FWIW, I spent two days in Kuala Lumpur (KL) last month. I got to speak to an Indian Malay academic, Cambridge trained, well estblished. He came from an impoverished family, whose goal in life was to become a policeman. He could not because of his eyesight so was encouraged to continue studying. I also met one his students, who represents the Indian community politically. He was linked to Anwar Ibrahim in UMNO (in Malaysia you cannot do damn thing if you don't work through UMNO). Acoording to him there were good prospects under Anwar for resolving these ethnic divisions but alas Mahathir (who was increasingly becoming insecure) trumped up charges and eliminated Ibrahim. I also talked to an Indian taxi driver (a long one hour ride from the airport). I should mention taxi drivers are always a great source of information. I attended a conference (of the Univ of Malay), where 99.9% of the speakers were Malays. I did get a sense of tension of such divisions as several speakers brought it up. The conference was on governance issues.
The article is pretty much on target. Malaysia has become ethnically very divided because of discriminatory policies in favor of Malays. The curious thing is that Malays are a massive majority. In most countries positive discrimination is always for the minorities. But since the Chinese controlled the bulk of the Malay businesses such policies were aimed at redistributing the wealth. So Chinese did lose out and so did Indians. But Indians were not in business, they were plantation workers in the countryside. Their lot continues to suffer today. Today the Malays in small and petty businesses, students, borrowers, and some on the religious fundamentalist fringes (for different reasons) feel threatended by the prospect of overturning such discrimninatory policies. Many with the support of the state (and the UMNO for party followers) have become emboldened. Consequently such talks about keeping the Chinese and Indians under control have become louder inspite of the fact that there is a sizeable Indian expatriate professional group in KL, along with other international professional class. But yes, social stability in the 1960s bought with discriminatory policies did work. Malaysia is quite well off from what it was. And if you go by outcomes, more poor Malays have been lifted out of their malaise so it has been more democratic. But the method has not been. At another level, there is still quite a bit of social decay among the poorer Indians and Malays although there has been social mobility among Indians too. So Malaysia might pay for all this down the road since what exactly is the Malay state is still being debated. This PM has said that Malaysia is a secular and an Islamic state! Anthony xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Currently Comparative International Development Senior Visiting Research Fellow University of Washington Asia Research Institute 1900 Commerce Street National University of Singapore Tacoma, WA 98402, USA 469 A Tower Block Phone: (253) 692-4462 Bukit Timah Road #10-01 Fax : (253) 692-5718 Singapore 259770 http://tinyurl.com/yhjzrm Ph: (65) 6516 8785 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, raghu wrote:
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:48:39 -0700 From: raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: PEN-L list <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: [PEN-L] Malaise in Malaysia? Maybe Anthony'd like to comment on this? http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8362605 ---------------------------snip As the country approaches its 50th birthday, racial and religious tensions are jeopardising its economic and social success UPROAR is still raging in Malaysia over inflammatory speeches at the annual congress of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in mid-November. One delegate talked of being ready to "bathe in blood" to defend the race and religion of the Malay Muslim majority against the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities. The education minister, no less, brandished a keris (traditional dagger), only to be urged by another delegate to start using it. The affair has brought into focus Malaysians' worries that, as their country nears its 50th birthday next year, its remarkable economic and social success is at risk from the increasingly separate lives its three main races are living. Last weekend these anxieties were voiced by the crown prince of Perak, one of the country's constituent states. He recalled that in his boyhood the races mixed far more freely; nowadays most children go to single-race schools. The prince regretted that some Malay-majority schools have made girls wear headscarves and even told pupils to avoid non-Malays' homes. Malaysians' spirit of give-and-take, he lamented, had been replaced by the idea that progress was a zero-sum game among the races. Apart from some deadly riots in 1969, the country has so far done remarkably well in handling the awkward racial mix it inherited when the Malaysian peninsula gained independence from Britain in 1957 (Britain's colonies on Borneo joined the union later). The Chinese, now around a quarter of the population, arrived in colonial times to work the country's tin mines. The Indians, now around one-tenth, mainly came to work on plantations. Neither group intended to stay forever but many did. The Malays' fears of being marginalised in their own land grew as the Chinese came to dominate business and the Indians the professions. At independence, a "social contract" was struck in which the Indians and Chinese got citizenship while the indigenous peoples received privileged access to state jobs and education. After the 1969 riots, a far-reaching positive-discrimination policy was introduced, with the aim of increasing the indigenous groups' share of business ownership from just 4% to 30%. Supporters of this policy say it has kept the peace, enabling Malaysia to achieve impressive economic growth. Opponents say it has widened the divide between rich UMNO wheeler-dealers and their less fortunate Malay brethren. UMNO itself, having led the country's development for decades, has become perhaps its greatest handicap. The Malay chauvinism and economic nationalism in its ranks are hobbling progress towards reforming and privatising the big government-linked companies, thereby discouraging both domestic and foreign private investment. The fate of Proton, a carmaker (see article) is emblematic: the government has dithered for months over whether to risk UMNO's ire by selling it to a foreign buyer.
