Census data fuels racial politics, says don

Shamsul Amri Baharuddin of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia speaking at a Penang Institute forum last night.

GEORGE TOWN: A social scientist has suggested that there could be an end to racial politics in the long run if the national census stops collecting population data based on racial profiles.

Shamsul Amri Baharudin of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) said the census system had been brought forward from the colonial era without much thought.

Speaking at a forum at Penang Insitute here last night, he said being a member of a certain racial group had once held no value and was a neutral statistic.

“But when the Malay Reservation Enactment came into force, all of a sudden, there was value to being Malay,” he added.

The enactment sets aside land reserved for use and ownership only by Malays.

“The first definition of being a Malay was not through the constitution, but through this reservation law many years ago,” he said.

Shamsul also said the British had added “value” to being a member of the Chinese and Indian racial groups by offering opium and toddy retail licences.

He said Malaysia today is not much different from other countries once ruled by the British. The colonial system “defined and ruled” by segregating races and later “dividing and ruling” them, said Shamsul, who is the founding director of UKM’s Institute of Ethnic Studies.

“Define and rule” was aided by the colonial census categories and inadvertently spawned Malaysia’s racial politics, which he says is here to stay.

However, he said if racial distinctions are dropped in all official government data such as the census, there would be a better chance of racial politics fading into the background.

“There has been no change in the race or social categories since 1871.

“The key is this, who constructs a race? You can talk until the cows come home, but if you don’t change the categories, the Malays will be Malays and the Chinese will be Chinese and so on. And if there are no differences between the races, you can bid adieu to racial politics. Until then, racial politics is here to stay.” - FMT