What it’s like being the minority in Malaysia today

So much can be said of the complex and tense relationship among Malaysia’s potpourri of ethnic and religious groupings today.

For those of us who grew up in a simpler Malaysia, childhood memories paint a rather contrasting picture from today’s society, when the colour of your skin and religion – or lack of it – seems to define your identity as a Malaysian.

In his book “Crossroads: A popular history of Malaysia and Singapore”, author Jim Baker wrote that race has always been at the core of Malaysia’s social contract, and a cause of further polarisation. In his opinion, the “institutionalised discrimination” in the form of race-based policies under the New Economic Policy of 1971 had further sealed the racial lenses which we use to determine what it means to be Malaysian.

It is a fact that minority groups have always had to contend with pro-Malay and pro-Bumiputera policies, in the name of maintaining balance in our complex and diverse racial population.

Whenever I travel, I get asked a lot about what it’s like being the so-called “victim” of state-sanctioned racial discrimination.

The question often surprises me because I’ve never felt victimised in spite of being aware of the social contract, and I surely have never felt like I was a second-class citizen.

The reason for this was because I grew up knowing that my personal rights and fundamental freedoms were never at threat.

Unfortunately, the minority groups of Malaysia today can no longer take consolation in that fact.

The voices of reason within society and within our government have become increasingly muted, overrun by myopic and even aggressive attitudes towards the beliefs and way of life of those other than the majority population.

As the acceptance of radical Islamisation grows, minority religious groups – as well as liberal Muslims, I may add – are in danger of losing their rights as citizens of a secular state.

Conservative dress codes for public government departments, efforts to bar the use of the word “Allah” by Christians and skirmishes about non-Muslim children eating during the month of Ramadan are just the tip of the iceberg in a pattern of increasing intolerance, and the communities that will ultimately bear the brunt of these prejudices will be the minority groups.

Where once we could at least say the discrimination lay purely at policy level, we now have to contend with rules that dictate the way we dress, where we are allowed to eat and how we are to practice our faith.

Minority groups have always taken a pragmatic approach to the discriminatory policies in our education and economic system, because we’ve been told they are necessary evils to rebuild a nation with existing unequal economic distribution and opportunities.

But just because we have been accepting of pro-majority affirmative action policies does not mean we need to be accepting of the erosion of our fundamental rights as non-Malays, non-Muslims and non-Bumiputeras.

The minorities of Malaysia are still here, fighting for a voice, because we want to be as much a part of this nation’s future as we are of her history.

But the question that bears heavily on the minds of many of the minority is this – how much more of our value system and beliefs must we be prepared to compromise on in the future?

How much more bending-over-backwards must we do before we finally decide that the “new” Malaysia has no place for the minorities, and before we decide to leave like the many who have done so before us? – June 28, 2015.

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