ARTIKEL bahasa Inggeris ini adalah tulisan Thirunavukkarasu (Thiru Jr) Karasu yang disiarkan di dalam akaun Facebook miliknya dengan tajuk "Tuesday Sermonette: Thank You, Utusan Melayu". Artikel ini sedikit sebanyak memberi gambaran terhadap dilema syarikat, akhbar dan wartawan Utusan Melayu dalam memperjuang hak dan isu Melayu serta Islam di negara berbilang bangsa dan agama ini.
Tuesday Sermonette: Thank You, Utusan Melayu
I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness at the closure of Utusan Melayu, a paper that had existed longer than Malaysia did.
I know some good journalists who started in Utusan and progressed into prominent senior journalists in Berita Harian and NST, some I count as my personal friends. As a writer, I share a common solidarity with Utusan’s writers. Despite differences in opinion, we are thinkers. We write to influence and all we want is a better nation.
Utusan served well in all of its 80-year history. It’s a national institution, even older than MAS. Almost everyone benefited from the paper. I recall Utusan’s ‘Siri Kertas Soalan Lepas’ that helped me score in my SPM BM paper. Syndicated articles from people like Prof Ungku Aziz and literary diva Adibah Amin were my favourites.
It’s sad that as much as Malaysians are clamouring to save MAS, there’s very little effort to save Utusan. It is strange because unlike MAS that simply bled too much money over the years from mismanagement and poor asset utilisation, Utusan was different. There weren’t echoes of corruption, grandiose assets, advertising budgets and the like. Utusan simply suffered declining readership, both in print and electronic media. The reason? Deep and often unfair resentments over the last few years when the paper seemed to tilt towards a more ethnocentric slant in championing the Malay agenda.
But I never saw Utusan as a ‘racist’ paper. As a writer, newspaper columnist and author, I depend on perspectives from both sides. I appreciated the thought-leadership and valuable insights that motivated Utusan’s journalists. I try to learn what it was exactly that drove Utusan along this dangerously ethnocentric road the past few years.
Then I realised: Part of the blame is ours.
I was chatting with a Utusan friend as we reminisced the good old days of Malay literature, He admitted it was a tad frustrating to see the ‘bukan Melayu’ expect them to embrace their version of unity. And I admit it can be superficial. Watching Jason Leong’s video about traffic jams, teh tarik and using ‘lah’ was a bit lame lah. But that’s what non-Malay solidarity with the Malay has regressed into. We think our commonness in food, fashion and festivals is all that’s required to call ourselves Malaysian. It’s like eh I wear baju kurung, I eat Liew Lian and I attend Hari Raya open house so I’m Malaysian mah.
Then we sidestep the more important issues of Bumi special rights, language, religion and royalty. But those are the issues close to the Malay heartland. When they champion these causes through mouthpieces like Utusan, we immediately label them racist.
And it must hurt because they feel they’ve compromised on many things already. The concept of ‘tolak ansur’ (compromise) has long been embedded in the Malay psyche. I for one also admit it grudgingly because few countries in the world allow their own minorities to retain their identities to their originating countries through separate vernacular schools or newspapers. Thailand has a 14% Chinese population. But no Chinese newspaper or a separate schooling system. Neither has Indonesia, despite its own ethnic Chinese population. Not even in the US. No separate Spanish/German/Italian schools or newspapers despite a sizeable number of immigrant citizens from those countries.
Another remarkable Utusan observation. A non-Chinese born in China and a non-Indian born in India are not granted automatic citizenry as the Chinese and Indians over here. The difference? Ours is a Malay administration built on compromise. One that enables everyone access to free public education, free healthcare, a large chunk of the welfare system and even an employee provident fund which the Malay-majority government permits 12% unfettered credit every month into the salaries of non-Malays.
We complain in our vernacular press about Bumi discounts for property purchases. They contend that they pay the same income tax and the same fees in public universities. Yet we continue to sensationalise their ‘mismanagement’, case example 1MDB which ironically, is a theft of public funds stolen by a Chinaman and led by an Indian!
They wonder why non-Malays are still reading newspapers in their own language. That too, is a valid point because the papers we read determine our degree of assimilation. The reality is that Indians and Chinese have problems assimilating with mainstream societies. That’s why we have Chinatown and Little India enclaves in foreign countries but no ‘Malaytown’. We insist of keeping our identity and links to our ancestral countries, not the country we’ve domiciled in. We want to be reminded of our identity as Indians or Chinese first before calling ourselves Malaysian.
Ditto with the school curricula. We have no issues when someone suggests mandatory Mandarin lessons. But we frown upon Jawi, which is their form of writing.
The closure of Utusan is hard even for me because it’s what birthed the Merdeka movement since the 1930s. A progression from nationalist platforms from Malay journalists like Ahmad Boestaman and Musa Ahmad. Let’s not forget Utusan’s founder, Yusof Ishak (the man on all your Singapore Dollars) and his sifu Pak Sako who formed movements like Kesatuan Melayu Muda and Pembela Tanah Air, which were subsequently reorganised as Umno. Or Dr Burhanuddin Helmy’s Angkatan Pemuda Insaf which was the precursor to Pemuda Umno (and the rest of the Pemuda equivalents in MCA and MIC). Or Wonder Woman Shamsiah Fakeh’s Angkatan Wanita Sedar that started our version of the suffrage movement for women’s political representation encompassing all races.
Friends, the real Malay dilemma isn’t the things they’ve been unfairly accused of. Their real dilemma is their proclivity to compromise and their tendency to keep giving concessions to the rest of us. As we bid goodbye to Utusan Melayu, never forget their contributions and sacrifices to our nation. Remember, without Pak Sako, Yusof Ishak and Utusan, there would be no Umno, no Persekutuan Tanah Melayu and no Malaysia. And remember, the first Utusan Melayu that began with a scathing commentary against the British government was written entirely, in Jawi. Ponder on that.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you Utusan Melayu.
https://www.facebook.com/thiru.j.karasu
