BEER AND GANJA CAN ERADICATE RACISM

My second suggestion to the IGP would be to stop arresting Malays who sit down with their Chinese and Indian friends to drink beer. Instead, the police should arrest the religious department officers who harass Malays who sit down with their Chinese and Indian friends to drink beer.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Back in 2008, two journalists from the New Straits Times (NST) interviewed me and asked me my view on various issues. Hmm…come to think of it, why did the Pakatoons not whack me back then and accuse me of selling out by talking to the mainstream media like they did in 2011?

Anyway, the last question the NST journalists asked me was what is my suggestion on how to end racism in Malaysia and I replied that the government should introduce a law banning same-race marriages. Malays must be barred from marrying Malays, Chinese from marrying Chinese, and so on.

By 25 years or so later, Malaysians would be the product of mixed marriages and by another 25 years the majority of Malaysians would all be chapalangs or chapchongs (mongrels) like me.

Yes, I am a mongrel and proud of it. My father is of Bugis-Orang Asli mixture and my wife is of Chinese-Thai mixture and I am of Bugis-Orang Asli-Welsh mixture and my children are of Bugis-Orang Asli-Welsh-Chinese-Thai mixture.

Hell, if the Bugis or Orang Asli are not considered Malays, as some people argue, then none of my family have a single drop of Malay blood running through their veins, except maybe for my five grandchildren.

The NST journalists laughed at this response but now I think they would no longer think I was joking since a certain Chinaman by the name of Chan Huan Wei suggested that I divorce my Chinese-Thai wife, whom I met 46 years ago and married five years later, and remarry a Malay instead.

Chan Huan Wei’s contention is that I am a racist and racists must marry people of their same race and not someone of another race.

So that proves what I wrote a year or so ago. A year or so ago I said that someone who has married a person of his or her race have no business calling me a racist because those who marry someone of their own race is a racist.

And Chan Huan Wei agrees with me. And that is why he asked me to divorce my wife and marry a Malay woman so that I can become a true racist.

But then, unless Bugis and Orang Asli are classified as Malay, that would mean I do not have any Malay blood in me so how can marrying a Malay wife make me a racist? By marrying a Malay wife I would still not be marrying someone of my own race unless I marry someone whose parents are of Bugis-Orang Asli-Welsh ethnicity.

Anyway, I have been pondering this issue over the last few days and have been trying to figure out why was it in the 1960s and 1970s racism was not such a big problem as it is today. Why was there better racial integration and tolerance back then but very little now? And then the answer popped into my head.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s we all drank beer, even the Malays. Malays, Chinese and Indians would meet at each other’s houses and would drink beer and sometimes, the younger ones especially, also smoked pot (ganja).

Ganja was not classified as a drug back then and even policemen joined us to smoke pot. In fact, sometimes the policemen even helped roll the ganja cigarettes. We were all one happy family, Malays, Chinese, Indians — and policemen included.

Malays and Indians would visit Chinese houses on Chinese New Year and we would drink beer the entire day and then pass out drunk on the living room floor by dinnertime.

Chinese and Indians would visit Malay houses on Hari Raya and the same thing would happen — we would drink beer the whole day. And the same when it came to Deepavali when the Malays and Chinese visited Indian houses — we would tani the whole day and night.

And then the government banned ganja and classified it as a drug. So, instead of joining us to tarek ganja, the policemen arrested us. So no longer were policemen our friends. They now became our enemy.

And that is my advice to the IGP if he wants to see better relations between the police and the Malaysian public. Ganja should be unbanned and should be declassified as a drug. And policemen should be encouraged to tarek ganja with members of the public. In no time at all policemen and members of the public will become good buddies, like back in the 1960s.

Then, in the 1970s, Anwar Ibrahim and his Islamic youth movement, ABIM, started Islamising the country. They whacked Malays who joined their Chinese and Indian brothers and sisters in beer-drinking sessions.

Soon Malays stopped drinking beer and you could no longer visit Malay houses on Hari Raya and get drunk. Instead, they served you coloured sugar water or orange squash. So Indians and Chinese no longer visited Malays on Hari Raya because there was no beer.

Malays, too, no longer visited Chinese or Indian houses on Chinese New Year or Deepavali because they drank beer and got drunk during these festivals and Malays did not like it any longer.

Anwar Ibrahim and his ABIM did a lot of damage to race relations in Malaysia. In their effort to make Malays better Muslims, they discouraged beer drinking and whacked those ‘un-Islamic’ Malays who still drank beer.

Now these Malays want to even ban beer on Malaysian Airlines flights. And this would mean people would rather fly on another Muslim-owned airline such as Emirates where they still serve beer. And this will also mean MAS will continue to lose money.

Maybe by arresting Malays who drink beer — like they do now and which they did not do back in the 1960s and 1970s — Malays would become better Muslims and will all end up in heaven when they die. But that does not improve race relations because Malays, Chinese and Indians no longer sit down at the same table to yam seng all night long and get drunk.

My second suggestion to the IGP would be to stop arresting Malays who sit down with their Chinese and Indian friends to drink beer. Instead, the police should arrest the religious department officers who harass Malays who sit down with their Chinese and Indian friends to drink beer.