My father, K John Kuruvilla, turns 90 today. Happy birthday Papa!

Today, too, the nation is watching the outcome of three by-elections in Kedah, Perak and Sarawak.

The new Umno deputy president said recently that the by-elections are not about a referendum about the new premier. I disagree. It is, to me, all about whether he is a \”Bangsa Malaysia\” man, even setting aside questions about his personal credibility.

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You see, it is my proposition that the Prime Minister of Malaysia can be from Umno but that when he climbs into that position, he should stop being only an Umno person and become an ever greater Bangsa Malaysia man.

Nevertheless, he cannot become the prime minister if, for example, all the non-Malay parties write to the King to say that they do not want him to be the PM, for some reason. He needs their popular support to become the prime minister. After March 8, 2008, the Umno agenda alone cannot define the new prime minister.

Today’s by-elections are really the first full sample of the statements that both sides have made about March 8 and whether the BN and the new premier are worth their salt. Their candidates do all carry the values they do stand for, corruption not withstanding.

My father is a true-blue Bangsa Malaysian. Why do I say this? Although he was a migrant like most other Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis or Punjabis and Javanese or Achenese of his generation, he has transcended ethnicity to focus on nation-building and development.

That is why four out of five of his children ended up in public service even though we were only on FaMa (Father-Mother) scholarships! But, God’s Grace has still blessed us with extra rezeki , because one each of the children of these public servants have earned a government scholarship for studies abroad. There is real value in faithful public service. Our God superintends his grace in extra special ways if we live by his edicts, rules and values.

To recognise our Bangsa Malaysia father, all his children have written a book to honour ‘Pak John’, as he is known in the kampongs of Sungai Petani. It will be launched at his birthday bash.

My father, although chairperson of the Bunga Raya MIC branch in Sungai Petani until the 1980s, did not make it up the ranks of the party, and neither was he monetarily richer for it. Even his Datuk-ship did not come via the MIC, but the federal government for his community service. His family is much richer for it but in a different way.

Criteria for Bangsa Malaysian

What then are the real, true, and good characteristics of a Bangsa Malaysian? Firstly, he or she must stand for truth. Anyone who sacrifices truth is a mere politician who is only concerned about the next election, not accountability; they only seek the popularity of political expediency.

How do we know truths about life? Science offers one method of truth verification. The only other method known to me is vide a direct relationship with the Almighty. All can experience this truth if we seek after God because the scriptures declare that he will reveal himself, if we seek him with sincerity and humility.

I believe that my father is a man who has always sought the truth, even when it was sometimes very painful!

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Secondly, the Bangsa Malaysian chooses to love his or her neighbours unconditionally. In Malaysia, ‘neighbours’ mean that person next door to you. Of course it may be easier to love a neighbour of your ethnicity, but to love your neighbour who is of a different ethnicity can be a great challenge. That is why the bible calls it ‘unconditional love’.

My father loved his neighbours almost unconditionally. That is why, I think, in the 1955 local government elections for Sungai Petani, he stood as an Independent and won against a Malayan Union candidate. That is also why, when the Kampung Raja mosque was first opened in Sungai Petani, my father was among the first to donate a stand-fan.

He genuinely had no theological hang-ups of the kind that we all may struggle with today. It was simple unconditional love. That was perhaps why he was asked to read the Merdeka Day speech in 1957 on behalf of the Sultan at the Ibrahim secondary school. Therefore he is, in my dictionary, a true Malayan and a Bangsa Malaysian.

Being a Bangsa Malaysian involves a new kind of loyalty to a new community of Malaysians; transcending Malayan-ness or Sarawakian-ness or Sabahan-ness. Does such a loyalty take away our ultimate loyalty to either the ‘other’ or even to our own ethnicity? No, I do not think so.

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If it does, then we cannot sing: Negaraku, tanah tumpahnya darahku . After all the only ones who I know who menumpah darah are soldiers like the late Mustapha Awang, Bon Hasbullah or Jalil Ibrahim, and likes of the living ones like Kamaruddin PGB and Mike Naser.

Let none of the rest of us claim to be willing to shed blood for the nation. Even the Gurkhas (the forefathers of our Nepali workers) have shed more blood than all the branch chairpersons of all Barisan Nasional parties.

Therefore, fellow Malaysians, as I wrote in my previous column, it is now time to go beyond Umno, MIC or MCA, or the Kadazans of Sabah or the Ibans of Sarawak. We need to become Malaysians of the Bangsa Malaysia variety, learning science and technology in truth and within the methodology of truth verification: that, which is rational and truthful regardless of how we have learnt to translate that word.

Let me make this final point, in an even more caustic way.

Kamus Dewan translates the scientific word ‘virtual’ as maya in Bahasa Melayu. Today, the virtual world may be more real than the real world. For example, it was reported that GhostNet, possibly Chinese-owned spyware, can spy into someone’s bedroom or even meeting room. Such spying was also reported to have already happened.

How then do we explain this truth, for example, to Tamil kids in primary school, who only know how to translate maya as ‘virtual’ – but who only know maya as ‘illusion’ from the Sanskrit roots of their mother tongue?

How would Dewan Bahasa explain to them that Chinese nationals have ghostware which is only illusory but it can somehow get into one’s bedroom and spy on your activities?

May God truly help Malaysia and Malaysians to meander through this river of confusion of terms, categories and concepts, and therefore our identities as well. And may Plato and Aristotle continue to stay in their graves and not rise up as new ghosts to haunt us too.