Spade!

By Hakim Joe

Let’s be honest with ourselves and call a spade, a spade. With the numerous articles detailing the plight of the Indian community hitting the pages of Malaysia Today these days and especially after the Bagan Pinang by-election, we should be able to understand their point of view, but we still do not. And why not? 

Hypocrisy is not exactly the right word and neither is ignorance. Conceivably insensitive and possibly thoughtlessness. Don’t agree? 

Okay, how many non-Indian people of Malaysia actually care about them? Ask the Malays and the majority would say that the Indians cannot be trusted. Ask the Chinese and they will tell you straightforward that it’s better to place your trust on a venomous snake than risk it on an Indian. Ask the natives and they will tell you that they cannot be bothered caring about the Indians when their own situation is worse off. The worse thing is that if one asks the richer and far better educated Indians about it and what you get is a shrug – that’s the caste system coming into play. 

To be fair, even the Indian leaders are not doing much to alleviate the plight of their own community. Look at Samy Vellu. Can anybody tell me exactly what he has done to improve the standard of living of a normal Indian? A lot of Indians may argue the fact that Samy is not their community leader and that beckons the question of how he was capable of helming MIC until today. 30 years is a long time in politics and unless he obtained the support from the people, he could never have stayed being the President of MIC for that amount of time. 

Where are the rest of the Indian leaders? S. Subramaniam was effectively isolated by Samy. Pathmanaban retired from active politics in 1991 and has since gone to meet his Maker. G. Palanivel might be the rising star but he cannot do (or say) much with Samy still there and nobody knows if he will do anything at all if he assumes the MIC presidency. So, who else is there? Sothinathan? Devamany? Saravanan? What has this lot of people done so far? Same with M. Kayveas and T. Murugiah, both being more interested in their internal party politics than caring about the Indians. 

Hindraf and Makkal Sakti perhaps? Hindraf cannot even register themselves as a party, let alone rise to lead the Indians. Waytha Moorthy is in exile in London and P. Uthayakumar is efficiently silenced by the government. Nothing has been heard from V.S. Ganapathi Rao since. As for Makkal Sakti, they have already pledged their collective souls to Umno and this party is too “new” to propose changes to the status quo as in existence now (even when Najib personally attended their inauguration as a political party) and whether they are capable or willing to speak out in favor of the Indians later. Anybody knows who R.S. Thanenthiran is? 

M. Kulasegaran, S. Manikavasagam, Sivarasa Rasiah, M. Manogaran, P Ramasamy and a lot more from the opposition but do you see them rising up to the forefront of Malaysian politics to be able to dictate terms? Their constant threats of quitting Pakatan are not helping things much and it can be said that such intimidatory political maneuvers do not often produce positive results. Better to remain together to fight the larger evil first before resorting to the last alternative of fighting them individually. 

Look at it this way. Indians make up about 9% (and declining) of the total population of Malaysia and that is not much and it is because of this fact of being the minority that the government overlooks their existence. The reasoning is that they need to take care of the majority first. MIC was formed to surmount this incongruity but they failed miserably when they took the option of looking after themselves first (and foremost) and the Indian community last. 

And then we have the numerous Human Rights organizations with Indian leaders that specifically targets aid to the Indian community only. No, there is nothing wrong with that but shouldn’t they be fighting for the human rights of all Malaysians instead? If they could have shed off their own discriminatory inclinations, the people would have supported them. At least Hindraf is being truthful when they sought to improve their condition by calling themselves the Hindu Rights Action Force, no matter how ridiculous their demands might be.  

Let us play the blame game now. Are the Indians themselves to be blamed or should their elected leaders assume culpability? Additionally, why does the majority of the remaining 91% of the Malaysian population do not willingly offer a helping hand? 

Indian leaders are elected by their Indian supporters within an Indian party in our race-based political system. It should have been a case of “election through performance” process but that is not the situation here. Samy was reelected time and time again when he did nothing for the Indian community. Who is to be blamed? 

When Mohd Isa stood as a candidate in the Bagan Pinang by-election, the Indians voted him in knowing very well that he is from Umno, a political party that has shown scant regard for the plight of the Indians for the past half century. If the status quo continues, who is to be blamed? 

When the Gerakan government in Penang alienated that plot of government land in Kg. Buah Pala in 2004/2005 without consulting the residents there and subsequently sold it off in 2007 when they were still the state government, who is to be blamed? 

When MIC’s investment arm Maika failed to obtain the 9 million Telekoms shares, and was subsequently discovered that those allocations have been diverted elsewhere, who is to be blamed? 

MIC is part of the government and they have been part of the government for 52 years since its independence in 1957. When they failed to stand up for the Indians after all this while, who do you blame?  

The Chinese are also a minority in Malaysia but they have worked themselves out from the same situation the Indians find themselves in now. Who helped them climb above the rest of the people? Was there a special affirmative action plan for the Chinese? Were the Chinese granted special rights? Or are the Chinese a wee bit more “clever” than the Indians? The answers are nobody helped them except themselves. There was never any affirmative action plan for the Chinese and neither are they accorded special rights, and lastly, no – there are a lot of smart Indians out there as there are as many smart Chinese (or smart Malays). 

So, where does this leave us? The answer is in fact very simple – vote for reforms. Not specifically for changes only to the Indian community but to all Malaysians regardless of race, religion or creed. Vote for status quo and there you will remain for the rest of your life.