I love this country, warts and all – it’s the only home I have

From Faridah Hameed

My father proudly told us how he stood at Merdeka Stadium on Aug 31, 1957, to hear the independence proclamation by Tunku Abdul Rahman.

He subsequently became a citizen, and went on to help my grandfather, also an Indian national, gain Malaysian citizenship a few years later. They both loved this land and built their future on it.

Today, on the 66th year of independence from British colonial rule, words like diversity and tolerance are frequently bandied about by some politicians – and then just as swiftly discarded.

Scratch the superficial veneer of flag-waving patriotism on this date, and you see that there are three threads to our story as a nation that have been infected for a long while now.

The origin: Malaysia’s origin story is multilayered. It is a story of a peninsula that was a melting pot of merchant traders from the Middle East, India and China.

They would stop here to exchange spices and stories and spread their beliefs and cultures to this country.

Stories of people who made Malaysia their home and fought shoulder to shoulder with one another to gain this country’s independence have been all but deleted from our education system.

It has been rewritten to put forward a more manicured narrative.

Diversity: Come Merdeka Day or festivals, there are lots of photos on social media to ‘show’ how diverse we are.

We show the superficiality but few want to have the difficult conversations.

How often do you see people of different races and faiths mix at weddings and festivals anymore?

In neighbourhood parks, at basketball courts or skating rinks, young people do not mix with one another.

Citizens are still called “pendatang” or immigrants by some politicians in an attempt to denigrate those who have helped build this country.

Let us not be under any illusions that there are many, who live amongst us and we call friends, who are only too happy to stay silent about this assault on their fellow Malaysians.

Tolerance: We tolerate things we cannot stand. It is a dehumanising word in my opinion, and I stopped using it a long time ago.

What we need is more respect for one another – but how do we do that when we have been manipulated to distrust the other?

I love this country – warts and all. My skin tone may not make me a first class citizen of this country, but it is still the only home I have.

I remember a time when one’s race or religion only ever popped up during festivals and even then it was to be celebrated.

It makes me nostalgic for a much kinder time about how we treated each other.

Language defines the mindset of a nation. It is the narrative on which the cohesiveness of a nation is either built or torn down.

Unfortunately, what Tunku said years ago, still rings true today:

“In the old days people never bothered about what others did, so long as they were free to do what they liked themselves.

Today, one cannot sneeze without being corrected, let alone enjoy oneself. That’s what politics has done to our society.”

The ‘pendatang’ (immigrant) and the prime minister: The writer’s father, the late Hamid Ibrahim with Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s first prime minister.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.