- The Lost Tribes of Malaysia : The Construction of Race Based Politic

- Farishes talk seemed great, pushing all the right buttons lots of feel good and the audience seem to love it. However Just like when I saw Anwar afterwards I realise you can pick the argument apart. And his arguments were like such a badly stitched bag it could be picked apart all over, I haven't got time to list all of my points against it. Farish is obviously an intelligent bloke, but his arguments were full of holes, no one else criticized him in the questions so I held back.

- I had expected him to say the same as for his Keris talk ..that once again we have politicians making up history.. but that was a bit much to expect .. in these political circumstances ..he's not able to say that Malay is a made-up race like African American ..and that most people identified as Malay are mongrels like the rest of us ... so he chose a different tack saying

1 - "race doesn't exist" : Well many of us are mongrels and racism is undesirable, but the trouble is it works to some extent that's why the old British organisers used it in selecting workers. Nowadays if you need a climber, we know it's no use getting a Nepali guy and then finding out he's a crap climber cos he was born in the city. Likewise if you need an engineer doesn't matter if he is black, white or blue.

- And talking of mongrels yes dogs are dogs, but they come in breeds.

- In indigenous tribes, Japanese and Koreans have a strong idea of race. An Orang Asli, could say their identity is being denied by including them in Malay, same for Bugis etc. One can't just turn up in an indigenous village, and say since we are all humans, me and my 200 family members are all allowed to live here and we'll put our large temple bell here. Racism is not acceptable, but certain groups do generally conform to a stereotype :Fijians big and strong.
- Look genetically aborigines exist.. but genetically "Anglos" or Malays mostly don't .. there maybe some people who can trace all most all their ancestors to Minang Kabau or Aceh or some place in Borneo
.. but so what ? could it be argued that what initially made them Malay was their indigenous culture and beliefs and the first thing that destroyed that was the thing coming from outside .. like Hinduism and later Islam itself ? No, I'm not sure; at a genetic level you are the same race whatever religion you practice. Yes you can belong to a group of people cos you have similar cultural practice say "punks", but I wouldn't call that race, maybe a sociological group. The word Malay initially used to describe a racial group, is being used by the authorities to describe a sociological group.

- People should be able to choose whatever religion they want .. but there is the temptation constantly in Malaysian political culture to push back things in history to make them concrete and immovable. "You are genetic Malay therefore you are a cultural Malay". Since you can't change your genes unless your family marries out then they will always be obliged to conform to this sociological group. Although this confusion between race and sociological group is convenient for the authorities I don't think this entirely malicious, it's an easy mistake to make.

- If a large number of Australian aborigines had become Christian 100 years ago .. could we today go around saying ah Christianity is an immovable part of of Aus Aborigine culture ?

- 2 It's all the fault of the old British : "The British divided up all the races and is Malay politicians who have continued it.", he said
- Again like a politician he identified a problem i.e. Malay is misdefined and doesn't really exist and then sought to pin the blame for this on a third party from the past instead of anyone today.
:"The British in a policy of divide and rule sought to define Malays as a group.",
I say : remember Malaysia wasn't a colony only Singapore, Penang and Malacca were.
- could it not be that Chinese all write the same, Indians also speak the same language so that leaves the rest of people who spoke some form of Malay ie people were defined by language not by "the British"
- see a 3rd way of defining a group of people 1 a race, 2. sociological group, 3. language group. It just so happens the word Malay is used for all 3. This is unfortunate and leads to confusion. Really we should use 3 different words.

- Oh it was all the fault of the British, before that when the country was feudal all those kind sultans had made some kind of paradise, where they all lived in hammocks and ensured the poor got all the best medicine. NOT !

- Is he romanticising that before the British Malaysia was like a US of mixed races ? Apart from saying Peranakan existed he gives little evidence of this.

- 3. His idea was everything before was a happy happy mix
- In other countries people can intermarry, here they can't choose their own religion or intermarry.

- Mahatir said at one time there are racial problems cos the Indians and Chinese refuse to integrate with the "Malays", yet I would say those sociological groups who are flexible it is generally the Muslim sociological group which has by far extreme restrictions. They get upset with their neighbours cos
- 1. they feel uncomfortable with them exposing more flesh
- 2. for having dogs which Malays don't
- 3. Muslims refuse to eat a their neighbours or Chinese restaurants for fear of contamination with one molecule of pork.
- 4. Muslims are prohibited by law from places where alcohol is served, so often can't socialise with their neighbours
- 5. Muslim Dress codes mean they can't share many sports with their neighbours

4- He like a lot of people spoke for an idea of a national unity culture
- I don't like the idea of forcing people into a single culture. I don't believe people have to share a culture to get on Belgium is an example of a 2 culture country.

- He failed to emphasise 5- Far from continuing the recognize the races system of the British, today's politicians have conveniently added up anyone who could possibly be Malay into the Malay basket in an attempt to maximize number of Malays and justify domination. If the race count was split to recognise Chinese Muslims, Eurasians etc, then Malays would not be a majority

- He failed to mention : 6 There are unseen races i.e. Aristocratic Malays, top political Malays

- 7. He criticized main political parties for being sectarian
he failed to mention - mixed race political parties are banned e.g. the socialists (PSM), communist

CONCLUSION : A whole set of simplications which don't bare close analysis . He seemed so confident, but in the Q & A he showed a nervous tick. How the hell could he say the country is racially segregated and fail to mention the if they got rid of the rule that Muslims who supposed to make up 60% of the population are not allowed to marry non-muslims then of course the society might be more integrated.

