Plea for Indian M’sians
Azly Rahman Malaysiakini Nov 26, 07 11:16am
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour – not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. – Albert Einstein in ‘Why Socialism?’ (1949)
What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea. – Mohandas K Gandhi
Will Queen Elizabeth II of England pay for the 150-year suffering of Indian Malaysians? How would reparations be addressed in an age in which we are still mystified by newer forms of colonialism – the English Premier League, Malaysian Eton-clones, Oxbridge education, and British rock musicians such as the guitarist-astrophysicist Dr Brian May of the better-than-the-Beatles rock group Queen (and recently appointed chancellor of a Liverpool university)?
Who in British Malaya collaborated with the British East India company in facilitating the globalised system of indentured slavery? Will the current government now pay attention to the 50-year problems of Indian Malaysians?
We need to untangle this ideological mess and listen to the pulse of the nation. We are hyperventilating from the ills of a 50-year indentured self-designed pathological system of discriminatory servitude of the mind and body, fashioned after the style of colonialism.
We need a crash course in the history of reparation, slavery, and the declaration universal human rights. We need to understand the style of British colonialism as it collaborated with the local power elites of any colony it buried its tentacles in and sucked dry the blood, sweat and tears of the natives it dehumanised and sub-humanised.
We need to calculate how much the imperialists and the local chieftains gained from the trafficking of human labour – across time and space and throughout history.
In short, we need to educate ourselves on the anatomy, chemistry, anthropology and post-structurality of old and newer forms of imperialism. British imperialism has successfully structured a profitable system of the servitude of the body, mind and soul and has transferred this ideology onto the natives wishing to be “more British than their brown skins can handle”.
We need to encourage our children to read about the system of indentured slavery – of the kangchu and kangani and how the Malays were also relegated to becoming ‘reluctant’ producers of the colonial economy. The Malays’ reluctance led to the British designation “lazy native”.
We need to also learn from the Orang Asli and the natives of each state and how their philosophy of developmentalism is more advanced that the programmes prescribed under the successive five-year Malaysia Plans. A philosophy of development that respects and is symbiotic with Nature is certainly more appropriate for cultural dignity that the one to which we have been subjected; one that exploits human beings and destroys the environment under the guise of ‘progress’.
Caged construction
Our history lessons mask the larger issue of traditional, modern and corporate control of the means of production of Malaya. We see the issue of race being played up from time immemorial; issue of convenience and necessity to the sustenance of the status quo and the proliferation of modern local oligopoly and plutocracy.
Our history classes have failed our generation that is in need of the bigger picture; ones that will allow us to see what is outside of our caged construction of historicising. Our historians, from the court propagandist Tun Sri Lanang to our modern historians written under the mental surveillance of the ruling parties, have not been true to the demand of the production of knowledge based on social and humanistic dimensions of factualising historical accounts.
We need to study the political-economy of the rubber and canning industry and the relationship between the British and the American empire as industrialisation began to take off.
The Indians in Malaysia have all the right to ask for reparation and even most importantly they have the rights as rightful citizens of Malaysia to demand for equality and equal opportunity as such accorded to the ‘bumiputera’. Every Malaysian must be given such rights.
Failure to do so we will all be guilty of practising neo-colonialism and we will one day be faced with similar issue of reparation; this time marginalised Malaysians against the independent government of Malaysia. How are we going to peacefully correct the imbalances if we do not learn from the history of international slavery, labour migration and human labour trafficking that, in the case of Hindraf, involved millions of Tamils from Tamil Nadu province?
I once wrote a piece calling for all of us to help the least privileged of our fellow Malaysians – the Indians. The piece called for the leaders to stop fighting and to help each other as well.
I wrote a passage on the need to help each other in the spirit of selflessness and collaboration: “It is time for the other races to engage in serious and sincere gotong-royong to help the poorest of the poor among the Indians. It is time that we become possessed with a new spirit of multi-cultural marhaenism. The great Indonesian leader Ahmed Soekarno popularised the concept of marhaenism as an antidote to the ideological battle against materialism, colonialism, dependency and imperialism. The thought that the top 10 percent of the richest Malaysians are earning more than 20 times compared to the 90 percent of the population is terrifying. What has become of this nation that promised a just distribution of wealth at the onset of Independence?”
Not a Hindu problem
Now we have a better scenario – we have the rights group that is beginning to pull together,-close ranks and demand for their basic human rights that have been denied. Not only their rights to be accorded places of worship and economic justice, but also the rights to look at history and ourselves and interrogate what actually happened and who actually was responsible for the misery, desolation and sustained abject poverty to which they have been subjected.
It is not a Hindu problem – it is universal problem that cuts across race and religion. If we believe in what religion has taught us about human dignity and the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, we will all be speaking in one voice rallying for those who demand for their rights to live with dignity.
In Hindraf, I believe there are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Catholics, atheists, Buddhists, Sikhs, Bahais, Jains, etc rallying for the cause. In other words there are human beings speaking up for peace and social justice. It is the right of every Malaysian to lend support to their demands.
