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New focus on social contract in Malaysia

— PHOTO: AP

HINDRAF leaders raise their hands after being discharged from a court in Klang, outside Kuala Lumpur, on November 26.

Can the enduring pact among Malaysia’s major political parties, which represent the main ethnic groups and run a coalition government, serve as a substitute for a genuine multi-racial social contract in perpetuity?

A simmering question this might have been during the years in power of the Barisan Nasional (National Front). But only now the protest rally organised by the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) in Kuala Lumpur on November 25, and the current spell of uneasy calm have propelled this issue to the centre stage.

Surely, HINDRAF, an umbrella group of non-governmental organisations, has not packaged its protest agenda in this long-term perspective of Malaysia’s political destiny. Nonetheless, the protest has highlighted the need for action to update the present system.

Malaysia is not alone in having a diverse matrix of ethnicities and religions; and observers point out that the country has maintained, on the whole, a good record of peace, stability, and inter-communal coexistence.

In the wake of the latest protest rally, Malaysian leaders have emphasised the need to ensure there is no communal backlash. And, nearly two weeks after the rally, the issue has largely remained centred on the possible “game plan” of HINDRAF. In focus now is the charge that the policies of successive governments have led to an “ethnic cleansing” of Indian-origin citizens. The governments have always been made up of nominees from parties representing the Malay majority and also the two main minorities of Chinese and Indian stock.

Asserting that the allegation has “racial undertones,” Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has said ethnic Indians “are not our enemies.” Far from any “ethnic cleansing” occurring at all in the 50 years since independence, “there are no problems with Islam [the faith of the Malay-majority] and Hindu religion” of the Malaysian Indians. “There are no sectarian clashes” in Malaysia, he says.

In a sense, the term, “ethnic cleansing,” found in the unauthenticated online text of a letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown from a HINDRAF leader, has shifted the terms of debate on the basic issue. Malaysian authorities are still investigating the authenticity of this document that is doing the cyberspace rounds. However, Mr. Abdullah’s condemnation indicates that the document is being taken seriously.

The timing and the target of the November 25 rally revealed the strategy of HINDRAF, led by P. Uthayakumar, P. Waytha Moorty, and V. Ganapati Rao. The rally roughly coincided with the Commonwealth summit in Kampala, which Mr. Abdullah was attending. And, the submission of a petition to the British monarch, through the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur, was the objective of the marchers. Later, a Malaysian Minister indicated that nearly 20,000 people had assembled for the “illegal” rally, which was banned through a pre-emptive court order.

A standard Malaysian political refrain is that street demonstrations are not the means to resolve issues. And, just a few weeks prior to the HINDRAF rally, the authorities had resisted a march, organised by Anwar Ibrahim, an advocate of political and poll reforms and a former Deputy Prime Minister.

Mindful of this, HINDRAF demonstrators held a banner proclaiming “peaceful” intentions. For the authorities, though, the issue was one of rolling back an “illegal” march. Tear gas and water cannon were used to disperse the crowds.

Behind the high drama of the rally lay some critical issues. HINDRAF had filed a law suit in London in August, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Malaysia’s independence from Britain. Reparations, to the tune of $ 4 trillion, were sought, through the suit, to redress a historical wrong.

The Malaysian Indians, now numbering about two million and forming eight per cent of the country’s population, are the descendants of a mass-displaced section of people from South India — mostly Tamils but also others who spoke Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada. They were transported by Imperial Britain to the Malaya peninsula to work on plantations. And, the relevant issue now, as articulated by HINDRAF, is that Britain remains morally responsible for the “marginalisation” of the Malaysian Indians after the country’s independence.

And, it cannot be missed that there is a political purpose behind the law suit in London and the move to seek the British monarch’s intervention for the appointment of counsel for the aggrieved Malaysian Indians in this case. The aim is to use these moves as the means to exert pressure on Mr. Abdullah to grant “equal rights” to the Malaysian Indians.

By seeking to “internationalise” the issues at stake in this manner, the HINDRAF is also trying to outflank Works Minister and president of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), Samy Vellu, for political space. At one level, much will depend on how the courts view the HINDRAF in a sedition case. At another level, Mr. Abdullah has asked Mr. Samy Vellu to fashion “new proposals” to defuse the current crisis and chart a way forward.

As a sustainable way forward is charted, the issue of a long-term social contract among all Malaysian communities will require deeper thought. At least two major communities have had no ancient links to the Malaysian land and mores. So, the future-oriented answers to overcome this aspect may lie beyond the realm of political power-sharing among the communities. It is in this fundamental sense that external powers, like India or China, have no direct role to play in Malaysia, which has emphasised that the current issues are entirely its internal affair.

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