" http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/2008/05/the-racist-card.html#more
Sun, 01/06/2008 – 14:57 | naragan
Mahathir’s blog start:
It is strange that whenever people like Param Cumaraswamy accuse others of being racist they end up by exposing the racist in them. For them you are racist only if you talk about Malays and their need to catch up with other races. If you talk of the imagined plight of other races in Malaysia, and make ridiculous statements that the Tamil Indians in Malaysia are facing “ethnic cleansing” when you know that no such thing is happening, it is not racist.
Naragan’s comments :
I do not know what catching up, that you Dr.Mahathir are talking about now. The Malay elite is ahead in every term, so what catching up are you talking about.
If you are talking about the larger Malay community catching up, then you have to accept that you made the policies which has created this perpetual ‘need to catch up, with other races’. You had 22 years to do what you call , catch up. After all that, you still want to champion the cause of catching up.
Your policies were never truly intended to help the poor and the marginalized catch up. All you needed for the perpetuation of you and your elite group was enough trickle down to them and a vehicle (UMNO) for the siphoning off of the resources of the country .
As Paulo Friere, the famous Brazilian educator put it succinctly:
"..in order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity", the elite must perpetuate injustice. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this "generosity", which is nourished by despair, poverty and backwardness.
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish such false charity. True generosity lies in striving so that the outstretched hands stretch out no more but rather work, and in working transform this world so that there may be no more opportunity for false generosity.
Dr. Mahathir, you should stop using the cloak of false generosity to hide your true intent.
Yes, I agree the term “ ethnic cleansing “ was used but once or twice. In anger, many things may be said, which then gives ammunition to the likes of you to make into big things. But all of that is just to detract from the real and larger issues of marginalization and deprivation caused by you and your policies – tell me that this is an imagined plight dear Dr.Mahathir.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
It is only in Malaysia that people of immigrant origins, so identified by their insistence on being linked race-wise with their countries of origin, are actually accepted as citizens.
In other countries including the much-admired democracies of the West, citizens are not linked to or classified by their countries of origin. They speak the national language habitually, go to schools where the national language is the medium of instruction and adopt the culture of the indigenous people, or at least the people who originally founded these countries (the indigenous people having been systematically wiped out).
Naragan’s comments:
Dr. Mahathir, do not try to confuse the rakyat with your convoluted logic. Which is the cause and which is the effect?
Do we have race distinction in this country because the “people of immigrant origin” insist “on being linked race-wise with their countries of origin”, or do they identify with “ their countries of origin because after 50 years they continue to be called “people of immigrant origins”.
I am an Indian Malaysian, but want very much to be just a Malaysian, but you have not allowed me to really be one – with your exclusive apartheid policies – always classifying me as Bangsa India. So which is the cause and which the effect.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
But in Malaysia although the national language is the language of the indigenous people, many Malaysian citizens cannot speak the language, much less use it habitually in their homes and with fellow citizens. Whenever some foreigner speak Bahasa Malaysia to them, they would reply in English. Foreigners cannot understand why they seem to downgrade their national language. And yet these citizens question why there is, for practical purpose, no Bangsa Malaysia.
Schools using languages of the countries of origin are not only permitted but are actually financed by the Government. Try and find such schools in South East Asia or in the so-called liberal developed countries where they claim there is no racial discrimination. There are actually more Indians in the United Kingdom than in Malaysia. But there is not a single school where the teaching medium is in any of the Indian languages.
Naragan’s comments :
When you say National Language, it is, in, plain terms just a language of a nation – not as you put it “ the language of the indigenous people” even though that is the history. In any case that begs the question,” What is a nation?”
As I understand, a nation or to put it more specifically a “nation state” is a political construct of very recent origin. There was never a Malayan nation before the 1940s. There were Sultanates and Protectorates before that. Then the Britishers, the Malays , the Chinese and the Indians created the Malayan Nation in 1957 . There was never an entity consisting of the Peninsular Malaya and a part of Borneo as a nation state called Malaysia before 1963. The basis of the nation was defined in the Constitution.
Given the history and the multi-ethnic composition of the polity, national consciousness was not an automatic thing. It needed appropriate policies for that national consciousness to emerge. But your policies, Dr. Mahathir, created significant hurdles to creating this national consciousness. Now you turn around with your convoluted logic and say “And yet these citizens question why there is, for practical purpose, no Bangsa Malaysia.”
First, Dr. Mahathir, national consciousness. Then all else follows. This is in my opinion deduced by very simple logic. Easily done if you don’t always indulge in self serving convoluted logic.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
People like Param would not notice all these. Instead he sees the effort to bring up the indigenous people to the level of the non-indigenous people as racist. Arrogantly he seems to want the indigenous people become the deprived in their own country.
Naragan’s comments
You are effectively saying that the marginalised and poorer sections of the Indian community are depriving the poorer sections of the Malay community – because that is what the Hindraf demands are about . What rubbish, nothing can be further from the truth. Your policies to enrich the UMNOputras is why the poorer sections of the Malay community and the Indian community are deprived. Not one because of the other, but both because of you and your policies.
