fe•tish

noun \’fe-tish also ‘fē-\

The Collective Individual

Malaysia is a land of diversity. However, the need to adopt the nationstate structure to replace colonialism disposed the country's postcolonial leaders to see its diversity as a weakness – in fact, as potential dynamite.

No doubt, much of that diversity was politically salient and basically of a divisive nature. Agendas and values among potential nation builders did differ greatly and the two forces that had, on good grounds, always been thought to be most dangerous were communalism and communism.

The latter is now passé, while the former has been heavily enhanced, and has left the country with a political structure pathologically fixated with ethnicity – a condition that in recent years has become aggravated by religion.

Over the last half-century, with so much of the country's governing logic being based on ethnic affiliations, it has not been easy for Malaysians to appreciate diversities in general as something that can be positive. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that most differences today, including in viewpoints, are seen through a racial lens. Should a Malay not agree with the principle of Malay supremacy, he or she is loudly suspected of being a race traitor. And if his understanding of Islamic behaviour differs from the state-sanctioned one, then he is in the eyes of the authorities on the way to being an apostate, or to jail.

This goes for the other races as well, except that if truth be told, it is the Malay community that has been exposed most strongly to collective identity manipulation. In the Constitution, it is already stated what characterises a Malay. This extraordinary attempt to define ethnicity legally definition may have seemed a good political strategy, but it does involve over time a minimising of individual space for the sake of the political advantage of the community as understood, and as led and represented, by a select group of leaders.