A wake up call for Malaysians of Indian Origin (MIO).

Firstly we should start referring to the Indian community in Malaysia as Malaysians of Indian Origin (MIO) as just about everyone is pouncing on the community for overzealously categorising itself as Indian and not Malaysian. But the critics including Malaysia 2Day’s Raja Petra Kamaruddin, fail to see the rationale behind the community’s dire need to hold on to this tag. If this tag is dropped, the community will in no time be relegated to the general status of the blacks and coloured people in the US, by the Government, civil sector and private sector. Especially since the MIO population is rapidly shrinking with most of the community’s present generation of couples content, having not more than two children. At this rate and going by the current call of Malay bloggers for a one school system with the agenda of blotting out vernacular  (Tamil) schools in Malaysia,  the MIO’s cultural identity is doomed to be wiped off the Malaysian soil,  suffering a similar fate as the peninsula’s pre-Islamic Indianised civilisations. Without attending Tamil schools, one cannot speak Tamil fluently (embellished with the beauty of the `Zhas, llas, las, Nnas, etc.’ ) causing the language which is one of the world’s oldest to be forgotten by future generations. Pls note that learning the language as a third language in a Kebangsaan school will definitely not help as the flexibility of the students’ tongues will be  affected by the  over usage of the other two languages which do not follow the unique linguistic pattern of Tamil.As I have mentioned before, for now the community cannot hope for any reliable leader, with the hogging of the political limelight by the irrelevant MIC and its archaic leadership. So again it is up to the individual with some help from the many sincere Indian based NGOs (here again you have to be careful as there are many wolves in sheep’s clothing in this fraternity to0) to lift itself and its young to remain relevant and rise to the occasion, borrowing from the resources of its rich heritage – religious scriptures, literature, drama, art and day-to-day culture. This can at once be achieved if we follow in the footsteps of our ancestors’ dharmic way of life.