As a former Prime Minister I feel ashamed that you continue to say after 50 years that this is not the own country of the Indian Malaysians. Dr. Mahathir, I do not know of anywhere else, more or less than you that I can call home or my own country, other than Malaysia.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
I admit that I spoke on “Ketuanan Melayu” in Johor. The Malay intellectuals have been talking about this for a long time. There was no suggestion about them being racist or that they should be detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
I spoke on this issue critically as I consider that claiming to be masters when you are not is ridiculous. How can the Malay driver driving a car belonging to someone else regard himself as the “Tuan” and the owner of the car as inferior to him? Actually it is the owner and his employer who is the “Tuan”.
In my speech my advise to the Malays is to acquire knowledge and skills and use them to enrich themselves for only then can they be regarded by their servants and employees as “Tuan”.
Naragan’s comments :
Your logic is too convoluted here for anyone to make sense . What I think you are trying to say is that you want the Malay community to look at you as one who gave them that sense of Ketuanan and which in your opinion is being chipped away by “these people of immigrant origin”.
When you try to cover up what you truly want to say, you come across so incoherently. Just read the last passage – it makes no sense. “Tuan, servant, inferior, be regarded by their servants and employees as “Tuan”.” Your true intentions cannot be masked with words, dear Dr. Mahathir.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
Is this seditious or near seditious? Is speaking about Malays and their needs seditious?
On the other hand let us consider the Hindraf memorandum to the British. Most people including Indians have not read it. To gain the support of the Tamil Indians, Hindraf demands that the British compensate every Tamil Indian in Malaysia one million pounds sterling (about RM 7 million). That should tempt even middle-class Indians. Surely Indian workers would fall for it.
The Hindraf memorandum also contains the following extracts which are obviously racist;
1) “Commonwealth ethnic Indian peace loving subjects in Malaysia persecuted by Government backed Islamic extremist violent armed terrorist who launched a pre-dawn violent armed attack and destroyed the Kg Jawa Mariamman Hindu temple at 4.00am this morning (15.11.07)”.
2) “Appeal for United Kingdom to move emergency United Nations Resolution condemning “Ethnic Cleansing” in Malaysia”.
I will not quote other highly inflammatory remarks found in the Hindraf memorandum. However I would like to mention the threat made by Hindraf in its conclusion;
“We fear that the peace loving Indian community of Tamil origin having been pushed to the corner and the persecution getting worse by the day may be forced into terrorism in a matter of time as what has happened to the Sri Lankan Tamils”.
Is Hindraf planning to make Malaysia a Southeast Asian Sri Lanka?
I don’t believe the majority of the Tamils in Malaysia would agree with the picture painted by Hindraf. Unfortunately, like the Malays, few of them read the actual memorandum. And so they support Hindraf blindly.
Naragan’s comments
Dr. Mahathir, I am an ordinary Indian who harbours no grand ambition beyond wanting a fair and just society for us all to live in. But let me tell you this. Your policies of total exclusion of the Indians from all walks of life, except that which you do not control, had left me and I am sure many Indians like me in the country with a seething lifelong sense of anger. So when Hindraf and Uthayakumar came along they instantly caught all our imagination. It is not as you put it “we support Hindraf blindly”. We know exactly what we are doing – please be clear about this. You have no appreciateion for the psyche of ordinary people like us. You have tucked yourself too deeply in with the elite.
Dr. Mahathir, maybe you should go and read the chronicles of police brutality against the underclass of Indians, in the former website policewatchmalaysia.com. If you cannot find it anymore, ask your nemesis about it. You should also ask your former subordinates, in case you have selective amnesia ( something which you are known to have) about the number of Hindu temples razed in the last few years. You should also look at the policies you have supported that turned a large number of the estate Indians into urban poor. You should look at the sad plight of rural schools for Indian children.
We are a deprived yet peace loving community – Dr, Mahathir. But we are known to get into fits of anger. If that is too wrong or too unreasonable, I am sorry but we are lowly humans.
In Tamil, there is a saying “Pinching the little child then accuse the child of being troublesome.” That is what has happened. You and all your former compatriots in UMNO are pretty good at it Dr. Mahathir.
Continuing Mahathir’s blog:
But if you read what I have quoted would you not conclude that Hindraf and Param Cumaraswamy, who objected to their detention under the ISA as racist especially as his desire to have me detained under the Act for telling the Malays to realise that they are not “Tuan” when they have to clean the shoes of others. If they want to be “Tuan”, then they must acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed in life. And when they succeed they would be highly regarded whether they are called “Tuan” or not.
It seems that according to Param Cumaraswamy talking about Malays is seditious.
Who is racist; Param Cumaraswamy or Dr Mahathir?
I am not going to call for his detention.
He should as a lawyer who understands the law, decide whether he is a racist and should be detained or not.
Naragan’s comments
Dr. Mahathir, I am not a lawyer. I do not quite understand professional law. I talk about the Indians and I talk about Malays. I know I am not a racist. I seek social justice as does Param Cumarasamy.
But let me tell you Dr. Mahathir, you are a racist for you seek to use the race card for your own spurious agenda.
I support Param Cumarasamy’s call for you to be detained under the ISA. The ISA best serves a purpose by putting people like you behind bars, so your mischief can be your company during all the solitary confinement that you will have.
End of Naragan’s comments
United we will stand and united we will act.
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