Anwar is a voracious reader; Malaysians are not

Generally speaking, Malaysians have a low affinity for reading.

As far back as 1991, a survey by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka found that Malaysians read only one page of a book in a year.

There was little or no public discussion and debate on this rather depressing finding, just as there was no public angst over former health minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s warning that Malaysians have become dangerously overweight.

If something is not palpably threatening, Malaysians don’t take heed.

Look around when you are in a coach of the MRT, LRT or KTM Komuter lines and see how many riders have their noses in a book or a magazine or a journal.

Really, it was a bit of a joke when it was disclosed fairly recently that there were over 400 candidates for doctoral programmes at a local university.

The disconnection between the facts of this disclosure – so much reading and researching to be done by so many PhD candidates from one university – against a backdrop of a population that is generally not interested in reading anything other than what is prurient and sensational, does tell something about our society.

It is interest in the status that is conferred by the possession of the ‘Dr’ prefix before a name than it is in actual learning that is responsible for the abundant quest for PhDs.

This is fundamentally corrupt as it devalues learning.

But who these days is interested in learning when the authorities view universities as factories for the production of knowledge?

Education, which in essence is the training of the mind and sensibility, is something of a different order to a factory for churning out people with useful knowledge.

It is not achievable without an affinity for reading, the paucity of which in our society is a matter for the deepest concern.

Lucky strike

Which is why the arrival in prime ministerial office of a leader who reads is something of a lucky strike.

Some pundits and commentators have cautioned against the penchant of well-wishers to give Anwar Ibrahim advice on how to govern, chiding them for being presumptuous.

But, one suspects, that Anwar knows what Ortega y Gasset meant when he wrote that “In order to master the unruly torrent of life, the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.”

Anwar would have read the Spanish writer’s ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ which is an early 20th century work that eschewed technical jargon in rendering philosophic and literary insights.

This brings us to the significance of having a reader in the highest office of the land, in charge of a people whose growing avidity for the elements of social media will only make its low affinity for reading worse.

There is a general consensus that the economic problems and the need for unifying a people deeply divided by race and religion are Malaysia’s most pressing problems.

I say the only way to solve these problems is to advert to John Maynard Keynes, the economist who gave the science of demand-management its fame:

“The events of the coming year will not be shaped by the deliberate acts of statemen but by the hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political history, of which no one can predict the outcome.

“In one way only can we influence these currents – by setting in motion those forces of instruction, and imagination which change opinion.

“The assertion of truth, the unveiling of illusion, the dissipation of hate, the enlargement and instruction of men’s hearts and mind, must be the means.”

If only a modicum of the effort and money that will go towards the easing of our economic and social problems is devoted to getting Malaysians off their indifference to reading, it will go a long way towards making the premiership of Anwar Ibrahim talked about when this century is over.

In sum, he should get them to emulate his penchant for reading. - Mkini

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TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century’s experience.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.