Reflections

Logos of the principal political parties of Malaysia It is Election Day in Malaysia this Sunday. Elections here are held every five years and luckily for them, both state and federal elections are held together on the same day. Only one state has its elections out of synchrony. This election is being touted as one of most significant in Malaysia’s history. There is a real possibility that the ruling party, the Barisan National will be voted out in what will be a huge upset. This coalition of parties has been ruling Malaysia in several avatars since independence and now the time has come, according to many, for the opposition to be given a chance. In the last elections which were held in 2008, there were many surprises. For the first time ever, The Barisan National (BN) lost control of three of the most important states of Malaysia: Selangor, Penang and Perak. Later defections, probably fuelled by huge infusions of cash, led to the regaining of Perak , but the other two states as ...

I am of that vintage that I can remember times when we had no TV and finally one channel in the idiot box. This was our good old Doordarshan, now totally neglected, except when they forcefully grab the rights for sports events held in India. There were some good programmes, some extremely boring and the highlight of the programming was the news. I would be guilty of injustice if I failed to mention some serials that they produced which have set benchmarks that today’s saas bahu serials never come close to matching, but, the news was the highlight of the Doordarshan day. Everybody watched Doordarshan news those days. You had no alternative, there was no other channel. The newscasters became famous and I am told that they used to receive love letters and fan mail aplenty. The news however was another thing. Doordarshan was called, in those days, not without reason, IndiraDarshan. The reason was of course the single minded devotion to the then Prime Minister and her doings. Not that thing...

Yesterday I got into an argument with one of the Indian residents of the condominium where I live. This young man, while discussing living conditions in Malaysia nd how it compares with life back home began to bemoan the lack of independence for Malaysian women, particularly of the Muslim faith. As proof of this he cited the widespread use of the tudong, the head scarf, which is widely, though not compulsorily used in Malaysia among Muslim women. (The Prime Minister’s wife does not wear a tudong.) There has been a hoo-hah in the press recently about some teacher who insisted that his schoolgirl charge wear the tudong at least during the duration of the Ramadan month . This has set off a lot of brouhaha in the press and the comment was in this context. In recent times, Muslim women have been criticized for sometimes voluntarily draping themselves in burkhas, hijabs and for covering their hair. This has led to even legislation in Western European countries preventing them from doing so...

I wake up nowadays to the sound of the koel’s call. It is untimely, at least that is what I would have thought in India where we associate the koel with the onset of Spring. It could , at least during my student days be heard even in central Calcutta by lanes. However I now remember that this call had welcomed me when I came to Malaysia one year ago. How time flies, it has already been a year since I came here and it is time to take stock. What are my impressions? The first thing that strikes you as you enter the country through the KLIA is the wonderful infrastructure that has been built up. The highways are better than anything I have seen in the West, and most of the other infrastructure is also impressive. It is now a semi developed country, far ahead of India or any other South Asian country. It was raining than too, just as it does every day now. And well it might as this is the rainy season: so the first lesson to be learnt here is that the seasons simply do not resemble anyth...

The Chinese form about 25 % of the population of Malaysia. They came to fill the demand for labour that developed in the tin mines, docks and mills that developed when the British took over the Malay Peninsula in the early part of the nineteenth century. They were mainly from the Southern part of China and soon took over most of the commerce and trading in Malaysia. They were also in majority in the principal tin mining states of Selangor and Perak. Together with their economic well being came political power as most of the Sultans were soon in debt to the rich Chinese merchants because of their profligate ways. Most of the Chinese worked very hard to build up their fortunes and a large majority of the immigrants stayed on in Malaysia and imported brides from the mother country. This was the origin of the thriving Chinese community which we see today, to my mind the most visible part of the mosaic that makes up modern Malaysia. There were many vicissitudes in between, the communist r...