The Indians do have leverage

Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy pens his political thoughts while on his hunger strike for the sake of the minority communities in this country.

COMMENT

By P Waythamoorthy

Today is the second day of my hunger viratham (hunger strike). The purpose of this hunger viratham is to educate and sensitise the people and those in power about the inherent immorality of the socio-political system of our country in relation to minority communities in the country.

I would like to use the occasion of the hunger viratham to lay out my political thoughts for a wide audience. We have been shouting ourselves hoarse, but the political class refuses to open their ears and listen.

They want to continue the institutionalised racist and oppressive system in different guises. It appears that they will only listen if it starts to affect their positions materially.

The hunger viratham gives me the opportunity to focus the attention on the political shenanigans of these politicians and let the people become the masters and ensure they do not get misled by the politicians.

I will be writing on a variety of topics in this column titled ‘My political thoughts during the hunger viratham’. And today I shall start by looking into the short term plan for the Indian community.

The way forward

Indians are a minority community in Malaysia, forming around 7.4% of the populace. More than 70% of the Indian community is made up of present and former plantation workers –and acknowledged to be an economically depressed and marginalized community.

In 1957 when Malaysia got its independence from the Colonial British government, the Indian plantation workers just traded bosses from white skinned bosses to brown and yellow skinned ones. They however continued to be colonised, in substance.

White colonialism worked to produce profits through a set of unequal relationships between the colonists who resided in the distant British isles and the colonised, a significant portion of whom were the Indian plantation workers.

Brown and Yellow colonialism replacing it today produces profits, exploits and oppresses these same people for an elite within its own borders and in the name of a moral and sovereign rule of the Malaysian people.

For the colonised Indian plantation workers, nothing substantial changed. They remain colonised and disenfranchised, just as in the white colonial days.

The main features of today’s so called moral and sovereign rule of the people that replaced colonialism are political parties, politicians, periodic elections to the legislatures backed up by a national constitution and a set of laws that institutionalise a new set of unequal relationships.

Then “first past the post” political party runs the state. This is our political system today. It does not take much to make out how this system is biased towards perpetuation of the colonization and disenfranchisement of the outnumbered minorities and the tyrannical rule of the majority.

Unjust rule

Anyone who cannot not see this, and says Indians are not minorities are engaging in plain self serving polemics. They just do not want to see it this way, as it does not serve their narrow self interest.

The majority (the political party first past the post) will always be the ones at the controls of the resources of the nation and the minorities will always be at their mercy in this system.

Oppression and subjugation become natural outcomes in this system.

This system though initially thought to be a morally superior system to colonialism, has through its workings, shown its inherent immorality. It has led to unjust rule.

Oppression and subjugation of minorities cannot be morally justified. What is immoral has to go. This system of tyrannical majority rule has to go. This is our first of our conclusions.

Over the last 56 years we have seen the evolution of this system. The essential ethnocentricity of the political system has not quite changed in Peninsular Malaysia.

The monolithic Malay polity has broken up into two major factions and what was faction ridden Chinese polity has consolidated into a monolithic ethnic voting block and the monolithic rural Indian community has moved away from being a monolithic voting block on the side of status quo to something more amorphous and amenable to change.

The net of all this is that we have on the BN side an increasingly defensive Malay faction lined up with emaciated Chinese and Indian partners. On the other, we have the smaller estranged Malay faction lined up with the monolithic Chinese block on the Pakatan side.

We have a smattering of Indians as window dressing on both sides of the spectrum. The “dacing” hangs in balance in the Peninsula. In Sabah and Sarawak, BN is set to lose some ground. The East Malaysian Chinese and the Sabahans are showing a tendency to move away from BN. The net of all this really will be determined on Election Day.

Indian voters kingmakers

This situation provides a unique historical opportunity for the minority Indian voice to be heard in spite of the terrible majority bias of the system.

Whither goes the Indian vote and the Sabah and Sarawak votes, thither you will find the winner. This is the second of our conclusions.

The Indian vote can determine the winner in these elections. There are over 60 constituencies where the Indian vote will determine the winner – that is 60 out of 165 or in a third of the constituencies on the peninsula side.

Since the Indian vote can be the determinant in these elections, it behooves those vying for the Indian vote to take notice of this. We shall not be misled by the 7.4 % minority irrelevance argument.

The Indians do have leverage – though not by design but quite by accident. This is the third of our conclusions.

So we say if you want those determining votes in large enough quantity, then endorse our Five Year Blueprint in a binding way and we will help you to win.

If neither of the coalition takes up this offer, we have a couple of options to pursue. One is to make a call to all conscientious Malaysian Indians to abstain from voting altogether in these elections as both coalitions have shown no interest in seeking comprehensive and permanent solutions for the problems of the Indian poor.

They do not care. They do not deserve anything in return.

The other option is to make a call to vote based on what their conscience tells them is the right thing for them to do.

We will decide what we will ultimately do at an appropriate time in the future. The hunger viratham will continue and as with all that we engage in, we are a determined lot – we do not give up easy.

We will influence the tide of public opinion. In any case our struggle continues after the elections whatever the outcome of the elections.

This is our short term plan.

For the long term what will be needed will be achieved through advanced strategies which I will discuss in subsequent parts.

We will be campaigning for a complete dismantling of the institutionalised racist system that underlies Malaysia and that which causes the permanent colonization of the Indian poor.

P Waytha Moorthy is the Hindraf chairperson. He has been on his hunger strike since March 10.