Author: pdadmin

oleh Faisal Tehrani

BARU-BARU ini saya terbaca satu hantaran di blog Projek Dialog dengan judul ‘Hate Speech: An Infographic’. Hal ini sangat menarik kerana dalam minggu yang sama juga saya bersama-sama beberapa rakan pengarang meraikan ketibaan PEN Malaysia. Kami telah menganjurkan suatu pesta sastera atas talian tiga siri dengan nama ‘Sembang Baru’.

Selepas acara itu seorang novelis muda telah mengajukan satu soalan iaitu, jika PEN meraikan penuh kebebasan bersuara, bolehkah PEN mengizinkan karya sastera yang menyebarkan misalnya kebencian? Apakah batasnya?

Pertanyaan di atas bukanlah biasa-biasa dan tidak harus juga dianggap enteng, apatah lagi remeh. Dalam sejarah penubuhan PEN International sejak tahun 1921, pertubuhan besar ini pernah berdepan dengan kemelut mengenai kebebasan bersuara yang melibatkan kebencian.

PEN, untuk makluman anda adalah sebuah kelab sejagat yang menghimpunkan pengarang, editor, pemilik kedai buku, penerjemah dan pengamal teater-filem (khusus dramaturgis) yang berpangkalan di London. Sejak kelahirannya, PEN memberikan tumpuan kepada kerja-kerja membela dan melindungi pengarang dari tekanan dan kezaliman pihak berkuasa. PEN juga meraikan apa sahaja bahasa yang dipilih oleh pengarang dalam karyanya – tanpa prejudis – asalkan karya itu tujuannya demi kemanusiaan.

Berdepan dengan soalan apakah PEN pernah menangani isu kebencian menerusi karya sastera, jawapannya ialah; pernah. Dalam hal ini, ada satu masa PEN berdepan ancaman oleh kebangkitan Nazisme di Jerman. Ia menjadi lebih jelas dan ketara dalam Persidangan PEN di Dubrovnik pada tahun 1933. Jauh sebelum itu, Parti Nazi telah membakar ribuan naskah buku yang dianggap sebagai ‘nista’ – dan dalam hal ini ia nista atau tercemar kerana karya-karya ini tidak menyokong atau menentang dasar-dasar mereka.

Ekoran dari itu, ketika Persidangan di Dubrovnik, Presiden PEN ketika itu, H. G. Wells, telah menegaskan kembali resolusi yang dibawa oleh John Galsworthy selaku pengasas dan Presiden PEN yang pertama di mana kebebasan berkarya itu tidak meraikan apa yang mengancam kemanusiaan, dalam hal ini tindak-tanduk Nazi. 

Seorang Nazi, yang hadir dalam delegasi dari Jerman telah menghalang Ernst Toller, seorang penulis teater Yahudi-Jerman yang hidup dalam buangan daripada berucap mengutuk Nazisme (dan tindakan membakar buku). Satu suara yang solid, kuat, formidable dan meyakinkan telah terbit dari persidangan itu. Para pengarang bersetuju untuk menolak usul Jerman mendokong kebebasan bersuara penuh (justeru menerima Nazisme) lantas kembali memihak kepada prinsip-prinsip yang telah mereka mandatkan. Pasukan dari Jerman marah lantas membantah, langsung bertindak untuk keluar dari Persidangan. Mereka malah memilih untuk keluar daripada PEN, sehinggalah selepas Perang Dunia Kedua.

Kejadian di atas menjadi ingatan buat semua pengarang di mana dalam persidangan pertama selepas perang, PEN berkumpul lagi di Stockholm pada tahun 1946. PEN Amerika dan Inggeris membuat satu daya-sepakat untuk mengusulkan dua resolusi penting. 

Yang pertama, PEN diseru agar mendesak ahli-ahli PEN terus ‘menunjangi idea untuk sebuah kemanusiaan yang aman makmur sejagat’; dan kedua, membawa perhatian kepada isu penapisan (sensor). 

Resolusi ini tidak diterima dengan mudah, malah perdebatan di Stockholm berlanjutan sehingga Persidangan PEN di Zurich pada tahun 1947. Hanya ketika itu lah para penulis bersetuju dan bersepakat. Resolusi inilah yang menjadi asas kepada tatacara keempat dalam Piagam PEN.

