MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Indian leaders are beholden to UMNO to bother about their community or their problems

THERE IS A TRITE SAYING that the Indian community in Malaysia must blend with the other races if it is to survive. Trite because the party that represents the Indians here do all it can to separate the Indian community into Tamils, Malayalees, Sikhs, Bengalis, others. The Malaysian Indian Congress, which once represented the Indian community in the governing National Front coalition, has done its job badly in representing the Indian community that the People's Progressive Party – which in its previous life was the opposition and multiracial Perak Progressive Party led by the redoubtable Seenivasagam brothers, both lawyers and with the younger, D.R. Seenivasagam, the more dominant, particularly in the opposition benches in Parliament – to also represent the Indians. His death in the late 1960s lead to his elder brother, known as SP, taking over, and subsequently joined the ruling National Front, After his death, it was the vehicle for a Chinese leader at odds with the Chinese party in the National Front, the Malaysian Chinese Association. But the PPP came back into Indian hands, its president being appointed a senator tough he is elected to parliament now. He, an Indian, is a deputy minister, but the party is a pale shadow of its old self.

The PPP was brought into the National Front 33 years ago when the tripartite Alliance became the multi-party National Front. After it was taken over by the Indians, the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, created conditions in the National Front for the PPP to represent the Indians as well. This has not worked well, partly because the PPP president, Mr Kayveas, took for granted the support of the Indian community, and is now no worse than the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, and both see their presence in the cabinet for the Indian community to be proud of. But the Indian community generally, especially the younger members, reject both. Datuk Samy Vellu owns or controls all the six or seven Tamil newspapers, which usually translates the government news that are published in the main English language newspapers, and publish in detail political and election news from Tamil Nadu in India. There used to Tamil newspapers owned by rivals to Dato' Samy Vellu but now are controlled, or owned, by him.

There is an oddity here. The MIC was originally founded in 1946 to fight for Indian independence. Its founding president, Mr John Thivy, became India's ambassador to the Vatican. The MCA was founded in 1949 of Koumintang supporters to be a counterweight for the Malayan Communist Party, which was aligned to the Chinese Communist Party. It was only in 1952 that the non-Malay was allowed to be citizens. In the local elections of that year, UMNO and MCA stood as a coalition. The MIC joined it in the fight for independence, mainly because the British had said Malay would not get independence unless the three major races – Malays, Chinese, Indians – jointly had asked for it. But in the 60 years since, the MIC leader saw his place in government as a career, and manipulated elections so that his rival is disqualified, or is reduced of his support.

The Indian community in Malaysia is badly served by both the MIC and PPP. Dato' Samy Vellu has been in the cabinet since 1978. He would not allow any other MIC Indian to be in cabinet, though before he became an MP in 1974, there were two Indians in the cabinet. Both parties do not encourage Malayalees. I had asked to join the MIC in 1962, at the insistence of my father, but I was told in 1970, that my application was rejected, and enclosing the application form with the two dollar notes attached to it. But the currency had been changed in 1967, and I lost thirty per cent. The then MIC president, the late Tun V.T. Sambanthan, in the seventies, asked me to join, and I was accepted but in a brach in Kelantan, about 300 miles away! The Tamils hate the Malayalees, particularly if they speak their mother tongue, and see them as exploitative. The odd Malayalee who gets to the top in the MIC are there because they speak Tamil, and reject their Malayalee heritage. There are about 1.5 million Indians in Malaysia, which has about 22 million people.

This was the problem of the former vice-president, Datuk K. Pathmanaban, a former high ranking civil servant, who entered politics at the instigation of the then prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak. But the MIC, particularly after Dato' Samy Vellu because president in 1978, isolated him. He died a few years ago as deputy minister. But what he wrote then of how the Indian community could be saved, was implemented by Dato' Samy Vellu. He now asks the Indian community to give him ideas for their betterment, which he looked with disfavour in the past if suggested to him. He keeps the Indian mass, most of whom work as labourers or are in the lower strata of Malaysian society, as a vote bank, keeping them as the British had when they were brought from India. The Malayalees in the labour lines came here because Palakad, Kozhikode and Cannoor was in the Madras Presidency, from which almost all Malayalee labourers in Malaya came from.

But Indians in Malaysia are better represented in the government, except perhaps in Fiji, in Asia. Of the first pre-independence cabinet, there were three Chinese, one Indian and four Malays. Today, in the cabinet of more than 30, there are only two Indians. In the present politics in Malaysia, it is unlikely there would be more in the future. The Indian community cannot be integrated into the Malaysian community; it has seen to it. A small group of Malays in Malaysia, even in the United Malays National Organisation, or UMNO, see the Chinese and Indians as interlopers, and birds of passage. They are subject to a quota in getting jobs in the civil and uniformed services. That fits into the MIC's attitudes so that the Indian is 'a hewer or wood and carrier of water'. The danger for them is that the younger Indian moves away from the Indian political parties, in fact actively oppose them, and prefer to throw in their lot with the parties in the opposition or act on their own.

A new development is seen here. The Malay and Chinese youngsters think likewise, and tend to go on their own. Now there is a move to get the three communities united outside the existing political parties, and promise to hold their vote against who they do not like. The National Front is the dominant party here. The other political parties cannot expect at the most more than 40 seats in Parliament, and they cannot form a government unless they unite. But the National Front have isolated the opposition parties against each other as they have the communities. The much vaunted idea of Malaysia as an industrialised country by 2020 will actually see the political system dissipated, with the ruling National Front preparing to go into the opposition. It will do this not be because of the opposition parties' strength, but by its weakness. If it cannot reverse the trend, the racial parties in it, which includes the MIC and MCA, would also suffer. At that time, their communities will have no truck with them. They are so identified with the National Front, not with their communities, that they have no future outside it. The MIC even now penalises its leaders for seen talking with opposition leaders.

[Published in the Malayalam daily, Thejas, Sunday 12th March 2006, under the title, "Indian politics in Malaysia"]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com