They articulate only limited ideals for the society that they claim to serve

Thank you for the article below. The main goal of politicians are to remain in power as politicians. They articulate only limited ideals for the society that they claim to serve and such ideals are usually aimed at the numerically dominant population, mainly  to garner votes for their survival. Malaysians have been conditioned to see themselves in their own racial frame work only, for ease of manipulation by calling on their tribal loyalty when needed.  The Malaysian society is capsulated within their racial boundary. 

The political system in Malaysia  does not allow the politicians to dismantle the racial fencing. The architects of the Malaysian constitution, the founding fathers, latched on to that racial classification that was used by the British.  The British found it convenient to use racial identity of  their colonial subjects, a practice that has become entrenched to this day by the BN government. The British identify  others by their ethnicity and call them the ethnic population, except themselves. The British do not consider themselves as an ethnic group. One cannot refer to  the British as ethnics. In Malaysia the division of Malaysians is  according to the racial composition and this practice is entrenched . It is a  convenient classification for political manipulation with patronage. Under such convenience, the class division in each racial group is well and truly hidden. Class has no cohesive structure to serve the politicians, but the emotive racial group has.  For egalitarian governance the recognition of class division is highly relevant, and sadly it does not exist in Malaysia.

It is essential  for the proper distribution of national resources based on need and not on race. Unfortunately, response to need-based action is not expedient for politicians who are primarily motivated to remain in power by using racial identity. They are not there to champion social  ideals to respond to people with need,  but to racial tribes as it is easy to call on their racial emotions  to harvest votes to remain in power for personal grandeur. Given this dynamics in Malaysia, we are stuck with the racial divide. Those who accuse HINDRAF as being “racist” organisation, a label that is not given to the other BN parties, are blind to the realities.  They wish to see Malaysians uncloaked of their racial identity, when the system itself does not and will  allow that.


It is a reality that the statistics and empirical evidence that indicates deprivation and poverty is correlated to the lower stratum of Malaysians of Indian ethnicity,  a stratification of class of people at the bottom rung we identify  as Indians. This lazy and inefficient term irks those who see in desperation the solution to the evils of a race based Malaysian political system. They decry demand that HINDRAF leaders avoid recognising the truth. The truth  is the correlation between the compelling need of  a class of people who happen to be of Indian (mainly Tamil language group) ethnicity. The visibility of this class of people in need are readily seen as Malaysians of Indian ethnicity. To avoid this realty will lead to non recognition of those Indians in the bottom rung of social class who are in dire need for affirmative action. There is of course this needy class of people in every racial group of Malaysian society, but than each group has their champions fighting for them. We have been conditioned to think in terms of racial grouping, and not under the egalitarian class system.

I am sure the HINDRAF leaders will not be intimidated from using the lazy term of Indian identity until such time when the rest of the society changes. Until than has to continue to use the trem Indian, a term that is easily understood to be heard, in their struggle to uplift the need of a class of people at the bottom rung of  society who are Malaysian Indians. This class of people are in dire need to the basics of living that is their right to have. Others will not fight for this powerless minority, who happen to be Indians and  who may not yield sufficient votes for Indian MPs to stay in power. 

Robert K Chelliah