We have let the Indians in Malaysia suffer for too long. We ought to have a programme of affirmative action in place. We ought to have a sound programme for alleviation of poverty for the Indians and radically improve their conditions through political action, education and cultural preservation. We ought to extract the enabling aspects of culture though and perhaps reconstruct the our understanding of the relationship between culture and human progress.
But can the current political paradigm engineer a solution to the problems of the Malaysian Indians, as long as politics – after 50 years – is still British colonialist-imperialist-oppressive in nature? We have evolved into a sophisticated politically racist nation, hiding our discriminatory policies with the use of language that rationalises what the British imperialists brutally did in the open.
But our arguments cannot hold water any loner. Things are falling apart – deconstructed. The waves of demands, the frequency of rallies and the excavating of issues drawn from the archaeology of our fossilised arrogant knowledge – all these are symptoms of deconstructionism in our body politics. It is like the violent vomit of a rehabilitating cocaine addict undergoing treatment in a Buddhist monastery somewhere in northern Thailand.
We cannot continue to alienate each other through arguments on a ‘social contract’ that is alien from perhaps what Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote about some 300 years ago – a philosophy that inspired the founding of America, a nation of immigrants constantly struggling (albeit imperfectly) to meet the standards requirements of equality, equity and equal opportunity especially in education.
How do we come together, as Malaysians, as neo-bumiputeras free from false political-economic and ideological dichotomies of Malays versus non-Malays, bumi versus non-bumi and craft a better way of looking at our political, economic, social, cultural, psychological and spiritual destiny – so that we may continue to survive as a species for the next 50 years?
As a privileged Malaysian whose mother tongue is the Malay language and as one designated as a bumiputera, I want to see the false dichotomies destroyed and a new sense of social order emerging, based on a more just form of linguistic play designed as a new Merdeka game plan.
Think Malaysian – we do not have anything to lose except our mental chains. We have a lot to gain in seeing the oppressed be freed from the burden of history; one that is based on the march of materialism. We are essentially social beings, as Einstein would emphasise. Our economic design must address the socialism of existence.
Let us restructure of policies to help the Indian Malaysians – they are our lawful citizens speaking up for their fundamental rights. Let us help restructure the lives of the poor before they restructure the lives of the rich.
