Dear Mahathir
The Peoples’ Parliament
Malaysianinsider reports that you had “defended the social contract, the so-called unwritten agreement between the Malays and the non-Malays during independence, by affirming that without the agreement, Malaysia would not have been formed”.
They quoted you :
“If there was no social contract, the terms and conditions of allowing citizenship to non-Malays would have not taken place. One million outsiders were given citizenships at the time.”
Now, this quote from you got me curious.
Let me tell you why.
I conferred with my aunt, who confirmed that my maternal great grandfather, Eliathamby, of whom I’ve written previously in a posting entitled “The land that my forefathers helped build”, would have left Ceylon and arrived in what is now West Malaysia, around 1870. He died well before the conclusion of that social contract that you spoke of, so my great grandfather would not have come within those ‘one million outsiders’ who acquired citizenship at the time of independence in 1957.
My maternal grandfather, Vellupillay T. Williams, never lived to see the formation of Malaya so he, too, did not make up the ‘one million outsiders’.
Enough of my family tree.
Let’s look at yours.
