The first time I saw Ibrahim Ali was four decades ago at a combined meeting of students’ unions organised by the PKPM (national federation of student unions). He was one of the union representatives from Institut Teknoloji MARA student’s union.

No one could have missed his presence. He was loud. Even at that young age, he was already a boisterous champion of Malay rights. Ibrahim Ali was indeed an angry young man. We non-Malay students were more than annoyed with all the noise he was making. That was in the immediate aftermath of May 13 and that’s the way things were then. Everyone just tolerated unreasonableness.

Ibrahim Ali is still an angry man, even if he has grown older by 40 years or so. He has just launched a pribumi NGO called Perkasa, meaning “mighty“ in English. He’s still berating others over Malay rights and is as loud as ever. And still unreasonable.

He is not alone. Other racists too wanted to hold a May 13 rally. Thank goodness for fear of losing Chinese votes in the Sibu by-elections, the government scrambled to call it off.

But Ibrahim Ali or Perkasa are no racists, so they tell us.

“I am not a racist. We are only asking what is due to the Malays under Article 153 of the Constitution. We are not saying, don’t give this or that to the non-Bumiputra. Nowhere in my speeches do I say take this from the Chinese, don’t give that to the Indians,” the Perkasa chief who is also the independent MP for Pasir Mas was quoted as saying.

Racism is a sociological phenomenon. One dictionary defines racism as:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

But that does not tell us what makes a person racist.

I have a family friend. She and her husband are Chinese to the core but they are very friendly to everyone they meet. Even to strangers.

One day the wife surprised us by saying that she has told he daughter who was then studying in Sydney in no uncertain terms that she is not to marry an Australian. Not even an ABC or Australian-born Chinese.

Is she a racist? Why, she wouldn’t even hurt a mouse. It’s just that she wanted her daughter to marry only a Malaysian Chinese. By no stretch of imagination would she ever consider herself a racist.

The Chinese in Malaysia call themselves Malaysian Chinese, Malaysians first. Both my paternal and maternal sides are Peranakan, or Straits-born Chinese. We speak a kind of Hokkien that is not spoken in China or for that matter anywhere else. It’s uniquely Penang-Hokkien with Malay incorporated words like sabun, tuala, sendok to mean soap, towel and ladle respectively. Our food has a dash of this and a garnish of that, so it’s called nyonya culinary; neither Chinese nor Malay but a blend in between. Very nice; hot and savoury at the same time. So we are equally at home being both Malaysian and Chinese at the same time. We are the original 1Malaysia before someone else plagiarised that idea.

When we were living in Australia, all the fair dinkums considered themselves Aussies regardless of whether they are Brits, Vietnamese, Italians, Chinese, Germans and so on. There are 142 ethnic groups in Australia and all of them consider themselves nothing other than Australians. Except for permanent residents or foreigners. So we identified ourselves by our nationality as Malaysians rather than Chinese. But that didn’t make us any less Chinese. We were glad no one called us pendatang or penumpang the six years we were there. That’s being civilised. That doesn’t mean that there are no racists in Australia. Sure there are, Pauline Hanson being a notorious example. And she was even an MP at one time.

We would become less parochial if we think of a Malaysia that has 182 ethnic groups. According to language mapping specialists, an Orang Asli language group in Pahang known as Mintil may have no remaining speakers. It is reckoned as one of the 473 languages in the world that are endangered or nearly extinct.

In Sarawak there are 46 living languages; of these 44 are living languages and two have no known speakers left or have become extinct. Among the endangered languages in that state are Punan Batu 1 that is spoken by an estimated 30 people in west of Long Geng, in Belaga. The other is Sian or Sihan with 50 speakers still alive; also in the Belaga region.

Sabah is said to have 52 living languages and none extinct but some like the Serudung Murut in the Tawau district may have only 350 speakers left, thus close to extinction.

I hope the next time before Datuk Ibrahim Ali draws his keris and brandish it in defence of Malay rights as he did at Perkasa’s recent launching, he will also consider the rights of all others including the Sians, the Serudung Muruts and the Mintils, especially when they are also primbumis like him. They too enjoy a special position under Article 153 of the Federal Constitution. In the face of extinction, there’s urgency to tend to their plight in merely having to survive as a people.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,

about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.