I am very disturbed by the Johor Umno liaison chief\’s policy speech questioning and undermining the government\’s Bangsa Malaysia Policy.

I think he should resign if he cannot accept Bangsa Malaysia as an approved and agreed public policy already enshrined in the Wawasan 2020.

If he is not happy with the concept, he should bring it up at the relevant forum and not shoot his mouth off at the wrong setting.

As head of Barisan Nasional in the state, it is unbecoming of him to make a public statement questioning the policy, even if he made it only in the context of the state Umno convention, and probably speaking to a racial gallery in Johor.

Come on, leaders of this nation we call Malaysia; if you cannot lead, please resign and find something more useful to do.

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What is the difference between the Johor Umno head\’s statement and that of deputy ministers S Sothinathan of MIC and Ong Tee Keat of MCA? Should he not also be equally reprimanded? Why haven\’t cabinet ministers or party heads, except for Gerakan\’s Dr Lim Keng Yaik ( photo ), said anything? Are they scared? Why?

As a first class citizen trained at the Royal Military College (RMC), the best school at our time and as people trained to fight and die for this nation and its flag, I take exception to that remark. It was not necessary unless he was trying to compete with the likes of the noisy backbenchers in Parliament.

When the deputy premier reprimanded a more senior party leader of another state and another party for a lesser comment, why was this leader only \”interpretive in his comments on this issue?\” Maybe the prime minister has to clear the air.

Symbol of unity

Now back to my favourite concept of Bangsa Malaysia, a symbol of national unity and togetherness of Malaysians at the level of national synergy.

First, we must begin with a better understanding of some embedded etymological concepts and definitions. The words and concept Bangsa Malaysia are not merely Malay words or a Malay concept. In fact, if you follow the recent logic of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, this can easily be considered a mixed word or bahasa rojak . \’Malaysia\’ is not a Malay word; in fact in Bahasa Melayu, the country is called \’Tanah Melayu\’.

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The first use of the concept of \’Malaysia\’, as geography, must have been related to the English language and its use of \’Malay\’ as a descriptor of \’Melayu\’ people. Therefore, if the root word for Malaysia is \’Malay\’, Malaya is \’the land of the Malays\’. The nation-state of Malaysia was only born in 1963 and belongs to all Malaysians of Malay, Orang Asli, Chinese, Indian, Sarawakian and Sabahan descent.

This is also why Sabahans and Sarawakians cannot accept 1957 as the birth date of the nation-state\’s \’merdeka\’. Malaysia must always remain an enlarged concept made up of the peoples of the three components states of Persekutuan Tanah Melayu, Sarawak and Sabah.

Second, bangsa is variously translated as \’race\’ or \’ethnicity\’ or even as a \’nation-state\’ as in the popular use of the term Bangsa-bangsa Berstatu to refer to the United Nations. In fact, the root word for nation is ethne , the Greek word for race or ethnicity. The real and correct translation is therefore \’a people group\’ based on ethnic features like language spoken and heritage and culture.

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Race or ethnicity has often very little or nothing to do with religion; although technically in the Federal Constitution, the religion of the Malays is declared as Islam and thereby protected and preserved. Premised on this, only if said in Bahasa Melayu can we connote that \’Bangsa Melayu\’ refers only to the Malay race in Peninsular Malaysia.

This appears to be the argument of the Johor Umno head. But surely he should know better, being a scholar and professor before he became a politician; even more so since he was educated in the English medium with Bahasa Melayu as his mother-tongue. Be that as it may, I can only impute naughty motives for his statement; he must have been playing to a race-based gallery and drumming up support for his agenda at the on-going Umno general assembly or even the next one.

Support single identity

While I will not hold my breath for the cabinet to reprimand him, I think all true Malaysians who subscribe to the social contract of 1957 must stand up and support the concept of Bangsa Malaysia as a more general concept of a Malaysian Malaysia and not a Melayu concept of race or ethnicity-based cultural hegemony.

I would like to support Lim who has defended this nationalistic concept; but then it is also consistent with their multi-racial concept of Gerakan as a movement for Malaysians. I would also like to thank Najib Abdul Razak for raising the bar on the same discussion by defending it and deflecting the need to refer to its explicit mention in the constitution.

The Rukunegara or bumiputera are not mentioned in the constitution, but that has not stopped us from using and evolving these sociological concepts for social purposes.

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So, my appeal is to all Malaysians, and especially those who are born after 1963; you know no other nation. Everyone in this beloved nation is Rakyat Malaysia or Bangsa Malaysia. Please do not ask them to reduce themselves to their base ethnicity, except for cultural and other community reasons.

As citizens we all carry passports which declare our identity as Malaysians; either of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan or Iban descent. The latter is our ethnic origin, but the former is our national identity; let us build, develop and evolve it to such a stage that when we sing the \’Negaraku\’, we all can truly say tanah tumpahnya darah ku .

While many of us are ready to shed blood for religion and other reasons, I am not sure how many will shed blood for our nationhood.

But, that is what we were all trained to do at the RMC. So we salute the flag – it carries not racial or religious connotation. God Bless Malaysia.