Why Indian Muslims should not be made Bumiputeras — An Indian Muslim

JULY 21 — The prime minister announced that the government is finding ways to grant the Indian Muslim community its much desired Bumiputra status. As a 30 something Indian Muslim myself with a quasi Bumiputera wife and children, I am not terribly excited of the prospect of being one of the chosen ones myself.

As a community we have always been in a somewhat grey area in the manner in which we have been treated in our dealings with bureaucracy. On one hand we are Indians and on the other we are Muslims, so they are not quite sure how we should be handled since a widespread assumption in this country is that one needs to be Malay in order to be Muslim.

Article 160 of the Federal Constitution defines a Malay as someone who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language and conforms to Malay custom. This allows many of my brethren to be so called “constitutional Malays” as most of us fit in this description. But this standard is not uniformly applied across the community.

One’s status ultimately boils down to the discretion of the bureaucrats we deal with and how we individuals from the community choose to be identified as. It all starts from the day an Indian Muslim child is born, do the parents register it as an Indian Muslim or as a Malay?

Sometimes the parents make the choice, sometimes it is the friendly lady at the National Registration Department (NRD) who decides to classify the child as “Melayu/Bumiputera” and sometimes it is the grumpy man with a kopiah at the same office who says “India Muslim bukan Bumiputera” and registers the child accordingly in his or her birth certificate as a non Malay.

Parents who are determined to have their child registered as a Malay will go to great lengths to do so. I have known of parents who are selective of which NRD branch office to register their child at, simply because the officers in such and such branch will be more flexible in allowing the parents to choose the child’s race to be registered.

I know of a child born in Penang who was registered in Kuala Lumpur because her parents from experience knew that registering her as a Malay in KL is much easier. Apparently it is quite difficult to pull it off in Penang as NRD personnel there are not very flexible in this matter. I myself do not know of the veracity of this, but if the parents are quite willing to pull this off, they must be quite experienced or reliably informed in this matter themselves.

Why all the hassle? A very glaring illustration can be seen in the area of opportunities for education. Every year when SPM and STPM results are released, school leavers year apply for precious university places via the centralised university application portal known as UPU. It is common knowledge that choicest places are reserved for Malay and Bumiputera applicants even if the government claims the system is meritocratic.

I have cousins who have gotten straight As and be denied a placement of their choice simply because they are not Bumiputera Malay. I also have “Malay” cousins who did not do as well as their Non Malay ones and get a much coveted spot for a foundation programme in local public universities in the very same year. I have seen this happen far too many times within my own extended family.

My own siblings and I were registered as Indian Muslims and were disadvantaged as far as the university quota system went. We weren’t straight A students and that added to our disadvantage. But we still managed to get a tertiary education to thanks to the sacrifices of our parents.

It would have been great if we had gotten one of our stated choices when we applied for places in the local public universities, but we saw it as normal and found other options. It was not particularly easy and straightforward but we all got our degrees and gotten into various professions.

My father refused to register us as Malays when we were born. “Why call yourself a donkey when God made you a horse?” he would ask us. His refusal was not out pride, but it was as a matter of principle and refusal to conform to what he saw as an unjust system. Today we his children are quite glad he took such a stand.

My wife and her siblings on the other hand were all registered as Malays and have benefitted from the system. They attended MRSM boarding schools, received MARA scholarships and convertible loans to study overseas or got desirable places in local public universities and have all gone on to very good positions in the corporate sector, GLCs and statutory bodies.

Before you accuse me of taking a pot shot at my in laws. I am not at all undermining the academic and professional achievements of my beloved in-laws, they are brilliant people who worked hard to get where they are. After all one can be given all the opportunities in the world to move ahead and such opportunities can still be squandered. I am merely pointing out the difference in treatment within my own community and family between those of us who are “Malay” and those of us who are not.

There is a clear advantage why many of my folk masquerade as Malays. It is an obvious way to take advantage of and get ahead in an unfair system. They know that if they don’t, they will have to queue up for whatever scraps the system may hand them with the rest the rest of the non Bumiputera hoi polloi.

In fact some will go to ridiculous lengths to fit in. Kids pretend to not understand Tamil during their MRSM days. I even have a relative who benefited tremendously from the MARA system and refuses to be seen talking Tamil in public, even if Tamil is his home language. I am no Tamil language snob myself, but this is an utter shame. One’s language is an integral part of one’s identity. But many see this is a price worth paying for the benefits that result.

So our soon to be granted Bumiputera status should give us an advantage as far as educational and business opportunities go, and we can stop pretending and basically be ourselves. Then why am I opposed?

Because I strongly believe that the Bumiputera policy represents all that is wrong with this country. A consequence of this policy is that Malaysians are divided into two de facto classes of citizenship. The premium class being Bumiputera and non-Bumiputeras being the second class citizens of this country. While many within my community may rejoice with this new development. I think it is a step back for us as a nation.

Instead of figuring out ways to recognise certain communities as Bumiputera for the sake of political expediency, we need to start figuring out ways to dismantle this policy and enshrine the concept of equal citizenship and equal opportunity for all citizens. Perpetuating this policy by expanding its franchise will do more harm than good.

Firstly this will create resentment towards the Indian Muslim community by other non-Bumiputera communities. This also reinforces the notion that on may benefit from the system by being Muslim. We are already seeing some cases of this, and what will happen when this policy is set into the stone of a gazette or administrative order?

This year we celebrate 60 years of independence, and it is an utter shame that after six decades that we are still treated differently according to the colour of our skin.

Malaysia has lost some of its best and brightest people to other countries simply because they feel that they do not have the same opportunities here to get ahead. The sad reality is that most of these people who leave are non Bumiputeras who left because they felt they did not have a choice. They want what is best for their children and for many this comes in the form of equal opportunities and a fair chance to succeed.

It is unfair to say that they left because they do not love this country anymore. Malaysians are a generally patriotic and sentimental lot. We love our country, our climate, our food and way of life. These are things which most of us are quite reluctant to give up. However, many are forced to because they do not have a choice.

If you ask Malaysians abroad why they left, they will say “because we feel like second class citizens in our country” or “our children have better opportunities abroad” or “as a non Muslim I feel there is no future for me in Malaysia.”

Mind you that these people are doctors, engineers, consultants, IT people, university professors,research scientists and so on, people whose skills and expertise we cannot afford to lose to gegin with. But we keep bleeding talent. Why is that? The answer is very obvious.

What this country needs is not an expanded class of Bumiputera citizens, we need a meritocratic system where those who work hard for the opportunities available earn it fair and square. When this happens people will stay on and contribute back to the country one way or the other. They will feel that they to have a stake and we all stand to benefit as a whole.

As for the Indian Muslim community, I say that, given our strong foundations in commerce and now expanding professional class within the community coupled with our traditionally unrelenting work ethic, we are more than capable of competing with the rest fair and square.

In fact ending up as Bumiputeras will slowly kill off our competitive spirit and blunt our work ethic. People who see privilege as a birthright rather than something you earn will become complacent and eventually uncompetitive. They will then start depending on handouts and forever think they are incapable of walking without a crutch.

We have seen this happen to other communities, I do not want to see this in my own.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.