Hindu rights and wrongs in Malaysia

Has rage over temple demolitions shifted the focus away from ethnic Indians’ economic marginalisation?

HONG KONG: As an ethnic Indian journalist in Malaysia, Michelle Gunaselan, 24, is more than ordinarily aware that the ethnic Indian community occupies the bottom-rung of the socio-economic ladder in the country. “Indians account for the highest rates of suicide, infant mortality, illiteracy, high school dropouts, alcoholism and domestic abuse,” she notes.
 
Yet, when over 10,000 ethnic Indians marched on Kuala Lumpur’s streets last Sunday in protest against race-based discrimination and a wave of temple demolitions in Malaysia, Gunaselan wasn’t one of them. The reason: as a person of Malayali-Telugu descent and a Catholic, she felt “excluded, even alienated” by the fact that the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), which organised the protest, was appealing only to the “Tamil-Hindu” constituency, which makes up over 80% of the ethnic Indian population in Malaysia. 

“To me, what Hindraf did that day was not very different from the politics of race and religion that politicians have been playing in Malaysia,” says a disheartened Gunaselan. “It’s time for a new approach.”

Such points of view, which have a critical mass of adherants within the ethnic Indian community, highlight the conflicts generated within the community by the rise of Hindraf on the platform of “Hindu rights”. Such ‘Hindu rights’ sentiment may have been crystallised as a response to the recent wave of temple demolitions in Malaysia, on the grounds that they were “illegal constructions” and the land on which they stood was required for redevelopment.
 
Some would argue that the Hindraf campaign has been effective — because it mobilised 10,000 people on the streets in a rare show of defiance, and drew international attention to the plight of ethnic Indians in Malaysia. But others believe that such a platform could in the long run prove detrimental to the interests of ethnic Indians.
 
Says leading Malaysian scholar and secular-democractic thinker Farish Noor: “While I sympathise with and support the Malaysian Indians’ struggle for equal rights… I feel that by turning the rally into a ‘religious’ issue, Hindraf has alienated a lot of people.” This, says Noor, “is a pity, because the issues raised by Hindraf — the economic marginalisation of Malaysian Indians — are very real issues, and need to be addressed.”

In Noor’s estimation, Hindraf’s racial-religious mobilisation could prove “detrimental” in the long run. “For a number of reasons, it alienates Malaysia’s Hindus from other religious communities in the country: it underlines how small they are as a minority and how fragile they are as a constituency because they are also economically at the bottom.”

The core issue, emphasis Noor, is poverty. “If Malaysian Indians were economically empowered, they would have a stronger lobbying voice than they do now.” And as for Hindraf, Noor says, “If I was in their position, I would align myself to a bigger cause — that is, equality for all Malaysians on the basis of Malaysian citizenship rather than on the basis of communal interests.”