Fight against Interlok goes global

PKR intends to highlight the racially charged book to MPs from Canada and India as the next step in the fight against the novel being used as standard text in schools.

PETALING JAYA: After being mired in controversy, the Interlok novel issue is expected to go global, with a PKR leader declaring that he would be meeting an Indian and Canadian member of Parliament  with the hope that they would highlight the plight of the Indian community in the country in their respective parliaments.

The local opposition party has also decided to handover a memorandum to the Indian and Canadian governments wanting them to pressure the Malaysian government to withdraw the novel from schools.

“I will make a trip to India mid-next month to send the memorandum to one of the central ministers. We are presently trying to get an appointment to see him,” PKR Malacca vice president G Rajendran told FMT.

“Our motive is not to tarnish the name of Malaysia but to expose how the Barisan Nasional led government is practising blatant racism,” he added.

The Bahasa Malaysia novel Interlok kicked-up a storm after the Education Ministry decided to introduce it as a text book for Form Five. The book contains derogatory words, deemed as an insult to the Malaysian Indian community.

Despite repeated calls by the community for the removal of the book from the school syllabus, the government, especially the Education Ministry, has refused to budge.

The community wanted corrections to about 46 pages of  factual errors in the book before it is used in schools. However, the Ministry only amended nine such mistakes.

‘Withdraw the book’

Rajendran said he had also prepared another memorandum to be sent to the Canadian parliament.
“We have a Tamil parliamentarian (Rathika Sitsabaiesan) in Canada and hope she can press our government to remove the novel,” he said.

He said Pakatan Rakyat, the opposition coalition, would remove the book from the school syllabus if it came to power at the next general election.

Meanwhile, the National Interlok Action Team (NIAT) reiterated its call for the removal of the book from schools.

“We suggest the government withdraw the book and replace it with other novels,” he added.
He said the book should not be reprinted with amendments as it put the onus on teachers to explain why certain parts of the novel was blanked out.

He also said that at the last parliament session, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also Education Minister, said that his ministry would make 106 amendments to the book before distributing it to schools.