Zech Pharamond discusses his bigoted view of what it means to be Malaysian
My bigoted view of what it means to be Malaysian
A LIFETIME AGO, on the TV, was a British reporter on a characterless square, stopping passers-by for their opinions on the brownie onslaught of London. “It’s all kormas and kebabs now,” someone slurred, in that nasally Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels pitch. “They don’t even speak common English for goodness sakes!” turned out to be a common lamentation. But most were subdued, saying, “Oh we don’t mind, but the inbreeding is a bit worrying, no?”
Then the reporter stopped a young Englishman who explained, “Look, all the people talking about protecting what’s ours, these folks did nothing to earn their citizenship. Their passports are simply a privilege of arbitrarily being born in the UK.”
I thought, dear me, that’s not what they taught us in school. You mean all that Monday morning hokey pokey about “tanah tumpahnya darahku” can be filtered, scrubbed and distilled down to a fluke of birth!? What a truly whimsical existence.
But I suppose that makes sense. In the same way you didn’t choose what street you grew up on, your Malaysian identity could very well be a product of random assignment. You were indoctrinated to find solidarity in the food you eat, cohesion in the language you speak, and consensus in the faith you practice. You’re a finely tuned program, acting out a set of instructions and wearing a code of colours that was foisted on you. Some might even say of culture, tradition and heritage - nothing more than the baggage of long-dead generations. I mean, you didn’t invent any of it, right? If you’re so desperate for a sense of identity, why not create one that best reflects where you or your clan currently stands?
Which might also mean: foreigners both high and low those immigrants of necessity or indulgence - might deserve this country more than the natives who happen to live here. Didn’t they literally uproot themselves and leave behind everything just to be here? I say this with the exception of the men and women who have muddied their pants and bloodied their hands. If you didn’t fight for it, you’re not supposed to claim it… remember?
In case marching rank and file on the frontlines is not your thing, there are many other ways to earn your citizenship. Vote and support the leaders who are fighting for everyone to enjoy fresh water, clean air, good education, great healthcare and a flourishing middle-class. Don’t let it be that the only time we rally as fellow countrymen is Lee Chong
Wei duking it out against some other (yeah, yeah, yeah… he’s retired but who else is there?). Or wait for the selfserving ambition and overreach of some hot-blooded nation to help us find brotherhood in times of war.
For sure each of us feels an attachment to this land, counting it both a blessing and tragedy to be running the race we were born into (like the epithet reads, “I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me”). But our attraction to the familiar can sometimes be misconstrued as love or even loyalty. It’s a pertinent question to ask ourselves if we’re Malaysians because we’re used to our lives here and have developed mechanisms to cope with both the good, the bad and the ugly. Perhaps we’ve assumed life gets that much harder outside our comfort zones.
Or maybe you really do love it here. You feel comfortable with this country not merely because you’re surrounded by kindness, compassion and a multicultural joie de vivre that can’t be replicated elsewhere - but because being Malaysian makes you feel comfortable and confident about being yourself too. You’re a patriot filled with unpretentious adoration for the virtues of this land, while driven by an eagerness and readiness to correct its deficiencies for the better.
For me, patriotism takes hard, contemplative, educated, humble, steady work. It means supporting and being responsible for your family, your community, and the government - to work, to volunteer, and to pay your share of taxes. It means the majority rules, but the majority also protects the rights of the minority. The opinions of our neighbours should always be respected while never overriding our own thoughts. Beyond yellow and black harimau logos with “Pantang Dicabar” captions and draping the Jalur Gemilang across the hoods of cars this August, patriotism means thinking for yourself. Educating ourselves so we recognize the biases in our perspectives and the sources of information that feed our views. When was the last time you sat down to read something of real intellectual value concerning economics, finance or ecology? In my narrowmindedness, I much prefer the kind of patriotism that’s best practiced logically, knowledgeably and quietly.
But if you can’t sit still and meditate, there’s always the 31st of August. Have at your flags, and fireworks and mindless screaming. Your chest-thumping on sloganed t-shirts and steely-eyed looks. What differentiates this hoopla from the cultivated exuberance felt for sports teams, celebrities and political personalities? My truth is that life has become too complex for a primate sub-species - hardwired to ‘belong’ - such as us. So we defer to simpleminded allegiances because we need a community to belong to. We’re desperate to feel we’re part of a larger, more important whole, and the less successful we are, the harder we cling to these outward props.
To discover how deep your Malaysian colours run, what would you do for this country that you would not do for others? Would you come to its defense, fighting for its collective health and prosperity? How much of your own darah would you tumpah, if you had to? Our nationality is much more than a group of people living under a government, occupying a certain area. Especially when a pin-prick can be used to trace our different ethnic stocks.