The "son of Iskandar Kutty" court case

Mahathir vs Zahid: The son of Iskandar Kutty court case

19 Feb 2024



TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher

Image credit: Stomp


In all four corners of the world for as long as history can remember, there is just one “constitutional Malay”, and that person is our one and only Tun Mahathir Muhammad.


He is so proud of being the one and only constitutional Malay in the world, that he is still angry with Zahid Hamidi for calling him the “son of Iskandar Kutty” in 2017. He is so angry, his suit against Zahid Hamidi for what Zahid had said in 2017 kicks off in court today, 7 years after Zahid had said it.


To the uninitiated, I think it will suffice to say that Zahid calling Mahathir the son of Iskandar Kutty, not only impinges on his racial identity, but reduces Mahathir’s esteem as a person of integrity. If it is true that he is a “Son of Iskandar Kutty” not a “bin Muhammad”, he actually can stand accused of the sin of Si Tanggang, which is that of forgetting your roots and parents, just because your fortune has changed.


Why does Mahathir call himself a “constitutional Malay”, and not just Malay, like every other Malay in the world?


Well, this is because unlike a bone fide Malay, who are made Malay because they inherited their identity from their father, Mahathir claims his identity from article 160 of the constitution, which says that Mahathir is a Malay because he “professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language and conforms to Malay custom.”


The fact that Mahathir can only claim that he is a “constitutional Malay” because of the federal constitution, when every other Malay in the country claim that they are a Malay because of their father, has always raised the question as to why is he the only Malay in the entire world who did not inherit his racial identity from his parents.


This question becomes important, because Mahathir is the nation’s most prominent living leader, who has been obsessed about race for as long as most of us are alive. Mahathir rose to prominence by being obsessed about race in the 60s. Just last month, he again ranted on a foreign TV network that Malaysian Indians are not loyal to the country. We can argue that it is Mahathir’s obsession with race and his prominent and paramount position in the country that has turned Malaysia into a race-obsessed nation that it is today.



This question was partially answered by Zahid Hamidi, the current DPM, who said that Mahathir is actually not a Malay. During a keynote speech at a Kelana Jaya Umno division meeting on July 30, 2017, Zahid shed a light on Mahathir’s ancestry by saying that Mahathir’s original name was Mahathir s/o Iskandar Kutty, not Mahathir bin Muhammad.


That he had a “son of” or “anak lelaki” in his name instead of a “bin”, indicated that during the pre-independence era, Mahathir’s identity was that of an Indian. That his father’s name was Iskandar Kutty further suggests that Mahathir’s original racial identity, which he inherited from his father, is that of an Indian Muslim.


So, what is the big deal about Mahathir changing racial identity?


Actually, Mahathir changing his racial identity should not really be a big deal. Racial identity changes after all. If I married a non-Indian or Malaysian in say, Australia, my kids will likely not identify as Indians or Malaysians any more. I, of course, will continue to identify as a Malaysian Indian, but it is really up to me as to whether I would want to pass that identity to my kids.



But just because I will likely choose not to raise my kids to identify as Indian, it doesn’t mean I don't want them to acknowledge me as their father, or that I identified as being a Malaysian Indian. Unless I abandoned my children or didn’t do my duty as a father, I expect them to acknowledge me as their father, by recognising me as I am. To the extent that they can tell, they must be truthful about me, in regards to my appearance, disposition, profession, personality, status, beliefs and yes, also my race and ancestry.


Whatever the reason that Mahathir changed his racial identity, his father abandoning him or not doing his duty as a father was certainly not the reason behind it.


We know that Mahathir’s father did not abandon him or not perform his fatherly duties towards Mahathir just by the way that Mahathir speaks English. Mahathir, all of us must have noticed, speaks English with an Indian twang. As we all know, if you are used to speaking a South Indian language, you will have a tendency to have certain stresses, like that around the letter R, which will give your English of Bahasa an Indian drawl when you speak it.



The next time you hear Mahathir speak in English, or better still, if you go back and check out old videos of Mahathir speaking English, ask yourself whether it is the Malay, Chinese or Indian accent that you hear, when you hear Mahathir speak English.


