Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy: A Reflection on the Eradication of Racialism and Promoting Social Harmony 9783031362385, 9783031362392

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Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy A Reflection on the Eradication of Racialism and Promoting Social Harmony Tan Chee-Beng

Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy

Tan Chee-Beng

Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy A Reflection on the Eradication of Racialism and Promoting Social Harmony

Tan Chee-Beng The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-3-031-36238-5    ISBN 978-3-031-36239-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book arises from the conference paper I wrote in memory of Fredrik Barth. It was presented at the conference jointly organized by the Departments of Anthropology of Boston University and Sun Yat-sen University, and it was held at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in June 2017. The revised paper, without the evolutionary psychology portion, was published in 2020 (Tan Chee-Beng, An overall generative approach: Fredrik Barth’s contribution to anthropological research and writing, in Keping Wu and R. P. Weller (Eds,), It Happens among people: Resonances and extensions of the work of Fredrik Barth (pp.  191–208), New  York: Berghahn). The conference paper compared Fredrik Barth’s contribution to the study of ethnicity to that of Clifford Geertz. My original intention of revising the evolutionary psychology portion to explain the persistence of racial problem gave way to writing this small book, as an article alone cannot really present fully my overall reflections of the issues of “race,” democracy, and integration. The analysis begins in Chap. 1 with rethinking about Clifford Geertz’s 1963 discussion of primordial sentiments and national integration in new states. I argue that it is necessary to examine the evolutionary basis of ethnic identification to understand the persistence of racial problems. However, human racial expressions and communal conflicts are brought about not by innate genetic potential but by socio-politico causes, especially the political use of racial ideology. Thus, racialism can be managed by curbing racial ideology and the political use of “race.” People can identify proudly with their respective ethnic and religious groups and at the same time hold a cosmopolitan view of humanity and be convivial to v

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people of different ethnicities and religions. Chapter 2 provides a detailed discussion of evolutionary psychology and ethnicity. An analysis of Malaysia (Chap. 3) shows how the politics of communalism is played out in a new state. It illustrates the political use of “race” and religion and the impacts on communal polization and democracy. Chapter 4 compares the case in the USA to that in Malaysia, and it shows that racialism poses problems in both a new state and a Western state with advanced democracy. Both “race” and religion challenge democracy and national harmony in both countries as racial politicians appeal to these primordial sentiments to mobilize political support. Why primordial tribal inclination is so prone to be incited is explained in Chap. 5 from a phenomenological perspective, which describes the relationship between life experience and the constitution of one’s unconscious being. While one can be incited to feel insecure about another community and even be racial toward its individuals, there is also the innate inclination to make friends within and across ethnic boundaries, that is, one can be socialized to be non-racial. Democracy with its rule of law and respect for basic human freedoms, despite its many weaknesses, provides a better environment for the pursuit of a more cooperative and harmonious society in which all can live in dignity. While post-Mao China brings about much development and social welfare, the lack of freedom of free speech and free flow of information makes it difficult for individuals in politically sensitive regions to articulate their case against state oppression and to live with dignity. The conclusion provides an overall review of the discussion of primordial sentiment, communalism, and democracy. Some measures are suggested to improve democracy and promote harmonious communal relations. These include the promotion of inter-ethnic and inter-religious friendship, reforming education to enable students to learn more about communal groups and the development of a nation and to embrace communal diversities, and having local government to enhance greater local involvement in governance. In the final analysis, combating racialism is very much connected to upholding social justice and perfecting democracy. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tan Chee-Beng

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Clifford Sather and Dr. Francis Loh Kok Wah for reading the preliminary draft and giving useful critical comments. Dr. K. J. Ratnam read and commented on part of the draft and I am grateful. Dr. Ravindra K. Jain read the final manuscript and I thank him for his encouraging comments. Two anonymous reviewers offered critical comments which are useful for my revision of the manuscript. I am, of course, responsible for the final presentation here. I thank my wife Guan Swee-Hiang who helped proofread the manuscript. Finally, I am grateful to Ms. Elizabeth Graber, Senior Editor, Sociology and Anthropology, of Palgrave Macmillan, and Mr. Vinoth Kuppan, Project Coordinator (Books) of Springer Nature for the production of this book.

