Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email 
Supporters at 1st Year Rally anniversary prayers
View the rest at Charles Santiago (MP for Klang) Picasa‘s site.
According to report from Malaysiakini and Anil Netto, the crowd was as follows:
Batu Caves: 500 people
Penang Ganeshar Temple Waterfall Road: 50 people
Mariamman Temple, Prai: 1000 people
JB Temple: 100 people
Anil Netto describes situation in Penang:
This was the scene at the Sree Ganeshar Temple along Waterfall Road in Penang at around 7.00pm. About 50 people gathered for prayers to commemorate the first anniversary of the Makkal Sakthi (People Power) awakening. On 25 November last year, some 30,000 Indian Malaysians rallied in downtown KL to highlight their plight.
Over on mainland Penang, people started arriving at the Sri Maha Mariamman Devasthanam Temple in Prai from 7.00pm.
At 8.32pm a contact at the temple tells me a thousand people are now inside listening to speeches. Among the speakers was Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy.
In the background, over the phone, I hear cries of “Makkal Sakthi!”. More people could have turned up if not for the heavy rain.
Plainclothes police are around and keeping a watchful eye.
In KL area, it was raining and traffic jam. Being a working day, it was hard to get to Batu Caves after 5pm. I was stuck in jam in Puchong itself, plus having a relative coming to house yesterday evening.
MalaysiaKini reports the event at Batu Caves as follows:
Despite that the movement is outlawed, police presence at the locations were minimal with hardly any uniformed personnel around. No untoward incidents were reported.
At the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple in Batu Caves, Selangor, some 500 Hindraf supporters braved the rain to attend the special prayer ceremony.
The prayers began on a low key at about 7pm but the enthusiasm grew as the crowd scaled the 272 steps of the temple.
With oil lamps in hand, the crowd chanted ‘Makkal Sakti Valga’ (long live people’s power) as they climbed the steps.
About 30 minutes later, the crowd descended and there were impromptu speeches from several politicians and leaders associated with Hindraf.
Again, the crowd chanted ‘Makkal Sakti Valga’ and the temperature went up several notches when those present chanted ‘Hindraf Valga’ (long live Hindraf) and ‘Uthaya Valga’ (long live P Uthayakumar) punctuated with cheers and rapturous applause.
“Hindraf is alive!” declared PKR’s Kapar MP and former Hindraf activist S Manikavasagam to frenzied cheers.
Other speakers included Selangor state exco member Dr Xavier Jeyakumar, Teluk Intan MP M Manogaran and Police Watch and Human Rights Committee coordinator S Jayathas.
The crowd dispersed at about 9.30pm.
Meanwhile, in Mariammn Temple Penang, Deputy Chief Minister Dr Ramasamy proposed that November 25 to be declared as a public holiday if Pakatan Rakyat takes over Federal government. He said he will put forth a request:
Meanwhile in Penang, some 1,000 people converged at Butterworth’s Sri Maha Mariamman Alayam for a special prayer session.
The function started at 7pm with Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy and Hindraf coordinator RS Thanenthiran leading the crowd on a 500-metre ‘agal vilaku’ (oil lamp) march to the temple from the main road.
State executive councillors Lim Hock Seng and Phee Boon Poh were also present to lend support.
Addressing the crowd later, Ramasamy described Nov 25 as the day Indians in Malaysia experienced a political awakening.
“It was an uprising against 50 years of marginalisation and racial discrimination,” he said.
According to the DAP leader, if the opposition alliance Pakatan Rakyat seized control of the federal government, it would declare Nov 25 a public holiday.
Ramasamy said he would table a proposal at the state executive council to have Nov 25 gazetted as a state holiday in Penang starting next year.
I thought that up to 3000 people were expected to be at Batu Caves, but in the end only 500 turned up. Combination of traffic jam and rain may have cause many others to be late. Many would want to go back from work and take a bathe before going to temple.
Well, what HINDRAF refuse to understand is that their parents and leaders agreed to the ’social contract’ and related constitution wholeheartedly before the independence was granted. If they have anyone to blame, if should be the people and Indian leaders during the period.
