It is interesting that there is now talk about introducing Mandarin, Tamil and Arabic in primary schools. I am in a little bit of a quandary now because of it.

I am Indian Malaysian and my wife is Chinese Malaysian. My kids only speak in English and that is the language of communication in our house. To hold that Chinese has to be my children's mother tongue would be a foolish notion as although biologically it might be that, it is only politics and the perverted minds of idiotic bureaucrats who would define my children's mother tongue as such.

Unfortunately, in dealing with this issue there is this assumption that Chinese should speak Chinese, Tamils should speak Tamil and so on. As a Malaysian Tamil, if I were to volunteer that I don't speak the language then I am supposed to be ashamed of myself and have to apologise for it too. Having taken this position, it has become impossible to ignore the travesty against us English-speaking lot that have been swept under the carpet for so long.

Whats more, we too have contributed towards our own denial of opportunities by remaining apologetic for not knowing our own mother tongue. This also has led us to lose sight of the discrimination that was rendered on us. It is after all not my children's fault they do not speak either Chinese or Tamil. It is also not my fault that I speak far better English than I do Tamil or Malay.

By the same token I have Indian friends whose mother tongues are Telugu, Punjabi, Bengali, Malayalee and Hindi. None of these languages is likely to be taught in school, one would presume! My own siblings, my nephews and nieces, though brought up in a totally Indian environment, speak only English at home. We would all would like our children to be taught English and not any of the mother tongue that is being planned to be offered now.

There are the Chinese schools for the Chinese Malaysian and the Tamil schools for the Tamil-speaking, presumably, Indian Malaysians. Yet there are many Chinese, Indian as well as Malay Malaysian families where the lingua franca at home is English. It is not too difficult to determine if there would be people wanting their children to be educated in English just as the Chinese Malaysian can be educated in Mandarin and the Tamil-speaking in Tamil. English is not necessarily the lingua franca of the elite as one might presume. There are English-speaking families who reside in squatter houses and indeed in squalor too.

This discrimination is not only towards the English-speaking Malaysians who might be of Indian, Chinese, Malay or other origins but also to minorities within the Indian community who do not speak the Tamil language but Portuguese, Dutch, Tagalog and other languages.

What I would plead for is that politics not be the reason why all of us minorities are discriminated against and denied schooling in a language of our choice.