Learning from Mandela and friends
An usher holds programs with the image of the late Nelson Mandela on the cover before a memorial service at the Riverside Church in New York December 11, 2013. — Reuters pic
Interestingly I got more insight from a job application. A fresh graduate wanted an administrative position at our firm and she had this as her career objective: “To contribute to my religion, race and country.”
Praba Ganesan, The Malay Mail
“Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.” (José Rizal in Noli Me Tangere)
The corridor leading to the Dewan Rakyat’s (Parliament’s lower house) lounge is strange enough, but it got a bit more awkward when I bounced into my old debate teammate, the infamous teddy-hugging articulator of weird wisdom, Ja. Understandably, I lost my thought processor during our minute exchange, and presently remain uncertain whether I have completely forgiven myself over the incident.
“Are you still with your political aspirations, Praba? It appears so, so tell me, what will you champion as an elected representative? You can’t get elected if you do not have a value proposition, a platform.”
Before I managed to say, “Did you enjoy the breakfast spread at the cafeteria?” she had already said “Never mind, bye” and was beyond an earshot of me.
Oh Ja!
Did I tell you that she would hold her stuffed toy with one hand while nailing her bed on the wall with the other hand at three in the morning during our days in the National University of Malaysia debate programme?
Gobsmacked in the ambush, I went with something unintelligible, what we used to refer in debate parlance as the “goldfish” impression.
This was five years ago.
Today
I’m not an elected representative in any house of repute or disrepute when it comes to legislating laws as of now, but I do ponder about what would have been a barely adequate response to my old friend.
“Why do I want to serve?”
At a gut level I’ve always been convinced it was never a decision to be made, those who reside in a society must serve, how else can societies grow without participation?
However, I can see in a world where what you do matter as much why you do it, it is necessary to provide a preface to my politics before the crowd writes my epitaph.
Even more now, since an election year is ending with an amorphous agenda for 2014 and a world comes to terms with the passing of Nelson Mandela.
I want to do this, help create a Malaysia where its citizens do not wake up daily to face questions of whether they are truly at home or unsure if they are at ease with others sharing the category “Malaysian.”
That my countrymen can first enjoy being Malaysians before contending with what being Malaysian constitutes, daily.
If you are thinking that after 50 years of formation (or 56 years of independence, contingent on whom you ask) such a basic objective is superfluous — it would appear to non-residents that Malaysia is a haven showcasing moderations — trust me, this is a surprising country.
These episodes
Last Friday I met up with my close Umno contact, we try to meet in person every few months just so that we keep each other in check. I say “Umno” because he joked as I sat at the kopitiam (coffee shop) that the owners of the store were overboard with their devotion to Malay rights, parading their Malay credentials at the entrance, that even he chided them for overdoing it.
So when I went to counter to order, I asked the manageress what she’d recommend and she adopted a race-centric explanation of what I would like because I was Indian. I looked at her quizzically and asked her if this is the way she’d treat a Penang Mamak (Indian Muslims from the state have somehow become seen as legitimate Malays, and in many occasions as the people most Malay)?
She apologised immediately and was most attentive to my needs till I left the restaurant. My friend broke out in laughter, all 100 kilogrammes of him, when I explained to him why this woman came to our table later to apologise again.
Interestingly I got more insight from a job application. A fresh graduate wanted an administrative position at our firm and she had this as her career objective: “To contribute to my religion, race and country.”
I don’t think she’s actually of the opinion this is what will define her outlook to life, I feel rather for a lack of her own personal development as a thinking and free person in her country she has ceded her judgement to the staple dogma fed to her for a lifetime.
That considerations and obligations are carved up by demographics first rather than on the principles those considerations and obligations may potentially lie on her personal moral scale.
She is expected to filter her countrymen using these demographics before engaging them.
It is not only damaging for a person’s development as a Malaysian, it is damaging for any person’s assimilation into an increasingly connected planet.
After all how many emerging market nations are generally filled with politicians with wide access condemning pluralism and liberalism? And they are not chastised by national leaders like Cabinet members, rather, they are backed and protected by them.
Right wing thinking and articulation receives adulation and full access. The harm this appeasement continues to cause will long haunt this country beyond the present administration.
They are not Mandela
I guess saying that I want universal celebration at home of our citizenship built by openness and discourse may be a little airy, to some.
Let’s sound-bite it.
I’ll leverage on the current global theme and state a binary, those who I oppose here in Malaysia are no friends of Mandela. They are fans of the things and ideas that kept the great man in prison for 27 years.
Nelson Mandela left prison with the moral mandate to lead the blacks who are 90 per cent of South Africa. He rejected this opportunity and instead fought for equality for all, irrespective of how unequal some have been under Apartheid.
South Africa for him was for all South Africans, colour was just incidental. Errors of the past are not passports for persecutions in the present.
By rejecting his racial inheritance, he inspired a multicultural nation superior in principle even if struggling with practicalities.
For me Malaysia has natural resources and great people, the future holds no fear for the country as long as those who govern it actively fight hate.
It is the proliferation of hate that is the biggest threat for Malaysia. I want to stop it. That’s the value proposition Ja, I want to fight hate without reservation or qualification, it is the true scourge of our country.
I started this column quoting Rizal from his seminal first novel, and he died in 1896. As he was shot in the morning of December 30 in Manila, it would have been late night 6,700 kilometres away in South Africa’s Natal where I am sure Mahatma Gandhi was still up after a day of advocating against the British colony’s racism. Mandela found much courage and example from that man from Durban.
None of these men despite their single-mindedness condoned or championed hate.
I’m ok if my platform is just standing on the shoulders of giants.
“We must win when we deserve it, by elevating reason and the dignity of the individual, loving justice and the good and the great, even dying for it.” ( José Rizal in El Filibusterismo).
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.