Tuesday, August 18, 2009

How many Malaysian Indonesians? How many Malaysian Filipinos? Malaysian Thai? Malaysian Singaporean?

There surely must be many Malaysian Indonesians, Malaysian Thais and Malaysian Filipinos, given the fact that we share borders with these countries, and migration of people is and has been going on from time immemorial.

I am pretty sure that this would be a significantly large group - and I wonder, why we have chosen to ignore the cultural identity of these groups of Malaysians.

It is sad that we talk only about Malaysian Chinese...Malaysian Indians etc

It will be interesting to know how many Malaysian Indonesians are there? Malaysian Thais and Malaysian Filipinos?

I look to the day when we shall all just be Malaysians - one nationality, one nation ...one people...

It is good that at last Cabinet is studying this matter - and I may no longer be required the country my forefathers came from...

The Cabinet is studying a proposal to drop the column in official forms that require race information, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.

He said the pros and cons would have to be fully studied before a decision can be made.

Many official forms require Malaysians to declare their race, which has come under criticism from some quarters for creating rifts in the nation’s multiracial society.

Even Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir recently suggested that Malaysians should not be required to state their race except where necessary when it involves bumiputra privileges. - Star, 18/8/2009, Race info might be dropped from official forms


Note also that many of us are no longer 100%....any ethnic group. We are maybe 25% Arab, 25% Chinese, 25% Pakistani and 25% Malay... so what am I? A Malaysian for sure.

Forefathers may have been from INDIA, but ethnically they may be Tamil, Malayalee, Punjabi, Gujeirati... It would be more correct to be talking about Malaysian Tamil, Malaysian Malayalee, Malaysian Bugis, Malaysian Batak, Malaysian Hainanese, Malaysian Hokkien, ...

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