HINDRAF MAY NO LONGER BE A TALE OF BROTHERS

By : JOE FERNANDEZ

ANALYSIS The statement by Hindraf Makkal Sathi National Secretary P. Ramesh on Sat was like a bolt from the blue. The NGO's Legal Advisor P. Uthayakumar would no longer be the NGO’s spokesman.

However, he would remain the movement's Legal Advisor. Furthermore, he was advised to “return to the right path and support Hindraf's true struggle”. The last bit sounded like a mullah warning apostates.

To add insult to 'non injury', Hindraf was 'officially severing all ties with Uthaya', according to the statement. Surely, this is no way to address one’s Legal Advisor, and through the media in a deliberate attempt to humiliate.

It remains to be seen how Uthaya is going to remain Hindraf's Legal Advisor if the movement, in the same breath, wants to have nothing further to do with him" and he can't make statements even in his legal capacity.

So, it looks like nothing appears to have really changed in a way between Uthaya and Hindraf. Ramesh, if considered carefully, was not only a non-statement but a bundle of contradictions.

Uthaya has always been Hindraf's spokesman, as the de facto chief, although he styled himself Legal Advisor 'for strategic reasons'. It’s for the same reasons, 'strategic', that his younger brother P. Waythamoorthy was made chairman when Hindraf was set up in 2005.

Uthaya’s “removal” as Hindraf spokesman doesn't mean that the NGO has designated anyone as Chief Spokesman or even Spokesman. The practice todate has allowed any senior Hindraf official to speak on behalf of it. Now, judging from the “treatment” meted out to Uthaya, there's a caveat of sorts: "Any senior official of Hindraf is free to make statements on its behalf until he -- there's no she -- crosses the line."

The proverbial line would be crossed when the said statement had not been cleared with other senior Hindraf officials including the National Coordinating Committee and thereby becomes an 'errant' one. That's euphemism for saying that other senior Hindraf activists disagree with the statement or have taken adverse public reaction into account.

In practice, senior Hindraf leaders merely alert each other well before they issue any statement or they may not. This approach allows the movement to quickly distance itself from any statement, if not disown it, and attribute it to the personal views of the errant official. Thus publicly chastised, the errant official would tread more gingerly in future.

The entire approach, being a self-correcting mechanism, works like magic.

In Uthaya's case, something went wrong, and seriously. Hindraf found that it could not issue statement after statement, immediately after he makes one under its name, to attribute it to his personal views. Every statement being made by Uthaya under Hindraf was coming across as being in 'his personal views' category. In short, Uthaya was not reflecting Hindraf's 'official views', whatever they may be.

If it appears that there's some duplicity of sorts at work here, there's really none at all.

Hindraf, as an ad hoc apolitical human rights movement but nevertheless working across the divide, essentially remains a faceless organisation. At best it can be likened to the proverbial many-headed Hydra. Every time a head is cut off, two new ones takes its place.

In that sense, it has some similarities to the emerging 3rd Force in the Parliament, also a faceless movement but at the same time nameless.

Hindraf subscribes to the 3rd Force along with various other elements poised between the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN), at whose expense it will emerge, and the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) national opposition alliance which venomously opposes it. PR itself largely emerged at the expense of BN but thinks the 3rd Force will bring its further growth to a halt. The BN meanwhile prefers the 3rd Force to benefit, rather than PR, if it suffers further losses of seats in Parliament.

Away from the digression, it's no secret that Hindraf was perfectly happy with Uthaya as long his public statements were issued under his pro-tem Human Rights Party (HRP).

They were not too happy with the media describing the HRP as its political wing but were willing to live with it until they could find a way out. Hindraf's oft-cited position has been that it eschews politics. It wants to remain an ad hoc apolitical human rights movement across the divide.

It has been no great secret for some weeks now that Hindraf has watched Uthayakumar's “return to the fold somewhat with helpless dismay. After issuing statements under the Human Rights Party (HRP) since 2008, Uthaya for reasons best known to him, it has been alleged, “suddenly started speaking on behalf of Hindraf as if he had never really been absent from the NGO for so long”.

Uthaya's latest move, which ruffled feathers from London to New York and Kuala Lumpur, was him challenging Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to disclose its plans for the Indian poor during its first 100 days in office after the 13th General Election. Uthaya, to add insult to injury according to Hindraf leaders, said that he was addressing Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim as the Prime Minister-designate.

Push came to shove when Uthaya issued the April 4 statement challenging PR leaders to turn up on April 22 at the Chetty Padang in Klang to state what they could do for the underclass Indians.

Challenging PR leaders was one thing but Uthaya demanding, on behalf of Hindraf, that they turn up at the appointed place and meet him was more than what the movement could bear. "It was undignified", Hindraf's leaders decided. They want to have nothing to do with Uthaya's attempts to emulate the John Rambo character from Sylvester Stallone's films.

Hindraf was not so concerned with the dignity of PR leaders. It has neither forgiven nor forgotten that it was Anwar who has time and again dismissed the NGO as racist and denied its role in the makkal sakthi – people power – wave that unleashed the 2008 political tsunami.

Uthaya's renewed political posturing ostensibly on behalf of Hindraf has placed it in a somewhat awkward position especially with its international supporters. These supporters are committed to quietly helping realise the NGO's agenda for change and reform. The last thing that Hindraf wants is to find itself being distracted and disrupted by Rambo politics.

If it appears that the two Ponnusamy brothers, Waytha and Uthaya, may have finally fallen apart over Hindraf to the great delight of their many foes across both sides of the political divide, nothing could be further from the truth. Their legions of admirers have no need to be crest-fallen.

It's highly unlikely that Waytha would ever challenge his elder brother over Hindraf or something as mundane as politics. Blood is thicker than water even in politics although the younger brother would be the first to swear that he's still not into politics.

Waytha himself has been privately speaking about moving on from Hindraf after the conclusion of the on-going class action suit against the UK and Malaysian Governments in London.

He has worked out a broader agenda under the newly initiated UK-based Human Right Foundation of Malaysia. Far from being the absolute ruler, Waytha is under considerable pressure all the time from other senior Hindraf leaders around the globe, many perhaps more hawkish than he will ever be.

Uthaya, with or without Hindraf, can be expected to focus exclusively on the underclass Indians, the poor, even at the risk of being labelled a racist.

He explains away the racist label by pointing out that being poor when you are Indian is not the same as being poor when you are non-Indian. The difference being that the underclass Indians lack a social safety network as a fallback option. Left with no option, the only way out for an underclass Indian who has reached a dead-end is suicide.

Another point Uthaya likes to mention is that a racist is one who denies others their place in the sun. One who fights for his place in the sun should not be labelled a racist. He believes that man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

One way out for the underclass is for the Government to make available license for petty trade and small business, SME and the like besides training in crafts, skills and technical lines. Uthaya and Co could also challenge the Government by way of Judicial Reviews on these matters.

Another step would be to make 15 acres land each available, even on TOL and lease of state land, for interested underclass Indian families to venture into small-time agricultural pursuits.