Interlok: Say ‘No’ to indoctrinating our youth
Commentary
To say that Interlok is only offensive to the Indian community, and then again only because of the word ‘pariah’, is to ignore the bigger issues at hand.
The real focus should be on how racist BTN doctrines are being subtly implanted in the minds of our nation’s youths. This can be readily seen in the Ministry of Education lesson guide for ‘Interlok’ that repeatedly emphasizes Biro Tata Negara-esque race stereotypes.
Bear in mind that Interlok is promoted as a novel that offers SPM students an invaluable lesson on race relations. Its characters are being promoted as ‘product ambassadors’ – the prime representatives of the three major races in Malaysia. Going by the excerpt below from the Ministry’s study guide, the ‘interlocking’ relationships in Abdullah Hussain’s novel are paraded as the recommended race relations template:
Tema
Novel Interlok bertemakan integrasi tiga kaum utama di Malaysia, iaitu Melayu, Cina, dan India yang terpaksa melalui pelbagai cabaran untuk hidup bersama-sama dalam sebuah negara yang bebas dan bermaruah.
(Theme: The ‘Interlok’ novel revolves around the theme of the integration of the three major races in Malaysia, that is, the Malay, Chinese and Indian who have to undergo many challenges to live together in a free and sovereign country.)
However, HartalMSM fails to see how Interlok can be held up as a work that can inculcate racial unity and integration when the Ministry of Education’s lesson guide has such blatant BTN bias.
Ministry’s racially biased study guide
Abdullah’s novel has been compared with ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, another novel with racial themes and stereotypical depictions of races. But read any of the online study guides for Mockingbird and you will see how one-dimensional the Ministry’s treatment of Interlok is. They stand in stark contrast to each other.
Lengthy commentaries of Mockingbird carefully explore the American classic’s race themes. Students are guided to understand the story in its proper context vis-a-vis the racist attitudes of the characters, identifying and exploring its timeless lessons, with heavy emphasis on teaching them to think critically (c.f. this site: www.gradesaver.com)
However, the Ministry’s lesson guide for Interlok holds up the racially stereotyped characters as accurate historical depictions of entire races, as can be seen from the excerpts below. (Note: All the following excerpts in Bahasa Melayu are extracted from the Education Ministry’s study guide. English translation by HartalMSM).
Watak dan Perwatakan
1. Watak Seman (watak utama)
Seorang yang taat akan arahan ibunya / taat akan ajaran agama / rajin bekerja / bertanggungjawab / berani / tegas / berdikari
3. Watak Cing Huat
Watak yang penting kerana beberapa peristiwa penting yang menimpa watak utama, iaitu Seman berpunca daripada tindakannya.
Seorang yang mementingkan keuntungan / mementingkan diri
Cing Huat sanggup meminjamkan wang kepada Pak Musa dengan cagaran tanah. Jika gagal membayar hutang tersebut, tanah Pak Musa akan dirampas oleh Cing Huat atau Cina Panjang.
Characters and characterisation
1. The character of Seman (main character)
Someone who is obedient to his mother / faithful to his religion’s teachings / hardworking / responsible / brave / principled / independent
3. The character of Cing Huat
An important character because several important events that afflict the main character, Seman, are a result of his actions
Someone who is profit-minded / selfish
Cing Huat is willing to lend money to Pak Musa on condition that his land is held as security. If he fails to repay his debts, Pak Musa’s lands will be seized by Cing Huat or Cina Panjang.
This is a typical narrative that follows faithfully the BTN-prescribed historiography, as exemplified by their theme song ‘Warisan’, one verse of which goes:
Indahnya bumi kita ini (so beautiful is our land)
Warisan berkurun lamanya (our heritage for centruries)
Hasil mengalir ke tangan yang lain (but its bounty flows into others’ hands)
Pribumi merintih sendiri (the sons of the soil agonize alone)
This twisted view of Malaysian history has been strongly supported by the media, literati and academia as well in their statements in support of Interlok.
Students are thus primed to identify and recognise the purported ethnic traits ascribed to the major races. Clearly, the intention of Interlok is for students to internalize the negative racial stereotypes and biased views of Malaysian race relations.
Children's education hijacked for political purposes
Abdullah Hussain, the author of Interlok, disclaims any bad intention when writing his book and instead strongly protests that he has been misunderstood.
“I was telling the story of how the Malays, Chinese and Indians came together. It was their relationship and unity at that time that brought about the creation of a country,” he reiterated during an interview.
However, the characters in Interlok representative of the two minority races are unmitigatingly painted as ugly, with various stereotypical depictions of their physical and pathological traits. For example, Interlok is replete with over-fed sepet characters, whose various sins are being portrayed as typical of the Chinese (“fakta sejarah” as Interlok supporters like to put it.)
