DANGERS AND DISADVANTAGES OF VERNACULAR MANDARIN AND TAMIL EDUCATION.

EXPOSING THE PROMOTION OF CHINESE AND TAMIL CHAUVINISM AND DISCRIMINATION IN MALAYSIA.

…AND HOW IT”S BEING PROMOTED IN SUBTLE WAYS BY THE MEDIA, THEIR COMMUNITY LEADERS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES.

By Mansor Puteh

It’s so subtle only the stupid Melayu leaders cannot see them, whereas they’re so obvious.

The Chinese elders in Malaysia do not say to the younger generation not to patronize shops and stores operated by the Melayu.

But this is what many Chinese in Malaysia do all the time. They only patronize Melayu stores that sell ‘goreng pisang’ but not the other establishments.

I saw a Chinese whose car broke down in front of a workshop owned by a Melayu, and he had the audacity to ask the Melayu mechanic if there is another workshop.

Whereas Melayu motor owners would flock to workshops operated by the Chinese, by sidelining those owned by the Melayu when they can push their vehicles to the workshops operated by the Melayu.

If they can do this, many of the workshops operated by the Chinese and also Indian can become bankrupt since their customers are mostly the unsuspecting Melayu.

What if the Melayu come to their senses and realize that they have been supporting the economy of the Chinese all along but whose support has been taken for granted for so long?

This will be good, so that the Chinese realize their economic standing in the country is not purely because of their business acumen as what many people have claimed, but because of the patronage of the Melayu.

Go to Dataran Pahlawan at Mahkota Parade in Melaka and ask the stalls selling souvenirs to the tourists operated by the Melayu and they can say how the tourists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapura do not stop there to buy things.

The reason being the Chinese tour guides do not take them there. And if they happen to be around, these tour guides will tell them not to buy anything at the stalls there because they are operated by the Melayu, and they will take the tourists to stalls elsewhere particularly at the Hang Li Po well further away, where they can buy souvenirs at.

This is how the Chinese operate, by shaping the thinking of the young Chinese not to patronize stores and shops operated by the Melayu. But they do not do it directly like telling them at the Mandarin schools.

They do it by showing it when they were still small when their parents would take them to stalls operated by the Chinese.

Now go to Low Yat Plaza in Bukit Bintang and one can see the many Melayu customers buying electronic goods and computer products. Without the support of the Melayu customers, the stores in this shopping complex which is touted as the largest computer center in Malaysia will go bust.

It is strange how there is no computer center in the city which is operated by the Melayu where they can go to, thus skipping Low Yat Plaza.

Maybe it will be good if some enterprising Melayu creates a new computer center so all the Melayu can flock there instead of supporting the stores operated by the Chinese in Low Yat Plaza.

If the Melayu adopt the same attitude as the Chinese have towards the Melayu, then it won’t be long before the economy of the Melayu will rise and that of the Chinese to fall.

Some Chinese traders are found to have complained not too loudly how during the Muslim festive holidays their businesses drop drastically.

And what if the Melayu continue not to patronize their businesses as a habit before and after the festive season that will be good.

It can also encourage more Melayu to go into trading, thus expanding their economic base, and also absorb the Melayu school children to work as apprentice where they do not have to loiter the streets and shopping complexes and ride the small motorcycles in the streets on weekends and during the holidays.

The sight of the Melayu youths speeding on their small motorcycles should have alarmed the Melayu leaders and other experts, particularly the economists and psychologists and politicians. But this did not happen.

The problem has been described conveniently as a menace. But the menace is due to the inefficiency of the Melayu leaders to absorb the youth who are mostly school dropouts to be absorbed into the workforce.

This is one reason to prove many of the Melayu leaders in the related fields to be stupid for not being able to study on the matter and to come up with long-term solutions to it until it got worse.

Those Melayu psychologists and historians have also failed to study the thinking of the Chinese and how they ‘teach’ their young how to ‘discriminate against the Melayu’ by creating a certain attitude in them that results in them not wanting to patronize Melayu establishments when the problem is so clear.

How come no Melayu leader has written or said about how the Mandarin and Tamil newspapers do not cover stories and activities on the Melayu performers and cinema?

In fact, they also do not cover Chinese and Indians who are involved in the local film and music industries treating them with contempt.

And in fact, too, the Chinese and Indian political parties and organizations do not invite these performers for their annual dinners or major functions.

The MCA, Gerakan and DAP and the Chinese newspaper organizations have not yet bothered to invite Andre Goh, a Baba from Melaka who sings exceptionally well Melayu Asli songs for their functions.

Do they see him and the other Baba and Nyonya as not being Chinese enough?

These are some of the things that the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia do which mean how chauvinistic they are. And they do not say so in words. They show them in deeds.

Yet, all this seems to have escaped their own leaders in all fields including the Melayu ones, who should have brought up the matter with the authorities so that laws and regulations can be introduced to stop the Chinese and Indian groups in Malaysia from showing their chauvinism too much.

That the Mandarin and Tamil newspapers must be forced to devote some space for the coverage of Melayu cultural and artistic events, and how their radio stations must broadcast Melayu songs and have programs to promote them and the Melayu films so that their listeners can find out more about them.

In the past, there was a sizeable crowd of Chinese and Indian audiences for Melayu films, but the size has dwindled a lot simply because of the discrimination practiced by the Chinese and Tamil-owned media organizations.

I’m sure the publishers and editors do not have a written policy to discriminate against Melayu arts and culture and the Chinese and Indians who perform Melayu songs and in Melayu films, but this is not important.

What they are doing is all so clear that they do not favor multiracialism. They only want to promote Chinese and Tamil chauvinism in subtle ways.

It’s just that the Melayu are so kind to want to deal with them and to get them into their acts by inviting their cultural and artistic groups to perform in their functions. But the Chinese and Indians do not reciprocate.

The discrimination and chauvinism of the Chinese and Tamils in Malaysia have to be exposed.