comment Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s ‘I’m Malay but that does not mean I’m not Malaysian’ must be seen against a longer historical perspective than in the present controversy.

Viewed against the parameters set by the current debate, the formulations of ‘I’m Malay first’ or ‘I’m Malaysian first’ appear as opposed: if you insist that you are the one first, you could not quite be the other.

The current debate appears to pit a race-based identity, if that’s what one owns up to first, as somehow opposed to a nationalist identity.

This wasn’t always so...