MALAYSIAN INDIANS, BEWARE OF TROJAN HORSES preaching greater racism than Umno!

As the festive cheers end the year and a new one begins, the Indian community in Malaysia needs to think really long and hard about what the forthcoming 13^th General Election means for them.

Their past has caught up with them and may haunt their future if they are not careful. The 13^th GE, more than the 12^th GE, will be a watershed year for them in dealing with the politics of the nation. 2013 is indeed a critical year and a time for making New Year Resolutions.

Blowing with the BN wind has not helped

If there’s going to be a complete break with the past, Indians need to consider that politics for them cannot be what it used to be. They must resist swinging from one extreme to another - from bending over backwards to please the Umno political masters to demanding an Indian 'Nation' in Malayisa whatever that means.

Malaysian Indians must learn that trying to blow with the wind, as they have done under 55 years of Umno-BN rule, will not solve their problems. They must stand up and fend for themselves with pride and dignity and fight as a community within and inside the Malaysian nation. And not some grotesque colony that some extremist leaders appear to be promoting for their own vested interests.

It is silly to sulk that Indians are the only community in Malaysia which doesn’t have even one ethnic seat in Parliament or the state assemblies despite having a million voters on the electoral rolls and forming 8% of the 28 million population. It is true their marginalisation and disenfranchisement under the Umno regime over half a century has been complete. But to demand for 'Indian' seats to be created doesn't make sense.

Requiring Indians to live geographically close to each other in order to achieve an Indian-majority constituency would raise another storm of human rights issues all of its own. As the minority races now accuse Umno of apartheid, why are some communal leaders pursuing this very same path? Are they just power-crazed, misguided or worse, the Trojan horse put in place by Prime Minister Najib Razak to create even more disunity and confusion so as to prevent further flight of Indian votes to the Opposition now dominated by the Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

It would indeed be more worthwhile to spend time ensuring the Malaysian Indian community is looked after equally and fairly by whoever forms the government of the day, which currently it is not due to the racist platform undertaken by Umno and supported without question by the MIC which cedes supremacy to the Malays.

False 'prophets'

To some in the Indian community, the absence of 'ethnic seats' means that engaging in party politics and coalition politics will not help resolve their myriad socio-economic problems. Such a theory has been spread to get Indians who are now with political parties on both sides of the divide to leave and become 'truly independent'.

How being 'truly independent' can save the Indian community from being further victimized in the aftermath of the 13^th GE remains to be seen. What's for sure is that these are trying times for all Malaysians, not just the Indians.

For example in Sabah, Jeffrey Kitingan is insistent on keeping out the 'orang Malaya' or Malaysians from the peninsula. Is he not every bit as racist and extremist as Mahathir Mohamad? What is Jeffrey - who has been accused of being fabulously rich though now in the same class as Mahathir - really after?

So Indians, just like the Sabahans and all other Malaysians, must avoid being duped by the myriad false 'prophets' from within their own community. One thing the Indian community can be sure of is that if the Barisan Nasional (BN) still manages to form the Federal Government, Malaysian Indians will continue to be scapegoats victimized by the powers that be and brutalized by a racist police force.

Between the known devil and the unknown angel

There is worry over whether Malaysian Indians can really be better off under Anwar Ibrahim's Pakatan Rakyat. One has to only look at the fate of the minorities in the MiddleEast and West Asia in the wake of the long civil war in Lebanon, US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the eruption of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. The Christian minorities here remain on the run everywhere, victimized and persecuted for having supported the past “divide-and-rule” dictatorships rather than taking a strictly neutral or apolitical stand.

The right way forward would be for Indian voters to come out and vote in full force on a non-political, non-party basis. But sad to say, no truly independent candidate of high and sincere calibre exist at this point in time. Those that claim to be truly working for Indian interests and Indian interests alone have shown strong signs of being even more hypocritical than than the MIC.

Another way is to vote based on the strength and calibre of individual candidates regardless of party affiliation. Incumbents who have been in a seat for three terms or more should be voted out.  Other incumbents who have not performed and/or otherwise done nothing for the Indian community should also be voted out.

This message needs to get out again and again until the Indian community sees the wisdom of it.

Reject extremist views that only make ethnic Indians more isolated and less Malaysian

There are also some who think it might be better if Indians did not vote for Indians to be in the legislature at all and neither should any self-respecting Indian offer himself in the GE as that would be tantamount to further misleading the community and postponing badly-needed solutions. The basis for such a radical call is that Indian MPs may not be able to do anything for the community and having them merely glosses over the problems as well as paint the impressions that the government is being shared fairly among all Malaysians.

