Multiculturalism in Malaysia: The Need of Local Knowledge to Grapple with Identity and Ethnicity ========================================================== Oleh: Shamsul Amri Baharuddin dan Mansor Mohd Noor ABSTRACT Kearifan lokal dibutuhkan untuk masuk ke dalam diskursus tentang multikulturalisme. Multikulturalisme, multietnisitas, pluralisme dan pluralitas pada saat dikaitkan dengan identitas dan pembangunan bangsa dapat saja bermakna banyak hal untuk masing-masing orang. Seringkali kegagalan dalam memahami —basis kearifan lokal dari identitas“ membawa Nonsekuensi sosial-politik yang merusak Nepada —Nomunitas“ yang pada akhirnya terbawa bersama Nepada level kebangsaan. Skenario ini secara historis membuktikan kepada bangsa bahwa konstruksi yang disusun oleh penguasa kolonial yang menempatkan kepentingan ekonomi mereka pada posisi pertama dibandingkan kepentingan komunitas lokal membentuk batas politik dari bangsa. Kajian ini dimaksudkan untuk menunjukkan bahwa identitas orang Malaysia sangat berhubungan dekat dengan aspek etnisitas. Keywords: Multiculturalism, Polyethnic, Pluralism, Plurality, Bumi Putera , I. MULTICULTURALISM IN THE reduced to a convenience concept to CONTEXT OF THE STUDY defend individual interest by Research works on multiculturalism mobilizing group parameter. Univer- is very problematic. Each individual salistic discourses of liberty, justice, and social group have their interests equality, rights and fraternity are thus at hand to defend. After all derailed as researchers fail to read patriotism, just as charity, begin at their own society, being blinded to home. With various models of societal changes taking place and nation-building, identity formation caught in the problem of presentism and managing society and state by succumbing to a game of prevailing in this contemporary manipulating society in order to world, multiculturalism is often achieve their own personal agenda. Multiculturalism in Malaysia … 187 II. MANAGING A COMMUNITY OF conversion of these rubber estates NATION AND A POLY ETHNIC into new townships. By 1990‘s the SOCIETY urban areas have increasingly Malaysia is a community of nation. It become a polyethnic space where the is a polyethnic society where ethnic Chinese community prevalence in the proportion by population do not colonial days give way to the sharing it with the others. produce a dominant majority. Horowitz description of the Malays as a group or in combination ethnic relations in Malaysia in the with the other indigenous groups of 1970‘s as the unstructured social Sabah, Sarawak and Orang Asli still status system in which the Malays could be on par with the Thais and and Bumiputera control the political Indonesians who only have a small resources and the Chinese control the Chinese and other minorities. The economic resources could be argued Chinese and Indian ethnic groups, as still relevant but not sufficient to especially when their population are explain the total picture of the ethnic combined, form a significant relations observed today. minority of 40 percent in the total The New Economic Policy of population. the 1970‘s has restructured the Malaysia also does not have a Malay-Bumiputera communities pattern of spatial population through education, entrepreneurship distribution by ethnic groups as programmes, privatization of the comparable to the Canadian and public amenities, an expanding Switzerland models. Pre- economy based on direct foreign independence picture of the pattern investment and the expansion of the of spatial population distribution by public sector into a formidable ethnic groups might resemble these middle classes. These social classes two countries, but economic transformation also can be observed development since the 1970‘s has among the Indians and the Chinese brought in Malays and other ethnic groups, of which the latter Bumiputera from the subsistence only lead the middle classes economy of the rural areas to work distribution but were found to have and reside in the urban areas. The strengthened their presence in the Indians too migrate out of the rubber small scale industries, trading and estates to the urban areas in the 1980‘s as property ownership commercial activities. However, the economic sphere has lost the ethnic changes hand from the colonial make-up of the post-independence corporate to locals and the 188 DEMOKRASI Vol. V No. 2 Th. 2006 era in which a single ethnic Perikatan and Barisan Nasional community was in controlled though ticket. Such acceptance by the Malay the Chinese community may still political community allows repre- predominate over the other ethnic sentation of the Chinese who do not groups. have sufficient areas and, especially, The political sphere the Indians who do not have a resembles the