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If those people who are familiar with MIC care to recall proposals/memorandums and resolutions made in the last 20 years, they’ll find that nothing much has changed. One can, to a certain extent, understand that because even the president has been around for 30 odd years. One can’t expect miracles.

Never mind that only last September this topic cropped up. I guess many of the round-table discussions, seminars, meetings, getaways, committees in the last decade or so would have suggested this idea in one way or another. Maybe they feel its not worth the time to dig back the past research, reports, studies etc., so the solution is to conduct yet another research and submit a memorandum. Where have we heard these lines before? 🙂

So, here we go again. MIC Youth has sent “a letter” to Education Minister. The leader, Mohan said that they have to start somewhere. I think he meant re-start because most likely next year this idea will come up again.

The argument is simple. Having other religions being taught will make it look like its on par or same pedestal with the religion that is official religion of the federation. For those people, their religion must be the first and the only one. The rest is sidelined, because it says so in the constitution. Liberal (one-sided) interpretation is made on the status of religion of federation, thus we have discrimination (or in better words, less emphasis) on other religions. As long as “others” can practice their religion in limited conditions, due to their tolerance and good heart, the “others” should be eternally thankful and not question at all.

Come on, when even temple height can’t be taller than their mosque height, you want to bring Hinduism to school? Even if the Tamil school got one muslim student, there will be a religious teacher assigned for him/her. That is the extent of expenses and power of the liberal interpretation of “religion of federation”.

Try suggesting a inter-faith committee, or department of non-muslim religious affairs. Try asking for tax exemption for donations related to religion or to tamil schools. Try asking for 60/40 budget for religious purposes.

We can’t argue with these people who are insecure, depend on outdated laws, and who need to resort to threats/violence. Just look at the PERKASA meeting last weekend. We have a 1/4 Indian Muslim fighting for Malay rights and yet the message is clear –  “Keep quiet or else”.

We don’t have the quality and qualified people to teach Hinduism. We don’t have enough classrooms to even run proper classes. We don’t have proper facilities in schools.

All the above sounds very pessimistic, but that’s what I feel. Deep inside, I wish the idea will succeed, but knowing the reality, its just wishful thinking.

KUALA LUMPUR: MIC Youth has urged the Government to implement religious education in Tamil schools as a measure to overcome social ills in the Indian community.

MIC Youth coordinator T. Mohan said religious education would help steer youths away from damaging activities.

“It is saddening to see reports of Indians being involved in gangsterism and violent crimes in the newspapers of late. We believe these youths had not been given any religious education,” he told reporters after chairing the national council meeting here Monday.

Mohan said the wing had already submitted a letter to Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein requesting religious education be introduced in Tamil schools.

“We are undertaking some research and will submit a memorandum to the ministry within four months,” he said.

Mohan said the results would not be seen overnight but he was sure of positive results within five years.

“We have to start somewhere to ensure that there is a future for our generation in the country,” he said.

Mohan said the wing would also have discussions with Indian-based non-governmental organisations to find ways of reducing the incidence of crime within the Indian community.

novinthen says:

So, how to we settle this problem?

Posted on March 24th, 2009

poobalan says:

the increasing crime rate or the introduction of religious education in schools?

if its the latter, these are my ideas:

1. make the request come from various groups instead of just MIC. national HM association, MCCCBHST, and MOST importantly – from all races/religion. Have to get the rational and liberal ones among them in. Get real hard data (perhaps from past studies) on the positive impact of religious education at primary age. something that cannot be denied, and if denied will make it look like we are being oppressed or discriminated. no two ways about it.

2. provide alternatives to teaching in school – perhaps parents can be given rebate for sending kids to religious education outside school hours. Here, MIC can come in to provide the infrastructure (we worry about corruption/cronyism later). of course this means parents have to pay for teacher/venue/food etc. That’s why the rebate must come in. Expand welfare services to include expenses for these kind of classes to cover the poor family.

3. hide religion behind the mask of moral education. very hard to implement because students may be hindus and christians, all in one class. teacher can’t teach all both religion at same time.

4. do it in school, but as so called non-compulsory extra class, perhaps even on weekends.

all this is not easy to be done. needs to have really long time to think. need to identify how to get resources.

the idea is to make the requests non-challenging to their religion status, while waiting for time for the change to happen. perhaps when a new government takes over, things may be different.

Posted on March 24th, 2009

novinthen says:

The easiest / logical / quickest way to implement this religion education falls back under HM’s hands. Have weekend classes for kids. Have it under societies or clubs in the school.Ministry will never implement our ideas of any , related to “enhancing” our religion.