为大马印裔请愿
姚文杰 當今大馬 11月30日 晚上8点04分
“照我看来，今日资本社会经济的无政府状态是万恶之源。我们亲眼看见一个庞大生产者社群，各自竭尽所能地互相剥夺集体劳动成果。总的来说，这剥削无关暴力，反而是藉着奉公守法来进行的。”—愛因斯坦
“我对西方文明有何看法？我想那会是个很好的主意。”—甘地
大马印裔痛苦地挣扎了150年，英女王伊丽莎白二世会赔偿吗？在这世代，大家都被新式殖民主义蒙蔽—英格兰超级足球联赛、大马伊顿公学（英国贵族中学）复制品、津桥教育，以及崇拜英国摇滚乐手，例如崇拜比披头四还厉害的皇后乐队（Queen）吉他手兼天体物理学者布瑞恩‧梅博士（最近被委任为利物浦大学校长）—我们又该如何解决赔偿问题？
谁在英治时代助纣为虐，助长东印度公司全球奴隶契约制度？印裔同胞在这50年来所面对的问题，现任政府会正视吗？
面对这些混乱的意识型态纠结，光是解开纠结是不够的，我们也还要了解国民意向。这50年来带有歧视性地奴役身心的病态制度，是根据殖民主义而设计的，其祸害正逼得我们喘不过气来。
有关赔偿、奴隶制、人权宣言历史，我们都很需要密集课程。我们必须明白剥削作为都丧失人性：英国殖民主义串通各地政治菁英之后，就把触角深入殖民地，吸干殖民地人民的热汗血泪。
我们也必须计算：纵横整个历史时空里的人口贩卖活动，到底帝国主义者和本地首领从中搜刮了多少油水。
总而言之，我们必须再教育自己，学习新旧帝国主义的解剖结构、化学作用、人类学和后结构性质。英国帝国主义凭着奴役身心的方式，成功地建构了一个有利可图的制度。这意识型态也被转化了，使得土著欲更英化。即便土著英化得再厉害，棕色皮肤还是无法英化起来的。
港主和肯嘉尼（kangchu and kangani）制度，都是我们必须鼓励孩子了解的奴隶契约制度。我们也要让孩子了解：马来人如何被贬为殖民地经济的“不情愿生产者”，因而被扣上“慵懒土著”帽子。
国内各州原住民和土著的发展哲学，都比五年大马计划的指定策划来得更进步，我们都必须学习。一个尊重大自然，并且强调与大自然共生的发展哲学，当然比目前在“发展”幌子下剥削人类、破坏环境的制度，来得更有文化尊严。
重拾平民主义正合时宜
一些更重大议题，不论是新旧议题，或者是财团控制马来亚财富议题—种族课题老早已被挑拨炒炸、维持现状是否有其便利性与必要性、本地少数财团垄断国内市场、财阀政治肆虐—都被历史课给掩盖起来了。
我 们生活在自己建构的历史牢笼里，即使上过历史课，也无法看到牢笼外面的广阔历史图腾，可见我们的历史课是失败的。记录史实必须以社会和人文面向为基础，但 我国历史学家—从马来皇族大文豪兼传道者敦斯里拉南（Tun Sri Lanang），到当代被各执政党监控思想的历史学家，都不符合这标准。
工业起飞年代的橡胶和包装工业，这两大工业中的政治经济学，以及英美两大帝国之间的关系，我们都需要研究了解。
大马印裔有权要求赔偿。更重要的是他们身为合法公民，有权要求所给予土著的平等与机会均等，而且每个大马人都一定要被赋予这权利。
这次是被边缘化的大马人要求赔偿。如果不能让人人机会均等，我们所有人都将会背负实施新殖民主义的罪孽，而且在未来会再次面对赔偿课题。如果不从国际奴隶 制度、劳工移民和人口贩卖历史中汲取教训，我们又怎能以和平方式来纠正不均衡状态？谈到人口贩卖，我们就必须知道：参与兴都权益游行的印裔，其祖先主要来 自淡米尔纳德省。
印裔同胞是最弱势族群，我曾撰文请求大家帮助他们，请求大家守望相助，同时也呼吁领袖们停止斗争。其中一段提到大家 必须无私地合作：“我们必须帮助赤贫印裔同胞，各族是时候同心协力了。与此同时，我们也该拥有多元文化的平民主义（Marhaenism）。面对着物质主 义、殖民主义、依赖性、帝国主义，前印度尼西亚总统苏卡诺以平民主义极力抵御之，平民主义一词也因此窜红。最富有的十分之一大马人，其收入是其余十分之九 人口收入的二十倍，听之骇然。国家刚独立时，我们不是承诺平均分配财富吗？现在呢？”
应有扶弱计划消除贫穷
目前局势比较好了—权益诉求组织开始互助合作，一起努力争取自己被拒绝的权益。这权益并不只是要有庙宇供教徒膜拜和经济平等而已，也还包括回顾自身历史的权力—过去到底发生了什么事，谁该为他们的穷困潦倒负责，他们都有权质问。
这问题非关兴都徒，这问题不只横跨种族和宗教，而且也相当普及。如果我们相信宗教所倡导的人类尊严，以及人性中的手足之情，我们都会支持要求活得有尊严的游行。
在兴都权益游行当中，我相信有兴都徒、回教徒、基督徒、天主教徒、无神论者、佛教徒、锡克、巴哈伊、耆那教徒等等，他们都是为理想游行。换句话说，有人为社会的和平正义大声疾呼。对于他们的要求，每个马来西亚人都有权伸出援手。
我们让印裔同胞受苦太久了，因此必须要有一套扶弱计划。除了要有一个完善除贫计划，我们也必须要有政治、教育和文化保育等各方面行动，以便可以彻底地改善他们的处境。除了必须从各文化汲取养分，对于文化与人类发展之间的关系，我们也必须重新建构这方面的认知与理解。
50 年过去了，综观当今政治环境，其本质仍无异于大英帝国压迫式殖民，现有政治模式可以在这环境里，为印裔困境提出和平解决方案吗？在英殖民时代，举凡歧视偏 差政策，英国帝国主义者都粗暴地公然实施；到了今天，国内偏差歧视政策，一律都被语言掩盖着，并且合理化了。由此可见，我国是一个矫揉造作的种族政治国家。
我们的论点站不住脚了，时局开始分崩离析了—一波波诉求声浪、次数频密的游行、用考古方法检验迂腐思想以揭发争议性议题—这些都是政治统一体解构症状。这就像一个瘾君子，在泰北某佛寺接受康复治疗时剧烈呕吐一样。
勿再用社会契约来分割
我们不能再根据“社会契约”争议来分化彼此，这与法国思想家兼文学家卢梭在大约三百年前撰写的哲学格格不入。美国这个长期挣扎（尽管不完美），以期可以达到公正平等标准的移民国家，就是受卢梭哲学启发而建国的。这国家希望人人机会均等，特别是教育机会均等。
面对错误的政治经济和意识型态—“土著对抗非土著”、 “马来人对抗非马来人”—我们可以不受其桎梏，并且和解、团结为马来西亚人吗？对于政治、经济、社会、文化、心理和精神各方面的命运，我们能否建构一个比较好的看法，以便在未来五十年以相同的大马人身份继续生存？
身为一个以马来文为母语的幸运巫裔、土著，我要看到错误的二分法被废除。我也希望新社会秩序可以出现，让各种语文包括马来文都获得尊重。如此的新社会秩序，应该成为新独立策略。
想一想，除了思想束缚之外，我们大马人没有什么可以失去。资本主义施虐导致许多人受害，如果让被压迫的群体解除历史包袱，对我们绝对有利无弊。实质上，人除了是个体的存在，人也是社会的存在，大概爱因斯坦也会这样强调。我们的经济策划必须彰显存在社会学。
印裔同胞也是合法公民，大家一起重定扶持印裔的政策吧。在他们还未调整富人生活之前，让我们先帮助穷人重建生活吧。