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Contents

1 Introduction 1 2 Evolution and Ethnicity 9 3 Communal Politics and Nationhood: Malaysia23 4 Race and Democracy in the USA Compared to Malaysia39 5 Being, Racialism, and Democracy53 6 Conclusion71 Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 5.1

Hakka fortified earthen buildings (tulou) in Western Fujian, China. (Photograph: Tan Chee-Beng, July 2007) “Black Lives Matter” protest in Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington, USA. (Photograph: Joshua Phua, June 2020) Timah Whisky. (Photograph: Tan Chee-Beng, January 2022)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This book is inspired by my rereading of Clifford Geertz’s analysis of primordial sentiments and rethinking of democracy in the light of persistent problems of integration in new states and the rise of the far right in the West where there is more established democracy. The aim is to show the significance of evolutionary psychology for the understanding of the phenomenon of communalism, and the significance of this perspective in understanding the functioning of democracy. Instead of seeing primordial sentiment as the expression of ethnic or religious identification, or in the words of Geertz, as arising from the “givens,” I propose to see this as an innate disposition that can be politically mobilized to promote group solidarity or to be hostile to an outgroup. This makes it important to consider communalism in relation to democracy since political articulation is an important aspect of the functioning of democracy. However, it is socio-­ economic and political factors, not the innate primordial inclinations, that cause communal tensions. Thus, the promotion of national integration involves both embracing communal diversity and improving the functioning of democracy that upholds the rule of law and ensures all citizens live with dignity and in harmony. Keywords  Communalism • Democracy • Evolutionary psychology • Racialism

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C.-B. Tan, Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2_1

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This book is inspired by my rereading of Clifford Geertz’s analysis of primordial sentiments and rethinking of democracy in the light of persistent problems of integration in new states and the rise of the far right in Western states with more established democracy. Geertz’s analysis of primordial versus civil sentiments is presented in his article “The Integrative Revolution,” which was published in 1963. His discussion is, no doubt, inspired by Edward Shils’ analysis of primordial and civil ties (Shils 1957). Geertz describes the integrative revolution in a wide range of new states (Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Lebanon, Morocco, and others), examining how these countries “search for ways and means to create a more perfect union” in view of primordial sentiments that hinder the promotion of civil sentiments. As one who is from Malaysia and has a strong interest in political developments in Southeast Asia, I am naturally drawn to rereading Geertz’s paper to reflect on what he analyzed 60 years ago. The new states he described continue to have ethnic tensions, and today we see that “race” is again articulated openly in the industrial West, mainly due to the increase of Muslim immigration, and in the USA, President Trump’s divisive politics had emboldened groups and individuals to articulate racial and right-wing politics more openly than before. It is thus timely to reflect on the underlying causes of communal hostility which seems to plague many societies unendingly and challenge the functioning of democracy. Anthropologists and most other social science scholars generally stress that Geertz’s primordial sentiments refer to cultural givens. In Judith Nagata’s excellent discussion of primordial and circumstantial approaches, she writes that when used primordially, “religion becomes an essential component of ethnic identity and membership” (Nagata 1981: 92). But how do we understand the term “used primordially”? According to her, “once a cultural attribute or behavior is accepted (by its bearers) to be carried by biological inheritance or to be acquired only by birth, it is primordialized” (Nagata 1981: 94). This explains ethnic identification but one cannot assume that such “primordial” identification always causes ethnic discord. This is the same problem in Geertz’s formulation which seems to assume that such an identification (with an ethnic group or with a religious group) always stands in the way of civil identification. This is the main reason why most scholars see Geertz’s formulation as static and prefer the circumstantial approach over the primordial approach. But the idea of the primordial is still important. This book argues that the idea of primordialism, and indeed the very phenomenon of communalism and ethnicity, can be better understood if we take into

