The Clash of Civilisations

By batsman 

I penned this after thinking about RPK’s The Malay self-inflicted wound and reading the associated comments. 

RPK’s blog is an extremely revealing and honest assessment of the situation in Malaysia. However, rather than describing the Malay situation as a Malay self-inflicted wound (which I agree is an accurate one when viewed from one angle), I prefer to see it as a clash of civilizations. 

Those who have worked with aborigines in Australia or even in other parts of the world can recognize the problems involved immediately. The aborigines were frozen in time. Although Malays may feel insulted with the comparison, the same happened to Malays. 

As RPK pointed out, Georgetown was founded 224 years ago. Of this time, the British ruled it for about 175 years. Within this long period of time, nothing was done to change the culture or value system of the Malays. The Malays were frozen in time. For those who are unable to grasp what this means – Malay values and attitudes is still largely the same as what it was 224 years ago. Whatever the British needed, they imported products and immigrant labour to cater to their needs. So shouldn’t the British take most of the blame for the Malay condition? 

With independence, the solution used to modernize the Malays was to give them handouts – “land, concessions, permits, ‘pink slips’ on new stock exchange listings, and whatnot”. This was refined into the artificial creation of Malay artificial millionaires with APs, monopolies, contracts and “whatnot”. 

I think this was a culture shock and a huge mistake. So what’s so wrong with Malay culture and lifestyle when their own government is willing to shower them with goodies? The automatic reaction of anybody with such an age old culture would be to use the goodies to enjoy themselves. After all, they know nothing of modern industry or commerce. Any attempt to invest new found wealth for such purposes would end up lost or cheated – so might as well enjoy while it lasts. 

So while the motives of a few decent people were good, they did not take into account the mindset of a Malay people frozen in time when designing solutions to bring them into the modern world. What was done was to try and change the external conditions of the Malays without trying to change the internal mindset. 

Ok, so let’s say the British complicity in freezing the Malays in time is old hat. We should forget it and move on. But for 50 years after independence, there has been no change to the strategy of trying to drag the Malays into the 21st century. Some good intentioned people even gave up half way. Those who were decent went on to other things. Those who were indecent saw their golden opportunity and took all the goodies for themselves and enriched themselves through corruption and abuse of power. 

The institutions of power were corrupted to maintain these indecent people in power and now it is awfully difficult to remove them to the horror of decent people everywhere. The Malaysian system of government has become a self-sustaining monster gobbling up wealth and resources to maintain itself, able to suppress threats to itself and no longer accountable to the people. UMNO now grabs the bulk of the wealth to maintain itself in power as well as for its VIPs and cronies to enjoy themselves. They have given up the struggle to bring the Malays into the modern world and have left them to their own fate just as their old masters, the British did. 

So whether it is a Malay self-inflicted wound or a clash of civilizations, the fact still remains that politically it is the Malays who must remove the corrupt government. This is the destiny of the Malays. Unfortunately again, it seems the corrupt politicians know the mentality of the Malays a bit more cunningly than reformers. They follow up handouts with seductive appeals to the superiority of Malay culture and Malay mastery in concepts such as Ketuanan Melayu and Malaysia Boleh. They add to it the appeal of religious power and bigotry. They blame the extremely competitive former immigrants for all the faults and problems suffered by the Malays. They point to the danger of Malaysia being taken over by aggressive and competitive former immigrants because the Malays are weak and addicted to handouts and are lucky to have UMNO to protect them. They practice divide and rule. 

The opposition must navigate safely through all of these addictive entrapments and fear of competition which weaken Malays and turn them into addicts to come out with its own message that can appeal to those Malays who are willing to abandon addiction and take the risk of plunging into the modern world without subsidies and without favouritism. This message will be a shocking one and will probably not be very appealing. 

Notice I did not use the name PR when I mentioned opposition. I think the PR well understands the problems involved and have been extremely circumspect in their statements. Even the frogs well understand the problems and sensitivities involved. They use it to good effect to attack the PR when they make the jump. 

It is the well intentioned but arrogant free-lancers who must deal with their own chauvinism. UMNO got into trouble during the 12th GE because of arrogance and because it looked down on and treated other races as it treated MCA and MIC. But the other races were not like MCA and MIC. They finally broke their chains and voted against UMNO, MCA and MIC. 

If the free-lancers who try to associate themselves with the opposition make the same mistake and treat Malays with arrogance as they would treat UMNO, the tables will be turned again. The Malays may have values and mindsets stuck in the 19th century, but they are not stupid people. They can recognize Malays, their own kind, feeling exasperated, irritated and worn-out by the struggle to drag them into the modern world. They can equally recognize non-Malays spewing chauvinism when these people try to jump on the bandwagon of modernization. The words may sound the same, but the feelings they engender will not be the same. 

Therefore it all has to be done with a lot of care, a lot of thought and a lot of self-reflection. Most probably the whole modernization process of the Malays (I might add quite a few Chinese and Indians as well) has to be done in stages. I don’t think it is possible to make the transition in one giant leap. The whole process needs to be carefully planned in stages and may involve sacrificing some aspects of Malay culture which are holding back Malays from entering the modern world as proud productive equals not just as modern consumers and complainants. The clash of cultures and of civilizations has to be taken into account. This has to be built into the message and the political platform of the opposition. It has to be turned into a social movement, not remain an electoral contest.

Turkey has done it, Syria has done it, Iraq was doing it until it got invaded, Iran is trying to do it and even India is trying its best to do it, all in their very different and separate ways to modernize not just infrastructure, but the mindset of the people. They did it not without sacrifices and a lot of misery. Malaysia can do it too, hopefully without too much pain although the great heroes among us will probably say this is too idealistic a hope. 

Hopefully too the reformers can do it without some self-inflicted wounds of their own making. They cannot afford to have what looks like exploitative hard-assed loud mouthed US style capitalists in their ranks all ready to chop up weakened and addicted Malays for breakfast, fat subsidized Malays for lunch and everybody else for dinner. They need to have sympathetic industrialists and captains of commerce who are nationalists in for the long haul and not short term internationalists ready to take flight with their capital the moment things go wrong and emigrate to other countries. 

The political struggle demands that the opposition have a winning team of all races able and willing to pull the WHOLE country into the 21st century not just the competitive citizens and the millionaires whether self-made or subsidised. 

I think if the opposition has people in it who look down on any one of Malays, Chinese or Indians and are intolerant of any one of Islam, Christianity, Bhuddism or Hinduism, it will be the stupidest and biggest self-inflicted wound yet. The Japanese samurai will laugh at us yet for our great ability to commit hara-kiri without realizing we are doing it.