Also, such Indian legislators become convenient scapegoats i.e. to be blamed by the non-Indian legislators when the Indian community complains about anything. So instead, the proponents of such rhetoric insist the Government of the Day, whether from BN or PR, should consider that it would be more in their interest to appoint Indians to the Senate and in the Government sector, especially statutory bodies, government companies and GLCs.

Needless to say, this is the proverbial fig leaf and the same childish call that was made by the disgraced and sinking MCA president, Chua Soi Lek.

The danger of such deafeatist thinking and 'siege-mentality' is that Indians will forever be bound by the parameters of their own ethnicity and never truly become Malaysian. Is this not Umno-style? This too feeds into the hands of certain ultra racist groups led by the likes of P Uthayakumar and his brother Waythamoorthy who like Jeffery Kitingan won't be happy until they get to form separate 'nations' in which they would no doubt be the new kings and lords over!

In 2013, Malaysian Indians must recognize and break such vicious political, economic and social cycles and soundly reject the ruthless politicians who try once again to use the community's naivete and lack of self-confidence to advance vested interests.

Stateless Indians an urgent issue that must be resolved

It must be noted that the 8% Indian population in Malaysia excludes at least 300,000 'stateless' and undocumented ethnic Indians, who were born here and entitled to full citizenship rights but which have been withheld.

Former Selangor Menteri Besar Khir Toyo unwittingly confirmed the existence of such a problem when he conceded that there were 50,000 stateless Indian children in his state alone. Accused of corruption and neglect of the Indian community in Selangor, Khir had tried to deflect attention by pinning a 'hot potato' on BN compatriot - the Malaysian Indian Congress  or MIC - with the stateless issue. Talk about dog eat dog!

At the macro level, the stateless and undocumented phenomenon needs to be brought to an end. At present, the Umno regime deliberately keeps the stateless and undocumented people as virtually slave labour in the twilight zone. Slavery is illegal under the Malaysian Constitution, international law and the UN Charter. The stateless don’t figure in official statistics and the phenomenon further deprives Indians of additional votes.

The Director-General of the National Registration Department (NRD) has prerogative and discretionary powers – can be determined by the Court – to resolve the stateless problem at the stroke of a pen but he refuses to do so because he’s being forced by Umno to act as if he was a hardcore card-carrying racist member of the party.

The Federal Government should appoint an apolitical ethnic Indian, a non-Muslim, as the Director-General of NRD and a non-Muslim Orang Asal – Murut, Dusun including Kadazan or urban Dusun, Dayak, and Orang Asli – as the Deputy Director-General of the NRD at least until the stateless problem in Malaysia is resolved. This is a human rights issue. Everyone has the right to an identity.

To add insult to injury, illegal immigrants and foreign labour are being allowed in to compete with Indians in jobs which they had traditionally held. The Minimum Wage Act ensures that Malaysians will be discouraged from entering the job market at the lower levels which are being kept open for illegal immigrants and foreign labour who go on to pad the electoral rolls.

Right now, marginalized Indians can’t get even cendol licences

Again, at the macro level, the spectrum of administrative laws – government policies in action – burdening the Indian community in particular, should be done away. These policies are unconstitutional and therefore unlawful.

An example is the fact that Indians can’t get even cendol licences from local authorities, such licences being reserved solely for members of the Malay-speaking communities - Bugis, Javanese, Minang, Acehnese, and Indian Muslims – who are Muslim.

Another government policy which targets Indians is that which derecognizes foreign universities with a sizeable number of Malaysian Indian students. This is a policy put in place by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad whose people came from Kerala state in southwest India.

Administrative laws also facilitate the ruling elite to plunder the Public Treasury from behind the racism (feelings of inferiority in this case), prejudice (being against something for no rhyme or reason) and opportunism (sapu bersih or swipe up all opportunities) of the Umno regime. Just consider the US$ 44 billion wealth allegedly amassed by Mahathir during his 22 years in the Prime Minister’s post. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The Syariah Court cannot be used against non-Muslims and conversions of non-Muslims should be ended. The 'stateless' minorities in the country should not be forced to convert to Islam to get personal Malaysian documents as some have alleged.

Malaysia Chronicle