1.Union of Catholic Asian News（http://www.ucanews.com）
Ending racism needs united front,21 March 2012
Minorities must fight for an end to discrimination for all marginalized people
Joachim Francis Xavier, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
In conjunction with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, the chairperson of HINDRAF (Hindu Rights Action Force) is leading a delegation to submit an anti-discrimination memorandum to Ban Ki Moon during the UN Secretary General’s visit to Malaysia.
The memo highlights among other things discrimination faced by the Indian community in Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957. It paints a dire picture for the future of the Indian community, which currently makes up 7.7 percent of the Malaysian population.
But is the situation in Malaysia so critical that it warrants foreign intervention, or is this something that the Indian community itself should begin to do something about?
No Indian Malaysian would argue with a clear conscience that there is no race-based discrimination in the country. Discrimination against the Indian community is probably most apparent in three main areas – opportunities in civil service, development programmes and education.
It was revealed in Parliament that as of September 2009, Indians made up 4.1 percent of the total civil service work force, a drop from 5.12 percent in 2005 and 17.4 percent in 1971.
In so far as government-initiated development projects are concerned, there is an abundance of them, most of which are geared towards poverty eradication, but they almost exclusively benefit the majority Malay community.
Education is no doubt an important leverage for eradicating poverty, but governmental budget allocations appear to be color-coded.
Tamil schools are only partially aided, resulting in an almost crumbling system that looks as old as it really is. This is in contrast to annual governmental budget allocations that have resulted in over 42 fully residential elite schools costing at an estimated RM100 million each. These are reserved almost exclusively for Malay students.
Compare this to the recent announcement by Prime Minister Najib Razak that the government had since 2009 made one-off allocations of RM440 million “in aid of” over 400 Tamil schools throughout the country.
Entrance into public universities is also a lot harder for Indians. According to Malaysian Nanban, a popular Tamil daily, only 2.6 percent of seats available in public universities were given to Indians for the 2011/12 academic year.
The political party that claims to be the custodian of the interests of the Indian community, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), is a member of the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (National Front). MIC has over the years trumpeted its efforts to improve the Indian lot. However, the results are simply telling of its efficacy, or rather the lack of it. Not surprisingly the party was almost wiped out in the 2008 general elections.
Numerous reports and studies concerning the plight of the Indian community have been compiled and published by political parties, civil society and academics from as far back as the 1960s. Task forces have been enthusiastically formed and lavishly funded. All these reports, studies and findings say more or less what every Indian Malaysian already knows – things are looking bleak for them. But has the government taken real notice?
If nothing got the government’s attention, a rally organized in November 2007 by HINDRAF certainly did, at least for a while. The rally saw over 50,000 angry Indians taking to the streets of Kuala Lumpur, demanding that they be reckoned with. The rally turned violent and the police put it down with brutal force. Five HINDRAF leaders were arrested and placed under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), denying them the right to a free and fair trial.
Being a 4th generation Indian Malaysian myself, I have always wondered why the Indian community has been left on the backburners.
Some have argued that because we lack the numbers, we do not possess the economies of scale to pull ourselves out of the doldrums or to ward off discrimination. I find this hard to accept.
The mere fact that a community is a minority does not seem to sufficiently explain why it is left behind. Chinese Malaysians, making up 26 percent of the total population, also face the same discrimination – in development, educational or civil service opportunities. Yet no one will dispute that the Chinese community is the most progressive and wealthy in the country. They are clearly ahead of the rest in economic and educational achievements.
At the risk of sounding unsophisticated, could it be both the collective attitude of the community and individual attitudes of its constituent members that form the cornerstone for the success or failure of that community?
I am also convinced that part of the reason why the Indian community has failed to progress has to do with our lack of unity. There are currently at least six political parties and countless NGOs claiming they are fighting for the rights of the Indian community but are actually fighting amongst themselves.
If the points on attitude and unity are to be accepted, then I am of the view that the Indian community should stop looking outside for solutions. Enough whining, complaining and blaming for our troubles, and certainly enough of begging for handouts or for interventions, especially a foreign one.
Each Indian Malaysian needs to take a good look at himself and ask what attitudes he can change to better himself. As an Indian myself, I shall ask how much longer I will continue to wait for that elusive scholarship, loan, contract, pubic university seat or low-cost housing.
It would be far better if I took stock of whatever resources I have access to in me and around me, channel that to a worthy goal with a determined dose of sheer hard work, while at the same time doing all that I possibly can to capitalize on a globalized world brimming with information. Wouldn’t that make something out of me and my community? At the very least, it sure beats complaining.
Next, its time the Indian community starts to think as Malaysians. Malaysia has changed. We need to shatter the racial lenses through which we view poverty and begin to see that there are also in our midst poor Malays, poor Chinese and poor indigenous people. Instead of rallying as Indians fighting for Indians, would not our country be far more beautiful if we rallied passionately for all poor and marginalized Malaysians?
An ethnic-centered struggle not only bolsters the outdated idea of race-based politics, but also surreptitiously draws us into the narrow and egocentric world view of “we versus them,” thereby sowing the seeds of division that the next generation would unfortunately but surely reap.
The effort of HINDRAF in raising international awareness is commendable and praiseworthy. However, it is time that the leaders of HINDRAF and other similar outfits wake up and recognize a new Malaysia emerging.
No longer will the generation of today wait for improvement to be made for them by others, let alone by foreigners. The generation of today will boldly take things into their hands and carve out a future for themselves, and they will do this first and foremost as Malaysians.
