It looks like the BN is learning from the opposition whose leaders have now become very comfortable with the usage of Mandarin and Tamil in their speeches to the people, in their quest for support.
The PM talks about nambikai or trust in the Tamil language when he does his walkabouts to the Indian electorate, a large majority of whom are of Tamil descent.
The PM has got to first understand what he is talking about when he promises transformation in the policies of the country. If he is really a transformer, he should have initiated the transformation policies and made sure that the results reached the people.
But till today, we have a delivery system that does something else while the chief executive says another!
It is as though the civil service has a mind of its own where old habits die hard and they just refuse to change even though the chief executive, who is their ultimate boss, says that he is the initiator of transformation.
Nambikai is a very serious word in Tamil, it entails trust from the people. One wonders for how long are we to give the nambikai to the BN-led federal government when all our requests have been met with empty promise after promise.
When money allocation is promised for Tamil schools, it doesn’t come or it comes in bits and pieces which will not be of any use to the receivers when they have infrastructure problems to address and land matters to overcome.
The Pakatan government of Selangor has done what the federal government and the previous BN-led Selangor state governments have only been promising for all the years the Indian electorate had given them the nambikai and voted for them.
If the PM is really serious about his 1Malaysia propaganda, he should be the first to transform and start policies that advocate equality amongst the races that make up our population instead of pandering to the wants of the elite few who are afraid that their stranglehold of economy will come to naught if the transformation policies takes place.
The PM must be ready to face the people with the truth and the people will then see how best is it to assess what he has to say with the facts that they see in their daily lives.
The basic problem facing the Indians in Malaysia is the lack of attention shown on them by the government despite the contribution that the Indians have put into the building of this nation.
The isolation policies of keeping the races apart by racial, religious, cultural and economic norms have created a vast space between the state and the common man on the street as far as the Indians are concerned.
The PM has to note that Indians had not only come to this country as indented labourers brought in by the British Raj but had also stamped their mark from time immemorial as the early conquerors and traders in this region.
If history is correctly told as in the ‘Sejarah Melayu‘ (Malay Annals), the sultanate of Kedah, which is the oldest of the sultanates in the country, had its humble beginnings from Hinduism until the chosen maharaja decided to embrace Islam.
It’s the same case for the Malacca sultanate whose founding prince was a Hindu from the neighbouring island of Sumatra whose origins can be traced from the Chola Empire of Tamil Nadu.
Therefore to see Indians in a very pathetic state today asking for only equal rights that the majority enjoys, should sadden any Malay leader who appreciates history and is worthy of the leadership that he professes to the people.
Allocation of land with title grants for places of worship, Tamil schools, crematoriums, and adequate places in all our
public institutions of higher learning should be part of the transformation shown by the PM instead of asking for nambikai to be placed in the BN government which has failed in its 55 years of administration.
A BN government in which the Indians can have nambikai would not have allowed thousands of Indians from the lower strata of society to live for generations without proper identification documents like birth certificates and identification cards.
A BN government that the Indians can have a nambikai in would not have allowed Indians to be convert to Islam unless they show they understood what they are doing and prove that they have embraced Islam on their own free will instead of having it imposed on them by the state.
A BN government that the Indians can have nambikai in would not allow the Indian dead to be a subject of tussles between the Islamic religious authorities and their families because their faith cannot be proven.
Therefore to simply tell the Indians to place their nambikai on the BN government is just not going to do the trick any more.
The Indians have awoken and have formed Hindraf to defend themselves from the years of nambikai that they have given to the BN government which has only replied with empty promises.
The PM should not have backed out from the policy of teaching Maths and Science in English, which would have transformed Malaysian education in a way that we can never imagine.
It would have been a catalyst for the Malays to embrace English and not fear the fact that by learning and mastering English they would lose their Malay identity by not knowing their mother tongue and national language.
This policy would have helped the Chinese and the Indians as well, as their command of the English language would have improved, besides having a choice to study in their mother tongue.
Therefore nambikai can only come when it is earned and for that nambikai to come now, the only way forward will be to have samma urumai (equal rights., Is the BN-led federal government prepared to transform and give all Malaysians equal rights?
The opposition is not great but at least they are making a start in the right direction, which one day may see Indian and Chinese leaders leading political parties with majority Malay membership and support!
So Mr PM, you will never get the nambikai that you want from the Indians unless and until you earn it from us by transforming the country with your policies.
Please remember Mr PM that 1Malaysia means everyone is one and the same so it must be equal rights for everyone under the Malaysian sun. Can we trust you?
