Last week I attended a book launch in the nation’s capital. It was a celebration of an extraordinary book written by two remarkable Malaysians, father and son, whose shared concerns about the future of their country resonate with the sentiments and emotions of all of us who love Malaysia, warts and all.
The book with the intriguing title, UNPLUGGED – Will You Still Be A Malaysian In Ten Years is bound to make an impact on the way we, young and old, view and review this complex and potentially volatile country we call home.
The authors do not lecture, hector or harangue their readers but they leave us in absolutely no doubt that as we clamour endlessly for our rights as citizens, we must never forget that with rights come responsibilities — a quid pro quo no less.
Datuk Mohd Noor Abdullah, the father, and Datuk Azrin Mohd Noor, the son, have brought out a heart-tugging and thought-provoking book, written in elegant prose, on the deadly urgent, critical issues of the day.
These are issues that unless dealt with in a spirit of mutual goodwill, trust and understanding will inevitably lead to mistrust, suspicion and animosity between and among our tangle of peoples, to borrow a phrase from Tom Harrison, one time director of the famous Sarawak Museum.
We are still after 58 years of Merdeka in search of a common national identity. A cursory glance at the contents page covering some 10 chapters shows not only the authors’ instinctive feel for the root causes of the debilitating, entrenched and deep-seated attitudes that have hampered all efforts so far at breaking down racial barriers, but also their commitment to promoting national integration, without which Malaysians will forever be condemned to an uneasy existence in a country easily distracted by issues of race and religion.
The book is a compelling read: it is a reservoir of practical down-to-earth wisdom “dedicated to the young generations of Malaysians who will inherit the legacy of shaping the future of our home — Malaysia.” There surely cannot be a more worthy act of love than this? Datuk Mohd Noor Abdullah is a former judge of the High Court and the Court of Appeal. He is an expert in the Constitution of Malaysia, and I find Chapter 5 dealing with the official position of the Malay language as provided in Article 152 and the rights of Malaysians to teach and learn a non-Malay language in use in Malaysia most enlightening. This right does not include the right to “the teaching or learning of subjects or having a curriculum IN that language.” I have long considered the existence of schools that have a curriculum in other than the national language as a serious impediment to national integration. It is no different from the system in place during the colonial era when Chinese and Indian schools existed in their own world and subscribed to their particular racial rather than the national value systems and aspirations. It suited the cardinal principle of the colonial divide and rule policy. That policy in educational terms is out of synch with our national unity goals.
Today we are masters of our own country and we cannot develop a united Malaysian identity if we deliberately choose to be educated in the exclusive, restricted confines of ethnic silos.
We have to break down these unMalaysian mental attitudes and barriers in the larger interests of our ultimate goal of a Malaysia united by a common destiny. We, including the government, must be prepared to abide by the constitutional provisions of Article 152 that allow only one interpretation in so far as the freedom and right to learn and teach all the other non-Malay languages of Malaysia. We need to keep politics out of efforts at uniting our people and instead appeal to our sense of nationalism, in the best and widest possible sense.
UNPLUGGED inspires because Datuk Mohd Noor is disarmingly honest about his humble upbringing. He is self-effacing, referring to himself as a kampung boy, the eldest of eight children whose parents were rubber tappers. He strikes me as a highly disciplined individual with a well-developed sense of duty to family, friends and the community. Datuk Mohd Noor is the epitome of a wholesome Malaysian who upholds the best traditions and values of an honourable gentleman. He and his son have shown selfless devotion to create a Malaysia fit for all and more to the point, good enough to leave to the generations to come.
Father and son, formidable thought leaders in their own right, deserve our gratitude for their wisdom as we seek to lay a new foundation for national unity based on the ideals of fairness, justice and equity for all loyal Malaysians. Together, we can take this aspiration into the realm of the possible. We really have little choice in the matter if we want the future of this difficult nation to be assured.
It is a book that should be on every book shelf, to read and reread.
The writer is a director of the International Institute for Public Ethics