- Why did he wear a supertight T-shirt is he going for a playboy look ?

- I can see him becoming a politician. Indeed I see in an old issue of Off The Edge I see he severely criticises 50 years of Merdeka seeming to say "celebrate ? what when stupid politicians have spent the last 50 years being sectarian and so destroying Malaysia"

- I have a new theory : Farish prepared a carefully considered scientific talk, but on the way into the talk he was kidnapped and Anwar took his place, cos that would explain the political angle of the talk .. that we are all mongrels and we should have a nice multi cultural happy government and eveything will be OK.

- No Science - He made no reference of what the word "Malay", means to anthropologists. I guess that Aus Aborigine is a valid term , and Polynesian is also so when anthropologists went to Indonesian mountains they said these people in this village are like this and in the next village are similar, but they aren't Polynesian lets call them Malay. I suppose sometimes it's difficult to say where Polynesian ends and Malay begins. They would have been able to say these people in this village are Chinese, and this other one Indian so I suspect that in a pre 20th Century SE Asian context meant someone who is not Chinese/Indian or Polynesian

- Of course even 100s of years ago there would have been some intermarriage so perhaps some people may have been considered Malay from cultural practice rather than genes. ..as I said before that's sociological Malaysian Muslim

- Say if they encountered 100s of subgroups e.g. Bugis1 and Bugis2 etc and if members from these subgroups intermarried they would still count as Malay ? same .. ..as I said before that's sociological Malaysian Muslim

- He points out that Indian Muslims were counted as Jawi Pekan and grouped on the Malay side. Far from this being a whim of the British surely the Islamic authorities counted this as a group Muslims could marry. And see how this broader definition of Malay was not actually begun by UMNO even though they continue it. UMNO is responsible for blurring the lines further by incentivising people to change religion or pretend to in order to get a government job, contract or scholarship.

- I say :The Malaysian government should be like the EU government it should not be telling them to all speak German it should just serve the people.

- Surely racial politics arose in Malaysia cos of 1 language and 2. cos one "sociological group" felt it had a grievences. It is about correcting for past perceived discrimination. When UMNO came in their main focus was on the past not the future. Since we can't change the past it is only by looking to the future that we can improve. They did however create a future where the average Sociological Malay can go to university and become a doctor lawyer etc. The thing is where do we go from here ? what about the Indians and the rest of us ?

- Again it's easy to say British used "divide and rule", but he gave no evidence that this was a deliberate policy in Malaysia.

- On politics - As in Animal Farm - the liberators promised the people they were liberating them from their colonial masters, but once in power they oppressed the same people they claimed to be liberating.

- The future of race based politics
- Race based is partially language based so since people with no Malay speaking parent don't speak Malay at home they won't be joining a Malay speaking party.
- The fact there is a Sociological Malay biased government fuels non-Sociological Malay staying in other parties.

1. the unmentionable 2. People speak different languages 3. People don't choose their own religion, 4. that Malay is a crap language (quite a lot less useful than English in explaining things.. did I say that ?). 5 Malays can't say they are cultural Muslims rather than Koran Muslims so the parties don't represent them they have to "be by the the Koran" parties. So Muslims who are cultural Muslims are not served by Sociological Malay parties are disinfranchised.
-I wonder : Does MCA represent Chinese Muslims ?

- in Europe we have Christian parties if you have a large automatic constituancy it's tempting for a party to try to grab it. Would Farish criticise the communist party for not represeting businessmen ? Also India has a Hindu party government.

- There are non racial parties, but a racial based UMNO has used everything it can to keep them out of the picture meanwhile people are bribed (by scholarships and opportunities of jobs and business contracts) to say they are Malay.

- Non-racial parties will succeed when they speak the languages of the people and stand a chance of doing something e.g. if ASEAN became a country.

- If the Saxons in the UK had a religion which says you can't intermarry, there would probably be still a Saxon language and a Saxon party.

- Assimilation can only come when there is a common language and no barriers e.g. US

- Imagine the same situation in the UK if pretended that all those descendents of original British, French, Viking and Saxon were a special group British 1 to define all people whose ancestors were normally Protestant Christian and British 2 to mean all other citizens, and furthermore if we allowed protestants who came over from Sweden to change their status to British 1 very easily, but prevented Irish immigrants from getting British 1 status unless they changed religion from Catholic to Protestant

- I think if the 4 Malaysian Sociological minorities moved to America they would probably all speak English on the street and call themselves American.

- I think the main thing I learnt is there are 3 ways of defining a group of people 1 a race, 2. sociological group, 3. language group. It just so happens the word Malay is used for all 3. This is unfortunate and lead s to confusion really we should use 3 different words.

but for Many Malaysians it's easy to answer : Malay, Malay, Malay, Malaysian

- particular local situations and political pressure mean the different things 1. a race, 2. sociological group, 3. language group. 4. country name have become blurred into one.

- I think by this unpacking the terms we can move forward.
- it's OK to be a Chinese Mongrel by race, a Hokkien by language , a socialist by sociological group and Malaysian by citizen the 4 terms don't have to be the same.

BTW in the June 26 edition of BBC radio4's Start The Week the author mentions the problem of confusing race with culture