In the way that I see it, Mahathir was not born a Malay. He likely became a Malay much later in life.
One reason that I believe that Mahathir is not a Malay by birth Is because Mahathir is the only "Constitutional Malay" in the entire world.
I have never heard any other Malay claim that they are a Malay because the constitution says so.
If you are born a Malay, you will just say you are a Malay because you are a Malay. You won't provide any further explanation, because your race will be a self evident truth, that stands on its own.
That Mahathir has repeatedly explained that he is a Malay because he satisfies article 160 of the constitution's definition of a Malay, is to me the proof that he wasn't born a Malay.
The fact that he repeatedly laments publicly that the Malays are untrustworthy or lazy or ungrateful, is another reason why I don't think he was born a Malay.
If you are born a Malay, you will not so consistently condemn your own race, because it will feel like you are condemning yourself.
Yes, there are Malays that criticize their race harshly and regularly, just as there are Indians and Chinese that criticise the Chinese and Indians race regularly and harshly, but that is mostly because they are frustrated with their lives.
Mahathir on the other hand, has achieved a lot in his life - that despite achieving a lot, he still sees fit to condemn the Malays, is likely another proof that he didn't always identify as a Malay.
If you notice, no other high ranking or succesful Malay condemns the Malay as regularly or harshly as Mahathir does. Be it Tunku or Tun Razak or Hussein Onn or Najib or Anwar or Muhyiddin or Pak Lah, none of them criticise the Malays as regularly or harshly as Mahathir.
Also, to be brutally honest, the way that Mahathir criticizes the Malay is actually the way that the older generation Non-Malays criticise the Malays. That Mahathir looks at the Malay disparagingly as how some older generation Non-Malays look at the Malays is another indication that Mahathir most likely identified as a non-Malay until later in his life.
Another reason that I believe that Mahathir did not identify as a Malay until much later in his life is because of the way he sounds and expresses himself.
I don't think that I am the only one who can notice a non - Malay or Indian twang in his accent. Not only that, the way that Mahathir jokes, uses sarcasm or cynicism in his expressions, is also closer to the indian rather than the Malay way of expressing oneself, and the difference is as noticeable as how an Indian curry is noticeably different from a Malay curry.
Finally, I don't think Mahathir is Malay because according to such journalists like Barry Wain, who researched Mahathir's life, Mahathir was born a non-Malay, or as Wain termed it, a Peranakan.
Now although he wasn't born a Malay, I consider Mahathir as a Malay, because I think it is possible to legitimately convert into becoming a Malay, even if you are not born a Malay.
In my view, the Malay identity is a work based identity, not a birth based identity.
You can't convert into a birth based identity, like the Chinese or Tamil identity - to be a Chinese or a Tamil, you have to be born as a Chinese or Tamil or at least, be raised as Chinese or Tamil from birth.
But you can convert into a work based identity later in life, if you agree to embrace the norms and ways of the people you wish to join, and they reciprocate your gesture by accepting you into their fold.
In my view, the Malay identity is like the Viking or Mongol identity - you can join it later in life, even if you have no ancestors in the group, for so long as you are willing to work together with the people you are joining.
My problem with Mahathir though, is that when he converted into becoming a Malay, instead of making himself more Malay, he wants the Malays to be more like him.
Because he is originally a non-Malay, when he wants the Malays to be more like him, it is equal to him wanting the Malays to be more like the non-Malays.
At the same time that he wants the Malays to be more like the non-Malay that he used to be, he is also expecting the non-Malays to follow his example and become like a Malay, although he himself doesn't want to
be like a Malay.
When the Malays would rather be Malays than non-Malays, he takes offense to them not wanting to be more like him, and condemns them as lazy and ungrateful.
At the same time, when the non-Malays would rather be non-Malays than Malays, he also takes offense against the non-Malays for not wanting to be like him, and condemns them as disloyal and chauvinistic.
Mahathir likely genuinely believes that he is a uniting figure, because he wants the Malays to be like the non-Malays and the non-Malays like Malays, and perhaps in his mind, he sees his desire for all of us to be what we are not as an effort into uniting us to be one and the same, but he is actually a very divisive figure precisely for the same reason.
One of the great tragedies of our country is that we put Mahathir at the top for so long that at least two or more generations have modelled ourselves by using him as our example.
The problem with using Mahathir as an example, is that the more we model ourselves after him, the more we will despise ourselves for being what we are not and despise everybody else for not wanting to be what we ourselves cannot be.
Mahathir has many great qualities - he is energetic, intelligent and daring, but his conflicted sense of self has been the one great tragedy of his life and the lives of everybody else he influenced.
If he was not such a conflicted person, maybe his could have been as great as Lee Kuan Yew.
But because of this one great flaw of his, he has never been able to make peace with himself, ruined his legacy and caused the people that he led for decades, to be plagued with an identity crisis for generations.
Anyway, this thought occurred to me when I read that Mahathir is again lamenting that he has failed to unite the Malays, in a Facebook post a day or two ago, before lamenting how this is going to cause them to lose their country - which I don't doubt is a passive aggressive dig against the non-Malays.
The great tragedy that is Mahathir is that he genuinely sees himself as a uniting figure, even if his efforts only causes division, not only in his country, race and party ,but also within himself.
The more he tries to unite anything, the more he divides it, and the more than everything he tries to unite becomes divided, the more he will weep for it.
In a way he reminds me of the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who would massacre multitudes in the day, and then spend the night praying for the salvation of their souls.
If there is anything we can learn from Mahathir, it is that sometimes we can be our own worst enemy, and when we are our own worst enemy, no matter how brilliant we are, nothing we do will bear fruit , and the more we try to save anything - be it our race, country , party or even our own sense of self - the more we will destroy it.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.