The racial or communal ideologies of Umno, MCA and MIC has been so deeply implanted into the consciousness and sub-consciousness of some Malaysians that almost everything is seen through the prism of race.

Modern and secular education in numerical literacy, arithmetic and mathematics not only does not seem to have eradicated the pre-modern obsession with race, but instead reinforce and rationalise it in the minds of the seemingly educated.

For example, after 17 labour activists were arrested by the police for participating in a May Day gathering in Kuala Lumpur, a journalist from a mainstream media quickly contacted MIC president S Samy Vellu and asked for his comment on why there were so many Indians taking part in the assembly and march.

Arithmetically and logically, the journalist is not wrong. But it is certainly not the essence of the question. The assembly and arrests were about workers rights and dignity, human rights, the attitudes and policies of the government and the police, the definition of internal security, capital-labour relationships, and the state of democracy in Malaysia.

The better persons, whatever their ethnic or religious identities and backgrounds, to be contacted and interviewed should have been the chairperson or other commissioners of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam), the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) president, the Human Resources Minister, leaders or the labour spokesperson of the opposition parties, leaders of non-governmental organisations that are concerned with labour issues and human rights, leaders of the chambers of commerce and the police.

Whether we finally agree with their opinions or not, they are the more appropriate authorities on the subject-matter, namely human rights, workers rights and dignity, capital-labour relationships and internal security and public order.

Racial ideology

Functionally, Samy is a minister for public works, and he should be consulted only when questions of road conditions, the rate of highway tolls, public expenditure on the construction of public utilities and related matters arise.

The problem is that Samy is also the president of the MIC which claims to represent all Indian Malaysians, irrespective of class divisions, religious affiliations, and ideological commitments.

In the political system Malaysia inherited from the British, Samy is considered the paramount chief of all Malaysians who display a skin colour normally associated with people with ancestors in India. The same logic applies to Umno and MCA in the Malay and Chinese contexts.

The racial chiefs are supposed to know every aspects of the lives of their kinsmen, from education to business conditions, working class problems, religions, languages, psychologies, histories and what not.

MCAs programme to encourage and help Chinese youths to marry earlier and produce more babies for arithmetic game of communal politics almost borders on totalitarianism, albeit in a non-violent or softer manner.

However, the truth of the matter is that there are also Indian Malaysians who join DAP, Keadilan, PPP or the Indian Progressive Front (IPF). Others do not join any party at all, or only identify with NGOs and trade unions.

Similarly, Chinese Malaysians are not only spread out in MCA, DAP, Keadilan, Gerakan, PPP and other non-political civic organisations, but are now also divided into Team A, Team B and possibly Teams A1, A2, B1, B2 and C within MCA.

Malay Malaysians too are now clearly divided into members and supporters of Umno, Keadilan, PAS, PRM and the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM). There are also now Malay Malaysians who reject party politics and choose to express their hopes and fears in multi-ethnic NGOs.

Historically, before the invention of Umno, MCA and MIC by British colonialism and their native agents, Malays, Chinese and Indians joined and supported the multi-ethnic Communist Party of Malaya and its front organisations, and identified themselves with common platforms such as Independence, working class solidarity, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism.

Although this writer rejects the notion of the dictatorship of proletariat, he has to admit that socialism, as a political belief-system, is more universalist and humanistic than the racial ideologies of Umno, MCA and MIC.

Contrary to the myth and lie concocted by Cold War propaganda in Malaysia and Singapore, there were actually many Malay communists and Marxist-Leninists, and almost all of them were pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) vis-a-vis the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The choice was ideological and political, not racial.

Similarly, besides Malays and Chinese, there were also Indians who joined the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle for Independence. SA Ganapathy, president of the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Union (PMFTU) was hanged by the British Military Administration (BMA) on May 4, 1949 at the age of 24.

His vice president, P Veerasenam, was killed by the British armed forces at the age of 22. Both of them, like William Kuok, Wan Ali and Mohammad Ramli, were martyred not because they were Indians, Chinese or Malays, but fighters for Malayan independence and the dignity of the working classes.

Future struggle

The moral of the story is that there was time in the modern and secular past when Malay, Chinese and Indians transcended their racial identities in the struggle for human dignity, national independence and the betterment of human conditions in Malaya/Malaysia.

Like it or not, socialism and the international labour movement has long been part and parcel of modernity and secularism, but unfortunately the left-wing modernity and secularism was suppressed by their right-wing versions.

Seen from this perspective, the ideologies of Umno, MCA and MIC are not only a form of neo-colonialism, but a relapse into pre-modern and irrational past prior to the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

The future struggle for nationhood and modernity in Malaysia is not only against religious extremism, but also racialism or communalism. There is no place in genuine modernity for communalism and racialism, either as institutions or ideologies.

In Islam, racialism and communalism are condemned as Assabiyah. In Christianity, they are forms of idolatry. In Liberalism and Socialism, racialism and communalism are but versions of fascism and nazism. Only by eradicating racialism and communalism could we regain our humanity, secular or holy.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia. Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.