Pada tahun 2017, dalam Persidangan ke 83 di Ukraine, Artikel 3 Piagam PEN telah digubah semula. Para wakil PEN ketika itu bersetuju bahawa ‘kebencian’ terhadap kaum tertentu, kelas dan semua identiti harus digubal semula kepada ‘semua bentuk kebencian’, dan perkataan ‘saksama’ dibawa masuk untuk mengukuhkan Piagam PEN. Prinsip-prinsip Piagam inilah yang menyatukan semua pusat PEN di seluruh dunia (berada lebih dari 100 buah negara).

Apakah bentuk kebencian yang ditolak dalam karya sastera? 

Ini kerana karya sastera harus diberi kemerdekaan dalam ruang lingkupnya untuk menyatakan kritikan secara jujur dan benar terhadap apa juga elemen budaya manusia termasuklah agama, politik dan sejarah. Seseorang pengarang misalnya mestilah merdeka mempersoalkan amalan agama yang mungkin tidak adil terhadap penganutnya. Seseorang pengarang juga mestilah diizinkan secara penuh menujah kritik dan menanyakan tindak-tanduk politik yang membahayakan. Contohnya seperti polisi diskriminasi yang didorong oleh Parti Nazi sehingga membawa kematian ramai manusia tidak bersalah ekoran perang. Pengarang juga dibenarkan bebas membongkar semula sejarah dalam karya sastera mereka.

Kebencian yang tentu sahaja tidak dapat diterima ialah kebencian yang membawa kepada keganasan di mana ia mendorong orang ramai untuk keluar menghukum kumpulan minoriti (katakan LGBT), atau memprovokasi supaya minoriti dinafikan hak sebagai manusia (katakan kumpulan marjinal agama). 

Karya sastera begini tentu sahaja berbahaya kerana ia mempengaruhi masyarakat untuk melakukan sesuatu yang berlawanan dari hasrat murni kesusasteraan itu sendiri iaitu mengangkat kemanusiaan.

Jika seseorang pengarang, atau sehimpunan penulis berkarya dan menerbitkan buku dengan niat mengangkat ketuanan kaum tertentu dan menafikan hak kaum lain, maka itu adalah satu kebencian yang melampau. Namun demikian jika himpunan pengarang ini contohnya telah mulai menyuntik propaganda keganasan atas nama patriotik, maka keadaan ini bukanlah satu keadaan yang boleh diterima dan PEN akan berganding bahu atas nama ikrarnya untuk melawan ‘kebebasan atas nama kebencian’ ini.

Sesebuah karya haruslah berperanan untuk mengangkat kebaikan dan kebajikan sesama umat manusia, bukan membawanya ke lembah jahanam yang boleh mendorong keganasan dan perang yang memusnahkan.

Pengalaman Perang Dunia Kedua sangat pahit untuk diulangi. 

Menulislah demi kemanusiaan, bukan kebencian.

Rujukan

Projek Dialog. 2020. Hate Speech: An Infographic. Projek Dialog.com. 30 Oktober. https://projekdialog.com/blog/hate-speech-an-infographic/

by Yvonne Tan

We are no stranger to anxieties surrounding halal consumption practices and the danger of contamination making waves in the media with a variety of non-halal spaces available. Back in 2014, there was the Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate scare where initial tests by Health Ministry (KKM) found traces of pork DNA before JAKIM did another round of tests to dispute this. Long story short, a boycott soon followed suit and the two products where traces of pork were found in was withdrawn. The Year of the Dog and the Pig on the Chinese Zodiac lunar calendar meant the animals were going to be depicted in decorations, advertising and so on for the New Year Celebrations.

If you thought that the problem with “babi” was confined to Malaysia alone, well think again. Who could forget when Dua Lipa’s Instagram caption caused a fiasco among Malaysians for wishing her father happy birthday, calling him “babi” as it meant dad in Albanian. After being mocked for using the word by Malaysians, she edited the caption as to “Happy Birthday Dad”. In a similar instance, a K-pop dancer coincidentally named Babi had received the same treatment. She responded differently releasing an angry statement on Instagram as well to Malaysians stating “I am not interested in your language, so it doesn’t matter what my name means in your language. And I didn’t know your country, but I don’t want to know it anymore.”

Iftitah Solutions (M) Sdn Bhd, owner of the brand Rapidtest released a product in 2019 called Pork Meat Test that claims to be able to detect pig DNA content in food, delivering results with 99% accuracy within 10 minutes. It was eventually written off by JAKIM, stating that this might lead to confusion and that authorities should be left to handle enforcement of halal products.