These could be forgiven as the writer’s social naivete as he wrote his opus in the highly-charged racial climate of late 1960s Malaysia. They could even be forgiven if the novel was to be studied with a careful lesson guide (similar to Mockingbird mentioned earlier), taking into account the racial sensitivities and nation-building needs of modern Malaysia.
But given the lofty goals of promoting racial unity ascribed to Interlok, it is painfully obvious that the novel is nowhere in the league of To Kill a Mockingbird with the latter’s rich symbolism, complex characters, sensitive touch and layered plot. Whereas Mockingbird challenges readers to confront their own prejudices, Interlok merely preaches a version of race relations that is seen exclusively through one particular community’s tinted glasses.
Interlok has now become a convenient tool of people with a certain agenda to drill their prejudices into a captive audience.
Emphasising the ‘otherness’ of minorities
Inflicting untold damage on Malaysian race relations is the Ministry’s persistent emphasis on the “otherness” of the Chinese and Indians, especially singling out vernacular schools as places to indoctrinate immigrant children to love their respective motherlands – China and India. Take a look at the sampling of the Ministry’s lesson guide below:
Nilai
7. Nilai cinta akan tanah air
Cing Huat berusaha dengan cara sendiri untuk membina sekolah di kawasan tempat tinggal mereka bagi memastikan anak-anak kaum Cina tidak lupa akan asal-usul dan bahasa ibunda mereka.
Kaum India yang diwakili oleh Cikgu Raman juga mendirikan sekolah Tamil agar anak-anak India tidak lupa akan asal-usulnya.
Values
7. Loving your homeland
Cing Huat strives in his own way to build schools in the areas where they live to ensure that Chinese children do not forget their origins and mother tongue.
Indians, represented by teacher Raman, also establish Tamil schools so that Indian children do not forget their origins
Pengajaran
7. Kita hendaklah mencintai tanah air sendiri.
Cing Huat berusaha dengan cara sendiri untuk membina sekolah di kawasan tempat tinggal mereka bagi memastikan anak-anak kaum Cina tidak lupa akan asal-usul dan bahasa ibunda mereka.
Kaum India yang diwakili oleh Cikgu Raman juga mendirikan sekolah Tamil agar anak-anak India tidak lupa akan asal-usulnya.
Lessons
7. We have to love our own homelands
Cing Huat strives in his own way to build schools in the areas where they live to ensure that Chinese children do not forget their origins and mother tongue.
The Indians, represented by teacher Raman, also establish Tamil schools so that Indian children do not forget their origins
This theme of “otherness” is repeated again and again and again, in several other sections of the Ministry’s study guide and in several permutations.
Since 90% of Malaysian Chinese children attend vernacular primary schools and an increasing number of Malaysian Indians attend vernacular Tamil schools, what would their Form 5 classmates think of them when this message is being repeatedly delivered over so many study sessions by BTN-indoctrinated teachers?
Is it any wonder that the ‘pariah’ slur has been increasingly on the rise in schools since Interlok formalized and legitimized the word? And this is not even taking into account other reports of racist incidents in schools perpetrated by students and teachers alike.
The pronounced bias of the Ministry’s study guide makes the compulsory text a potential weapon to ignite even more provocations in schools.
Perpetuating the myth that Malays are naïve victims
While the Malays undeniably do not escape the stereotype of gullible and trusting fools, Abdullah’s caricature nonetheless leads the reader to sympathize with the helpless, beleaguered ‘bumiputera’. Who can sympathize with the cunning Chinese predators?
This BTN-flavoured theme is also being repeatedly pushed in the Ministry's lesson guide:
Tema
Pak Musa terpaksa berhutang dengan Kim Lock untuk membeli harta dan hidup senang tetapi tidak sempat melunaskan hutangnya sebelum mati. Akibatnya semua hartanya diambil oleh Kim Lock menyebabkan anak dan isterinya melarat.
Theme
Pak Musa is forced into debt with Kim Lock in order to buy property and live an easy life but he died before he could repay his debts. As a result, all his property is seized by Kim Lock leaving his wife and child destitute.
Pembinaan Plot
(ii) Perkembangan
Buku 1
Ayah Seman meninggal dunia. Setelah 27 hari kematian Pak Musa, Cina Panjang menemui Seman untuk memaklumkan bahawa Pak Seman berhutang hampir sepuluh ribu ringgit untuk membeli tanah dan pada masa yang sama menggadaikan tanah yang dibeli kepada Cina Panjang. Seman menyangka ayahnya menyimpan wang lima ribu yang dipinjam daripada Cina Panjang di rumah. Seman membawa ibunya keluar dari kampung kerana tanah itu bukan miliknya lagi.
Plot Construction
(ii) Development
Book 1
Seman’s father dies. 27 days after the death of Pak Musa, Cina Panjang meets Seman to inform him that Pak Seman owes him almost ten thousand ringgit for a land purchase and at the same time the land that he bought had been mortgaged to Cina Panjang. Seman thought his father had kept the five thousand borrowed from Cina Panjang at home. Seman took his mother and left their village because their land did not belong to them anymore.