economic picture of dominant ethnic areas to contest and the nation but in which the Malay win electoral seats. Even the and Bumiputera communities are in opposition political parties such as strengthened. The population distri- the Democratic Action Party, Parti bution by ethnicity could be in the Keadilan Rakyat and Partai Islam ratio of 6:3:1 between Malays, SeMalaysia know that without Chinese and Indians, respectively, forging a united front among them, but the delineation of parliamentary the nation‘s corridor of power will and state seats are constructed in never be within their grasp except for favour of the Malay and Bumiputera local politics in Kelantan and communities. By the logic of this Terengganu of which the Malay electoral boundary, Malay and population still formed 90 percent of Bumiputera communities could the population. politically rule the state and national Furthermore with rapid political power by themselves. economic development and internal But the ethnic political migration taking place in the 1990‘s, advantage for the Malays and newly delineated parliamentary and Bumiputera communities were never state constituencies in the new put into practice as the political township are getting more ethnically culture practiced in Malaysia since mixed. This can be observed in the independence in 1957 is to have a township of the rapidly expanding power sharing formula among the new economic growth centers of Malay, Bumiputera, Chinese and Kulim-Sungai Petani of Kedah, Indian communities beginning with Bangi in Selangor, Parit Buntar and the formation of Perikatan in 1955 Proton City in Perak, Kuantan and and later the Barisan Nasional in Pekan in Pahang, Kertih in 1974 to contest and formed the Terengganu, Nilai and Senawang in government of the nation. In such a Negeri Sembilan and Pasir Gudang practice, Chinese and Indian can and Tanjung Pelepas in Johor where stand and win election not only in Malays and Bumiputera from the Chinese dominated seats, but also by rural areas, Indians from the rubber standing in Malay areas on the estates and the commercially minded Multiculturalism in Malaysia … 189 Chinese from the traditional urban freedom, teaching in their own areas converged to reside and exploit mother tongue, business and the new economic opportunities educational opportunities and found there. Even the traditional landownership for the other urban areas of Kuala Lumpur, communities are defined in the Petaling Jaya and Shah Alam in the Federal Constitution so as to protect Klang Valley, Georgetown, Malacca the interests of the minority. and Johor Baharu are spared of these Although Malaysia is a land changes as they too are getting of the Malays and Bumiputera, they ethnically mixed as their urban have to share the nation with the boundaries expanded into the Chinese and Indians who have been hinterland taking additional here for some generations. The polyethnic communities within them. Malays and Bumiputera are not in a Lastly, the Constitution of clear cut numerical majority as in Malaysia is federal in nature except Thailand and Indonesia. Pro-Malay for the questions of land, water and and Bumiputera delineation of rural religion which lie in the hands of the constituencies remained but new respective 14 states. Even though constituencies delineated in the new these three questions are matters of township are ethnically mixed. Thus, the respective state, a converging to since independence Malaysians are national policy direction is the norm used to a political culture of power as the federal government since sharing as exemplified by Perikatan independence is always in the hands and Barisan Nasional as well as the of Barisan Nasional and so to nearly opposition political parties. With all of the respective state except economic development, not only the intermittently in the cases of urban landscape is ethnically mixed Kelantan and Terengganu. but business relations tend to Studying the federal nature transcend ethnic lines. Economic of the Malaysian Constitution, one growth brings social transformation can notice that what are stipulated which saw the rise of a middle for the Malays and Bumiputera classes as well as poverty, social such as Islam as the religion, land disparity and marginalization, reservations, quota for the irrespective of ethnic groups. The government civil service, business ethnic divide is thinning in the social permit and education are caveat winners but a thickening ethnic wall with a parallel protection for the among the social losers, though they other communities. Thus, religious 190 DEMOKRASI Vol. V No. 2 Th. 2006 share the same plights of powerless Prior to independence, three and voiceless. streams of nationalist movement With no one ethnic group in a could