The reason Mahathir speaks in English in the way that he does, is likely because that is how his father taught him to speak in English. Mahathir, by the way, can speak really good English. This is actually peculiar, for a commoner Malay who was born in Mahathir’s time. In Mahathir’s time, it was only the “atas” Malays that spoke really good English. The only commoners that spoke good English were the Indians, who worked for the British. That Mahathir speaks English really well, although he was born as a commoner, itself sort of tells you whether Mahathir was originally a Malay or an Indian, doesn’t it?



Mahathir, you can also notice, has a peculiar way of being cynical and sarcastic, that is familiar to Indians, but is peculiar to a Malay. I am sure that subconsciously, every Malay in the country would have realised that there is something different about the way that Mahathir pokes and jibes with his words. Well, guess what, that something about it that is different is the result of it being Indian in origin. The way an Indian pokes and jibes with our words, is as distinct from the way that a Malay will poke and jibe with their words, as how Indian curry is distinct from a Malay curry.


Somehow, I think that Mahathir’s frequent complaint that the Malays are lazy, useless and ungrateful, might be something that he might have picked up from his non-Malay father too. If you identify with your father, and your father keeps complaining that your mother’s people are lazy, useless and ungrateful, if your mother’s people are Malay and but your father’s people are not Malay, when you grow up and identify as Malay, you might still believe that the Malays are lazy, useless and ungrateful without believing that you yourself are lazy, useless and ungrateful, because you will take refuge in your identity as your non-Malay father’s son.



Mahathir's recent opinion, about Indians being ungrateful to the country, might have actually just come about out of his observation of his father. Mahathir, if you notice, did not cite any research or study to come to a conclusion that Indians are not loyal to the country. It is something that he said as if he knows it by experience to be true. I reckon Mahathir’s experience likely came about from observing his own father. Mahathir likely thinks that Indians are not loyal to his country, because his father was an Indian, and his father was not loyal to the country.


Coincidentally, Mahathir became a doctor, although he was not very much interested in being a doctor, because he left being a doctor to become a politician at the earliest convenience, might also be attributed to his father and his father’s heritage. Being an Indian, his father might have insisted that he take Medicine, because 99.9999 percent of Indian fathers are obsessed with turning their children into doctors.


There is a picture of Siti Hasmah, Mahathir’s wife, that I saw online, which will show her wearing a saree during her wedding night. I have always wanted to ask Mahathir whether the picture is real or fake? If it is fake, that is fine, but if it is real, I have always wanted to know why, if he only has a spoonful of Indian blood in him, is his wife wearing a saree on their wedding night?

Image credit: X

Is there any official record of Mahathir being the “son of Iskandar Kutty” and not a “bin Muhammad”? Well, Zahid Hamidi certainly thought so, when he waved a copy of Mahathir’s old IC that said his name was Mahathir s/o Iskandar Kutty, not Mahathir Muhammad, as Mahathir likes to claim.


Personally, I doubt if there is any official copy of Mahathir being the “son of Iskandar Kutty” left today. Mahathir was born in 1925. I doubt they kept much of an official record of a common citizen back then. Also, Mahathir was a powerful PM when he reigned for 22 long years in the country. If Mahathir did not want anybody to know that his original name was “Mahathir a/l Iskandar Kutty”, how hard would it have been for him to wipe out any official record of it?



Personally, rather than proof his identity via official records, I reckon that the best way for Mahathir to remove any aspersion that Zahid Hamidi has cast upon his integrity and ancestry, is just by applying a test of reality.


As Einstein once said: “Truth is whatever it is that stands the test of experience.”


All Mahathir has to do to show that he is right and Zahid Hamidi is wrong, is just show us pictures and videos of himself and his siblings when they were young. Interestingly, we have never really seen the pictures of Mahathir’s sibling or half sibling, although has at least 8 of them. If most of them look and sound like Malays, then Mahathir is right. If not, then Zahid Hamidi is right.


The truth is always simple and quiet. It is lies that are complicated, and no one lies louder than he who is lying to himself. When you are lying to yourself, the more you are unconvinced by the lie you are telling yourself, the louder you will lie to silence your lack of faith in yourself.

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.