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consideration an evolutionary psychology perspective. There is a primordial tribal disposition (see discussion below on evolutionary psychology) along with an ethnocentric tendency that has been with humans throughout our long course of evolution. This primordial disposition is an innate inclination that can be evoked by socio-political factors (such as racial incitement or threat by another ethnic group) to manifest racial attitudes in individuals and support racial treatment of ethnic others. However, this innate inclination does not cause communal conflicts; it is the external socio-economic and political factors that bring about such conflicts. Since people can be persuaded to be hostile to an outgroup, they can also be educated or persuaded not to fear it or blame it for existing social problems. Thus, national integration can be achieved through combatting racial articulation and promoting inter-ethnic harmony. This means that efforts have to be made to eradicate the external causes that may be used to provoke the innate primordial sentiment. As an anthropologist who is familiar with Southeast Asia and China, I shall use examples mainly from these countries, especially Malaysia, to illustrate my arguments which hopefully contribute to some integrative knowledge about ethnicity and national integration. Political articulation is an important aspect in the functioning of democracy. If there is an innate primordial tendency in group identification, ethnic identification in particular, then this must be significant in our consideration of the functioning of democracy. In modern nation-states, ethnic groups are large groupings formed in the historical process and influenced by the state’s political economy, especially the competition for resources and opportunities. These groups are really “ethnic blocs” referred to by Maurice Freedman (1960). We shall use the term “communal blocks” to make it more general to also include religious and regional identification. A communal bloc doesn’t exist unless its members believe that it’s there and they’re part of it. This belief grows from a pressing need, that of finding a vehicle big enough to join in the battle for resources within a modern national state. Members of a communal bloc may individually enjoy good relationship with neighbors and friends belonging to other blocs. Meanwhile, politicians who represent these blocs may manipulate their members by attributing wicked designs to the members of other groups, or by alleging that they enjoy selfish privileges. Too often voters fall for this gambit. Going off to vote, a good neighbor becomes a political entity; and as political entities, members of a bloc often show a weakness for emotional appeals keyed to intergroup conflict.

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The discussion in this book thus deals with states which have, at least, some form of democracy such as having national elections and some freedom of speech, restricted though it may be. The democratic system allows articulation to convince people to support and vote for a particular party and a particular candidate. The system works well when political elite themselves support the democratic system and uphold the constitutional guarantee of equal rights for all citizens, and speak out against all forms of discrimination, be it racial or religious. This becomes problematic when politicians and interested parties use race and religion to mobilize support. Clifford Geertz’s analysis of primordial attachment is thus not just an issue in new states but in all nation-states. Other than appealing to the human emotions of race and religion, ideology also plays an important part in political mobilization. Many of the ideologies, especially those of the right wing, are, in fact, based on “race” or religion which serves to mobilize political support through incitement. As Kristy Campion and Scott Poynting point out, “Racism and ethnonationalism are intrinsic to the far-right,” who imagine a nation “ethnically exclusive in far-right ideology” (Campion and Poynting 2021: 2). An influential ideology that, on the surface, does not rely on ethnicity is communist ideology. Even then, its support often benefits from appeals to nationalism, such as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CMP) appeal to nationalism to fight against Japanese aggression and Western imperialism. To this day, Chinese nationalism plays an important role in supporting the Chinese Communist regime. Overall, ethnicity and far-right ideologies have tremendous impacts on societies, including the functioning of democracy. The aim of this book is two-fold, namely, to show the significance of evolutionary theory in the understanding of the phenomenon of communalism (which includes ethnicity) and the significance of this perspective in understanding the functioning of democracy. I use the terms “ethnic group” and “ethnie” interchangeably. John Hutchinson and Anthony D.  Smith define ethnie as “a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a link with a homeland and a sense of solidarity among at least some of its members” (Hutchinson and Smith 1996: 6). I agree that ethnie is a convenient term to use as it covers various kinds of ethnic groupings, and a number of scholars have also found this term useful (e.g., Gil-Whites 2005; Salter 2017).

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The term “communal” is commonly used in English writing in Malaysia. It generally refers to identifying with an ethnic or religious community, and in the context of Malaysia this is synonymous with the term “ethnic.” Thus in the context of Malaysia, communal tension refers to ethnic tension. The term “communal” is useful as it includes not only phenomena arising from ethnic identification but also religious and regional identification. Indeed, Clifford Geertz’s description of primordial sentiments refers to ethnic, religious, and regional identifications. In this book, I use communalism to cover the “we people” identification based on any of such identifications, of which ethnic identification is most common. In social science the term “ethnic” has become a popular term to refer to human groupings, as a way to distinguish the social identification from the biological identification of “race,” thus the preference for “ethnic relations” versus “race relations.” There is only one human race but there are many ethnic groups. While anthropologists and biologists use race to refer to biological race only, in everyday usage people hardly distinguish between biological race and social race. In this writing, race is used in this popular usage along with its confusion with biological race, although in a specific context it may refer strictly to biological race. Racialism is also used in this popular sense with an emphasis on the social dimension of race.

