Marginalisation of a Minority community

The world believes that the Tamil/Indian peoples' problems are really a result of socio-economic and political marginalisation i.e socio-economic and political marginalisation.

The Tamils are a working-class minority community, a community that has been, as a result of the developments in Malaysia, pushed from rural to urban poverty, from plantation worker to factory hand, from living in an estate environment to living in a squatter area. Serious problems within the community stem from the state of socio-economic powerlessness it faces.

The Tamils/Indians are a poor minority community and poverty has become an inter-generational problem, poverty reproducing poverty. Economic powerlessness, the size of its population and poor political foresight of the Indian leadership have also led to political powerlessness.

Consequently, within the national community, the Tamils do not have much bargaining power. The Tamil community and its problems are hardly addressed seriously and systematically in the national context. Perhaps the only problem that constantly gets national attention at present is the problem of gangsterism. Even this is addressed as a punitive strategy rather than a preventive one. As part the preventive strategy if there was one, one cannot overlook the importance of upgrading the Tamil school system.

Powerlessness in the community has led to many difficulties. For instance, the young Tamil Malaysian youths educational and career options are severely limited in comparison to the other communities. Tamil schools are faced with serious problems affecting education of a poor minority community. The presence or use of Tamil in the marketplace or public places is confined or limited to Tamil/Indian areas. Tamil Malaysians who have brought fame to Malaysia are hardly treated as "national heroes" and have found difficulties being recognised or rewarded as one. A few millionaires like Anantha Krishnan produced by the system do not really solve the problems related to the general marginalisation of the community. Ordinary Tamils/Indians Malaysians have an uphill task to deal with in relation to their poverty and marginalised status.

We need to re-think our strategy of building a national Malaysian community. Is it by an assimilation agenda or by actively promoting mother tongue education and/or multi-culturalism? The global society, for instance, is concerned of many languages and many linguistic communities on the brink of extinction. According to a recent study, the National Geographic Magazine observes, "half of the world's 6,000 languages will become extinct in the next century [and] 2,000 of the remaining languages will be threatened during the century after that."

In this context, it should be our effort to preserve and actively promote cultural diversity, not in terms "muzeumising" it for the purpose of selling it to tourist but in terms living it actively. Mother tongue education is not really anti-national if we can work out practically how our children, in their respective cultural stream, also go through national social and cultural socialisation.

The consequences of bad and unsustainable governance instead of addressing the issues of bad or ineffective governance. Thus, the suggestion is "get rid of Tamil schools" not "Why it has failed or not doing well enough?"This is really punishing the victim.

The debate over the problem of the Tamil/Indian Malaysian community will go on. I only hope that those in power to influence public opinion and popular action evaluate the situation carefully and propose a line of thinking and action that will help to deal with the cause of the problems faced by the Tamil/Indian Malaysian community rather than the symptoms.