This is the 17th day of P Waythamoorthy's hunger strike. Today he writes about Hindraf's meeting with the prime minister yesterday.
COMMENT
By P WaythamoorthyYesterday was a tiring day. I left the temple for Putrajaya for a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak on his invite. Now, let me share my thoughts with you on this meeting.
My journey into human rights activism started in 2005 with the formation of Hindraf. Hindraf was formed directly as a response to the accelerating demolition of hindu temples by the Umno-led government of the day.
We gave expression to the extreme anger of the rural sections of the Indian community at this stage and we led the resistance to the demolitions.
Then when this converged with the rampant killing of an Indian youth in police custody, the cauldron really began to boil.
The stage was set for an explosion. The explosion began with the first demonstration in Putrajaya in August 2007 where several thousand Indians gathered to submit our 18-point demands to the government.
The big explosion took place at the grand Hindraf rally of November 2007. The Indians in the country were at war with Umno.
Umno was Hindraf’s nemesis. They hounded us, harassed us and went to extreme measures to kill us off.
They jailed our activists, they linked us to the LTTE, they confiscated my passport and put me in effective exile, they banned us and they used the police to harass us at every turn. They refused to recognize us or have anything to do with us at all.
Yet we did not buckle. We resisted, we fought back, we got better organised as a group of activists and we kept going.
Then after reaching a crescendo, Umno started to roll back on all of that when Najib took over. They released the activists from Kamunting Detention Center, they reduced and finally stopped the harassments, they lifted the ban on us, returned my passport and allowed me to return, and now reaching a new peak of this trend, Najib invited us for a meeting yesterday.
Hindraf has come a long way to this point of being able to agree to this overture and to sit at the same table with its nemesis and to talk to them.
This was something that was never considered possible. A lot of bad blood had flowed in these last five years and Hindraf has to set aside all of that to accept the invitation.
Hindraf had been the trigger for change and accelerator of new political developments in the country. Hindraf has been a vocal and leading opponent of many fundamental policies of the government.
Historic meeting
Najib for his part had also come a long way to meet us at this point – he probably had to overcome significant resistance from various segments within his domain to get to the point of inviting us for this meeting.
This was indeed a risky move for him personally. So, it can be said that the meeting yesterday was truly a historic meeting.
This meeting, historic as it may be, however has to be understood for what it really represents. It is effectively only a preliminary meeting to decide if we should proceed.
Subsequent meetings are really the key, should they take place. They will provide opportunity to explore the possibilities of meeting respective objectives by movements of positions on both sides.
Those meetings are yet to take place and there is no certainty they will take place at all, as all we have up to this point is a verbal undertaking.
If there is a true commitment for rapprochement on Najib’s side, then this is the first place that it will tell.
The rest will become apparent during the talks. We go into the talks with our eyes and minds wide open.
Our focus is the proposals in our blueprint. We have been very consistent on this point.
I reiterate, whichever of the two coalitions accepts and endorses the blueprint will get our total support.
This is not decided as yet. There is still some time before Hindraf will come off this ambiguity and take a firm position in this issue.
P Waythamoorthy is the Hindraf chairperson. He has been on his hunger strike since March 10.
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