This time around it involves OLDTOWN White Coffee, where a TikTok user @sazz999ritz accused the restaurant of using pork meat in their Mee Kari. Quickly many defended OLDTOWN stating they were halal-certified by JAKIM to acknowledging that there is a common fear that Chinese people are out to contaminate food consumed by Malay Muslims. Another debate that arose was the expensive price of pork itself as a reason that Chinese people do not have an incentive to switch out a chicken product for pork. Some poked fun upholding this reasoning using the Chinese stereotype that they are “kiam siap”.

Meanwhile headlines from throughout the media ranged into two camps from “Restoran Halal terkenal jual mi kari babi”, “Oldtown White Coffee nafi produk mengandungi daging babi” to “Responsible Netizens Call Out Fake News After OLDTOWN White Coffee Accused Of Serving Pork Instead Of Chicken”. Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs (KPDNHEP) took the complaint seriously and did an inspection under Perintah 3(1)(a) Perihal Dagangan (Takrif Halal) 2011. They checked their halal certification to the ingredients itself while JAKIM confirmed that their Mee Kari were halal.

While some rushed to support OLDTOWN’s food, this continued to raise some eyebrows across Twitterjaya. Comments included that it was always better to eat at a Malay Muslim establishment without a JAKIM halal certification rather than one own and operated by a Chinese with certification, further signalling a distrust in the audit process in securing halal consumption. As the OLDTOWN controversy died down, another came around.

Namewee, who is no stranger to controversies since his parody of Negarakuku, is once again at the center of public attention for his film conspicuously named Babi. After Namewee celebrated his international nominations at the Open World Toronto Film Festival, Around International Film Festival and Thai Film Festival the Perikatan Nasional Youth lodged a report specifically against the film’s poster. It featured a vandalized wall of a toilet with words like “Cina babi” other racial slurs such as “Melayu B-“ and “Indian K-“, not revealing the full derogatory slur of the other races. Namewee claimed the film was banned in Malaysia and is based on an alleged race-war that started innocently in a Malaysian high school in 2000 and covered up.

By now, it is clearer that these outrages are from the cultural politics of food risk as informed by race and religion. Babi is the abject other not only because it is considered to be haram and against the Malay Muslim identity but that “it lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated” given how esteemed pork is to the Malaysian Chinese identity. It has become the defining factor of what demarcates and distinguishes oneself from the opposite of oneself. This cultural narrative that babi is a threat that one will continuously be confronted by given the presence of an identity that celebrates pork, has thus been passed down.

The disgust and uneasiness associated with babi “is thus not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, and order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”. [1] When the clear distinction is no longer there, there is outrage as it threatens what is thought to be the core of one’s identity–in this case is Islam–which the nation-state is supposed to be structured on.

In the case of OLDTOWN, it highlights increasingly there is a wider rupture in food trust with  Malaysia Halal Certification under the purview of JAKIM. Thus, this ambiguity calls for people to take things into their own hands such as with Rapidtest, choosing to support specifically Malay Muslim establishments or eating at a restaurant situated far from a Chinese restaurant in fear of pork particles travelling through the air.

People have become cynical to the halal certification process where “officials would request cash payments above the statutory fees in order to guarantee registration. Municipal councils and the fire department, too, would request such payments to issue the necessary documents required by JAKIM for halal product and premises applications.” [2] It has become but the norm with the high rates of rejected applications, lack of quality control officers, the proliferation of fake halal certificates with JAKIM having total purview on the matter.

Calling out corruption practices only leads to backlash such as the now-deleted allegations against JAKIM for purposely delaying the restaurant’s halal certification to for a bribe. Hence, such seemingly “drastic” measures to ensure one’s food is halal may stem from recognising JAKIM’s ineffectiveness and in the process avoiding establishments that have no personal incentive to be halal. The quick response by the government in order to ensure the dish was indeed halal after the video went viral is also a display of the effectiveness of their agencies in ensuring there is no food risk.

During the OLDTOWN controversy, there was some discussion on what is considered “haram” is always more or less exclusive to only to pork and the specific usage of “babi”. Bringing up that there is no equal outrage with corruption which is equally if not more haram. A particular video with an unknown source was circulated during this time where a man speaks about how the idea that dogs and pigs are haram are instilled since birth and wished people saw corruption as something more haram as it affects more than one person.

