Ignorance and truth are important words in any language or culture. One talks about knowledge or actually its lack, and the other sits positioned within the perennial human knowledge of truth. 

When all such truth is a comprehensive system of knowing and positioned within a framework of time and space, we call it a belief system. That belief system when entrenched within a community of peoples we call it a worldview.

Any worldview is an integrated and commonly shared unity of thought and life, or within a universality of thought and life for such a community. Every such community is often called an ‘ethne\’ or a people group, which is often translated into the word, \”nation\”, in modern parlance.

Worldviews also define the ethnicity – of culturally held beliefs of and for life and living. Often such worldviews are not questioned, challenged or critically reviewed but are instead blindly adhered to in faith.

Maybe we can blame Thomas Edison for the modern light of reason, which encourages every modern university student to question and review the \”traditional truths or closely held belief systems\” of one\’s ethnicity for logical or rational consistency.

But to be fair to Edison he was not even the father of modern reason. That privilege must belong to the more noble Greeks and their thought systems.

Similarly the Athenians articulated and sought to practice modern democracy that we aspire for today. Such modern thinking and aspirations for a more liberal and interpretive worldview, which is fully integrated into one\’s life and beliefs, is truly the challenge of modern education. It also helps define one\’s sense of human dignity at its best, which is a very modern value of no more than 50 years.

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Tunku Zain Muhriz ( right ) called such a post-modern but self-aggrandised view of a \”truth within community or ethnicity\” as infantile and wrong in his regular column in the SUN. I cannot agree more.

He argued against such an unexamined worldview in his speech at the launch of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas).

At the launch, the speakers spoke of the late Tunku\’s worldview of life.

They placed the meaning of freedom and independence within the Tunku\’s worldview and context.

He would have been 103 years old on the day Ideas was launched.

Of truth

When truth is properly located in time and space and within an appropriate context; it infuses the real meaning of life and inspires new energy which becomes more relevant in both forms of time; kronos and kairos! Such truths situate the historic truth with a capital T into today\’s context.

But, why then are the majority of Malaysians a people-group who largely ignores historical truth today?

I was in Taiping to attend a funeral of a man almost 30 years older but whom I considered a true friend and an ally in the affairs of human kind.

But while staying in a hotel in the heart of downtown Taiping for the first time, I was able to take a walk around the square blocks of roads but also observed that the Masjid Melayu Taiping was no more a community congregation hall for morning prayers.

Therefore, I have a simple and sincere question. Since the Perak ruler, as with other Malay rulers, has declared that he will consciously act to preserve and protect Malay culture, tradition and practices, my question that follows is: If Perak is in fact one of the original Malay lands, why is the Malay mosque at the heart of Taiping not reflecting original Malay culture, tradition and practices?

Tunku Zain Muhriz is the grandson of our first Agong. As he had enquired in his column of the Sun on Feb 12, 2010, why is the Tunku\’s motto \’Unity is strength\’, which is already engraved on the national crest, not good enough as our symbol and motto for national unity?

Both the newer slogans; Bangsa Malaysia, and now 1Malaysia appear to be attempts to provide an anti-thesis or synthesis to the original proposition of the Tunku\’s model of governance. Why is this new sloganeering really necessary?

Custodians for all

The Council of Rulers have also asserted their role as custodians of the Article 3 of the Malaysian Constitution. Can such rights and privileges be protected for all Malaysians, as promised by the same Article?

Are not the traditional Malay rulers now also Malaysian rulers of a federation of the three states, of Sabah, Sarawak and the Peninsula? Or are they merely rulers in the federation of the 9 Malay states but excluding the two Straits Settlements and two British colonies?

\"conferenceCan they therefore perform their non-Malay but Malaysian roles and responsibilities, as already engraved within the same Article 3 of the constitution of the federation of Malaysia?

There can never be a human truth without a defined space and time context. All human truth must be juxtaposed within her historical context of reality.

Taken out of its context, while it can become a very modern interpretive privilege of a small group, it may not help in the resolution of truth matters.

All truth and reconciliation requires a mechanism for truth seeking and truth verification. In our courts of justice this is called evidence.

Even evidence adduced must relate and have bearing in time and space before they can be accepted as true evidence. Fabricated evidence will not stand the test of both kronos and kairos time.

Truth matters and cannot be ignored over time. Forensic science is today a very technical process of a totally rational and technology aided deduction that is driven by modern methods of scientific investigation.

Even older truths can be verified and aging is also today measureable through rational and critical historical review.

Next week I will conclude the second part of this column when I will apply much of what I said about truth matters, inter-faith dialogue and what it means to ‘fully seek to understand before seeking to be understood\’.

This column is dedicated to the memory of Uncle KK John of Taiping, a well-known Malayalee Mar Thoma Community member and leader who lived a full life of service to mankind.