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by Mihar Dias October 2026
I was born a Malay. My birth certificate says so, which in this country is the closest thing to a divine decree. I arrived in Alor Setar, beside a swamp my father drained with his own hands. No subsidy, no committee, no launch ceremony with a giant cheque. The swamp, I note, was never asked its race.
I attended a Malay school in Kanchut, then a Special Malay Class, a finishing school for the nation's hopes. I passed my Higher School Certificate, and the nation, moved by its own generosity, shipped me to America as one of the first Malay guinea pigs. The experiment was simple: could a Malay survive a campus without a patron? He could. So they sent more. Nobody thanked the first pigs. We were too busy surviving the winter.
I came home and worked on a campus full of Mat Salleh, because Malays were scarce there. I joined an American firm, because Malays were scarce there too. In Malaysia, being scarce in a place is a qualification, but being good in it is a suspicious side effect.
I tried to join Umno. They declined me politely, the way a restaurant declines a customer who might order the wrong thing. The party wanted Malays, just not the kind who read the small print.
I married a Malay woman whose grandmother was Japanese, adopted into a Malay community and raised as one of us. By the logic of our national obsession, my wife is the most authentic Malay of all: Malay by choice, not by accident. Yet our daughter walked into her first job and was looked up and down. "You don't look Malay enough." Enough of what? Nobody has published the measurements.
In shops, the attendants ask her, "Are you Malay?" in the tone one uses to ask whether a banknote is genuine. She holds herself up to the light and passes, every single time. A banknote only has to be genuine once.
At the mosque, the faithful regard me with suspicion because my pen name is Mihar Dias. Too un-Malay. Never mind that I write in English more than Malay, a second offence. So I stand in prayer, approved by God and pending review by the congregation.
Then my son, at his international school, was told that as a Malay he was entitled to privileges. We sat him down and asked the obvious question: What privileges?
We checked under the sofa. We checked the drawers. I am a man who went to America as a guinea pig, was turned away by the party of my own people, and had his daughter's ethnicity audited at a job interview. If there is a privilege, it is filed under a ministry I have never been introduced to.
Here is what I have actually inherited. A swamp, drained. A language I am policed on, a religion I am cross-examined on, and a face I am measured on. Yes, I could buy Amanah Saham Bumiputera, though even that had its drama. Some of my Indian Muslim friends found their Malayness reviewed by clerks like an overdue library book.
So to my son I say: yes, you are Malay. It means you will be too Malay for some rooms and not Malay enough for others, and that the definition shifts depending on who needs you to be what.
Which brings me, conveniently, to an invitation.
Gerakbudaya is hosting a discussion titled, with admirable nerve, "What Does It Mean to Be Malay?" It promises to look at the diversity of Malay experiences across regions, generations and communities, and at how language, customs, faith, migration and social change shape belonging. It even proposes to value our heritage while making room for different ways of being Malay.
Different ways of being Malay! My daughter has been waiting twenty-odd years for someone to say it out loud, preferably before the shop attendant asks.
It takes place on Saturday, 21 November, 2pm to 4pm, on the first floor of Gerakbudaya, 2 Jalan Bukit 11/2, Petaling Jaya, with Deborah Henry moderating. Two hours is a generous allowance for a question the state has been answering by decree since before I was born.
I will be there, birth certificate in hand, pen name and all. Bring your own proof of authenticity. Bring the ones who don't look the part, don't write the part, and don't pray where they are expected to. Let us finally ask in a room full of books what the privileges are, and who is holding them.
If someone finds mine, I would like it back. I would like to see what it looks like. Like the swamp's original owner, it has yet to be found.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@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!
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