George Town Festival video: Were Malays really excluded?

George Town Festival video: Were Malays really excluded?

Mariam Mokhtar
Published: Jul 19, 2024 1:07 PM


COMMENT | The gaffe by the George Town Festival (GTF) 2024’s organiser to exclude the Malay community in its promotional video may have offended some Malays, but there are two points to consider.

First, the Malays may not have been excluded. Second, the video is a reflection of our divided nation.

Like many Malaysians, we sometimes conflate the two - Indian and Muslim - and wrongly refer to the Indian Muslim as Malay. He speaks Malay, worships Allah, has a Malay name and maybe more tanned than most Malays; but is he ethnically Malay?

The highest concentration of Indian Muslims in Malaysia is Penang, with many Indian Muslims allegedly facing an identity crisis, asking, "Am I Indian or Malay?"

Some Indian Muslims prefer to align themselves with their Indian ethnicity. In some Umno-Baru branches in Penang, meetings are conducted in Tamil.

If they marry Malays, many switch ethnicities to Malay, for their offspring to enjoy the socio-economic and educational benefits.

Perhaps the organisers hadn’t overlooked the Malay element in their videos.

Flip-flopping between ethnicities has confused them, like it has, most Malaysians. The GTF organisers genuinely thought the Indian Muslims were “Malay” and as far as they were concerned, Malays were featured in the video.

On the other hand, excluding the Malays may have been a genuine mistake, or a clever but risky marketing stunt to generate more publicity for the festival.

Risky, because excluding half the Penang population (Chinese 41.3 percent, bumiputera 41.1 percent, Indian 8.9 percent) would invite a public backlash and closer scrutiny by the authorities.

Treading on eggshells

The Malays who were offended by the video now have first-hand experience of how many non-Malays feel to be denied an identity in multicultural Malaysia.

It is not a pleasant feeling, but it is how many non-Malays feel about being sidelined, denied and rejected, almost on a daily basis.

The reaction of some Malays was expected. Malaysians spend their lives treading on eggshells, fearful of upsetting Malay sensitivities. Nothing must resemble a cross, photos of pigs and dogs are not allowed, and even logos on socks and shoes are suspect.

The “offended” Malays probably live in cloud-cuckoo-land, unaware non-Malays are treated as second-class citizens and called “pendatang”, despite being born and brought up in Malaysia.

Did these “offended” Malays speak up for their fellow non-Malay Malaysians when they faced discrimination or injustice? Many are denied access to scholarships, a decent education, entry to public universities, religious freedom, affordable housing, and jobs in the civil service and armed forces.

The nation is cursed with institutionalised racism because in just about every government department, agency, institution, GLC, public university, civil service or housing allocation, there is a set quota of entries or allocations for non-Malays.

Comical and hypocritical

The organisers of the GTF may have airbrushed out the Malay heritage of Penang from their video but the reaction of the “offended” Malays has been both comical and hypocritical.

Lecturer Ahmad Murad Merican, of the International Islamic University Malaysia, said the GTF “erased the Malay-Muslim memory in its video" and that the organisers were committing “memoricide” and “ethnocide”.

He criticised the National Department of Culture and Arts and Malay groups in Penang for failing to intervene.

Murad mentioned ethnocide and memoricide because it was “a very serious invasion and suppression of culture and memory”.

These are serious charges but did Murad ever talk about the plight of the Orang Asli? Their way of life, their languages, their religion and ancestral landmarks have been destroyed by cronies and politicians, in the name of progress and development.

Did he criticise the Kedah menteri besar for destroying Hindu temples in Kedah? Or previous state administrations, which allowed oil palm developers to bulldoze Malaysia’s rich Hindu-Buddhist heritage in the Bujang Valley?

When successive governments held the Bumiputra Economic Congress, did Murad openly criticise the attempt to “erase non-Malay contributions” towards the Malaysian economy?

He claimed that Malay culture had been excluded since the festival’s inception in 2010. So, why did he wait over a decade to point out this anomaly?

‘Malaysian identity’

PAS’ Permatang Pauh MP Muhammad Fawwaz Mohamad Jan, urged the Penang state government to rename George Town to Tanjung Penaga.

He said to do this, for the sake of “the Malaysian identity” and not “ape what colonisers left behind”.

Will he speak up for the non-Malays who are denied a Malaysian identity? They are often told that they are “lucky” to be given the right of abode in Malaysia.

If memory serves me well, didn’t many parents complain that Yap Ah Loy had been airbrushed out of the school history textbooks as the founder of Kuala Lumpur?

Community leader and a former president of the Malay Chamber of Commerce, Abdul Rahman Maidin, has demanded an apology from the organisers.

He said that the video gave the impression that Penang comprised Chinese and Indians only, that it was “an attempt to erase Malay culture from Penang” and that “it exposes the political machinations to promote Chinese and Indians as the dominant overriding race".

It’s a bit rich of Rahman to make these claims. Does he think the proponents of ketuanan Melayu would allow the non-Malays to dominate?

Whatever the reason for excluding the Malays is immaterial. The end result has been achieved.

Interest in the GTF has been generated and more are eager to watch the events being promoted.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army, and the president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, X.