Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Persecuted Indians and disingenuous political narratives - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Malaysiakini : Fa Abdul continues this tradition with her latest piece
about a poor Indian gardener and the benevolent Aunty Devi, who was
some sort of bourgeois guardian angel (from humble beginnings no less)
and handmaiden to the happy ending of his familiar story.
Honestly,
Indians gardeners done good are the equivalent of the hooker with a
heart of gold fables in the Western pop culture canon.
I do not
have such stories. I have a story about the big brute of an Indian thug
who worked as a bouncer, whose wife ran away leaving him with two kids
(whom he loved) and a mother-in-law (who he could not stand) but had to
look after.
He worked the club circuit in KL and moved into a crappy shophouse so his kids could go to a nice suburban school.
He made sure they watched English TV series so they could "speak
properly" and saved every ringgit he earned, including tips and other
valuables he got from busting heads for more well-to-do Indian, Chinese
and Malay club kids.
His children did well and got into local law
and accountancy programmes, but their father died with a knife to his
throat before he could see them settled down with families of their own.
Every
year the kids take turns keeping the urn of his ashes in their
respective homes because they never really communicated with him when he
was alive.
You see, watching English shows led to reading books
in English and they soon lost their ability to communicate effectively
in Tamil, especially after their grandmother passed away. He always told
me he was slowing down but was glad his kids (especially his son) were
not in his line of work.
Or how about the Indian woman police
inspector who worked the drug beat and came upon the idea of opening up a
āsecurity serviceā after she retired because she could employ young
Indian males to patrol the streets of middle-class neighbourhoods
because at least this way, they would not have to deal with the state
security apparatus which she knew very well could mean life or death for
them but most importantly was a way to make money through the political
(Malay) contacts and business (Chinese) contacts she made over the
years.
"I'm
doing the same thing now, as I did before, Thaya, keeping people with
money feel safe". She really doesn't worry about Indian youths that much
these days because she says the Malays have to compete with all these
"foreigners" who are coming into this country and doing a better job of
making this their home.
She worries that ethnic strife will occur because Malays will finally understand what it means to be a pendatang
in their country and politicians do not see the danger in these
foreigners. Not very politically correct I know, but life on the streets
in Malaysia is not politically correct.
And really bullying in
school by being called ākelingā. Hate to break it to the readership but
most young disenfranchised Indians have gotten in touch with their inner
kelings much better than privileged community members have.
Indian activists complain more about the fact that disenfranchised
Indians do not get the same opportunities as their bumiputera
counterparts when it comes to education and so-called Aunt Devis are as
tangible as urban legends. This is where the struggle is and not in some
out-of-touch pity party narrative pushed forward by urban types.
Jakim
has programmes targeted at disenfranchised Indians and has independent
Indian preachers who specifically target vulnerable groups. This is what
young disenfranchised Indians are dealing with in this country as are
Indian activists who do not get air time on mainstream English
supposedly independent press.
In other words, the system is
specifically targeting vulnerable Indians, with the agenda that
assimilation would give them better lives. This is what people are
dealing with.
So it is not as if Indians are sitting around
throwing pity parties. Blaming Indian politicians for supposed
narratives that make urban privileged voting demographics feel better
about not having political operatives that really want to address the
systemic inequalities is what this is all about.
Great disservice
This
is why I really admire PSM political operatives. Young Indians, Malays
and Chinese who understand that the system impacts their lives with an
immediacy that young Muda political operatives ensconced in the
mainstream political process would never understand, but yet are
venerated as the saviours of this country.
So yeah, reject PSM
when all evidence indicates that change will eventually come to this
country through grassroots agitations in the dominant Malay community.
Our
Indian politicians are doing us a great disservice by imprisoning us
inside the victim mindset, wrote Fa, and I wished she had named names.
Here is Charles Santiago talking about this sorry state of affairs in our education system here.
āSuch discriminatory practices that deny children a better future just
because of their race would only end up sowing hate and animosity
amongst the different races. So, instead of lamenting about the state of
education, (Education Minister) Mohd Radzi (Md Jidin) must instead
create a system thatās fair to all Malaysians irrespective of race or
religion.ā
So is Charles playing the victim card or is that solely a BN play?
Or how about M Kula Segaran of the DAP saying this
in 2017 ā āIn 1970, there were over 17 percent Indians in the civil
service. Now there are less than five percent Indians in the service.
The GLCs are dominated by the Malays, while the Chinese are strongly
represented in the private sector. Indians inhabit the margins of both
the civil and private sectors.
āTo effectively assist the Indians,
unless all issue affecting the community is unearthed and ascertain the
shortcomings with the Indian society nothing much can be achieved. So
far the plans and policies are ad hoc and an eyewash just to shore up
support from the Indian Community!ā
And of course this gem from
Fa: "Sadly, many of our Indian people seem controlled by anger, thanks
to our politicians. We carry our rage from childhood into adulthood,
believing that we are oppressed and weak. And for everything that
happens to us, we blame our skin colour." Really?
Let us take
education for instance since this is the battleground. Since public
education is mired in racial and religious supremacy, non-Malays have
had to resort to private education. This was not done in any sort of
racial calculation but rather because of survival.
This, in turn,
developed two separate cultures in young people, the first based on
racial and religious privilege and the second based on resentment. This
feeds into the private sector which, of course, is part of the larger
capitalist narrative of this country which profits from divisions in
societies if left unchecked.
Pakatan Harapan uses this anger and
resentment because it is easier to galvanise instead of addressing the
fundamental issues of the way education separates us around racial and
religious groups.
Hence
racial strategies of the non-Malays are complicit in maintaining
divisive politics because the realpolitik of Malaysia is that if we,
non-Malays, do not employ these strategies, there would be no line in
the sand when it comes to racial and religious supremacy.
It also means that we can never really have an honest dialogue about race because we are part of the problem.
On
the one hand, Indian politicians are blamed for victim narratives, and
on the other Indians are told not to wallow in victimhood which most of
them do not.
But of course the victimhood of the Chinese community
with partisans calling this an apartheid state and hard luck stories of
the state oppressing the educational, social and economic rights of the
Chinese community is the gold standard in minority narratives even
though the economic and social realities are completely opposite from
these narratives.
Doesnāt Fa see the victim ideology in everything
Harapan does? Everything wrong with this country is blamed on Umno/BN
and racism.
Harapan's brief stint in government a failure? Blame the Sheraton Move. Blame Dr Mahathir Mohamad for the failings of Harapan.
Blame
Umno/BN for the systemic racism and when Harapan was in power they gave
more to the Malays because they feared any sort of egalitarianism would
mean spooking the Malays.
Malays not voting for DAP, blame the
propaganda from Umno and not the strategies employed by the DAP for
decades to secure the non-Malay vote instead of building a truly
multi-racial party.
This is the essence of the rage and victimhood that Fa thinks resides solely in her community.
We
get the government we deserve and no matter how vocal the toxic
supporters are on social media, things are not going to change until we
hold accountable anyone who is voted into office and stop perpetuating
narratives that help the political elites in this country.