Consider all of us together, critically…for a moment.

Where are we as a People today? Is there even something like "a people" in Malaysia? We seem more and more like a crowd than a people...a physical collection of individuals and communities thrown together at different times, by the Hand of History, that seems to refuse to come to terms with their co-presence or their common future. Or, struggling to make sense of it…by tracing history of our togetherness again and again.

While a minority amongst us have, most of us have certainly not developed an intimacy that governs and guides a people. We are like islands physically close but without bridges or established waterways.

We pretend with pomp that all that are there. But what officialdom and those comfortable with that have done is build a world of pretence and falsehood and force them upon us and our children, and sustaining them by a culture of fear and threats. Many of us have become purveyors of lies and/or unspoken harsh realities. In silence, we strangle the soul of Malaysia and become spectators, one episode at a time, of the slaughter of a sacred hope/dream in the heart-mind of many of us.

The mainstream 'Malaysia Project' is so acutely flawed.

Left-brain civilisation

On the ground, we think our future is in the big and plush shopping malls we create. We want Malaysia to be one big super-market. Isn't that the metaphor that guides most of us? We think that is where we should be heading…today, tomorrow and everyday...to the 'Malaysia Mall' where our identity as Malaysians is a two-dimensional flat reality contained within the 'buying-selling' mode. We want us to be just buyers or sellers, achieving the supposedly perfect harmony of the market. There is no need for us to concern ourselves with anything else or other realities. There are no other realities, by order of our officialdom.

We are growing to be a left-brain civilisation, focussed on cold intelligence, aggressive self-interest and overly analytical concerns moving away systematically from the integrative and the affective and from the benefits of the warmth of our humanity. Our national right brain is frozen and is in danger of being lost. We are losing depth of being…becoming shallow, petty and prejudicial.

We want the world to see us as an example of multicultural living but we have really perfected the art of being an ethnocracy, complete with ethnic silos and hegemonic motives. We want democracy but do not want to actively nurture an individual and community rights culture.

While we self-righteously call ourselves a democracy, we shamelessly deny people to take their grievances or their suggestions to the parliament. We do not want our young to take to the streets but close all other doors for their active and, when necessary, peaceful anti-establishment political engagement. We say we want to promote justice, but attack those who are bold enough to talk/act for all us even in the streets and hurt them with tear gas and irritants-laced water...security concerns hide cruel intentions. We want economic and political democracy, but focus on mindless and skewed material growth. We want a peaceful future but we carelessly nurture an angry generation.

Our national leaders have huge material wealth but questionable wealth of an integrative vision for the nation. We build more and more houses of worship but grow more and more materialistic, and less and less spiritually inclined. We promote religion as territory not as spirituality or as aspect of our common humanity. We want justice but manipulate laws with wealth and power; we promote the word of law but kill the spirit behind it. We promote integrity on paper but rationalise or practice corruption.

We want a nation with one heart and one mind not by negotiation and dialogue but by instruction and dictates, guided by myopic and hegemonic agenda. We have piled into earth tonnes of concrete and steel to support sprawling urban centres but have hardly been able to pile any emotions to build a positive 'emotional infrastructure' to build a nation, together.

'An-other Malaysia'

Some serious reflection on our present cultural, religious and emotional divisiveness, and the consequences generated by them, has jolted many of us and questioned the possibility of us ever living together. It has prodded some of us into examining our delicate but genuine collective psyche, an intangible 'resource' from which a minority of us draw strength and imageries. There have been a good number of personal outpourings that capture a 'Malaysia-that-is-here-but-marginal-and-hidden'. There have been so many references to our togetherness and mutual support in the recent past (even during Nov 25), all pointing to a yearning of the 'possible-but-not-allowed-to-grow-Malaysia'.

The growing and genuine collective psyche has opened us, now and then, to 'an-other Malaysia' of possibilities and challenges away from the mainstream images of it, away from existing paths of growth and away from the limited social identities (expressed in racial or profit terms) offered by such growth over the last 50 years. But because it is genuine and inclusive, it also bears the attack of political vested interests of the old society that it threatens. It is thus seen as subversive. But in the fledgling collective psyche that captures this 'an-other Malaysia', Hope comes alive in imagination and imagination offers hopeful imageries…

There are no indigenous people, no Malays, no Chinese and no Indians…Deep down we want to be just identified and known as Malaysians, living in a just and fair country to be proud of. While the colour of our skin is different, the place we submit to the Spiritual Almighty is unique, the cultures that make us into civilised people varied, deep down many amongst us want to be treated equally and fairly as Malaysians. And, deep down we want our individual cultural uniqueness to be part of our collective being, through active engagement. Deep down many of us eagerly wait for that day when our children or their children will not be asked for their race or ethnic origin in official forms and identity cards. And, deep down we want common ownership of Malaysia so that all of us are guided by a shared and common destiny.

The images secreted by such emotional orientation trespass officialdom's projected images of ethnic silos and inauthentic multicultural living (seen as public relations exercise or projected for tourist consumption). I have known taxi-drivers to workers to students to professionals to academics to religious leaders to civil society activists, young and old and across the communities who have articulated the images of an authentic Malaysia, fondly at times, assertively at times, but at times in a very questioning and frustrated tone.

Can we really have a future together as Malaysians? Can we sit in a coffee shop and talk about our pasts, our children and their future together? Can we join each other's festival (beyond 'open houses') without fear of touching or wishing or participating or that we are doing something religiously or culturally wrong? Can we stop demonising each other as gays or gangsters or anti-government or whatever? Or, punish people for being different and/or having different opinions? Can our young fearlessly but honestly speak up in public forums, even against the government, if they need to? Can we stop politically-motivated intra-communal bonding (which can be cashed out as votes) that is achieved by encouraging cultural/religious inter-communal conflict through design or default? Can we stop using the May-13 race card to stop genuine movement or expression of issues concerning our complex diversity? Can we have Malaysian leaders rather than an Indian, Chinese or Malay leaders? Can we present a problem of our people as problems of Malaysians and not as problems of the Malay, Chinese, Indian or indigenous people?

Can we have a government that stops being a security-state and starts being a 'government of, for and by the people', empowering and enabling all its citizens? Can we have leaders who are accountable and who have the honesty and moral courage to resign if they do not meet multi-cultural public norms and do not fulfil their own political promises? Can we remove revenge and retaliatory stances from our national life and live the values of the religious teachers we so aggressively own and promote? Will we ever grow wise enough to change our orientations, walk together in peace while engaged in deep open conversations, hands over each other's shoulders, with no one leading no one and no one following no one?

Let go the young

Given that our world is in a depressing disarray, are there any really good reasons to celebrate our 50 years of independence? Together we - the present generation - have corrupted the gift of our independence and freedom and have let-down, and continue to let down, the generations to come. We infect them with our pettiness and prejudices. We imprison them in the past and deny them a present and future unlike ours.

One people. One destiny. There is no other way out for our young. It is up to us to ensure that they find this in their homes, their schools, in the public institutions, in their places of work and play.

And not in the streets. If the recent turn of events is any indication, they seem to be up to the challenge… any which way.

Dr M Nadarajah is a sociologist by training. He is the secretary of the Asian Communication Network (ACN) based in St John’s University, Bangkok. He also belongs to the Asian Public Intellectuals (API) Community, a community of filmmakers, theatre people, song writers, poets, activists and academics working in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Japan for a better Asia. He works on cultural and sustainability issues.