An end note for 2018.

Hypocrisy and racism are but the different sides of the same coin. No no, I am so not going to talk about being Indian or Hindu, as it comes with the ready privilege of sharing your genetics, beliefs and resources with another 1.7 billion people on this planet. I am going to talk about the bullies from a fragment of our own community in Malaysia who use the slightest chance possible to condemn the beliefs and practices of a certain race and religion, very well in line with the ‘when you can’t progress, simply pull others down’ attitude. When they do this, they put the rest of the community in such bad light, creating in turn, deep suspiciousness and unrest against us.

To illustrate this - there’s a child marriage case that made headlines earlier this year and which apparently, earned the wrath of netizens. Netizens being people with too much time to spend on the internet.

I was mortified not by the marriage or the age of the marrying persons (41 and 11), but by how the case was blown out of proportion, the man shamed, the girl publicized and chided and most importantly, by how it was deliberately linked to religion and used as a bashing tool.

So first, let’s discuss the hypocrisy of it. Hopefully this serves to illustrate that ‘little knowledge is a dangerous thing’. My grandma got married in her teens. So did most of our grandmas. Wait, before you say that was 1920s, read the rest of this. Early marriage meant more children, a bigger labour force and more hands in the economy. Without those early marriages, Malaysia’s GDP would have hardly crossed RM 50 billion today, making us a truly puny nation with close to zero bargaining power in the world economy. We won’t have enough funds to build highways, let alone the Twin Towers. Our close rival would have been Papua New Guinea, economy-wise, and they too would have beaten us on the grounds of mineral resources and excess land.

Alas, while our grandmas were upping the game to raise the status of this country, there were sections of the then slightly educated communities who were ranting on about how early marriages are a reflection of the backwardness of the community and that girls were much better off put in schools until they turn twenty or more, making way for a better nation. Hang on, I can hear my grandma, no wait, infact all our grandmas, laughing in their graves. ‘A better nation? Gee, we created that nation, you know. Not like you lame, weak, self-absorbed over-educated ladies (yes, that’s us) who can’t raise two kids without the whole support network of RM10k C-section delivery units, babysitters, maids and mums, as well as playschools and crèches and a few pre-pregnancy and post-pregnancy holiday trips, mothers’ day outings and gifts, destressing-away-from-kids meets, counselling etc. – and still create children who are too stressed to even contemplate marriage when it’s their turn to reproduce.’

To the uninitiated, marriages are an economic phenomenon. That is why as more girls become educated, the average age of marriage goes higher – simply because women become self-sufficient. However, in certain geographies, communities and families, there aren’t sufficient resources for everyone to see each girl through school and university. Education is paid via tax, mind you and if you are too stupid to go to public universities for your desired course, you would have been auctioned away via marriage had you not dipped your hand into your parents’ savings. When such funds are non-existent, parents have no choice except to sign their girls up for early marriages, according to the accepted culture and practices. It is in fact, a much nobler act than people who take PTPTN loans and don’t pay just to get themselves on the higher education bandwagon; and also way more responsible than those who take refuge in welfare schemes paid by tax monies.

Ideally, in a marriage, an optimal age gap of 3-4 years is preferred. Just like ideally, if you are a doctor, you would like to marry another doctor. But then you end up marrying a playboy-cum-holiday enthusiast, who may later become jobless, which makes you look unwise. In economics, we call this market forces. Theory of scarcity. Not everyone gets what they want. In the case I mentioned earlier, the man was 30 years older. That’s quite a big gap. But I used to stay in a girls’ hostel run by a lady whose husband was a wrestler and was 20 years older than her. She’s about 80 now. Married very young. Strictly an arranged marriage. Loves her husband to the moon and back. A learned lady. Both of her sons later graduated from England. She champions charity and similar causes, and still does, I believe. Now, shall we go to her house, take pictures of her and her husband, put her on newspapers, get thousands of so-called feminists and human rights activist to ‘publicize’ her ‘young age plight’. I mean, anyone misses the sound and feel of a tight slap from an 80 year old? And surprise, she is an Indian Hindu, not a Malay Muslim.

I once watched a documentary - when the white men first set foot in India, he was apparently horrified by the carvings on our temple walls - those which depicted half naked Gods and some in certain compromising positions. The white men then concluded that Indians were backward, barbaric and non-civilized and needed a new value system based on morals and religion. Yes, gold, GOSPEL and glory – remember Sejarah Tingkatan 4? Well, I don’t know if they did re-educate our forefathers (that would have been hilarious – plunderers teaching hardworking men how to improve their morals), but they did successfully build the pretext for colonialization, during which a lot of India’s resources set sail to mills and factories in England. We were even made to swap food crops for commodities, which plunged parts of India into famine and food crises, and poverty. And guess what? That’s when your teenage grandma and mine (together with their husbands who they got betrothed to at 9 or 10 years of age) decided to board the steam ships and land here, in Tanah Melayu looking for a better deal.

250 years later after the arrival of white men in India, what happened to morality and religion? Most white men have since come to their senses and claim no affiliation to their forefathers’ ideologies and some have even started believing in ‘karma’ – the very essence of Hinduism. They feel that meddling into the culture and beliefs of others is actually quite detrimental and disruptive in the long run. The days of the ‘white man’s burden’ are now long gone or replaced loosely by globalisation. But you know what? They are and have always been a cleverer breed of humans. They adapt and move on.

Unfortunately, it is the wretched fragment of our own people, who are both intellectually challenged, mediocre in all fields and who are spoilt rotten with too much good in this country, that are playing to the tune of certain media that if you cover up or agree to arranged marriages (i.e. no sex until the night of the wedding) or marry very young, then you are backward, barbaric and non-civilized. To these retards, exposing skin and living immorally is okay, having sex before marriage even if it’s in secondary school is okay – no, wait – it is actually the hallmark of liberalization and the epitome of women’s rights and it is a sign of progress (Aduh!).

But did they stop there? We saw half-baked champions from this fragment of our community using this recent case, which is neither immoral nor criminal, to criticise, of all things, the official religion of this country. They have effectively become the new age bullies with ZERO EMPATHY. Patronizing others for something that doesn’t involve them, for something that is of mutual consent between individuals and families, for something that even religious authorities are not in opposition of. Can we allow this fragment to sow such disregard for other religions and earn the fury of other people towards all of us collectively? Do we have any idea how this contributes to our own downfall later?

If we allow this to continue, then hatred will grow. When hatred grows, even when we do no wrong, we will be perceived to be wrong. Sometimes, big tragedies come from many small wrong-doings repeated time and again, over the long term. This has become quite apparent in recent weeks.

So as a closure for 2018, we as part of a multi-racial, multi-religious community, need to remember one thing – TO EACH HIS OWN. Give respect to earn respect. We have enough crap to deal within our community, we don’t need to poke our heads into the culture, practices, beliefs, religion and convictions of others.

May we all be wiser in year 2019. Happy New Year! 🙂