Clifford Geertz and the Primordial Argument In the study of the anthropology of ethnicity, Fredrik Barth and Clifford Geertz are the most well known, the former for the idea of “ethnic boundary” (Barth 1969) and the latter for his analysis of primordial sentiments in new states (Geertz 1963/1973). Typically, Geertz’s primordialism is set against Barth’s situational approach (more akin to instrumental approach). Barth describes his own focus on boundary and processes as “highly situational, not primordial” (Barth 1994: 21). He must have Geertz in mind when he mentions primordial. The dichotomy is between the instrumental and the primordial, with scholars seeing the former approach, which takes into consideration group interests and political economy, as dynamic while viewing Geertz’s primordialism as static and reducing ethnicity to being simply caused by cultural “givens.” Yet both approaches are relevant. Barth’s concept of the ethnic boundary explains much about ethnic interaction and identification. Geertz’s examination of primordial sentiment, that stubborn factor in national politics, takes us far into ethnic politics and the problems of national integration.

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Fredrik Barth’s “ethnic boundary” and situational approach laid the foundation of the constructionist approach to the study of ethnicity, but the contrast between the instrumental and primordial persists. Richard Jenkins clarifies that the social constructionist approach involves “an appreciation that ethnic identity is situationally variable and negotiable” (Jenkins 1997: 51). This may be seen as a third approach, as pointed out by Stuart J. Kaufman (2015: 32). In actual fact, the instrumental approach is generally subsumed within the constructionist approach that is seen as opposed to that of primodialist which is generally regarded as essentialist. While the constructionists distinguish themselves from the primordial approach, they actually take it for granted that most people are attached to their ethnic identity. Meanwhile, the debate on circumstantial/instrumental approach and primordial approach continues (e.g., Gil-White 2001), often this centers on perceiving identification with ethnic groups as circumstantial construction of actors versus natural identification. It seems to me that ethnicity, a phenomenon related to identifying with ethnic groups (we people versus others), may be perceived as covering ethnic identity and ethnic relations. The constructionist approach, no doubt, contributes a lot to the study of ethnogenesis or the process of ethnic identity formation over time. Fredrik Barth’s theoretical conception is most useful in this respect. When individuals identify with an ethnic identity, they acquire a “primordial” quality in the sense that there is an emotional attachment that is not easily surrendered. Clifford Geertz’s work is most relevant to the study of ethnic relations and politics in nation-states, including nationalism. Geertz doesn’t claim that primordial feeling, by itself, causes ethnic conflict. He looks at the ease with which primordialism can be made to erupt, and the problems it poses to civil politics. Geertz discusses “the sorts of primordial ties that tend, in one place or another, to become politicized [this author’s emphasis]” and “the concrete patterns of primordial diversity and conflict that in fact exist in the various new states” (Geertz 1963/1973: 263). Barth, examining the coming to birth of various ethnic groups, lays out the processes that shape ethnic politics in a new state. Geertz is concerned with the factors underlying the creation of ethnicity, with the primordial and the irrational. Geertz defines primordial attachment as arising from the “assumed ‘givens’  - of social existence,” especially “the givenness that stems from being born into a particular religious community, speaking a particular language, or even a dialect of a language, and following particular social

