(Laughs) Many mosques are also scheduled for demolition. But the Muslim community is bigger in number and has stronger economic and political clout, so it can lobby, whereas the ethnic Indians cannot. This simply highlights the glaring inequality in Malaysian society.
I fully sympathise with the anger of a lot of Hindus in the country, except that I wish they would express it in a more constructive way.
Q: You say the temples that are being demolished are 'Malaysian', not 'Indian'. Could you explain what you mean by that?
As a historian, I would point to a very long process of inter-cultural communication and contact. As we know, South East Asia was very much a part of the Greater Indian world, long before the advent of modernisation and colonisation.
Till today, the characters of the Mahabharatha appear in popular narratives all the way from Vietnam to Indonesia. We are part of a continuum. SE Asia has more in common with India than with China, which never had a cultural impact on the region.
It is very disheartening to see this long history of cross-cultural contact between peoples being erased in such an explicit way through the destruction of these temples.
For me the bottomline is this: what is the status of the Indian migrant community in Malaysia?We're talking about the third, fourth, fifth generation… they've been here for 200 years. They are as Malaysian as anyone else.
Some Malaysian politicians and newspapers constantly use the phrase 'Indian temples'. For me, there are no 'Indians' in Malaysia; we are all Malaysians. The only Indians are the Indian nationals with Indian passports.
That's the point we are getting through to the Malaysian Indian community: that you are Malaysian citizens who are Hindus, or Malaysian citizens who are Muslims. Fight on the basis of that.
Your temples are part and parcel of the whole Malaysian landscape. You demand the right to have these temples because these temples belong in Malaysia, they are built by Malaysians, not foreigners.
Q: Do a lot of Malaysians share that perspective?
From an academic point of view, yes, of course. And a lot of people who went to the Hindraf rally were demanding exactly that. I was very moved by one of the demonstrators, who said, 'We are Malaysians: my family has been here for three generations, so why are we being treated like second-class citizens?'He is completely right. It's very telling that he used the world 'Malaysian' throughout, he didn't describe himself as 'Indian'.
For me, 'Indian' is a political category, just like 'Malaysian' is a political category.
I am of mixed parentage: I'm Javanese-Dutch-Punjabi. I don't have a drop of 'Malaysian blood' in me. I'm completely foreign. In fact, I'm a recent migrant: a third-generation migrant.
But I demand my rights as a Malaysian. I believe that all fellow-Malaysians have to do the same. I think it's a very surreptitious way of alienating Malaysian Indians by calling them 'Indians'.
It's on the basis of that shared solidarity that we work together. It's on that basis well that I will defend these temples as 'Malaysian'.
The people who built them were Malaysian citizens, those who worship them are Malaysian citizens, they're built on Malaysian soil, and are open to all Malaysian citizens.
For me, that adds to the richness of Malaysia. I am proud to say that every major religious group in this planet is represented in Malaysia.
Even the Malay language has incorporated Sanskrit cultural influences: there's a Malay sentence made up entirely of Sanskrit words: Mahasiswa-mahasiswi berasmara di asrama bersama pandita yang curiga.
Q: What does it mean?
(Laughs) It's actually a joke. It means: 'The students - male and female - are romancing on the campus, and the teacher is suspicious.' It is entirely Malay and entirely Sanskrit in origin!
But it is no longer orthodox Sanskrit, because in terms of its grammar and syntax it's been 'Malaysianised'. If I were to recite that to a proper Sanskrit speaker, he wouldn't understand it.
There's more… The building that houses the Malaysian radio and TV station is called 'Angkasa puri', which is a sanskit term meaning 'palace of the sky'. We still call our soldiers 'parajurit', and our teachers 'guru'.
Forty per cent of the Malay language is of Sanskrit origin. So, how can we possibly deny that we have this long historical link to India? This enriches us.
Q: Is that why we see a reaction even today from India to last week's developments?
The Malaysian government does not realise the long-term impact this will have worldwide. I've already received protest letters from Hindu activists in America.
This is my worry: across SE Asia now, with the rise of religious politics, it is more often than not right-wing politics. If you look at the statement issued by the Malaysian Socialist Party, which says 'We should be careful not to allow issues like this to be capitalized by right-wing elements'.
But I fear that it's bound to be capitalised by right-wing elements. If the right-wing in India takes up this issue, the right-wing Malay Muslims in Malaysia will react.
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