For a plural Malaysia

WE must initiate the debate on what is “Malaysian” culture.

In my experience as a Sarawakian, often enough when we talk about culture and heritage in the Malaysian context, we leave out those outside the holy ethnic trinity of Malays, Chinese and Indians. Racial minorities like the Peranakan, Kadazan-Dusun and Orang Asli have been underrepresented international and domestically. This is due, in part, to our national psyche of sectarianism of the majority.

The culture of these ethnic communities are, unfortunately, only relevant in regions with significant populations like Sarawak and Sabah. To be truly representative of all cultures, we must be plural and impartial in our representation and advocacy of all cultures.

The main challenge lies in overcoming ethnic chauvinism. Nowadays, we rarely take the initiative nor the interest in other races’ cultures and customs. This is a sad reality. Ethnic groups have been driven apart by political ideology and economic opportunities while efforts to unite the different communities have not yielded the desired effects.

Left to their own devices, many have increasingly retreated into racial enclaves, succumbing to institutionalised and voluntary racial segregation. This has led to selective cultural preservation, whereby each race focuses only on its own heritage, and in passionate missions to preserve them, their actions also inadvertently sideline the heritage of other ethnicities.

Furthermore, government and private institutions alike are slightly biased in their choice of preserving and celebrating cultural heritage.

This is due to three factors – racial policy, unintended tyranny of the majority and closed mindedness.

Many a times, only Malay, Chinese and Indian heritages are explicitly advocated by private and government institutions. Case in point, history textbooks generally diminish the contributions of other races to the formation and growth of our nation. Therefore, more effort should be put into highlighting and celebrating their contributions past, present and future. Many public and private institutions are also, unfortunately, staffed chiefly with a single race, unwittingly leading to the celebration and practice of only certain cultural traditions. For instance, some universities do not factor in the Gawai, Kaamatan and Diwali holidays into their academic calendar. This forces students to choose between skipping their respective festivities or classes and exams.

Is it not paramount that we respect equally the festivities of all Malaysians, especially so, since Malaysian culture is an amalgamation of all of our cultures?

Conversely, the solution lies in structural cultural integration, promoted by the government via incentives and policy enforcement. It’s high time we truly remove racial profiling at large.

The government should double efforts to promote a united Malaysian identity, inclusive of all races and religions (even minority ones). This will serve to preserve and protect the heritage of minorities such as those of the Lun Bawang.

I’d like to applaud the federal government’s decision to remove the ‘ lain lain’ in reference to Sarawak Bumiputeras in all official forms. This echoes the sentiment of the former deputy chairman of the National Unity Consultative Council, Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, who also suggested the government should eventually work towards promoting greater national unity by getting rid of the race column entirely.

He, I and many other Malaysians hope we will eventually become one “Bangsa Malaysia” by looking past race and religion as well as regard other cultures as our own shared Malaysian identity. This way, our unique smorgasbord of cultures can be preserved and enjoyed by all.

Other than that, education is definitely a key unifier and I call for the liberalisation and independence of our education system. Our education system must undergo a radical overhaul, mainly by making the Education Ministry more independent and appointing technocrats, instead of bureaucrats. We must ensure no political entities can use our schooling system as a means to sow disunity and hatred among the youths of this country.

Secondly, I believe in unifying all schools under a revamped national school system where Bahasa Malaysia and English are the dual languages of instruction along with optional mother tongue language classes of Mandarin, Tamil, Iban or others.

This will ensure future generations are brought up in an environment allowing for interaction across racial lines at an early age. This guarantees fluency of the national tongue as well as the global lingua franca.

Hopefully, the act of understanding and respecting each race’s culture and traditions is actually put in practice as supposed to being taught in theory, for instance in “Hubungan Etnik” or Civic Studies classes.

As the adage goes: Action speaks louder than words.