COMMENT | Last week, I wrote about how Malaysia needs to ratify Icerd if we want to progress towards being a matured and civilised society that isn’t racist. Almost immediately after my column was published, the prime minister announced that we were not ratifying it.

This didn’t stop many of the ultra Malay conservatives from presenting their counter narratives towards what I wrote. By the way, in my column last week, I mentioned that most of the people who were protesting Icerd were those from that category anyway.

I wrote about how when I was seven years old decades ago, I was condemned by a few of my Malay Muslim friends for celebrating Chinese New Year and receiving ang pows. The ultras criticised me for blowing this out of proportion.

They challenged me to show if these same little kids would say the same thing to me now that we are in our 40s. Yes, I can prove it. Just two or three years ago, I was still condemned by these people for wishing my fellow Malaysians Kong Hei Fatt Choy and Merry Christmas.

They may not be the exact people I knew in primary school, but they were Malay Muslims who I had I known in university. This is more proof to show that the racist indoctrination that has been happening for decades in Malaysia is working too well.

These ultra Malay conservatives also accused me (and all the other Malays who were for Malaysia ratifying Icerd) of being hypocrites because we all reaped the benefits of affirmative action that has been practised in Malaysia all this while...