SMOKING out racists seems not to be too difficult. It only took some choice words from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (picture) and they fell over each other to “reveal” themselves.

Leaving aside the sycophants, the political wannabes and those wet behind the ears – even the likes of P. Ramasamy, the ex-deputy Chief Minister of Penang, consciously or otherwise, helped Dr Mahathir expose the racists.

The whole issue started when Dr Mahathir said in an interview with an Indian (India) TV channel that as long as Malaysian Indians and Chinese identify themselves with their countries of origin, they cannot be completely loyal to Malaysia.

He also said that for anyone to claim to belong to the country, they must identify themselves with the indigenous people.

But local reports merely stated that Dr Mahathir had questioned the loyalty of Indians and Chinese without the qualifier “for as long as they identify themselves with their countries of origin” or that they “must identify themselves with the indigenous people.”

Which part of Dr Mahathir’s contention is racist?

That those still identifying themselves with their countries of origin? That immigrants must identify themselves with the indigenous people to be able to claim that they belong to the adopted nation?

Isn’t it expected of anyone wanting to be a citizen of a nation to be able to adopt and adapt the indigenous language and culture, in this case, the Malay language and that of the Bumiputra if they were in Sabah and Sarawak?

If the Malays do not want their primacy to be supplanted in the Peninsula it should be the same for the Bumiputra in Sabah and Sarawak.

Some, in their haste to cover their racist attitude, accused the Malay/Bumiputra primacy as supremacy, basically to box those fighting for Malay primacy as supremacists.

With that, the promotion of their own schools and culture would not be seen as an act of a supremacist.

The problem with these racists is that not only do they refuse to assimilate or rather embrace or identify with the indigenous people, but some outrightly reject it.

In the same breath, they use Indonesia and Thailand as examples of everyone being equal and identifying themselves as Indonesians and Thais regardless what their ethnic origin.

Yet, they chose to be silent that the migrant society had fully embraced the indigenous culture and language with as many adopting local names that for outsiders, it was almost impossible to identify their ethnicity even.

Interestingly, Ramasamy, when debunking Dr Mahathir’s contention however let another cat out of the bag in which, he revealed that the DAP is a fake multi-racial party.

When Ramasamy quit the DAP, he said that he had lost faith in the concept of a multi-racial party and that the existing ones, namely the DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat did not represent the Indian.

Not only that the Indians were not represented, Ramasamy then said the Indian leaders were not allowed to speak up and needed to obey the leadership’s instructions while the leadership were more focused on their respective race.

For one, Ramasamy wanting to fight for the Indians is not racist. It is only racist when Dr Mahathir or other Malay leaders wanted to fight for the Malays.

Secondly, if the DAP and PKR leaders were only focused on their respective races as revealed by Ramasamy, it meant that these parties were worse than race-based parties – the latter did not lie to the voters about where and what they stood for while the former pretend to be multi-racial but covertly racist in their pursuits.

So, all these talks especially by the likes of Tan Sri Lim Kit Siang who made it his campaign to question Malay leaders about them being Malay or Malaysian when the DAP is actually about Chinese first, again going by Ramasamy’s revelation.

It is indeed elementary that even a half-witted Dr Watson would have been able to deduce. If Ramasamy says the DAP is a fake multi-racial and that Indians were marginalised within, then which race is the DAP championing?

That should be a bigger concern for the likes of Lim as he should understand that being Malay meant that being Malaysian is a given unlike if some choose to be Chinese or Indian first, consistent with what Dr Mahathir had pointed out.

Lim, in his latest diatribe at Dr Mahathir over the same issue, questioned the latter if he was suggesting that Samy Vellu, Lee San Choon, Dr Ling Liong Sik and others who had served his Cabinet of not loyal to Malaysia.

Obviously, Lim missed the whole issue and only chose the part of Dr Mahathir questioning the loyalty of Indians and Chinese whereas, those non-Malay Ministers were Malaysians in their own right as they embraced the Malay/Bumiputra primacy as proven in their support of Government policies and strategies including those privileging the Malay/Bumiputra.

Then Lim brought up the issue of Dr Mahathir’s brainchild Vision 2020 and that the Bangsa Malaysia the latter suggested was a national fraud.

Actually, the fraud is Lim who intentionally or otherwise, did not share the fact that when Dr Mahathir was strategising to realise the Vision and Bangsa Malaysia including the introduction of Sekolah Wawasan (or Vision School), the DAP vehemently opposed it.

The Cabinet Ministers that Lim mentioned supported the Sekolah Wawasan and that proved their commitment to the Vision and the creation of Bangsa Malaysia.

So, the sudden affinity for Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia is because they serve a purpose, nothing more and nothing less.

And that is elementary. – pic TMR FILE

• Shamsul Akmar is an editor at The Malaysian Reserve.