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practices.” Note the inverted commas around “givens.” Primordialism is not a concept that allows one to settle comfortably on words. According to The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, primordial means “existing at or from the beginning, primeval,” and “original, fundamental.” But Geertz didn’t see the primordial as innate. Instead, as Anthony Smith tells us, “for Geertz primordial attachments rest on perceptions and beliefs, and that is not the intrinsic nature of these attachments that makes them ‘given’ and powerful; rather, it is human beings who see these ties as givens, and attribute to them an overpowering coerciveness” (Smith 2010: 57). Geertz explores how, in the struggle to set up a civil order, new states must cope with religious and ethnic sentiments and other “givens.” So do many established states. Today in the USA and Europe there are citizens who think the besieged West must drive off a wave of Islamic terrorists and refugees. Old and new, states contend with people’s “us versus them” mentality, the need to see the world as ingroup versus outgroup. However, in focusing on the new states and in viewing “a direct conflict between primordial and civil sentiments” exclusively, Geertz assumes that identification with one’s kinsman, one’s religion, one’s region, and so on (what he calls primordial identifications) hinders the promotion of civil sentiments and of national integration and that such primordial identification is particularly strong in new states. This leads to the perception that primordial identification hinders ethnic harmony and national integration, and it explains why scholars treat Geertz as proposing a primordialism approach in contrast to the instrumentalism approach. In actual fact, one can attach to and be proud of one’s ethnic or religious identification without discriminating or excluding others. This brings us back to the definition of primordial sentiment. I propose to see this not merely as the expression of ethnic or religious identification, or in the words of Geertz, as arising from the “givens.” It is an innate disposition that can be politically mobilized to promote group solidarity or to be hostile to an outgroup which is perceived to be a threat in one way or another. It is not primordialism that causes communal tension, but the innate disposition facilitates stirring communal fear and prejudice and perpetuates communal distrust. Nevertheless, the causes of communal problems are social, and so ideological and political factors have to be taken into account. To understand the innate communal disposition, there is a need to understand evolution theory, especially from the evolutionary psychology perspective.

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References Barth, Fredrik. (1969). Introduction. In Fredrik Barth (Ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference (pp.  9–38). Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Barth, Fredrik. (1994). Enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity. In Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (Eds.), The anthropology of ethnicity: Beyond “ethnic groups and boundaries” (pp. 11–32). Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Campion, Kristy, and Poynting, Scott. (2021). International nets and national links: The global rise of the extreme right – Introduction to special issue. Social Sciences 10, 61. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020061 Freedman, Maurice. (1960). The growth of a plural society in Malaya. Pacific Affairs, 33, 158–167. Geertz, Clifford. (1963/1973). The integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states. In Clifford Geertz (Ed.), Old societies and new states (pp. 108–113). New York: Free Press. Reprinted in Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973. Gil-White, Francisco J. (2001). Are ethnic groups biological ‘species’ to the human brain: Essentialism in our cognition of some social categories. Current Anthropology, 42(4), 515–553. Gil-White, Francisco J. (2005). How conformism creates ethnicity creates conformism (and why this matters to lots of things). The Monists, 88(2), 189–237. Hutchinson, John, and Smith, Anthony D. (Eds.). (1996). Ethnicity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkin, Richard. (1997). Rethinking ethnicity: Aspects and explorations. London: Sage Publications. Kaufman, Stuart J. (2015). Nationalist passion. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Nagata, Judith. (1981). In defense of ethnic boundaries; The changing myths and charters of Malay identity. In Charles F. Keyes (Ed.), Ethnic change (pp. 88–116). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Salter, Frank. (2017). On genetic interests: Family, ethnicity, and humanity in an age of mass migration. London: Routledge. Originally published in 2003 by Peter Lang. Shils, E. (1957). Primordial, personal, sacred and civil ties. British Journal of Sociology, 8, 130–145. Smith, Anthony D. (2010). Nationalism. Second edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. First edition, 1988.

CHAPTER 2

Evolution and Ethnicity

Abstract  Why are people ethnocentric and prone to be provoked to distrust another communal group? Evolutionary psychology which studies the evolutionary process that shapes human innate psychological inclination helps to explain this persistence. Such human adaption in the ancestral environments as identifying with and supporting one’s group continues to play a part in our psychological mechanism, so is the ability to cooperate within and across group boundaries. Primordial tribal sentiment is adaptational for the success of a group but in modern states, this may serve the interests of politicians and organizations to stir up communal sentiment to distrust another communal group or to perceive them as a threat. Evolution theory is relevant to our understanding of the biological bases of communalism. However, it is the politics of ethnicity, not our innate potential, which causes communal tensions. Fortunately, cooperation is also an adaptative value which operates in a modern state to foster solidarity beyond one’s communal group. Individuals in a state can be provoked to feel suspicious and insecure about another community or immigrants, but they can also be encouraged to embrace ethnic and cultural diversities. National integration requires individual and group efforts to promote solidarity and to counter racial ideology and communal politics, and this is also important for the promotion of democracy, which in turn, protects the liberty and cultural rights of all citizens.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C.-B. Tan, Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2_2