Read More at
http://balankumarpremakumaran.blogspot.com/
interestingly, the constitution have been modified so many times to suit the changing times (and perhaps the ruling government’s needs). nothing is carved in stone. if i remember correctly, the original draft and proposal by the committee was different. it was opposed by the rulers and UMNO, and certain clauses were removed (for example review in 15 years clause). I guess at time (as it is now) the leaders did not have much choice or had to compromise for the sake of independence.
MP
Please try to read from a wider source of material than what is being published by PR and their supporters. If you quote such information from reknown historian I could accept but such claims only been put forward by HINDRAF and political writers.
Firstly the social contract is not the constituition, so it should not be confused. Going back and asking for a change in the social contract and the parts of constituition related to ethnic and religious issue will open up a can of worms that will be very harmful to all communities.
From a non-bumi perspective, it might look logical to ask for more rights (or equal rights as some say). However we must remember than it was done more than 50 years ago and the position of the communities were very different then.
It must be remember that the social contract that was agreed was at that time without precedence any where in the world since the Malays were very generous to the non Malays in granting citizenship and rights. In today’s terms it would be akin to giving citizenship and full rights to all the foreign workers in Malaysia and let them have their schools in Indonesian, Bangla, Vietnamese, Burmese,etc languages. Let me ask you MP, would you agree to such thing if someone proposes that ? I am sure no Indians would since they fear their position. But that exactly happened 50 years ago. That’s what the Malays gave away.
If we insist on re-negotiating the social contract, remember the Malays too can demand some concessions that we might not agree. This is a game where two party can play. For example, if we want equal rights , the Malays (I would I am one) would demand that we have a single identity and abolish vernacular schools and adopt Malay name as in Thailand and elsewhere. Would you agree to it ? I think from the Malay perspective perfectly fair request just like you and HINDRAF seems to think what you are demanding is just.
Think about it…
I think the numbers are wrong. And the whole anniverssary was a BIG FLOP.
Based on eyewitness and even the Star, Butterworth only has around 300 to 400 people. Batu caves was around 500 to 600.
This is a far cry from the 30,000 last year.
I don’t think the traffic jam or the rain was the issue since last year people braved police road blocks and transport problem to join the demo.
It is just that people have just lost their faith in HINDRAF.
I’m not sure if article that appears in Star qualifies as “truth”. However, the proposals of Reid Commission can be googled online. I found one at Google Books: A short History of Malaysia by Virginia Matheson Hooker.
If we look back 50 years ago, there were few countries (if any) that had significant number of migrants and have not achieved independence. I would say that leaders back then didn’t have much choice. how to repatriate millions of people back to China and India? Who going to pay for it? The British?
If we are still not independent now in 2008, then I fully agree that the Indonesian, Bangladeshis, Burmese etc be given citizenship as well. But now, post independence, no one is forcing them to come here. They come and work. If they like the country, they apply for citizenship. Marry a Malay and become a pseudo-bumiputra.
well, we look at the proposals put forward. Let’s have a list of demands or requests from all parties. Maybe the Orang Asli will ask the everyone else to leave Peninsular 🙂 . I think we should see which areas can be improved/compromised and where we have to remain status quo. If our past leaders can do it 50 years ago, why not the current ones?
You pick on Thailand (even Indonesia applies) as example. Why not model after Singapore? Do we try to model after certain countries, or try to figure out our own model?
I don’t mind if every is asked to use Malay name and abolish the vernacular school. In the same way, we should remove reference to official religion (which tends to discriminate) and expand official language to English, Mandarin, Tamil etc. Why not? If it will encourage multi-language capability among the public.
Do you think the final list of changes to constitution can be put up for a referendum? Let the people decide directly instead of 222 people in the parliament.
I’m not sure if this is treading on sensitive issues, so I’ll stop here for now. Will continue after lunch.
MP
I did not read the article in the Star when you referred to until now but we can assume he knows what he is talking about since he is Prof of Law and a generally respected person from what I know.
