APRIL 2 — Bizarre to say the least that the 80th anniversary of the Malayan Union yesterday went without mention.

That seminal moment in this country about to start its jog to independence whence neighbours claimed it in a sprint with a sprinkle of gunpowder.

Malayan Union would have rendered Jus Soli the law of the land. Citizenship as a birthright. If you were born in Malaya, by definition you were Malayan.

It would have formalised Malays as a demographic minority in the country.

The genesis of Umno is from there. The genesis of the “us versus them” also was formalised when the Malayan Union was upended.

Umno’s vision trumped Putera-AMCJA’s People’s Constitution recommendations via British complicity, in the form of the Federation of Malaya structure which shaped independent Malaya’s constitution.

Is Jus Soli or Jus Sanguine (birthright by parents or ancestral links) as a debate still valid in 2026?

Because most Malaysians born in the last 30 years are both delivered here — Sunway Medical Centre or Hospital Ampang, like that — and with both parents born here. Probably ushered in from the womb by doctors who were born here to Malaysian parents.

So much has changed, as time does to any society. Time melds people together.

Today, is it still “us and them”, or worse, “us versus them”?

It seemed in 1991 when Mahathir Mohamad in his tenth year in office declared Bangsa Malaysia as part of Wawasan2020 that the past of re-examining “us and them” was over.

It was symbolic since Mahathir was from the initial generation of Umno, the party that held on to “us versus them” as its raison d’être — reason for existence.

It felt that his generation came around to the fact it’s Malaysia first despite the past and that being Malaysian mattered more than other demographic details. From Padang Besar to Semporna, a nation of Malaysians.

The enthusiasm for Bangsa Malaysia was palpable. It did not last long. At the first sign of critics asking whether Bangsa Malaysia trumped Bangsa Melayu, the whole campaign collapsed.

No Umno leader, including Mahathir, and then vice-president Anwar Ibrahim, was willing to clarify the ascendancy of Malaysian citizenship.

It was a wishy-washy discourse of how kaum and bangsa are two separate constructs or interchangeable terms. It went back and forth with no conclusion that the millions who lived then and live still struggle to explain to others what did Bangsa Malaysia actually mean then, or even now.

It is poetic in that sense that Wawasan2020 is almost forgotten and that 2020 is more synonymous as the year of Covid19. Poetic indeed it was the year Mahathir exited unceremoniously for the second time as prime minister.

It was not reassuring that his replacement was Muhyiddin Yassin who in 2010 uttered the infamous lines which have followed him long before criminal trials: “I am Malay first, but being Malay doesn’t mean I am not Malaysian.”

‘Us and them’ with concrete foundations

I have some good news.

Despite the online vitriol in a country infested with cybertroopers it is safe to declare “us versus them” is dead. There are no battlelines today between those whose great-grandparents were about to benefit from Malayan Union and those whose great-grandparents opposed the Malayan Union.

However, this remains a polarised nation. Hard to find a country as old as us and rich as us with the level of polarity present here.

So, unfortunately, “us and them” has not been weeded out. It renders us fragile, for events, developments, tragedies and mistakes are seen far more through the lens of race than polite.

Too many Malaysians preface their racism with the lines “I do not want to be racist” and too many present when it’s said stay silent.

Is that a fair summation?

Yes, if you consider the overwhelming number of times Malaysians threaten fellow Malaysians that “they should go back to where they came from” and an equal number of Malaysians bellow to their opponents “You are not from here too, go back also.”

The mistrust from the Malayan Union era persists.

The story of us

“Us and them”, will eventually morph into just “us”. It’s inevitable despite the best efforts of dissenters. What will be the first problem for the just “us” generation would be to worry too many have departed since they were too tired to wait for the “us” age.

There would be a time when those from a hundred years after Malayan Union who’d find the idea that there were Malaysians who opposed Jus Soli a century before an anathema. In the future, the past always appears petty.  Can we of the present countenance slavery which was common for several millennia? Yet, it was for a long, long time.

It is the speed of us getting there that is in doubt. Braver leaders accelerate shifts. Our passage to nationhood was stalled, not the least in the 1990s when Mahathir was unwilling to back Bangsa Malaysia with substance and his own political capital. He could have traded the title longest serving prime minister with a meatier title. Our own Lincoln, Ataturk or Mandela, only if.

The Malayan Union is a reminder that the best intentions do not yield without a ready population. It is a stark warning that prejudice warms up to more people than a conviction around principles.

It’s a reminder that when a system is rejected by fear and bigotry, that in the distant future when the system is forgotten like it was yesterday, the fear and bigotry associated with it and seen as the winner carries on as a stumbling block even in a different time.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.