Malaysian mala fides

by Ashok Malik

Malaysia's Indians don't send home dollars, don't become CEOs of IT start-ups; they haven't even produced a VS Naipaul. Consequently, in contrast to the dissertations on the NRI community in the United States, the formerly east African Indians in Britain and the Indian diaspora's experience in the Caribbean, there is a paucity of even basic information on the ethnic Indians living off the Straits of Malacca.

The recent spurt in anti-Indian -- or anti-Hindu, as few would argue that in Malaysia the terms aren't coterminous -- has, in a sense, forced Indians to confront a rare species of Person of India Origin: One that does not adhere to the stereotype of educated, upwardly mobile and socially hip.

Malaysian Indians are predominantly uneducated; few are white collar professionals, fewer still own property. Drug addiction is a problem among the young. At the bottom of the heap, they do low-end jobs and run errands for ethnic Chinese crime syndicates.

Even the belief that all two million Indians in Malaysia are one un-segregated whole is a simplistic inaccuracy. True, some 90 per cent of the two million are Tamils, but this includes at least three strands. The majority makes up the underclass. A sprinkling of educated Tamils man Government hospitals as doctors or are in the middle rungs of the civil service.

There is a third slice. When the British imported indentured labour from Tamil Nadu, to maintain "their own system of checks and balances", they also brought in overseers from among Sri Lankan Tamils. The latter see themselves as superior to the plantation workers -- yet they all get categorised as 'Indians'.

That aside, a sprinkling of Christians, largely of Malayalee descent, also make up the Indian community. A small band of Sikhs, descended from policemen the colonial Government brought to the Malay Peninsula in the late 19th century, maintains a strict community structure anchored by the local gurdwara.

It is interesting that there is an almost total absence of Muslims in Malaysia's Indian community. From the 1980s onwards, Malaysia has rapidly turned to Wahaabi-style Islam as a marker of identity. It has sought to make Malay synonymous with Muslim, marrying ethnicity to religion in Government-sponsored social engineering.

As such, many ethnic Indian Muslims have chosen to identify themselves as Malays, either by citing inter-marriage or simply by emphasising their faith. There is even a word for these Indians turned Malays -- Mamaks.

It is piquant that Mr Mahathir Mohamad, who ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, and discovered -- perhaps invented -- its Arabist Islamic soul, is descended from Keralite migrants. Mr Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister and opponent of both Mr Mohamad and current Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, is of Tamil descent, said to be proud of his "Iyer grandfather".

At least one Malay Minister has extended family in Uttar Pradesh and secretly visits his father's grave -- the father was a Mamak who wanted to be "buried at home" -- near Moradabad.

From Chola-era cultural and trade relations down to James Brooke, the Banaras-born 19th century English adventurer who became the 'White Rajah' of Sarawak, India has never been far away from Malay popular consciousness. To this day, for Malaysia's princelings, yellow is the colour of royalty, a rajabhishek-style sprinkling of water marks every coronation.

Given this history, what happened? Malaysia is today a society in denial. Just as individual Mamaks want to forget their Indian origin, the Malay leadership, collectively, would rather see themselves as part of the global Muslim community, as ethnically linked to the Chinese in the East Asian region -- anything but derived from Hinduism and India.

The domestic and external dimensions of the situation are not unrelated. When apartheid-period South Africa treated Indians as second class citizens, it was not necessarily sending a diplomatic message to the Government of India; it was merely being obnoxious. Malaysia is different. "Whenever the Malaysians want to hit out at their ethnic Indians, they snub India," says a veteran diplomat, "this time it is vice versa."

That is why the logic that New Delhi has no role in Kuala Lumpur's "internal issues", while seemingly persuasive, is flawed. India is integral to the drama. Anecdotal and empirical evidence is disturbing and difficult to ignore.

In recent years, officials point out, there has been a significant increase in Saudi-funded mosque construction in Malaysia. "It is the easiest way of collecting money from the Saudi Ambassador," goes one cynical comment. Many of these mosques have brought in Pakistani clerics. This has had its impact on Malay perceptions of both India and ethnic Indians.

That aside, the Chinese and Malaysian Governments are the closest allies in Greater East Asia. They have argued, so far successfully, that India is racially different and has no place in the inner circle in East Asia. Kuala Lumpur has been an obstacle in the path of the India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. Indian foreign policy has to confront the Malaysia question at some point.

What are India's options? Malaysia merits a sophisticated response beyond either rhetoric or gunboats. First, there has to be the recognition that New Delhi has a certain responsibility when it comes to safeguarding rights of overseas Indians, particularly Hindus.

There are moral as well as practical reasons for this. Pushed to the edge, where are Malaysia's Hindus going to come? To Chennai, where some of the richer ones already own houses.

Second, the traditional ethnic Indian party is the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). The MIC is part of the ruling alliance and its leader, Mr Sami Velu, is Minister for Works. He uses his "Indian-ness" to promote business in the mother country, win Malaysian companies infrastructure contracts. Yet, the degree of community dissension against Mr Velu and the MIC now cannot be ignored. One insider describes him "as an old-style Bihar politician who thrives on keeping his supporters poor and badly educated". Another diplomat is blunt: "Mr Velu is the Indians' Uncle Tom."

Finally, India needs to revive a proposal, first made about five years ago, when Ms Veena Sikri was High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, that it will support schools for Malaysia's Indian minority, flying in teachers from Tamil Nadu who will teach children both Tamil and English and help the ethnic Indians overcome the built-in biases of the Malaysian Government school system.

This is a system, incidentally, where the roll number on an answer sheet tells the examiner which race the candidate belongs to.