From time to time I try my best to educate my fellow readers and friends about the true meaning of ‘Indian’ or at least what I believe. I am not going to write a long thesis kind of article today regarding this as I believe I have mentioned the meaning of it previously. However, just to refresh our Malaysian Minds, I will re-hash and add a little bit more masala to this.
Before that, wondering what Malaysian Minds are? Well the terminology Malaysian Minds refers to the Malaysians who are prone to forget the important things that happen in our country. Some sort of amnesia. Don’t believe me? Well go through the list below and you will be amazed what your mind fails to remember.
1) MIED : Samy Vellu, Chitrakala
2) Sujatha Krishnan Murder : Vellpaari, Indrani Samy Vellu, Shaila Nair
3) Maika Holding : The thugs, the fights etc
4) MIC Power Tussle : Samy Vellu and Subramaniam
5) Death of A.Kugan, R.Gunasegaran, A.Gnapragasam,
6) 6 Indians gun-downed by Malaysian Police, suspected arm robbery : Kedah
7) V.K Linggam : Correct, correct, correct
8) Police in Perak Parliament : V.Sivakumar dragged out
9) Murder of Mongolian : Who to be blamed
And the list goes on and on…..
Let’s just put a side Malaysian Minds and high drama crap. Today is about Malaysian Indians. Most Malaysians are stereotype when it comes to defining Malaysian Indians. In fact, they are stereotype in identifying even the Malaysian Chinese. Let me give you a short historical class. Actually a geographical class as well. “Indians” in a general jargon mean people that are from the country India. You know the 2nd most homo-sapiens populated country in the world. Yes, yes!! India. Now people from India can vary from skin color to different physique. It is known that the country India owns about 300 ++ languages. So don’t you generalize us, who were born and bred in Malaysia. Our ancestors might have an Indian passport, but not us. Just because my great grandparents were born in India, that does not make me Indian. I was born in Malaysia, thus I’m a Malaysian. In the event you want a little in depth origin of mine, I am a Malaysian Indian and that’s it. However, this does not make me a person who came from India. I don’t even know how to sing the Indian National Anthem. The only national anthem I know is ‘Negaraku’.
Then why does the government call us ‘India’. You sick moron, India is a country, not a race! If you deny us of becoming a Malaysian, where else do we go? What am I talking? You can’t deny us of becoming a Malaysian. We are already Malaysians. In India, there are different ethnic people as well. There are, Tamilians, Malayalees, Telugus, Gujeratis, Punjabis etc. Each ethnic speak different languages and exercise different cultures. Some are even from different religion faith. They could be a Malayalee Chirstian, a Telugu Buddhist, or a Punjabi Muslim. Nevertheless, regardless of what race, ethnic or religious faith they are from, they are united under the one nation called India and the people are called Indians.
The country Pakistan is another example. Pakistan is a Muslim country just like Malaysia. Islam is both Pakistan’s and Malaysia’s official religion. Now if I go to Pakistan and was asked by a Pakistani what am I (referring to what countryman), I will answer Malaysian which is the correct answer. I cannot answer Indian because I am not from India. In fact if I answer Indian, I might be shot because there is rift between the Pakistanis and Indians. So you see, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know this, it’s as simple as knowing your own name. No disrespect for those who don’t know their name or perhaps were never given one.
However, sometimes when you think about it, we can actually forgive the government for generalizing us because they are not that smart. But what do you tell to the people inside the community who practices isolation of Malaysian Indians. I hate to admit this, but even I sometimes have to go in depth on identifying my origins when asked by some senior Malaysian Indian citizens. I have been asked many times this question by these people, “What are you actually?” Of course the answer goes from Malaysian to what cast I am. Sick people! It amazes me that even highly educated people ask these questions. We want to unite under one theme of Malaysia yet we are thrown questions about origins and the moment we are asked this question, we are divided already. For this, I strongly propose for all application forms by the government to scratch the Religion/Agama and Race/Kaum column. We don’t need these 2 columns; we only need one which is ‘Nationality’. Haizz! They never change.
One last example I would want to publish is Ceylonese. Now Ceylonese are the people from Sri Lanka. They are either called Ceylonese or Sri Lankan. I would quote them as Ceylonese in here. However, Ceylonese can be from different religious faith as well. They could be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Tao, a Christian or any religion in the world and once again, they are called Ceylonese because they were born in Sri Lanka. You cannot call a Malaysian born person whose parents or grandparents are from Sri Lanka a Ceylonese. These people are to be called Malaysians as well. I know a lot of friends who were born in Malaysia and yet would not give up the self-proclaimed status of being a Ceylonese and yet, there are even more friends I know in this pool who would not even utter the word Ceylonese. Perhaps they don’t want to be divided or perhaps they are just being patriotic. I don’t know, only time and situations will tell.
Below are some examples of countries and their citizens:-
1) Malaysia - Malaysian
2) Indonesia - Indonesian
3) Australia - Australian
4) Holland - Dutch
5) Iceland - Icelandic
6) Ivory Coast - Ivorians
I know it’s difficult and almost impossible to be patriotic in this country now. But there are people who are from the beginning. My dad is one such person. To your amazement and even mine, my dad actually ties our Malaysian flag high up a pole and waves it in my house every Independence Day (31st August) without fail. I speak to him about the corrupt government we have and he replies to me saying that the very corrupt government I speak about has given me the chance to get a degree in a university, has given me the professional job I have today, has put food on my table ever since I was born, has given my dad a job till now (my dad is 63 years old) and so forth. My reply to my dad is, “.. and has made me who I am today, going all out to ousted them by all means possible.” You see, from my analysis and you don’t need to be Einstein to know this, the only pool of people who can change this is the youth.
Anyway, we as Malaysians are to be united by the country. Scrap the Indian, Chinese, Malay terminology. Scrap the race-based politics. When the most Islamic based political party can accept other religious faith people into their party (I’m talking about PAS), we as Malaysian Indians and Malaysian Chinese will have to accept that we are more Malaysians than Indians or Chinese. It’s because we, the individual claim for ourselves that we are Indians and Chinese that the government takes us for granted. Let us start now. From now on, we say that we are Malaysians. Where you from? Malaysia. What are you? Malaysian. I mean really, what are you? You numbskull, I just answered you, Malaysian!!
“Patriotism is like charity, it begins at home.” – Henry James.
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