Disgusting remarks ??
Dr XXXXXXX
I am a Malaysian currently living in the USA. I am supporting the
education of my sister who is enrolled at CalPoly, California.
The reason I am writing this letter is to express my disgust and anger
regarding comments passed by the Minister of Science, Technology and
Innovation Jamaludin Jarjis during a working visit to California
recently.He was present at a gathering organised by the Malaysian Consulate for
the students to meet him. The purpose of this meeting was for them to
address any concerns or queries they had. Being away from home, we all
know that we love to meet our fellow-countrymen regardless of what color
or creed they may be.And being brought up in the true Malaysian way, we were thought to
respect each other and look beyond the shallowness of skin color.
This was not the case with our minister. He made several derogatory
remarks about Indians in general, about how they were brought in as
‘buruh kasar’ and at one point asked my sister about how many Indians
were in her batch of students.
My sister answered him saying there were two of them. The other Indian
student was fair-skinned and was actually sitting at the same table as
the minister.He did not realize that this student was also an Indian and went on
saying that he must be a ‘high class’ Indian and then pointed at my
sister and said that she must be a ‘low class’ Indian as she was darker
skinned.
I am appalled that we have people like this sitting at the helm and
trying to run a multi-racial country. I urge all Malaysian to stand
together and voice out against weeds like this who give our country a
bad image.
I demand an apology from him and I want him to take responsibility for
his words and I believe that malaysiakini is one of the venues to voice
my dissatisfaction.
03/05 03:58:01
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Readers , Where are we heading towards ? What happened to our Multiracial harmony that all of us supposed to constantly hold on ??
Sirs..Words is not just enough please put it into some action.
Dr Sheela demanded for the apology, she deserves it, agreed. The minister apologized, it worked, great.
Now when are we Indians gonna stop discriminating each other with the caste system that WE invented thousands of years ago? The minister offended us, yes, but look from the other perspective, he merely mentioned what we’ve been practicing over the years, sad to say till today. We should open our eyes to prevent racial insults like this. But his actions were purely unethical. And i’m not declining that.
Our Indian casting system is fundamentally wrong. Get that sorted and move to issues like this. An apology is not going to get us anywhere.
Peace.
Comment by December — May 10, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Ehmm, you are right. We as Indian haven't demolish caste system, how could we expect other's to respect us in tht matter. If you browse through Form1 History book it is clearly states our Caste system. We start from school and we carry it till we kaput. So whose mistake is this ? I remmber when i was in form 1, one of the Malay student did ask me, so "awak ni kasta apa "? I was speechless to answer him.. So this carries on and never ends. It is just like a circle. The best part when i was working in S'pore, almost all Singaporeans think that Indian's are originated from Estate and even till today they stays in Estate !! I was puzzled and shock why do they give such a statement, the answer i receive was , "It is stated in our History book"!! See all this starts in education system !!
Comment by chaitanya — May 11, 2007 @ 10:51 am