If I were a Malay, I would also think that the argument for UiTM to open its doors to non-Bumiputeras to have more cardiothoracic surgeons to save lives in the national interest is unconvincing.
The reasoning behind the call for UiTM to open its doors to non-Bumiputeras is dubious and unclear from the start.
Supposedly, the issue arose after four graduates who had obtained a Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons Edinburgh qualification for cardiothoracic surgery were informed that they couldn’t practice as cardiothoracic surgeons in Malaysia because the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) does not recognize the certification from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons Edinburgh. Since UiTM is the only institution in our country to offer a parallel pathway program in collaboration with IJN in the cardiothoracic field, the call was made for UiTM to temporarily open its doors so these graduates could start practicing in the cardiothoracic field.
If the crux of the problem is that MMC doesn’t recognize a particular certification from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons Edinburgh, why not solve it by just asking MMC to recognize it? Isn’t that simpler?
Why use a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito?
When a simple issue is made complicated, can you blame people for suspecting ulterior motives?
The ulterior motives in this matter, I reckon, are being forwarded by some misguided people who assume that UiTM is practicing apartheid by having a Bumiputera-only policy. They see themselves as righteous and saintly people who are against such evil and racist policies and thus, they have made it their life mission to get UiTM to rescind its Bumiputera-only policy and open its doors to all.
I call these people misguided because I don’t see them as anti-racist, saintly, or godly at all. Instead, I actually think that half of them are actually racist and the other half has identity issues, in that they identify too closely with the West.
For the same reasons that paedophiles often lurk in religious institutions and a thief is often the one to yell “thief” when their theft is discovered, racist people in Malaysia are often the first to sign up for some avowedly non-racist organization and call others racist at the drop of a hat. They do so not because they truly believe in what they are saying but because simply to prevent others from knowing who they actually are.
As for the other half of the people calling for UiTM to open its doors to all, they are probably just doing so because they are too extreme in their desire to identify with the West, to the point that they are even aping the West’s desire to repent for its past racism without rhyme or reason.
In the West, until not too long ago, a “coloured” person would have been denied entry to places where whites went because the whites were racist. They truly thought they were a superior race on account of their skin colour and believed it was insulting to co-mingle with people of other races as equals. It is because they were truly racist for hundreds of years that, when the West was finally forced to repent for its racism, they had to forcibly make both whites and coloured people use the same bathrooms and universities as a way to publicly renounce their racist past.
This concept of forcible integration to prove that you have been cleansed from the sin of racism is just in tune with the experience of the West. It doesn’t have any relevance to our own experience in our part of the world.
Nations in various forms have existed in this land for thousands of years, and in those thousands of years, none of the races here thought that the other races were inferior to them. All of them wanted to live separately in their own enclaves without feeling like they were doing something wrong just because they wanted to be with their own kind.
Being with your own kind is a perfectly natural feeling that all of us have. It is only in the West that people of different races have to be forced to be together as a reaction against their racist past. In our part of the world, where people of different races have never been forced to be apart, there is absolutely no reason why we should force all of us to be together either.
It is only criminals who need to be sent to prison to be rehabilitated. Law-abiding citizens do not have to go to prison to be rehabilitated. In the same way, it is only Westerners who have to be forced to live with people of other races as a form of rehabilitation for their racism. We don’t have to be rehabilitated this way because we have never been guilty of racism.
To force Malaysians to assimilate as Westerners do is akin to asking us to repent for the sins of the Westerners, which we did not commit.
If you are truly a reasonable and non-racist Malaysian who loves this country and knows it well, you would actually understand why UiTM wants to be an exclusively Bumiputera organization. All the races in Malaysia actually want our own space and place. Instead of doing away with the UiTM model, all us would probably like a UiTM model for own race too.
We would, because rather than follow the Western model of being “colour blind,” which is actually just a reaction against their racism in the past, we would all prefer to follow our own model of being “colour aware” and treat people from other races as being different, as we have done for thousands of years.
I honestly think that the way forward for the country to rid itself of the racial tension we are perennially stuck with is by allowing each race in the country to continue having their own racial space, where they can be comfortable with people of their own race while being welcoming to other races, as we have been doing for thousands of years.
The different races in Malaysia are likely just resisting the entry of other races into their domain because we are forced to do it. If we are not forced to do it, I am confident that we will make the necessary arrangements to make all of us feel welcome here.
The problem with Malaysia is that we have too many “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who are promoting racist agendas under the guise of promoting “color blindness” and too many people who admire our colonial past, to the point that they are still trying to earn the approval of the West today, despite the fact that it should be clear as daylight by now that our colonizers and their successors do not have any good intentions toward us.
As long as we force all the races to integrate with each other and become one people, or be shamed as racist if anyone doesn’t comply, another 61 years can pass and we will still resist becoming one people, and our racial tension will only grow with time.
It is only if we stop forcing ourselves to repent for a sin we never possessed and just let everybody have their space that we might stop being so defensive about “protecting” our domain from being taken away by other races, and maybe even start the process where we will be able to open ourselves to accept other races as part of us over time.
Hundreds and thousands of years ago, this is how people in this land became one people despite coming from different backgrounds and ethnicities. This is how we will also be able to become one people someday if we just stop this irrational desire to ape the West in every single aspect and start showing more respect for our own ways and methods of doing things.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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