Change Your Race - Retain Mother Tongue

A few days ago, the president of the Malaysian Indian Muslim Congress (Kimma), Syed Ibrahim Kader, advised Indian-Muslim children in Malaysia to speak Tamil more often lest they forget their mother tongue.

I burst out laughing upon reading the news. Let me tell you why.

In 2005, Kimma passed a motion during its 30th annual general meeting, appealing to the government to bestow the status of Malay to Indian Muslims born in Malaysia. And in 2006, Kimma’s president met the Prime Minister of Malaysia, attempting to secure the Bumiputera status for Indian-Muslims.

A political party formed to represent the interests of the Indian Muslim community in Malaysia, Kimma decided to sacrifice the roots and true identity of the Indian-Muslims in exchange for special quotas in the civil service, federal scholarships, business licenses and enrolment in public institutions of higher learning.

But to be fair, Kimma isn’t the only one championing the Malay agenda, for Gepima (Malaysian Indian Muslim Youth Movement) and Permim (Federation of Indian Muslim Associations of Malaysia) are also very favourable about converting Indian Muslims to Bumiputera Malays.

“We feel uncomfortable to be known as Indians. Malaysian Indian Muslims suffer an inferiority complex by being regarded as Indians” – Gepima (New Straits Times, 2008).

“It is about time Indian Muslims are uplifted from their socio-economic stand and recognised as Bumiputras” – Permim (Malaysian Digest, 2015).

Now that Kimma and friends have exchanged their preference for chutney and dhal to tempoyak and budu, I ask what right do they think they have to champion Tamil as the mother tongue of Indian Muslims? If they are so eager to sacrifice our race in exchange for privileges, why not just go ahead and champion the Malay language as well?

The thing is, religion can be changed – it is a matter of faith; mother tongue can be changed – it is a matter of the language a person has grown up speaking from early childhood (as per the Oxford Dictionary); but race can never be changed – our genetic identity is fixed in our DNA. Oddly, here we have Kimma showing a dire lack of common sense as they aspire to change our race but not our mother tongue. But then again, it is Kimma we are talking about – naturally common sense is rather uncommon to them.

Seriously, I do not know what’s more embarrassing – the fact that Kimma does not want Indian Muslims to be recognised as Indians or the fact that Kimma is still fighting for Tamil as our mother tongue while begging not to be recognised as Indians.

If wearing the baju melayu and songkok; the baju kurung and kebaya, entitles Indian Muslims to be recognised as Malays, why don’t we get a keris as well and start calling ourselves bangsawan?

Fa Abdul is an FMT columnist.