Malaysia’s trouble: overly or inadequately diverse?

Most Malaysians probably grow up being told by school textbooks and government policies that too much diversity breeds division. Have you ever thought that the truth could be the opposite – we are in trouble exactly because we are not diverse enough?

Most nation-building projects believe in homogenisation, or reducing the differences between citizens or residents.

Why homogenisation? There are at least two grounds for that.

The first ground is national identity, the argument that a nation must be different from others and she should demonstrate and advance her uniqueness. But who decides in what way the nation should be homogenised? Often, this is decided by the dominant group, who may lay their claim on nativity, superiority, uniqueness or whatever ground.

The second ground is national integration, the notion that a nation cannot stand if the population is too diverse to uphold some common values, to have some common interests to tie everyone’s destiny together and to develop solidarity for each other.

Although some would like to make the case that national integration is not possible without some dominant national identity, these two grounds are quite distinguishable.

This article will leave the first ground aside – for it is really subjective on what should constitute the national identity. I respect those who hold a strong view on that and perhaps we can discuss and debate over that some other day.

Now, I would just like to examine the notion that diversity may undermine national integration, national unity, nation-building or what other alternative terms used.
It may benefit our discussion to introduce the idea of “cleavages”, which basically means fault-lines that divide a population into various groups, such as ethnicity, religion, language, class and region. And the pattern of cleavages can be divided into two categories: reinforcing or cross-cutting.

Reinforcing cleavages

When cleavages overlap with each other, they produce “reinforcing cleavages”. The likely end result is social groups in bitter rivalry or even antagonism because a person in such society would share most common interest with members of the same groups but little if any common interest with people outside the group.

In societies with reinforcing cleavages, you can easily tell the rival groups from their distinctively different combination of traits.

In Northern Ireland, English Protestants who were privileged by Britain and support continued union with Britain while Irish Catholics who were suppressed by Britain and desire unification with the Irish Republic.

In Sri Lanka, Tamils are non-Buddhists and historically advanced while Sinhalese are mostly Buddhists and historically marginalised.

In Thailand , you have the dominant Buddhist Thais and the marginalised Muslim Malays.

In Fiji, you have the Indigenous Fijians who were historically marginalized and the Indian Fijians who were historically advanced.

Is it hard to understand why these countries were or still are wrecked by political instability, social unrests, or even outright civil wars or coup d’etat?

Cross-cutting cleavages

When cleavages cut across each other, then instead of creating groups with reinforced boundaries, it fragments the groups into smaller sub-groups.

A person is likely to share different common interests with different groups of people, making it hard to position permanently friends and foes. Instead, everyone may possibly be on his/her side, given the right division.

Hence, when a cleavage divides the population like a river, it becomes a bridge when other cleavages cut the population like rivers too.

India would make a good example of societies with cross-cutting cleavages. The country has seven major religious groups (although 82% are Hindus), 387 languages (with22 enjoying official status), countless castes and tribes and of course, socio-economic classes in modern economy.

India is certainly not a bed of roses as communal violence is not dead and sometimes riots claimed thousands of innocent lives. But the country as a whole does not get set alight even with these riots.

With a low degree of homogeneity and the absence of any cultural element that is undisputedly national (neither Hinduism nor the Hindi language is), India actually survives for nearly 70 years now as the world’s largest democracy.

Malaysia’s reinforcing cleavages

Coming back to Malaysia, our problem is clearly one of reinforcing cleavages.

We have two rigid blocs defined by three sets of dichotomous fault-lines: Malay-Muslim-Bumiputera (MMB), and, non-Malay-non-Muslim-non-Bumiputera (NNN).

Are the ethnic, religious and policy fault-lines overlap perfectly? Not exactly, but what happens to six other possible groupings?

“Malay-non-Muslim-Bumiputera”, “Malay-Muslim-non-Bumiputera”, “Malay-non-Muslim-non-Bumiputera” are non-existent categories because all Malays must be Muslim and all are Bumiputera.

Both the “Non-Malay-Muslim-Bumiputera” and “Non-Malay-Muslim-non-Bumiputera” groups exist but their numbers are shrinking as many of their members would just adopt a Malay identity and join the first main bloc (BBM). For the latter, the Bumiputera preferential status is the most obvious inducement.

The only significant minority group is the “Non-Malay-non-Muslim-Bumiputera”. These are mainly the Christian Bumiputeras from Sabah and Sarawak, who now bear the brunt of the Allah ban.

But even this group may be absorbed into the two main blocs over time. On one hand, many non-Muslim Bumiputera found themselves denied the full Bumiputera preferential status unless they convert into Islam. On the other hand, exactly because of the assimilationist pressure, many of them are increasingly aligned to the second main bloc (NNN).

How does this pattern of reinforcing cleavages happen? Part of it was the colonial or colonial-age legacy, but part of it is very much the outcome of the gradual and gentle homogenisation that tries to make everyone – including the Christian Bumiputera – Malay-Muslim, mainly through the inducement of differentiated citizenship.

Longing for cross-cutting cleavages

With the two main blocs of MMB and NNN, I was almost tempted to say that Malaysia is a bipolar society, but this is really just a social reality in West Coast Malaya where the NNN makes up nearly 40% of the population and rivals the MMB.

This phenomenon is not even shared by East Coast Malaya, which is unipolar with more than 90% of Kelantan and Terengganu population being Malay. A distinctive difference between most of the East Coast Malays and most of the West Coast Malays is that the former are so confident of their faith that they do not fear the sight of pigs.

It is certainly not the case in Sabah and Sarawak, which are multipolar societies with cross-cutting cleavages.

Many Borneans have families and relatives of different faiths and ethnicities. Intermediate groups like Sino-Sarawakians and Sino-Kadazans are flourishing as entry is still possible by act of marriage. This is starkly different from Malaya today, where a Chinese and a Malay can no longer become new Baba-Nyonya by act of marriage.

Will greater success in assimilation bring greater national integration? I believe Sarawak and Sabah have provided the answer.

Therefore, I believe our problem is that we are inadequately diverse.  I long for a more diverse Malaysia of cross-cutting cleavages. For example, where language is concerned, I long for Bahasa Melayu and English to be spoken by all, and Chinese, Tamil, Punjabi, Iban, Kadazan and other languages to be also spoken widely beyond the native speakers.

It is for that reason, as a pluralist, I lament the denationalisation of Bahasa Malaysia, as it aims to build the reinforcing cleavages of ethnicity, religion and language. – August 6, 2014.

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