divisions

A close friend of mine had a letter he wrote published on a Malaysian news/ opinion site. Unsurprisingly, it was on the state of ethnic relations and the rising tensions. He is optimistic about 'our common humanity' and Malaysians' capacity to rise above the petty fearmongering and playing up of communal tensions.

I used to share his views but here's the thing now.

These statements are petty, true, but can it really be said that these are the sentiments of very few and that 'the people' can rise above the basic emotions that they arouse? I wonder if we are not the ones living in a little bubble, imagining that most people see things the way we do. That there is such as a thing as 'common humanity'. Even in the prosperous, middle to upper-middle class area that is Bangsar, the divisions are so clearly visible.

I remember the first day I walked into BB all those years ago. It was like entering a parallel universe from the one I was used to. People clustered together according to bumi/ non-bumi. Most of the time.

How open are we, truly? We have friends from different ethnic groups and different background. But would you and could you discuss issues of ethnicity with them as openly as you would with people you already know will share your sentiments?

The 'othering' of each other is something which cannot be avoided. In the depths of your mind you know this is true. We look at someone who looks slightly different from ourselves and the first thing that automatically pops into your head is the difference, not the similarities.

In an egalitarian country, this may not be the case but in Malaysia, this instinct is compounded and institutionalized by the state. The NEP was the wrong answer. It was a bandaid for the state to enable business to run 'as usual' but in the long run it hasn't solved anything. Jamming the lid on an overflowing pot doesn't help.

What we needed was an open discussion, no restrictions for the sake of avoiding 'sensitive issues' but an extensive, broad based discussion where all views were heard no matter how polarizing or discriminatory. Because once you have all this out in the open, only then can you see how absurd statements such as Ahmad Ismail's are. That didn't happen, and that won't happen anytime soon. So the different groups will keep fueling their flames, pointing at 'the other' and what the other is saying, and the state will be trapped in the middle.

We put our faith in the everyman, blissfully thinking that the everyman is not susceptible to such talk and scaremongering. But the everyman is flawed and human. Malaysia has social and cultural differences that have been reinforced by the state to form divisions among the everypeople.

Malaysia is a nation-state that has multiple nations in it, not unlike North America in the early colonial era. But it is also a colonial construct that would not otherwise exist because of these multiple nations. Globalization has enabled the resurrection of these nations within nation-states. The Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico are the clearest example of this. Wikipedia/ Google it. The voices that were previously on the margins are making themselves heard again and I think that the modern post-colonial nation-state is not strong enough to keep it together.


Solve this.