Merdeka, are we?

Since early childhood, it has always struck me how strange that everyone around me is absolutely obsessed with their racial profile. I'm designated a Malay (despite my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather being suspiciously darker than the average Malay, and a maternal grandfather whose fair skin evoked comparison to angels), purely because I'm Muslim. My earliest memories of politics is of a keris in a yellow blob in the middle of a slash of white and red, and later it had a name, UMNO. We were strong supporters, and proud. They told me it's because we have a king, that our PM is fair, and that we're safeguarding what is supposed to be good in the world, and against all that is bad and evil.

I was a child, and I also saw that Aunty S, my Indian neighbour who was always kind to me wincing when her Muslim neighbours discussed politics, and Uncle W, my Father's (chinese) best friend from his primary school days sighing over economics and the way of things. I played with other kids in the neighbourhood, but with strict restrictions from Mother, my protestations and questions curbed with "sebab diaorang makan babi' and me being confused over that statement because as far as I understood it then, it was only a difference in palate preferences. It was also odd that the vegan Hindhus was a no-no, just because. Kids being kids, we didn't care, but we learned, oh boy, did we learn.

What is in a race? It is drilled into every fibre of our being that our culture is our identity. Religion was eventually introduced as the guideline to a good and virtuous life. Funny how the pieces of the puzzle never fit. If religion is our identity, why then do we make concessions to allow the idiocies of those that claim to live it in its very essence? If culture is so important, why the heck are we Muslims impersonating the Arabs to the point of the Indonesian academics cracking jokes about us? If Muslims are supposed to be 'the best of the best', why are we making snide remarks on those 'heathens'? Why on earth is every faulty behaviour attributed to the race/religion as a whole and not solely the idiot who did it to begin with?

Part of the arguments put forth by many, Farish A. Noor & Lee Ban Chan amongst them, was that Malaysia still unfortunately practice the colonial's way of governance and control over the people, the 'divide and conquer' formulae supposed to be defunct ages ago. We still after all practise the colonial's firm grip on the way that people think i.e. the media, based on a theory forwarded by Farouk Latiff. It saddens me because of the unwillingness of a collective body who is in the position to commit changes that would turn the tide into a more universal good to instead hoard it greedily amongst themselves. I make this statement not lightly. Isn't it ironic that UMNO would rally that they spearhead BN for the good of all, and yet in their own annual assemblies it is often "Hidup Melayu", all in the now tarnished name of democrasy.

We've reached 50 years of so-called Merdeka. Merdeka from what, I wonder. From tyrrany of few over the ignorant many? From a police state? From a condesending paternalistic state? From the rich over the poor? From the marginalization of the minority? From which we came, have we really departed from all that was wrong then into something better today? For argument's sake, it is true that we are considered relatively peaceful and economically stable, but what right does another has to confer to me more rights than my other friends merely because of an accident of birth? What kind of a place allows men to be irresponsible in the name of religion, and utilize wealth to be free of his obligations? What type of Masters have we chosen for ourselves, those who jail people merely because they disagree, the prisoners of conscience? How well do we regard ourselves when we abuse our maids and see others as sub-humans merely because.

Human rights. Most of my Malay peers would sniff and call it the ploy of the non-Malays to take what is rightfully ours, while in my mind I'd love to point out that we were ourselves migrants of sorts from Parameswara's legacy. Let's just not start on the seeming lack of effort to persuade the Orang Asli to a proper chunk of the country's wealth, since if anyone's pure pribumi, it'd be them. How long does it really take anyway for a particular group of people or person to belong to a place truly and get equal rights as his peers? I'm a hypocritical ass, you might argue, child of NEP. Just because it's a political reality, it doesn't make it right. It simply is a problem that we need to address and tackle in a win-win solution.

Racial politics is cheap politics. There is such a thing as universal values that far supersedes any religion, discipline or conceivable tradition in its common quality. Do we not love the same, feel the same when watching our children's laughter trail in the air, exult in a completed task after burdens of hard labour? I propose to carry a dream that Tunku couldn't make a reality, I know, of a political party that allows entry for all races and religion, and fights not for vernacular rights of specific racial grievances, but for the common goal of all. Fair wages, fair treatment, fair access to justice, fair education, all that we are supposed to strive for to begin with.

Here's to Malaysia, her 50th official birthday. May God help us all.