
first made about five years ago, when Ms Veena Sikri was High Commissioner
in Kuala Lumpur, that it will support schools for Malaysia's Indian minority,
flying in teachers from Tamil Nadu who will teach children both Tamil and
English and help the ethnic Indians overcome the built-in biases of the Malaysian
Government school system.
This is a system, incidentally, where the
roll number on an answer sheet tells the examiner which race the candidate
belongs to.