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Keywords  Ancestral environment • Ethnicity • Evolution • Evolutionary psychology • Primordial tribal sentiment • Race There is a biological basis to group identification, including ethnic identification. There is also a human tendency to support one’s group, and even to stereotype an outgroup as inferior, or deceitful or evil. Both ethnic identification and ethnocentrism have their evolutionary bases. Evolution theory, especially evolutionary psychology, is relevant to our understanding of the biological bases of communalism. Why are people so prone to be incited to action or take a prejudicial attitude toward another ethnie? This cannot be explained merely by focusing on economic and socio-­ cultural factors. There is a large volume of publications on ethnicity by scholars who take evolution as essential to their studies. Most people know what evolution theory is, but not evolutionary psychology, and so I shall briefly explain the latter, which is important for understanding the evolutionary perspective of ethnicity. Evolutionary psychology, in the words of Catherine Salmon and Charles Crawford, is a discipline which focuses on “the study of human behavior from an adaptationist perspective, examining the mental mechanisms that evolved to solve problems faced in our ancestral past and how those behaviors continue to produce behavior today” (Salmon and Crawford 2008). The relevance of evolutionary psychology is, as pointed out by John Toby and Leda Cosmides, “because it studies the evolutionary processes responsible for shaping the innate foundations of psychological mechanisms” (Tooby and Cosmides 2016: 153). L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, who had contributed significantly to the founding of the new discipline of evolutionary psychology, point out that an important difference with human sociobiology is evolutionary psychology’s rejection of “fitness maximization as an explanation for behavior” (Tooby and Cosmides 2005: 14). In addition to analyzing the domain-general innate mechanism, evolutionary psychologists also point out that there are domain-specific programs (mental modules) that organize human experiences (MacDonald 2008, 2013). While some scholars (Ellis and Solms 2018; Mithen 1995) have questioned the presence of innate modules with cognitive content, there is a general agreement on modules that perform affective function (Ellis and Solms 2018: 3). Anthropologists like Pierre L. van den Berghe and Don Symons are often cited by evolutionary psychologists, but cultural anthropologists

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have largely ignored evolutionary psychology, although a few like Steven Mithen (1995), John P.  Jackson Jr. (2010), and Harvey Whitehouse (2011) do engage in debating about evolutionary psychology and anthropology. I find inspiration from evolutionary psychology concepts such as environment of evolutionary adaptedness or ancestral environment (EEA), inclusive fitness, as well as domain-general cognitive mechanisms and innate modules that account for such human universals as the ability to identify with kin and ethnic categories and to cooperate among themselves as well as to fear strangers and to be ethnocentric, which are essential for understanding communalism. The anthropological study of ethnicity can benefit from paying attention to the findings of evolutionary psychology. The distinction of race as biological and ethnic as cultural is well-­ known, and there is no need to engage them in this discussion. However, race is also a “folk category of biology” (Alland 1973: 127; Banton 1988: 5; Hirschfeld 1996: 159), and as explained earlier, the terms racial and ethnic are used interchangeably in this sense, as both biological (generally phenotype) and cultural features are used by actors in matters ethnic. As Lawrence A.  Hirschfeld (1996: 47) appropriately points out, “race and ethnicity are not rigorously distinguishable at the semantic level, they refer to the same phenomenon.” This is obvious as racial thinking arises from human propensity to identify human kinds and make human-kind concepts which children acquire from their surrounding environment (Hirschfeld 1996: 191).