However, what I was saying that many politicians tried to play historian by twisting the Malaysian history and unfortunately a lot of naive people has taken that as the gospel truth without looking at their version objectively or the background of the writers and their qualifications or motivations. HINDRAF itself had twisted many aspects of the Malaysian history to suit their agenda.
The fact is, as it was stated by the Prof here, the social contract and the constituition was a compromise by the various races and stakeholders at the point of time. Our position as non bumis were much weaker then so the deal we had was a very good one.
Whether it happened 50 or 5 years ago is immaterial, it is the policy that matters. If repatriating them was a problem then, what we do with the millions of the legal and illegal workers we have now ? Give them citizenship ?
Of course, examining the social contract under the current context it would look unfair but we need to remember that it was something that was agreed to decades ago by our forefathers. Going back and questioning them would be going against the spirit of consitituition and the social contract. And that would open up for the avenues for the bumis to make their own demands.
I can tell you not many Malaysians will agree if we want to give out the same rights as Indians to Bangla, Vietnam, Indons, Pakistanis, Burmese, Nepalis and others. In fact many Indians are worried about the number of foreigners might outnumber them.
As for our model, Singapore is a bad choice. First of all, they have a very diffrent ethnic and socio economic condition. The majority (Chinese) are far richer than the minorities and control most of the economy. Furthermore, there are no space for vernacular education and the practice of culture is also limited. Try building temples as you wish for your kula deivam in Singapore and you will be in jail even before you can finish the temple. Though in terms of income Indians in Singapore are richer, they too face numerous restrictions for cultural, religious and economic aspects. I spend much of my time there so I know what I am talking about.
Due to the overwhelming control of the economy by the majority group, Indians had to face tremendous challenges in getting into management positions or even prestigious companies. It is a common knowledge that Tharman is the most capable among the Singaporean ministers but everyone also knows he can’t be the PM due to his Indian ancestry. Unlike the typical Singaporean minister, he did not receive much help from the Singapore government but worked his way up. In any case I would hardly call him Indian since he is married to a Japanese lady and raised his kids more like Chinese than Indian.
The same can be said of any other country. No other country gave so much rights to minorities as we have in Malaysia. Not 5, 50 or even 500 years ago. Not even in the US, Indians have such rights. Even today if you want to be a citizen of another country (unless of course if you are a billionaire) you will e subjected to many conditions and tests and interviews. And the process is lengthy and tough. For example if you can’t speak English, you can’t be a citizen of UK, Australia or the US for example.
If you open up the debate on social contract, as the prof had rightly said, it will open up a pandora box that would be hard to contain. I would assume that the Malays will demand the non bumis to use only Malay names and give up vernacular education, cultural and religious practices and integrate fully as Bangsa Malaysia. You can expand the official language to 4 like in Singapore but without vernacular schools it would be meaningless, as in Singapore. I hardly think any non bumi would accept such conditions as stated above.
Personally I agree that we should review the social contract but that has to be done in a manner that does not threaten the rights of the various groups. The problem is now that the way we are demanding is sending a wrong message to the bumis and put them on defensive. I think the Malays are also offended when the non bumis claim they are treated as 2nd class citizen even though this was agreed under the social contract.
I think it is possible to gain more concessions from the bumis if we re-open the social contract but we also must be prepared to lose some. Personally, even though I am from Tamil school, I would agree to go for a single medium schools.
let’s not talk crap about social contract claiming it has been agreed by our fore fathers so nothing can be done . Say a father has been a grass cutter in an estate but his son manage to study degree in IT and wants to move to city to jump into IT workforce against his father’s wish of continuing grass cutting job. Can the father or ancestors or the estate kanghani or even govt could stop him from doing so claiming it’s not his father’s wish ???
Let rotten brain like drM and umno apologists to talk the crap . let’s move on to suit ourself with current and future demands .
Yeah right, if the Malays think like you they also might demand to tear off the social contract and send all Indians and Chinese back to their countries of origin after revoking their citizenship.