When two of my young Indian female office staff went to at the Hindraf rally in 2007, I felt ashamed that I did not join them. Never mind that i am a Chinese professional male or that I had clients already booked in that day.
I tried to rationalise it away by claiming pragmatism or self-interest or loss of earnings or whatever but it was something I still think I should have done. The problem with Hindraf is that it is the very anti-thesis of Umno which highlights Umno's staggering hypocrisy and deceit.
The people who support Hindraf do not make money from Hindraf nor do they expect to make money from Hindraf. The people who support Hindraf are genuinely poor, and live in an institutionalised, racist system that bluntly discriminates against the non-Malay poor.
The Malays who support Umno are told by Umno's leaders that they need a system that discriminates against non-Malays. The people who support Hindraf believe in human rights, in equal rights and in social justice regardless of skin pigmentation.
The people who lead Umno campaigns on electoral platforms promote special rights, Malay rights, unequal rights and special privileges regardless of individual need or poverty or merit.
The fact is many people who support Umno have made millions and billions from supporting Umno leadership. The people who lead and support Hindraf, however, are some of the most oppressed and under-privileged people in Malaysia.
The people who lead Umno are some of the richest and obscenely privileged people anywhere in the world, never mind just in Boleh-land. The people who lead Hindraf have been detained without trial, and have had basic medical treatment denied them, and have had their basic human rights trampled upon.
Umno leaders who are grossly over-privileged and obscenely rich and control the judiciary and police apparatus still see fit to jail Hindraf supporters instead of meeting their arguments and claims in an open court.
The problem for Umno is that Hindraf leaders cannot be bought unlike countless other Umno-BN apparatchik.
The problem for Umno is that it cannot accuse Hindraf’s leaders or supporters of controlling any segment of Malaysian business, economy, politics, government bureaucracy, parliament, military, police, judiciary or cabinet.
It is Umno that owns the entire racist, corrupt feudal Third World Malaysian cotton-picking plantation.
When Umno leaders look at Hindraf leaders, the whole world knows who is the plantation owner and who is the slave.
It is only a matter of time before even the kampung Malays will acknowledge who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. It is the Umno elites that crush everyone - Malay, Indian, Chinese and lain-lain - who stand in the way of Umno’s big, dirty profits.
It is the NEP vision that used to win Malaysian general elections but I would suggest to Umno that it needs to change it's vision thing.
Hindraf's very existence points a damning finger at Umno's systematic oppression of the poor and oppressed. It is Hindraf that bears witness to Umno's insatiable demonic greed.
Hindraf's suffering and persecution make a mockery of Umno's supposed ‘struggle’ to assist the Malay poor or protect Malay dignity or achieve ‘social justice’ in Malaysia.
I sincerely believe that no decent Malay is going to agree to Umno oppressing the poor and oppressed in the name of special rights or special privileges or Malay supremacy.The only way Hindraf will lose this battle is if they break the law to allow Umno to demonise them effectively in the eyes of Malay voters.
I may not be Indian but I am Malaysian and I can tell the difference between right and wrong and I will take my stand at the polling booth at the next general election.
