By C C Pung
Justice of Peace
NDIA and China are two of the five cradles of civilisation of the world.
People of Chinese and Indian ethnicities happen to be the main communities in Malaysia after the majority Malays.
Is this therefore motivation enough for this International Islamic University associate professor to so eagerly suggest that the Malays too are descendents of a civilisation as influential, knowledge-rich as the others long recognised universally?
In not so many words, that seemed to be the message she was trying to convey in her lecture claiming that the Romans learnt shipbuilding from the Malays.
She gave no credible sources nor evidence.
The Romans ruled for over a thousand years in parts of the globe that were light years (measured in the BCE era) from the lands where the ancestors of modern Malays lived.
I don’t know much. But I agree with one social media user who responded to the professor’s claim by posing: ‘so the Romans walked to Malay archipelago and returned in sampan?’
Come on, Professor, convince the world!
National pride, patriotism and national identity are enjoying a sudden surge of currency.
There’s an element of second thoughts about it because Malaysia is, after all, already 62 years old.
Some older Chinese and Indians are laughed at for not speaking Malay (the national language) very well.
Millions in China speak very little or no Mandarin (China’s official language).
It’s never been made an issue, just as the fact that even rural white Caucasian Americans don’t speak proper English and Hawaiians Americana widely speak in native tongues.
To me, national pride, patriotism are an outcome emerging from the workings of many elements.
They don’t come simply from the wearing of badges, the waving of flags or the singing of anthems.
If the professor could show me that the Romans learnt from us, and other smart Malaysians like her can point me to museums and archives of Malay artifacts, literature, language to support our claim to cradle status ‘Malay civilisation’.
I’m all ears. My national pride will quantum leap.
I know every word in Negaraku, our national anthem.
So what?
I also could recite the Rukunnegara, once taught to me as our national ideology.
But then you guys up there decided that it’s not so ideal because, purportedly, the ‘Belief in God’ ‘Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan’ declaration had suddenly become debatable.
‘Tuhan’ isn’t specific enough any more, apparently.
So you threw the baby out with the bath water.
Rukunegara went silent. Is it erased? Who knows?
And you question my national pride and my disdain about the invasion of foreign adopted vocabulary in Bahasa Melayu?
Our Education Ministry talked recently of promising character and values in our education system.
It’s called ‘karaktor’. Could the philosophy, wisdom and importance of this whimsical element called ‘character’ be overlooked in the overall scheme of things?
I’m born and raised Malaysian.
I’ll be buried here at the risk of being considered by some as unpalatable.
It’s still ‘tanah tumpahnya darah ku’ (the land on which I’d shed my blood) for me as pledged through my national anthem.
Bull shit chips at my pride.
Editor: The views expressed here are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the talantang.com