・Joachim Francis Xavier is a legally trained social activist who has served the Catholic Diocese of Penang for over 10 years. He is now chairperson of the Malaysian bishops’ Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants.
2.Malaysiakini(http://www.malaysiakini.com)
Thank God for St John's, 21 March 2012
by Dean Johns
I was touched last week by the obituary that my old friend Bernard ‘Zorro' Khoo published on his blog to mark and mourn the passing of his old friend and teaching colleague at St John's Institution, Vincent Fernandez.
And along with sympathy for Bernard on the occasion of his loss, I also felt a pang of envy for his evidently happy memories of the institution at which he and Vincent taught and coached sports teams.
Because, as Zorro's piece reminded me, I have very different recollections of a St John's College that I attended way back in the 1960s.
My St John's, I hasten to disclaim, has no connection with my family despite the suspicious similarity of names. So there was not a shred of nepotism, let alone Malaysian-style NEPotism, in my involvement with this institution.
‘Institution' being an entirely appropriate description of the place, as it proved to be more like an open prison or low-security lunatic asylum than most would expect of Sydney University's residential college for male Catholic students.
A hotbed of alcoholic anarchy
Rather than the civilised and cloistered centre of scholarship to which my parents fondly believed they were committing me, and which in my relative innocence I also expected, it proved to be a hotbed of alcoholic anarchy.
Drunk with potable intoxicants or power or both, seniors and sophomores subjected us newcomers to a system of so-called ‘fresher-bashing', purportedly for the purpose of initial ‘initiation' into the institution, but in practice unrelentingly for the entire first year.
I have to admit that, despite the ominous word ‘bashing', the plethora of indignities and insults we freshers were subjected to stopped short of actual physical assault.
But short of beatings and waterboardings, we experienced virtually every refinement of Abu Ghraib-style physical and psychological intimidation a sick mind could imagine.
Not that I recall it as all doom and gloom. Shared suffering being a powerful bond, we freshers quickly became great mates in misery, and thus, five decades later, my room-mate at St John's, Phil Gibbs, remains one of my closest and most cherished friends.
And, thanks to either the resilience of youth or a touch of masochism in my mental make-up, I found lots of the fresher-bashing activities not so much fearsome as loads of fun.
The one I recall with particular fondness is being regularly woken in the middle of the night by drunken revellers and being ordered to clamber up the inside of my room's old stone chimney far enough to escape the worst of the heat from sheets of newspaper that my would-be tormentors set alight in the fireplace, and at the same time being required to sing the old Platters hit Smoke gets in your eyes.
Hardly conducive to academic endeavour
But as jolly as some of these japes were, the atmosphere at St John's was hardly conducive to academic endeavour. So, after a term of failing to get any study done at all, I asked my parents if I could move out and get a room somewhere quieter.
But they flatly refused to believe that a famous Catholic college could be as undesirable as I claimed it was, and made me stay for another term of no study, with the result that, like about 90 per cent of other first-year students at St John's, I failed my university exams.
So that, looking back on these events 50 years later, I'm as nostalgic about my St John's as Bernard Khoo could be about his, if for very different reasons.
Firstly I have St John's to thank for helping me fail to achieve my original ambition to qualify as a veterinary surgeon, as I feel that my alternative career as a writer has been infinitely more interesting than animal-doctoring would have been.
And secondly I'm grateful for the fact that my experience of an institution that was such a disgrace to its staff, Sydney University and the entire Catholic Church proved so powerfully instrumental in helping me overcome my childhood indoctrination into religion.
This and other, subsequent insights into the schizoid split between ‘religious' belief and practice, were hugely instrumental in helping me break free of the false illusions, futile hopes and other symptoms of early exposure to the psychotic hallucinations and delusions so fancifully hailed as ‘gospel truths'.
Rid me of any remaining shred of religious credulity
And witnessing the psychotic antics of the leaders of the countless creeds and sects so viciously competing for the hearts, minds and souls - not to mention the money and political support - of the ‘faithful' has, thank goodness, rid me of any remaining shred of religious credulity.
How can anybody take religion seriously in the light of everything from the paedophilia epidemic among the Catholic clergy through the bombings, stonings, ‘honour killings' and other ungodly atrocities in the name of Allah in the fundamentalist Islamic world, to calls by ‘moderate' Muslims in Malaysia for laws against apostasy promoted by Christian clerics with the help of "portable, hand-held, solar-powered Bibles"?
Or, for that matter, how can the St John's College that was so crucially instrumental in converting me from Catholicism have changed so little in the half-century since I left the place?
Except for the worse, that is. On March 17, 2012, the Sydney Morning Herald carried a story about vicious and obscene verbal attacks by some staff and senior students against the current rector of St John's, Michael Bongers, for his efforts to reform the now co-ed college's culture of "degrading rituals and alcohol-fuelled initiations."
Among the initiation practices mentioned in the Herald article were many that have apparently been instituted since my time, including penis-measuring, underwear wrestling and naked leap-frog.
In short, as one student was anonymously quoted as remarking, "the misogyny and homophobia" still rampant at St John's "would alarm anyone living in the 1950s".
To which all I can add is that at least my old alma mater, or, more appropriately alma martyr, is still doing today's freshers the same favours it long ago did for me and many of my contemporaries: turning them off academia in favour of the arts, and away from religion towards sweet reason.
And from there to the truth that the lives of special people like Bernard Khoo and the late Vincent Fernandez so clearly proclaim: that our worth is not measured by whatever school we did or didn't attend, or our belief or otherwise in one of countless Gods or religious creeds, but the goodness of our thoughts, words and deeds.
・DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia' and ‘1Malaysia.con'.
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