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Indians
in Malaysia, and why is New Delhi handicapped?
 Hindus
are being stripped of their dignity and self-respect by this
vindictive act. The Indian government has also failed to take note
As
a community newspaper, the WSN often takes up causes and cudgels
that have to do with the Sikhs, but then Sikhism is necessarily an
ism that desires Sarbat Da Bhala. The world knows the underlying
meaning of the sacrifice made by the ninth Sikh Guru, Guru Tegh
Bahadur ji, and Sikhs everywhere remain committed to stand up for
the underdog, the disadvantaged and the kirti, no matter what his
religious affiliations.
It
is in this context that we focus here on the fate of the thousands
of Indian-origin citizens of Malaysia who are currently at the
receiving end of the regime there, and except for the Tamil Nadu
leader and Chief Minister Karunanidhi, no Indian leader of any worth
has raised his voice. In fact, the federal authorities in India and
the Indian Parliament have merely indulged in minimal lip service.
Malaysia's demography boasts of 2.7 crore Malays (60 per cent),
ethnic Chinese (24 per cent), ethnic Indians (10 per cent) and
indigenous tribes (6 per cent). Like neighbouring Indonesia,
Malaysia too has until now displayed remarkable tolerance of
religious pluralism, which is rare for a Muslim-majority country.
But of late, the People of Indian Origin, most of them Hindus,
are being subjected to discrimination, injustice and persecution.
Islam is Malaysia’s official religion. All Malays are, by the
constitution, Muslim. The law bars their conversion out of Islam,
but permits proselytisation of non-Muslims.
There was the famous case in 2005 of M. Moorthy, an Everest climber
who became a national hero. After death, he was buried according to
Islamic rites. Reason: the Sharia court upheld the Muslim claim that
Moorthy had converted to Islam just before his death, a contention
that his widow stoutly refuted. The high court rejected her appeal,
saying that since she was not Muslim, she could not testify in a
matter pertaining to Islam.
On
November 26, for the first time in Malaysia’s history, some 30,000
ethnic Indians held a protest rally in Kuala Lumpur, but faced a
strong police crackdown.
 India's federal system has hardly been run along federal lines and
the Centre has been too strong. India's rulers have singularly
failed to prevent even attacks on the most-focussed upon mosque, the
Babri Masjid, and its government has been guilty of ordering a
direct full scale army attack on Golden Temple of the Sikhs. With
such a record, of course it is understandable that India finds it
difficult to take up with Malaysia the issue of demolition of many
Hindu temples in the country.
As one-time ghost writer of L K Advani's
speeches, Sudheendra Kulkarni, recently wrote, most of these were
clan temples built more than 150 year ago by people from Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala, who had been brought here by the British
to work in rubber plantations. Now, Hindus are being stripped of
their dignity and self-respect by this vindictive act. The Indian
government has also failed to take note of the systematic campaign
to Islamise the Malaysian state, something that has alarmed not only
the Hindus, but also Buddhists, Christians and Taoists.
 This section in Malaysia has the lowest per capita income, highest
number of beggars and squatters, highest suicide rate, and lowest
intake in government jobs and universities.
Why, then, is the Indian state silent? The reason is clear. Any
focus on such actions of the regime in Malaysia brings its own
actions into the limelight. India’s political and intellectual class
must ponder over the fact that actions of New Delhi render India's
capacity to intervene in situations of human rights violations very
limited.
Also, India must not duck its moral duty to act whenever its ethnic
people suffer racial or religious persecution. Now, the Malaysian
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has warned that ethnic Indian
activists accused of having links with Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers
could be held under internal security laws. Malaysia has often
accused Hindraf of seeking support from the Tigers. The country's
Internal Security Act (ISA) allows detention without trial. Again,
what would India say on the subject as a country which has similar
laws on thestatute, and wants to enact worse ones!
12 December, 2007
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