Not to mention, as noted earlier, recurring controversies surrounding babi are not confined only to whether a food is halal or haram but a need to make this term exclusively forbidden, calling out international figures who have no knowledge of the term in Malaysia. Eventhough “pig” is a derogatory term elsewhere, there is an added quality babi holds that no exceptions can be made for the word to mean something else only reveals how much weight the term holds and also how much of a national preoccupation it is.

In this regard, the word provokes shock and disgust to the point one is unable to look beyond its set-in-stone meaning and understanding of other cultures. Babi is the antithesis of what rojak / kebudayaan rojak is. While babi is a point of contention, representing lack of compatibility between cultures and uneasiness about not observing Islamic law with the cultural disparity, rojak on the other hand “constitutes a useful set of images for reflecting on the politics of commensality, intercultural exchanges, and identity hybridity and belonging”. [3]

[1] Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982. p. 1, 4.

[2] Duruz, Jean, and Gaik Cheng Khoo. Eating together: Food, space, and identity in Malaysia and Singapore. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014p. 2.

[3] https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/s/189692

Projek Dialog has designed an infographic for the public in collaboration with ARTICLE 19, a Freedom of Expression NGO based in London.

The infographic responds to a growing demand for clear guidelines to identify “hate speech” and to respond to the challenges it poses to human rights.

As such, this infographic addresses the following questions:

1. What is hate speech?
2. How do we identify ’hate speech’ that can be restricted, and distinguish it from protected speech?
3. What positive measures can States and others take to counter ‘hate speech’?

For more information on hate speech, feel free to read the toolkit that has been provided by ARTICLE 19.

by Yvonne Tan

In light of Indonesia’s omnibus bill protests that have been led by worker’s unions and Malaysia’s growing scepticism surrounding the government’s COVID-19 economic recovery plans, what can be said about the current state of Malaysia’s labour movement today? As labour unions played an important role in pro-independence movements, the Enactment for the Registration and Control of Trade Unions in 1940 curbed and weakened the labour movement significantly. What was most important was that unions were no longer allowed to be involved in national matters. With political unionism strictly forbidden, unions were to remain exclusively within the company for employer-employee relations. Today, the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill 2019 governs trade unions, allowing more than one trade union that can represent employees.

Unions in Malaysia are categorised according to the private sector, public sector, employers’ unions and unions in statutory bodies and local authorities. Within the private sector, there can be national unions, that tries to cover workers of the same occupation, and in-house/enterprise unions for workers with the same employer [1]. Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) was established in 1949 to encompass unions from both public and private sector, of various occupations and trades, however, it does not qualify as a union, rather it is registered as a society.

Malaysia Airlines System Bhd has one of the biggest unions in Malaysia where the MAS Employees Union Peninsular Malaysia (MASEU) have threatened strikes after mass layoffs in 2014, which were of course not met favourably. They demanded for key management executives of the airline to be removed and were in favour of government intervention. The union has managed to gain significant leverage such as protesting a merger between MAS and AirAsia, which eventually was dropped.

The National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (NUFAM) has also been recently recognised by the Federal Court after two years, rejecting Malaysia Airline’s leave to appeal in a dispute where in-flight supervisors were not employed in any managerial, executive, confidential or security capacity. NUFAM’s president, Ismail Nasaruddin, was sacked from employment for issuing a press statement highlighting the plight of workers and calling for the CEO’s resignation. However, the Industrial Court ordered Malaysian Airlines to pay about RM210,000 in compensation to the trade union leader for his unfair dismissal.

The Petronas Worker’s Union in Sarawak (Kesatuan Kakitangan Petronas Sarawak / KAPENAS) negotiated against the “one size fits all offer” by Petronas, where workers claimed they had to accept a lower salary increase in comparison to other oil-producing states. With yellow t-shirts and black badges, KAPENAS has staged peaceful strikes with placards and slogans such as ‘No to discrimination’, ‘No to bullying’, ‘No to intimidation’ and ‘No to eroding our rights’.

Meanwhile, the Sabah Timber Employees Union (STIEU) organised and filed reports with the Labour Department, police, the Department of Trade Union Affairs and also pursued legal action via the Industrial Court for wage theft. Not to mention, the union was prevented from registration in 2019 and members were subjected to harassment such as blacklisting workers and threatening repatriation. Many workers were also pressured to instead join the in-house union that was fully under the control of the timber mill. Nevertheless, STIEU’s collective bargaining managed to garner a wage settlement on 1 October 2020, where workers would receive wages owed to them in full no matter their union status.

