A Universal Suffrage Sir

Tales of Resemblances : XI

 

 

 

 

 

Our laws, whether they are a product of our history, scientific laboratory, human insight or sufferings bring the promise of satisfaction and sense of just to our affairs. In the West these refer to an Euclidian orderliness while in the East they represent the dharma of life. Where we are isolated and aggrieved with each other, it does represent suffering. But where we are relating to the other, we find a common bond of friendship that helps us both to understand the world.

 

In the village where I live in Malacca, there's a grave of a Malay warrior, well Acehnese actually, from an earlier time when the British were fighting the Nanning Wars in the area. The name of the deceased is Datuk Samsudin b. Datuk Arom and his grave is preserved today as a tourist site. He held the position of Kapitan Melayu, which is an appellation given to distinguished leaders in those days.

 

By sheer coincidence the grave is located in a wooded area, surrounded by a new housing estate. His descendants had apparently refused to sell the property to the developers, so they built around the grave site.

 

The man was originally from Acheh in Sumatra, Indonesia. There his people were previously colonized and ruled by the Sri Vijayan empire from India. Borobodur stands as a reminder of that experience. But after the Indian colonizers were chased off, the Indonesians fought many rebellions in Acheh to remove any traces of their Indian past and cultivate their own local identity. That continues to this day even after the recent Dutch colonization of the country.

 

As a country, Malaysia traces its past to immigrants from Acheh, Yunnan, Bugis and Minangkabau in the South seas and the folks from Polynesia. This added to the tribal population then in the jungles, such as Bajau, Sakai, Negrito, Iban and several others. In the last two centuries, the British colonizers of the country encouraged immigration from India and China. Today there's a foreign labour force of about 2 million workers in the country of about 23 million.

 

One of the benefits of British colonization was the practice of democratic principles which creates cognition of the rights of each individual as to faith and beliefs. That is practiced to this day. Its an invaluable concept in a country that is facing a daily bar rage of change in the world from new ideas about faith, social relations and individual behaviour. It preserves the hopes and aspirations of each community and provides an opportunity to every individual promise.

 

The term suffrage may refer to votes and prayer but the experience in Malaysia is that of a lived experience that guides our daily activities and the hand of friendship from the rest of the world. And in such a environment, the term dharma has come to have new meaning.