I am the founder of Parti Hindu SeMalaysia (PHM). Together with a group of Malaysian Hindu youths through its protem committee meeting, with the approval of seven state branches, we submitted to the Registrar of Societies (ROS) in 2007 a very clean application for a Malaysian Hindu based political party we named PHM.

Our application follows all the requirements of the constitution and adheres to all the Societies Act rules and regulations.

It has taken us all in PHM years of struggle and much of time, energy, support, financial costs to get PHM approved as a legal party, yet it’s another blow for freedom of religion when ROS rejected our application in 2011, after almost five years of being held in consideration.

ROS' reason for the rejection, which is unacceptable at all, is that the name of the party is confusing.

And what of the rights of Hindu peoples to have a Hindu party having lived in this country for decades, with so much of contribution and sacrifice to the country despite being oppressed and rejected?

And we are being forced to swallow this blatant lie from the ROS even after so much of explanation given to them over our application, and after explaining the benefits of having a Hindu based party to represent our dejected community.

Even our appeal to the home minister to overturn the decision of ROS was rejected by the minister last week without a comprehensive study on our submission and proposal.
 
We want to highlight our plight that society should question and condemn this act by the ROS in manipulating the facts to reject our this noble application from Hindu youths for an alternative, clean, honest, moderate politic platform as PHM.
 
We are now being pushed to take the matter to court and may be proposing to set a royal inquest to investigate the betrayal and lies from the ROS, as a good government servant that is supposed to be fair to all Malaysians.

What is confusing about the name ‘Hindu’; fact remains that it has never happened in history of Malaysia that the name Hindu can be confusing, for example Thaipusam and Batu Caves are living proof of that.       
 

Saravana Kumar is Acting President of Parti Hindu Malaysia.