Of pendatangs and an exodus of brains

Years ago I had this discussion with a close friend about the use of the term pendatang used by politicians in Parliament.

He asked me to trace back my own roots, and I openly admitted that I am on my father's side a second-generation pendatang. That much is true, having a paternal grandfather from Medan, Indonesia.

At the same time, I could trace my maternal roots back to both a Malaccan Indian Muslim and a Kelantanese woman with Chinese blood. Now looking back, I'm guessing my parents and grandparents must have taken Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's genealogy lesson in The Malay Dilemma to heart.

These are my roots. I don't deny them, even if I joke about how a cafe latte is just Kelantanese coffee.

I embrace these roots, the same way I embrace Shah Alam as my kampung even though it isn't technically one. I was born in Assunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya because, well, Shah Alam didn't have a hospital back then.

The reason I call this city my kampung is because it is my home town, where I spent 30 years of my life living there and studied there in my primary, secondary and even tertiary education days – except for that one year stint in Londang, Malacca.

So, I have always said that the people of Shah Alam are politically astute because we have daily experiences of going through roundabouts.

So when yet another group, any group goes once again into the roundabout of calling people pendatangs, those of us in Shah Alam would just roll our eyes. As for me, I'd personally someone's stuck in Persiaran Kayangan.

Most of us living in this country are pendatangs, yet many either omit or seem to have forgotten such. I guess that is a measure of Malay-ness. The more you forget who you are and where you are from, the more Malay you become. After all, Malays forget easily.

If you were in Form One in 1996 as I was, you would have had to do a project in school tracing your roots back to whereabouts your ancestors came from in detail. This is how I knew my own mixed-blood heritage.

It is also through studying my roots that I know a distant relative has a hospital named after her.

All these were made even more interesting when I sat down in a recent forum and listened to Professor Emeritus Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim speak of the titbits of Malay history in Malaya now Malaysia, of how the British differentiated even the Malays at the time.

But it was his bottom line that needs to be repeated by all: if you are a citizen, nobody gets to call you a pendatang.

At the same time, yes, we do have many things that separate us – preferential treatment (real or imagined), mother tongues, religion, education, rural and urban, have and have-nots to the point of stealing a smartphone from Low Yat.

Honestly, I care more about the rural and urban, have-and-have-nots divide compared to the rest because these are what matter the most. However, there is no denying that even most developed countries, and even this one, we have a racially tinged division of the urban and rural, have and have nots divide even without bringing up Low Yat.

The Low Yat incident was just stupid, pure and simple.

But it goes to show that a racially tinged urban and rural divide and also a class divide will breed hatred between races, and we can see such even now being taken advantage of by the opportunistic vultures. Worse than this is that there is no inherent solution in achieving the one social point – racial unity and cohesion – of Vision 2020.

As such, what we will see and continue to see is an exodus of those who can afford to emigrate. This is basically the trigger for the brain drain, to be honest. And it won't be stopped by Malaysia achieving a high income status by 2020, even if it does.

What is causing many Malaysians to leave is the absence of being able to live their lives with minimal government interference, and we must admit there is a lot of interference. Malaysians are feeling underappreciated, and at the same time looking at our current politicians, see no hope of change for the better.

But do they think so come 2018?

I would leave that up to them. For me personally, I don't see Pakatan Harapan as a winning formula just yet, unlike DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua seeing as how they haven't a single party in their coalition targeting the rural areas, Sabah and Sarawak respectively.

But if there is yet another flop in the next general election, well, we may see an even bigger exodus of Malaysian brains. – October 13, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.