And there are many more such homilies in Malaysian race relations being repeated throughout the Ministry’s study guide. Remember too that exam questions run along the predictable groove of what ‘lesson’ can be drawn from the morality tale. Thus students are forced to internalize the caution: ‘Beware the conniving Chinese evicting the natives from their own homes.’
With this less-than-subtle racist propaganda, can we expect teachers to retain a semblance of impartiality and refrain from infusing a covert anti-Chinese, anti-Indian bigotry into their lessons? Even if they tried, that would involve leaving out a substantial part of the Education Ministry’s blueprint – an impossibility since Interlok is a compulsory text and students MUST learn all the lessons that the Ministry has set for them in order to pass their exam.
In such a case, it would take an incredible leap of faith to believe that race relations in Malaysia can ever improve when the Ministry’s prescription is imposed upon an already contentious novel.
Isn’t the point of a language subject to teach language?
Interlok was selected as the text for the compulsory literature component of the SPM Bahasa Melayu paper. However, it seems that Interlok has now been elevated to the status of race relations handbook. This can be seen in the various statements made by the literati, think tanks and even the author himself.
Since when did language / literature textbooks become political education tools? Isn’t the point of a language lesson to teach language?
It can be easily surmised that there is another agenda at work, especially since the “Malay First” Education Minister himself overruled all but one of the recommendations of the review panel to excise passages deemed sensitive not just to Indians but the Malays and Chinese as well.
Literature is indeed an excellent subject to help students develop communication skills, creative expression, critical thinking skills and appreciation of culture. Most of all, teaching literature should be about teaching the student to enjoy reading for himself/herself, so that through books he/she can gain an knowledge about things in the world-at-large.
However, problems arise when Interlok is not seen as a mere literature book to be read and analysed. Instead, from the various statements in the media supporting Interlok and the Ministry's insistence on retaining it, it is clear that there is a quiet, unwritten acceptance of Interlok as an accurate roadmap to Malaysian race relations to be taught to SPM students.
The closest association one can make of the Ministry’s methods is to Hitler Youth priming. The Nazi project brainwashed German children into blindly accepting the state’s racial stereotypes of the Jewish minority.
Our own Education Ministry study guide seems to hint that a similar ‘mission’ has been assigned to Interlok, given its potential to mind-bend the way youths view their own race and their assigned place in the hierarchy.
The real victims of Interlok forgotten
Amidst all this controversy and politicking, the real victims of this fiasco have all but been forgotten – the students and their parents.
All parents want their children to be well-educated so that the next generation may enjoy the wonderful opportunities that a good education can bring. All students need to learn how to think critically in order to survive in this complex world.
But young Malaysians are being treated as pawns in a political game both by the ruling party and the Road-to-Putrajaya marchers.
While Malaysian Indians have objected strongly to the unflattering portrayals and factual errors Abdullah made about them, Malaysian Chinese and Malays remain largely unperturbed. Hullo people! It’s time to wake up and realise the adamant insistence of the government on making Interlok compulsory in schools is an affront to ALL peace-loving Malaysians.
It insults with its shameless endorsement of derogatory racial stereotypes, for its insidious peddling of dangerous racial doctrines, for its indoctrination of impressionable young minds, and most of all, for its arrogance that parents and students have no say about what values they can be taught.
All parents, regardless of race, need to repel this attempt to poison ever younger minds against each other. Your next generation will reap what you sow today. Say ‘No’ to this brainwashing of our youth!
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Last week Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin thought that he had succeeded in consigning it to a backburner by assuring that the novel would be purged of terms deemed offensive to Indian Malaysians and thereby retained as a text for study in schools.
It came as no surprise that PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub (left), MP for Kubang Kerian, decried the choice of the novel in Parliament earlier this week. He queried the wisdom of the choice of reading matter for the edification of young Malaysians.
DAP MP for Ipoh Barat, M Kulasegaran, is expected to make the case at the meeting that the novel is an affront not just Indian Malaysians but other ethnic groups as well, and therefore the issue should be made a cause celebre. 
Semalam, Naib Presiden Dewan Perhimpunan Cina Kuala Lumpur dan Selangor (KLSCAH) Cheng Su Chean mendakwa novel itu hampir sama dengan program Biro Tata Negara yang didakwa sebagai "pembasuhan minda" dan mempromosi perkauman dan perpecahan.
"Interlok sepenuhnya menyeru kepada fahaman ketuanan Melayu. Pada pandangan kami, novel ini bukan sahaja tidak sihat (untuk bacaan pelajar) tetapi juga beracun," kata Naib Presiden Dewan Perhimpunan Cina Kuala Lumpur dan Selangor (KLSCAH) Cheng Su Chean.
"Tetapi penyelesaiannya, Interlok tidak patut dijadikan buku teks di sekolah."