Ethnic Affiliation, Evolution, and Racial Mobilization Is ethnic affiliation, in the words of Stephen K. Sanderson (2014: 332), “an evolutionary adaptation”? In the modern world, trouble-free travels across borders are a reality because nations maintain laws and order that allow legal visitors to feel safe. But for most of history, being safe meant being among one’s own. Some architectural designs that can still be seen today, such as the indigenous longhouses in Borneo and the fortified earthen buildings (tulou) of the Hakka people in western Fujian in China, show the need of living together to protect against outsiders (Fig. 2.1). Having an immediate ingroup was a survival necessity, and outsiders were regarded as trouble unless proven otherwise. Often the latter were also scorned as deficient in courage, trustworthiness, intelligence, or other

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Fig. 2.1  Hakka fortified earthen buildings (tulou) in Western Fujian, China. (Photograph: Tan Chee-Beng, July 2007)

good qualities. Everyday experiences remind us that people still harbor these old habits of mind. In the privacy among friends and family, relaxed conversation can abound with ungenerous thoughts about various ethnic groups or communal groups in general. In Sarawak, it was not until the nineteenth century that the different indigenous peoples lost the habit of battling one another. Older informants interviewed by this author could still recount past aggressions, with old invasions and migrations living on through oral history. To live in a block of longhouses, as most of these people still do, was itself a defensive strategy. In past days, potential invaders might be from another river basin or might be so different as to speak another tongue. For example, the Ibans of each river basin made up a separate, autonomous community, and these communities could fall into battle—the tendency which helped the adventurer James Brooke in his capture of Sarawak during the 1840s (Pringle 1970: 68–96). The Brooke government’s rule over Sarawak led

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to much violence and displacement of groups, especially its use of Ibans and Malays to fight against other “tribal” groups. This is clearly recorded in Badeng’s oral history and relevant government reports (see Tan 1993). Nevertheless, its rule eventually contributed to the realignment of ethnic groups. A major change came in the decades just after the Second World War when a new political landscape was being shaped, leading to the cession of Sarawak to the British Crown in 1946 and its independence by joining the Federation of Malaysia which was formed in 1963. Today all Ibans have merged into a single ethnic category in the Malaysian politico-­ economic scenario. Despite internal rivalry, this united façade enables Iban politicians to use the idea of Iban ethnicity to articulate about Iban interests in their pursuit of political support. The elites of the various indigenous groups in Sarawak led their people to form ethnic associations. Each such association now represents an ethnic group established from an assortment of once-autonomous local groups. The various peoples had to merge into bigger ethnic blocks or lose out. This is how the indigenous ethnic groups, recognized in today’s Sarawak, came to be (Tan 1997). “Ethnic groups in today’s world are in a very real sense extremely large tribes,” writes Sanderson (2014: 332). This is true in the sense that in modern states, previously autonomous groups of people who are “ethnically” related (such as speaking the same language) need to form larger ethnic groupings for more effective competition of resources. In this sense, ethnic groups are really products of nation-states. Now we can better understand whether ethnic affiliation is an evolutionary adaptation. Anthropologists who study hunters and gatherers and small groups of indigenous peoples in remote places show that they are mostly egalitarian, and many of them are quite inclusive and establish links between groups, as the book Anarchic Solidarity in Southeast Asia (Gibson and Sillander 2011) has shown. In fact, most hunters and gatherers were able to avoid unfriendly groups. However, as the above description shows, as larger groups needed to own territories for cultivation, warfare between groups might take place. Thus, “tribal wars” became common as each “tribe” needed to defend its territory or its leaders had special interests in such invasions. In this sense warfare is related to cultural evolution of grouping into larger political units, and modern states today still have to guard against foreign aggression. The formation of nation-states leads to realignment of groups, forming larger units called ethnic groups or ethnies. Ethnic affiliation is thus a social adjustment to state formation. This is, at best, cultural