Despite anti-union tactics employed by companies, there are many instances till today that unionising works even in an environment that is highly unfavourable to organising. Collective bargaining is usually favoured, and if negotiations continue to remain in a deadlock the issue is taken to the Industrial Court. The last major strike—and longest lasting up to 22 days—in Malaysia is usually said to be by the 13,000 employees of the Malayan Railways Limited (Keretapi Tanah Melayu / KTM) on December 1962. They demanded their daily-rated workers to be paid monthly salaries, in which the Transport Minister at that time agreed to do so, however the company was later corporatised in 1992.

There is a reason for that as the Industrial Relations bill makes it almost impossible to strike. A trade union can only call for a strike if two-thirds of its members agree through a secret ballot submitted to the Director-General. On the other hand, under Section 25 (A) of the Trade Union Act, 1959 strikes are considered illegal if conducted by workers who are not part of a registered union. If found illegal, workers can be fined up to a thousand ringgit, imprisonment of not more than a year or both. If that was not enough, to top it off the amended Industrial Relations bill enables the Minister to stop a strike or lock-out “in the event the strike or lock-out lasts beyond a certain time or extends beyond a certain scope, thus endangering the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population.”

The general optimism surrounding the government’s institutional shift to loosen stringent labour laws that would revitalise the union movement are but now thrown out of the window as it is apparent with the amendment bill in 2019 that that is not the case. To also say that the labour movement is the precondition for a regime shift is but a far cry from reality where union density is rapidly declining even though absolute membership rose from around 220,000 in 1957 and to 530,000 in 1980, and more than 800,000 in 2008 [2].

The Malaysian trade union movement continues to be “highly fragmented, diffused and characterised by the large number of small unions in general” [3] consisting of mainly enterprise unions. Even though the trade union movement has been systemically crippled, despite all these restrictions there has been promising instances of achieving respective trade union’s goals and better welfare for the workers through industrial action. As illustrated in the cases mentioned earlier, the government becomes the third party acting between the employers and employees. Nevertheless, the cases also have shown unions in Malaysia have managed relative success despite the long court process. In short, unionising works in Malaysia even with such limitations, and one could only imagine how it would be like without the many restrictions imposed.

[1] Ramasamy, Nagiah and Rowley, Chris. Trade unions in Malaysia: Complexity of a state-employer system in Benson, John, and Ying Zhu (eds.) Trade unions in Asia: An economic and sociological analysis. Routledge, 2008, p. 127

[2] Wad, Peter. “Revitalizing the Malaysian trade union movement: The case of the electronics industry.” Journal of Industrial Relations 54, no. 4 (2012): 494-509, p. 497.

[3] Wu, M.A. (1982) The Industrial Relations Law of Malaysia, Longman Malaysia, p. 144.

by Yvonne Tan

Every so often racial tropes by politicians make headlines, sparking heated debates on the topic Malaysians love talking about but never candidly — race. Take for example Mahathir’s incessant blaming of Malays for being lazy which was followed by letters almost always citing Syed Hussein Alatas’ Myth of the Lazy Native when challenging this stereotype. As much as we try to brush off moments like these with band-aid solutions such as telling people simply not to be racist or succumb to “that’s-how-it-is” attitude, race will continue to be a preoccupation of Malaysians as we continue to unlearn the legacies of colonialism. Hence, I present some books (in my humble opinion) I believe we can interject into our discourse of race to continue to question the normalised narratives we know.

1) Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory women in Malaysia by Aihwa Ong

We all have a few anecdotes on spiritual possessions which led us to question if we believe in the paranormal. Aihwa Ong in this publication instead analyzes such instances of “kerasukan” or “mass hysteria” through the lens of power relations, work discipline and gender. She goes beyond functionalist approaches such as monopoly of power versus powerless, exploitation versus exploited, coloniser versus colonised but instead centres on “their resistance, retaliation and negotiation shifted according to the institution of successive modes of discipline in production systems and other areas of life” (217).

Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline transverses the colonial history of Malay peasants — in relation to Tamil plantation workers and Chinese rubber tappers — usually composed of local inhabitants and immigrants from the wider Malay archipelago who established cash cropping villages in coastal Selangor before moving onto her fieldwork on post-independence constructions of Malay identity in Kuala Langat. Her analysis of Malay women in transnational electronics factories in “free trade zones” is thought-provoking as she frames mass hysteria as a symptom of rural-urban transition and trauma of industrial labour from the domestic sphere. All in all, it is a one-of-a-kind study of cultural resistance among rural Malays at different phases of their encounter with incorporation into the world capitalist system, setting upon different trajectories of survival and mobility. A shorter version of her research can be found as well in the journal article “The production of possession: Spirits and the multinational corporation in Malaysia”.

2) Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia by Sunil Amrith

Amrith’s research attempts to draw histories of migration beyond the boundaries of empires in South, Southeast and East Asia according to four main phases: i) from 1850 to 1930 ii) the aftermath of World War II and Asia’s decolonisation from the 1930s-50s iii) “Golden Age” of Asian nationalism from 1950s to 1970s iv) and contemporary globalisation from early 1970s onwards. He takes into consideration the biases of census data within national archives as a starting point for his research but recognizes it as “a repository of its official memory” (p. 13). In order to create a more intimate dimension of the migration experience, Amrith utilizes not only oral history but also on print and material culture as an archive of migration to best capture their lived experience, trauma and dreams. For example, one of the analyses he makes is of remittance centres and communication centres illustrating relationships and obligations to their families as essential to most migrant’s journeys.

3) Wage Labour in Southeast Asia since 1840: Globalisation, the International Division of Labour and Labour Transformations by Amarjit Kaur

Although the title might seem heavy, this publication is mostly concerned with how differently gains from economic growth have been distributed between workers and capitalists in colonial and postcolonial periods in Southeast Asia. As cheap labour continues to play a key role in export-oriented industrialisation, this publication concentrates on labour and labour relations in Malaysia and Indonesia which were representative of ‘labour-scarce’ and ‘labour-surplus’ economies.

Adopting a comparative historical approach to the emergence and nature of wage labour, the colonial enterprise thrived on coercion and indentured labour while nation-states continue to utilise migrant and contract labour under a new guise of indebtedness to many intermediaries. As Southeast Asia has been lauded for its remarkable economic growth, Kaur brings the focal point to the mobilisation of the labour force and the role of migrants looking into how the labour force was formed and recruited, wages and conditions of labour, the characteristics of the labour force, and the social consequences.

4) Cage of Freedom: Tamil identity and the ethnic fetish in Malaysia by Andrew Willford

This book combines political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis in analysing Tamil identity situated in Malaysian nationalism. Wilford unpacks the image of the “docile” Tamil — initially the colonial justification for recruiting Tamils primarily as plantation workers — and how this image continues to be utilised in present-day Malaysia. As working-class Tamils left work in the plantation and began to move into urban centres, exploitation continued contributing to lack of socioeconomic mobility and education.

Coupled with “fantasies” of ethnic assertion of their identity through religious rituals such as Thaipusam, a celebration of the distinctively Dravidian god, Murukan, Wilford argues their stereotype as submissive and superstitious people continues to justify their position at the bottom of the system: “The preservation of Tamil identity, and even its “revival,” are of paramount concern in their views, as well as in those of many others I met. Still, there is a pervasive sentiment that “decent” Tamil culture is lost in a sea of government-supported “Western materialism” and the exhibitionism of “low-caste” Tamil ritualism” (50). Mulling over Islamic modernism, Malay nationalism, “Ceylon” or other upper caste cultural alienation, that contribute to the othering of Tamils, Wilford offers an interesting assessment of the Tamil working class within Malaysia.

5) Politics of the Temporary: An Ethnography of Migrant Life in Urban Malaysia by Parthiban Muniandy

Muniandy explores on the ground migrant experiences particularly in Kuala Lumpur and George Town, Penang. It is based primarily on fieldwork involving first-hand interviews and observations of migrants from various sectors such as the food and beverage industry, construction, maids and sex workers among others. His fieldwork also included enforcement authorities and employers of migrants as well, spanning between May to August 2012 and August 2013 to January 2014. Muniandy analyses and discusses these experiences through the framework of “politics of temporariness”, to reveal the multiple facets of contemporary migration. Although Muniandy does not claim the book to be an academic text or research report, recognising its lack of objective assessments, the critical ethnographic notes the text presents remain an important archive of contemporary urban life from the margins of society in Malaysia that have been systematically silenced.