In Need Of Some Breathing Space From Feudal Malay Leaders

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Somebody told me of a discussion he had with a fellow Malay friend about Malaysia’s affirmative action programmes. His friend didn’t agree Malays should be weaned off such programmes. He felt they should be there forever.
But that was 40 years ago when they were students in the US.
Somebody else, a fellow Nusantarean but not Malaysian, said he knows of Malay friends who don’t agree with many of the things being done by fellow Malays, but still feel compelled to defend them.
Apart from the obvious issues of insecurity, it’s about being loyal to the race. But therein lies the rub.
Assuming that no ethnic community is all good or all bad – which otherwise would be a racist belief by the way – then there must be more specific explanations for the woes facing the Malays.
We can blame bad leaders of course, but who put them up there? Fine, we didn’t put all of them up there. Some inherited their positions, while others wrested theirs by being cunning and corrupt. But we choose to let them lead us, which is what matters.
This again assumes you believe the Malays aren’t doing well. Many Malays do, while many don’t; surprisingly, a lot feel we’re both doing well and endangered at the same time!
Having two contradictory thoughts in our head is something uniquely human. It’s part of our survival mechanism where we rationalise away uncomfortable ideas by accommodating them all.
What’s my view about such affirmative action programmes? I feel they were appropriate, with “were” being the operative word. We were weak economically, and a full-on laissez-faire approach would’ve pushed us off the cliff.
You can always say let the Malays fall off the cliff. But such an attitude guarantees the inevitable, a national catastrophe similar to that of Uganda and Fiji expelling or repressing the more successful migrant population. Everybody loses.
It’s likely to be worse though, creating never-ending ethnic violence like those that plague many parts of the world, from Rwanda to the Balkans, and which had touched Malaysia too. Had the Malays fallen off the cliff, they’d have pulled everybody along too. Then everybody really loses.
It’s been said the cause of all wars is economics. The proximate causes may be politics, religion or ideology but the real cause is a fight over resources. The Germans went to war for that, for lebensraum – room for territorial expansion, euphemistically called “breathing room” – and started a huge European war.
The Japanese, with their ambitions to create the innocent-sounding Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, turned Germany’s war into a global one. Other strife, from colonisation to more recent conflicts, has also been caused by similar desires.
The driving force seems to be insecurity, usually about being surrounded and overwhelmed and deprived of rights and resources. But could it be greed instead?
Perhaps, but greed is too simplistic an explanation. It seems no matter how successful your civilisation has been and how much you have acquired, you could still be insecure and want more.
The Malays were conquered by three colonialists – first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch, and last by the British. That certainly left a scar on our psyche and explains a lot about our situation now.
We were a feudalistic lot then, and feudalistic now. A foreigner friend blamed the British for our love of titles, protocols and the class system – essential appurtenances of feudalism. I disagreed: we were already very good at that even before the British arrived.
Not too long ago, a popular theme in conversations among Malays was that of how unfortunate Singaporean Malays were, a small minority being marginalised by the Chinese majority, and that we Malaysian Malays had to make sure it wouldn’t happen to us.
Life must have been hard for Singaporean Malays then, being forced to adjust from a laid-back island culture to competing with the more aggressive migrant groups such as the Chinese and Indians. Many then probably wished to be part of the warm comforts of Malaysia.
I doubt there are many with such sentiments now. The Singaporean Malay friends I have possess a rather superior, even condescending, attitude towards Malaysian Malays. They certainly don’t feel they need to be under our protection.
Neither do we hear local Malays still lamenting the misfortune of the Singaporean Malays. That belief seemed to have disappeared years ago, replaced by loud cries of a fear of being overwhelmed in our own country.
Singaporean Malays have adapted to the needs of the new world, one of competing and fighting for resources without crutches and props. I have a close Malaysian relative who made it in Singapore and – horror of horrors – wishes to become a citizen there!
Let’s be clear, the laidback attitude of Malay culture isn’t inherently bad. It values synchrony and sympathy with nature and focuses on relationships and conservation of resources. You can’t blame it for plundering our world the way capitalism, or even socialism, has.
But it’s certainly not a great modern survival tool. It’s a more crowded, more competitive world where we need to adjust, keeping what’s good from the old culture and adopting new things too, such as being more resilient, competitive and perhaps a bit more individualistic.
After the Second World War, the population of the Malays and Chinese in what was then Malaya was roughly even. In my kampung, sundry shop owner Bok Cheng had nine sons, and the common Malay narrative was that Chinese people, breeding like rabbits, would soon outnumber us.
The merchants and labourers, as the Chinese were then, would have found an extra pair of hands, or nine, to lighten their load considerably. The Malays in the kampungs had a more hand-to-mouth existence; having more hands also meant having more mouths feeding off their small subsistence farms.
I’ve often said, half-jokingly, that the way for Malays to advance is to renounce all the special privileges and affirmative actions and quotas and subsidies and give them all to the Chinese instead!
With this cold-turkey approach, we would have one generation going through a harsh, painful transformation. But after that we’d have been toughened and able to stand proud and create our own lebensraum without any more props or crutches.
And the Chinese, with all the rights and privileges and goodies given to them, would be the ones who would be fat and lazy and entitled, all within one generation. Battle won!
It wouldn’t quite happen that way obviously. The Chinese have a deeply embedded Confucian work ethic and the migrant mindset and wouldn’t easily fall for the easy life. Any plans to make them indolent won’t succeed, at least with the present generation.
The chance of this happening is of course nil. Even when we Malays have everything, we still scare ourselves silly with doomsday scenarios every day. We’re happily turning privileges into rights, and trying to create even more rights to protect our existing rights.
Our insecurity is really keeping us down and making us easily exploited by our own unscrupulous and feudal leaders. They’re the ones getting fat and lazy while feeding off fellow Malays.
We, too, need some breathing room away from such leaders. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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