Bumi dipijak

June 14th, 2007 gier Posted in Mentera Moden, Politics | No Comments »

About a month ago, I made a business trip to Taiwan. Along with my work colleague, we were accompanied by a couple of guys who were the Malaysian distributors of the product we were looking to purchase. These two guys were Malaysians of Chinese extraction. My colleague and I were, effectively, being chaperoned, which is normal business practice.

While we were there, the two dudes and their Taiwanese counterparts treated us well, showing us their product lines and taking the time to go through the bugs we found in the products they had already sent to us to test.

Anyhow, that’s not what this is about.

What this is about is that the two dudes kept calling the Malays in general, and me in particular, “bumi”. For e.g.:

“For lunch, we’ll take you to this halal restaurant, because we know you bumis are particular about your food.”

“When I was in school, I was friends with lots of bumis.”

“We got this product that we want to show to the Ministry, but we need you bumi guys to front for us.”

“I know this bumi guy who just bought the new S320. Nice car.”

“This Pak Lah government no good. Last time, can still do business with bumi company fronting. We let the bumi company make some money while we do all the work. Now, Pak Lah say cannot do Ali-Baba anymore. Cilakak! This is our rice bowl. We don’t mind the bumi fler make some money, as long as we also make, mah!”

After some time, I got tired of it and said that if they need to call me anything, then call me Malay.

The point is that, as an unfortunate side effect of the NEP, whether consciously or subconsciously, other races look at the Malays as “bumis”. This is an old subject, sure, but one needs to be raised continuously and raised often. That the Malaysian society is rent into two classes is one that cannot and should not be sustained forever.

After all, which is the more “privileged” — the race that is given discounts on property, special quotas in business, easier entrances to universities and so on, or the Other that has none of those? I would argue the latter. Nothing comes easy in this life, and we are often the stronger for having to work harder.

As Rehman Rashid noted in his book, “A Malaysian Journey” (and I’m paraphrasing here, since I don’t have the book with me), with the NEP a Malay will no longer know whether whatever he achieves is solely due to his own efforts.

When a non-Malay calls a Malay “bumi”, the Malay is accorded a different status, and that status is not often an elevated one. In fact, I get the feeling that it has become a derogatory word, and I look forward to the day that the word is consigned to the same bin as “keling”, “Chink”, “slit-eyes”, “nigger” and “towelheads”.