What is Malaysia's greatest achievement in the last 50 years of Merdeka? It is our ability to maintain a remarkable degree of inter-ethnic peace. By inter-ethnic peace we mean a minimum of communal violence over five decades of Independence and a maximum of tolerance, compromise and adjustment among the different communities that constitute the Malaysian nation.

Why should one consider this an accomplishment? Most other multi-ethnic societies, even those that are far less complex than Malaysia, in demographic, cultural, religious, political and economic terms, cannot boast of such a record. For the sake of comparison, look at two other multi-ethnic countries, Indonesia and India, both of which also attained nationhood in August, the first in 1945 and the second in 1947. In both cases, there has been much more communal and political violence.