I read with amusement when the Malay press emphasized on the “Malay” as the first settler of Malaya and the former Premier commented that:

In an article in Utusan Malaysia on 20 Nov, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad called on the Malays to adopt a more proactive attitude in defending their rights.

“Nowadays we only see the Malays defending instead of attacking,” he said. “We need to defend our position, and like the English saying that the best defence is a good offence, we need to be on the offensive to defend ourselves,” he said at a Perdana Leadership Foundation talk.

Mahathir said instead of just defending their rights under the social contract, the Malays should start talking about the benefits enjoyed by the other races because of the social contract.

Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra gave out one million citizenships to non-Malays without any question, he said. “If they want to revoke Malay rights, we too want to revoke the rights given to them,” he said.

Instead, I would like to thank the Indians, a minority among the non-Malays, who insist that they are Indians even though some of them have converted to Christianity. Regardless of whether they remind as Hindu or Christian, they are proud to be Indians. They have shared Hinduism with the pre-colonial Southeast Asia and have brought Islam to Malaya so that today the Malay could be Muslim. They have not forgotten their root and immersed themselves into something they are not. They remain Indians so that there is the category of so-called non-Malays as opposed to those who have forgotten. See those who have forgotten their root, their ancestors were from India.

Like Mahathir said, they have been given citizenship by the Tunku without any question. But now they, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, now discriminate against the non-Malays, which small portion are Indians. They, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, now speak of Malay rights and want to talk about the benefits enjoy by the non-Malays. They, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, talk about Malay unity. They, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, defence the Malay rights against the non-Malays. They, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, travels the world talking like the Malays but smiling like the Indians.

But i am thanking those Indians who remember who they are and do not kid themselves the ways they, the Malay who have forgotten that they were once and still are Indians, do. For this, i thank those Indians that remain Indians. When/if the citizenship of the non-Malays are revoked, wouldn’t Mahathir also loose the citizenship his father gained with the independence? After all, the blood running in his body is also Indian.