[Reader-list] Tarun Vijay on Malaysia

Thu Dec 6 11:55:08 IST 2007

Intolerant Malaysia, tolerant faith?
Tarun Vijay

When Hindus gathered courage and protested in an
unprecedented solidarity on November 26 in Kuala
Lumpur, they were crushed brutally by the Malay police
using chemicals in the water cannons. None of those
who had put up a united front against a cartoon
created in Denmark felt anything bad or condemnable in
the injustices meted out to the Hindus in an Islamic
country. When it's a question of Hindus getting unfair
treatment in a Muslim majority region, the 'civil,
sophisticated and articulate' Muslim intellectuals
take refuge in the statement that it's a matter
concerning a foreign country. But when it's a question
regarding a cartoon or a fatwa for beheading a writer,
they say -we are a global Ummah, anything happening
anywhere to Muslims is our common concern! All big
lies and a bigger hypocrisy traded in the name of a
religion. 

This year Diwali was not celebrated openly by
Malaysian Hindus in protest against the demolition of
one of their most revered shrines, the
hundred-year-old Maha Mariamman temple in Padang Jawa.
In the last fifteen years, hundreds of Hindu temples
have been demolished and the number of forcible
conversions and unfair treatment on religious grounds
has been constantly increasing. The tragic case of
Revathi was just a recent one. 

Moorthy Maniam was a Malaysian Hindu hero. After he
died, a group of Muslims claimed he'd made a deathbed
conversion. Despite his widow's protests, the Sharia
courts declared that he should be buried as a Muslim.
They used Moorthy to show that in this country, Islam
is supreme", complained his lawyer. 

In the 1980s, Malaysia's Sharia courts were given
equal power to the civil courts, creating two parallel
legal systems. But while the Sharia courts are
constantly trying to extend their authority, secular
courts are reluctant to challenge them. 

Malaysia which tries to woo Indian tourists with an
aggressive media campaign claiming-it's a 'truly
Asian' destination, has become a hotbed of Islamic
intolerance and barbarities on non-Muslims. It has
sixty per cent Malay Muslim population with Chinese,
mostly Buddhists, comprising twenty-five per cent.
Malays of Indian origin constitute about eight per
cent and Tamil Hindus are ninety per cent amongst the
Indian origin population. There is a fair number of
Indian Muslims too. 

Indian Malays were taken there by the British as
plantation workers in the late nineteenth century and
have now become an inseparable part of Malay life. In
fact, from the second century to the 14th century,
Malay Peninsula has seen Hindu kingdoms and a way of
life beautifully expressed in arts, culture, language
and Shaivite values. Sanskrit's influence over their
language is visible all over, yet the Malay Muslims
choose to express their affinity with the Arabs and
deny their ancestral heritage. 

Politically, Indian-origin Malays follow the Malaysian
Indian Congress (MIC), established in 1946 as an
instrument of independence from the British rule.
Malaysia, freed in 1957, remained a practising
pluralistic society till Islamic fundamentalism grew
in the last two decades bringing Arab money and
intolerance with it. Now it has parallel Islamic
courts, functioning along with the civil ones, which
are obviously more influential. 

Malay Hindus have their leader in Datuk Seri Samy
Vellu, president of the MIC and a minister in
the14-party coalition government who mustered courage
to protest against temple demolitions by declaring a
'private' Diwali this year. However, instead of being
supported by the countrys Muslim intelligentsia, he
was booed, and in a rally addressed by Prime Minister
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, people demanded his ouster from
the cabinet as a 'trouble maker'. 

Hindus seems to be losing hope on all fronts and are
making last-ditch efforts to attract attention by any
which way to their sorry state of affairs. An umbrella
organisation of thirty Hindu NGOs has been formed
under the banner of Hindu Rights Action Force or
HINDRAF that had called for the successful
demonstration on November 26. Earlier a court had
banned the rally  but HINDRAF workers  gathered in
an unprecedented number  twenty thousand by a modest
count defied the ban and had their voice heard
throughout the world. A nation, which has seen
centuries of Hindu influence nurturing its
socio-cultural milieu, suddenly turned against her own
people when Arab-Islamic influence grew, resulting in
the dispossession of minority rights. It has tried now
to completely eradicate its Hindu history being taught
in the schools, including the descriptions regarding
ancient Ganga Negara (2nd to 11th century), Langka
Asuka(2nd to 14th century) and Sri Vijaya empire(3rd
to 14th century) in different parts of the earlier
greater Malay Peninsula. 

It's a reflection of India's secular government that
the Malay Hindus of Indian origin chose to knock at
the British doors, strangely petitioning the British
government, Malaysia's former colonial ruler, to pay
two million dollars each to every Indian-origin Malay
as compensation for 'putting them in a situation of
darkness and exploitation' which was a result of
bringing their ancestors as indentured labourers a
century before. They are discriminated on religious
grounds and economic opportunities are not available
to them. 

"Over the years Indians have been marginalised in this
country and we now want the same rights as enjoyed by
other communities," M. Kulasegaran, opposition
lawmaker with the Democratic Action Party (DAP), told
the media. "This gathering is unprecedented, this is a
community that can no longer tolerate discrimination."
said HINDRAF leader P. Uthayakumar. The demonstrators
had gathered at Batu Caves Hindu temple and many of
them carried posters of Mahatma Gandhi. But, sadly,
there was no murmur amongst the Indian authorities in
Delhi or in their High Commission in Kuala Lumpur
about it.