So finally someone shot back in style to the Malay supremacists. Last Sunday, a Gerakan man told UMNO last Sunday that Malays are supposedly ‘pendatang’ to this land as well. And for his troubles, Gerakan member Tan Lai Soon was immediately suspended from the party.
Various non-government organisations (NGOs) including ISMA — who once called the Chinese ‘pendatang’ — lodged police reports against him. Federal minister Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim reportedly wants action against Tan. On the other hand Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin said yes, Malays are ‘pendatang’ too but we came first.
But lurking beneath the fascinating responses to Tan’s statement is the point that this catchy rhetoric simply perpetuates a conversation that is fundamentally flawed.
The very concept of citizenship means that once you are granted a Malaysian citizenship, through birth or otherwise, you are Malaysian. You would have to pay taxes, obey the law, uphold the Constitution and swear allegiance to the King and country, just like any other citizen before you.
Once you’re in, you’re in — until such time that you renounce your citizenship. Apart from political alignment, citizens of this nation are all on the same side: Team Malaysia.
As a nation, there is no ‘us’ or ‘them’. Just ‘us’.
So why are we still talking about whose fathers came from where like it is the single overarching factor of everything today?
Our identity, past and present
History, of course, is important. Malaysia’s history is rich and the nation today has a wealth of diversified cultural heritage. Remembering where our forebears come from lends perspective.
Yes, Malays were in what would become Malaya long before the Chinese and the Indian immigrants came. But as our history unfolded, citizenship was extended to the immigrants, who in turn pledge loyalty to the nation.
Sarawak and Sabah had their own history and joined with Malaya to form Malaysia, which many seem to forget or dismiss today.
More importantly, the granting of citizenship back then was not conditional upon forgoing cultural heritage and identity. Unlike Indonesia for example, there were no nationwide assimilation policies per se to homogenise our national identity.
Hence today we do not have a homogenous identity as a nation. Rather, we have a multi-cultural identity forged by our various races brought together under one roof.
And we supposedly celebrate our diversity, going by how we advertise ourselves as a tourism destination. Yet we continue to talk about who came here first and who are supposedly superior because they came first.
This talk of ‘pendatang’, among others, tries to tackle an issue that is long past our control: that the immigrants of so many decades ago were eventually granted citizenships and their children were subsequently born citizens of the land just like any other Malaysian today.
But trying to undo the past is futile. None of us can choose who our fathers are, where our ancestors came from. Nor can we change what our fathers chose to do in the past.
Now Malaysia is what it is and there is no going back, nor should there be. Having each other with all the implications that brings enrich us further collectively.
We all own Malaysia
What we should talk about today instead is making the arrangement work for all of us, not just some of us. Like it or not every single Malaysian has rights to the nation as provided by the Constitution and the law.
While we cannot undo the past, we can shape the present and choose the future. We cannot choose our ancestors but we can choose who we are, what we do today and what we leave for our descendants.
For my fellow citizens who did not and do not wish to migrate away from this country, their choice is, essentially, to be Malaysians.
They are choosing to be loyal to this land they are born to and which they call home.
They are choosing to live here, to start families here, to fulfil what is expected of citizens here. And sometimes they even go above and beyond that for their fellow citizens.
It is something that many take for granted but nonetheless no less important. That choice to be Malaysian, to pledge loyalty to this nation and to serve it, should matter more today than lineage and ancestry.
Who is to say that the so-called ‘pendatang’ Malaysians are not as willing as, if not more than, other Malaysians to give their all for the country? Or that the other Malaysians are more patriotic solely by virtue of their ancestry?
The better measure of a good Malaysian, to my mind, is what service a person does for the betterment of the nation. And, in turn, how we can all prosper together while we are at it.
That, unlike who our fathers were and where our fathers came from, is something we can all do something about.
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