A brilliant piece of thought by Afifi Albarr: I am not a self-hating Malay, nor being a Malay in Malaysia is an achievement that justifies having Malay pride and going around saying Hey Cina, Im proud of being a Malay. In fact, I am quite fond of the different Malay traditions. Look at Kelantan and Negri Sembilan. Although done with their own interpretations and traditions, both cultures have histories of standing the ground for women way before we learn of the word feminism. There are essential cultural differences we can see between these two groups of Malays, yet in observing the similarities, I feel rich. Malay has a beautiful language and dialects too. The classical Malay, for example is so aesthetically pleasing that I am ashamed of not being able to express my feelings and ideas with it. The age old bahasa istana, I wish I can write a fiction in classical Malays. And yes, if I wanted I could have put an effort into it, but Im not seeing any modern work. We demand English education, yet we talk about memperkasakan Bahasa Melayu, or Bahasa Malaysia, whichever you want to call it. I think its ok to import words, or heck, come up with new ones even, we have been doing it for ages, but somebody is not doing work here. Joke 1. Not a few days ago I saw a headline saying Malay graduates are unemployable because of they are not fluent in English. In Malaysia. Seriously? Where are they supposed to find jobs? Tagalog speaking countries? Do Americans find it hard to get jobs in America because they cant speak Mandarin -- the most spoken language in the world? This has to be the biggest joke about Malaysia today. By all means, learn and master all the languages of the worlds, but dont let them rule you. Not in the languages homeland, your homeland. The headlines should have been Some Malaysians are unemployable because they cannot speak BM. My God I feel insulted having to type that. And then we have Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat. Fictional characters or of Chinese descent they may be, but they were presented with virtues like loyalty, integrity and righteousness, although these are not exclusive to Malays, these are the spirits that shine to those who consider themselves Malays. And suppose Tuah and Jebat were real and they were Chinese, they were still taken in as one of our own long before our Federal Constitution was drafted to conflate the ethnological and biological definition of Malay. Isnt this heartwarming? I do not accept racial politics, much less racial political parties. But these are objects in reality which existence I cannot deny nor refuse to deal with. Throughout my still short life I learn that we are hardcoded to look after the number one, and then we look after those we care about, the next of kin, and the richer with love among us love more and beyond. So I understand why UMNO, MCA and MIC were brought into existence. But I cannot reconcile the BN of today, UMNO specifically, with the UMNO that was conceived by our forefathers. Today it speaks hate and reeks of fat acquired from greed. Voices of reason and tolerance are almost unheard of. There is no sign of honest brotherhood amongst its components, everything is top-down. Dont they think this only gets translated into tension when it reaches the root? And heres another joke. The further top someone is in UMNO the less likely they are to spend a week living under the roof of the people who they claim to fight for. How the hell do you solve that which you do not understand? For decades now BN has equated itself as The Country. Anything that destabilizes it is seen as a threat to The Country. For long it moved ahead with a walking stick that it used to whack dissent into submission, forgetting it has been whacking its own other leg all along. Now without a walking stick, it finds moving ahead with one leg to be too huge of a task. Everything is falling down. Except crime rates. But then even that is dismissed as a matter of perception. It is not perception. It is intuition. It is knowledge derived subconsciously through experience. Not any difference than my perception that UMNO had lost its plot. The one leg needs a good, long, rest, if it is not already too broken that it has to be amputated. Perhaps only then The Spirit of Malaysia could be reborn into healthier body and race into a better future. This is not hate. This is frustration. UMNO today, to me, is beyond salvation. Some may think Malays still need UMNO. I respect that, but I cannot accept it. Hungry dinosaurs are lining up to be throned and they wont let anything change and risk destabilization of their ambition, and their ambition is one -- the weak are meat, the strong do eat. To my people, find another umbrella. Keep our tradition alive by staying alive. The old saying went Biar mati anak, jangan mati adat, but I would interject, Bila mati anak, nanti mati adat. Learn from history -- do not put all the eggs in one basket. And this, is what I thought Aura Merdeka is about. Goodnight. #AmbangMerdeka #AuraMerdeka
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:54:57 +0000
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