And i think all of us forget there is something called TEMPLE. Those days i remember there were Thevaram / Religion classes in most of the temples. I personally attended religion classes thanks to my parents back in 90s. Even that class was stopped due to less students / funding.

What happened to them? Why parents not sending in the kids to thevaram? Busy with Piano / Karate /Swimming classes? Which are seen as more beneficial?

Why temples not keen into having these classes? Busy with internal politicking?

Funding for thevaram or religion classes can never be a big issue. So what is the problem?

And lastly, shall we blame this on MIC too.

Posted on March 25th, 2009

poobalan says:

bro,

in primary tamil schools, there’s not many clubs/societies. we might as well ask PIBG to organise it. the HM is quite powerless on his/her own. for partially aided schools, he can’t collect money. need PIBG. for fully- aided, may be can try. but now, as i told in another article, one HM in Selangor said got instruction that PIBG cannot collect money from public. accounts will be suspended. the guy thinks mic wants the schools to be dependent on them only, and not get help from others. anyway, i haven’t read about it in tamil papers. have you?

i think the problem now has been compounded compared to 20 years ago. last time, ppl still had time to send kids here and there. now, both parents working, proper temple is far from indian areas, and also without supervision and strict person around, kids won’t take part, plus the entertainment channels are so many. need monitoring – more voluntary manpower. the problem kids come from broken families, squatter areas, indian settlements etc. the thugs now are product of the system failure in last 20 years. how many middle class or rich family sons going around with parang threatening business owners or robbing houses? who are the hired killers who are brazenly killing people in broad daylight? BSc holders? i don’t think so.

i thnik some temples lack the people and willpower. some temples do organise events. i’ve seen few in puchong. but look at the participants. not the poor kids, but kids from parents who are aware, concerned, and in “not so poor” to rich category.

thus, the solution need to be an all-encompassing type – covers every possible failure point (parents not bothered, lacking transport, students lack nutrients, 1001 reasons from all sides). it needs funding because volunteerism is dying. indians have to work double to put food on table, so how to expect them to spend time on weekends or weekday evenings? 20 years ago, could have worked. but we missed the boat. now, no time and no money and so much pressure. bad combination. one possible way out is to start small – do a pilot project. we have such cases like ATMAH in OKR. We have MHS doing classes in temples. How can we coordinate all of them? MIC?

now, some schools are introducing yoga and meditation as part of training for students. i wonder how long before another fatwa comes out – “no yoga in tamil schools because the muslim student and teacher may be influenced”. you never know, its after all bolehland. it will be great if MIC can do this kind of coordination. putera ka, puteri ka, youth ka.. doesn’t matter. only thing, don’t start to regulate too much by dictating which yoga master to choose. and reduce the “malai” culture. in short, just facilitate, don’t overtake.

what we are seeing now is the result of 20 or 30 years of decomposing of the community. it started to rot when industrialisation started in 1980s. the effect is what we are seeing now. we have two generation of problematic adults/youths in our hands. one in the 20-40s group, and the other in 0-20s group. if not treated, the rot will affect the next generation – our kids. it may be a small percentage, <5% (100k/1.8mil), but its still a rot that needs to be stopped.

my conclusion – we need force. need to have legislation to force the parents to send the kids to religious classes – regardles of where it is – school or temple (school will be better as many of the facilities can be used to facilitate learning). the govt must play its part by funding the program (at least for the poor families and for teacher salary). or we can set up a foundation. make it tax-exempted. get the indians to donate to it and use the fund to fund the program. but that’s the problem. we can’t get legislation as it will taken as equating religions.

one more thing, we need to address students lacking proper food problem. one reason why some students come to school everyday including saturday is sadly – because of the food. that is the status of our makkal in some places. school is like welfare for them. cut the food, and maybe 5-10 kids will disappear. not sure why i mentioned this, but i think this is important area to be tackled.

do note that the issue at beginning was proposal by mic to start the class in tamil schools. they been talking about it but nothing happened (or nothing will happen). that’s the blame.

btw, i wonder if MIC can do something. Get in touch with all the HMs and find out who are helping them out – finance, manpower, etc. my concern is how many HMs will reveal the truth – for various reasons. well, the HM can withhold donor name, but at least list out the activities. from here we can analyse the data. come out with patterns – which schools get help easily, what is being helped – extra class? infra? food? equipment? salary? books? my worry is that the data may be misused to inject cronyism or threats. so how?

Posted on March 26th, 2009