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evolution but the interest to form larger ethnic units is related to the innate ability to identify with groups and to defend group interests. Anthropologist Pierre van den Berghe is known for his sociobiological view of ethnicity. He incorporates inspirations from evolutionary biology into the study of ethnic groups, seeing them as extended kin groups and ethnicity as “primordial and rooted in the biology of nepotism” (van den Berghe 1981: 251). Although few anthropologists have followed his approach, he is widely cited by evolutionary psychologists as his theory fits well with the idea of inclusive fitness relating to genetic success, as highlighted by William D. Hamilton (1964). While I admire van den Berghe’s effort to understand the root of primordialism and appreciate his important contribution to the study of ethnic groups, I see both kin and ethnic identification as outcomes of innate human need to identify with groups for one’s benefit and thus also for genetic interests. Ethnic groups are not a mere extension of kin groups, and seeing ethnic members as kin is best understood as a rhetoric rather than perceiving it as an extension of kinship sentiments. The idea of ethnic nepotism which works in the group’s favor is important, but this is more than nepotism for kin. There is fear of being subdued, fear of the group’s security, and so on, with regard to suspicious outgroups. The human mind, that “product of genetic evolution” (Wilson 1994: 351), does have the trait of altruism toward closest kin, and at the same time, that trait of suspicion of strangers. The intensity of ethnic feelings depends on a country’s political economy, meaning how hot the fight is for advantages. In Malaysia—where the Malays dominate politically, and the Chinese economically—so it seems, being a Malay or a Chinese is a lever used by politicians to mobilize support, and so too being a Muslim or a non-Muslim. Helping kin and tribal members is one side of the tribal coin. The other is driving off threats posed by outsiders, whether the threat is outright invasion or the loss of some choice hunting grounds. Charles Darwin wrote about successful tribes supplanting other tribes (Darwin n.d.: 498), and the oral history of the Badeng Kenyah (including narratives by the author’s older Badeng friends) recounts the burning of long houses and the slaying of their people as “tribe” fought “tribe” into the twentieth century (Tan 1993). Watching nearby children playfight with sticks, some old men told the author that, in their childhood, the adults encouraged fights to see which boy fought the hardest. Back then, headhunting and tribal wars had already ended, but grandparents still talked highly of old heroes who once defended the community. In fact, physical courage and

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aggressiveness are still perceived as important masculine traits in modern societies. Similarly, patriotism and narrow nationalism remain strong, as is ethnocentrism. Ethnic groups are tied to the sentiment of ingroup versus outgroup, but individual members of both groups can interact in friendly ways, as discussed above. It is when a group is threatened or perceived to be threatened that the primordial tribal sentiment can be easily evoked. Today, while there is little in the way of “tribal” war between ethnic groups in a stable state, extremists and unethical politicians can exploit the fear of the outgroup. When an outgroup is portrayed as a threat or “perceived to be engaged in violation of accepted societal norms” (Goetze 2004: 152), primordial tribal sentiment may flare up. Politicians and racial groups can mobilize support by appealing to the fear of outgroups. However, there are members who see through the extremist view of politicians and may even promote dialogue between ethnic or religious groups and criticize extremist views that seek to evoke primordial tribal sentiment. Attachment to one’s ethnic affiliation does not hinder speaking up against fellow ethnic members who are extremists. Of course, this doesn’t obliterate the other side of the coin. Evolutionary psychology helps us understand why the suspicious outsider is feared so easily. But cooperation is also an adaptive value; groups can collide, but they can also join forces. At home and abroad, modern nation-states show how groups will sometimes cooperate to tackle a common problem or enemy. And even as groups divide a society, they unite their members. Tribalism is often deplored, but life inside a tribe feels like people taking care of each other (De Waal 1996: 212). Weaker groups adopt various strategies to preserve their survival, and these can range from direct confrontation to seeking co-existence while articulating for maximum advantages. The strategies adopted are aimed at preserving the group and its cultural life. This works out well for the group’s genetic interest. Humans are equipped with general intelligence to make choices which help to preserve their genetic interests even though individuals are not aware of it. As Kevin MacDonald (2013: 35) has argued, “intelligence is a set of domain general abilities” which “equips humans to make mental modes of the environment and to develop actions plans based on these models.” While socio-cultural and political factors account for the events of human action, the outcomes generally serve biological fitness. Do individuals always make rational choices with regard to ethnic belonging? Fredrik Barth is most known in anthropology for arguing that

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individuals choose strategies to “maximize values” in order to seek maximum advantage (Barth 1966: 5). In his study of the Pathans, he shows that where Baluch chiefs allow, there are Pathan individuals who join the more powerful and resource-rich Baluch groups (Barth 1969). However, ethnic affiliation is generally a strong emotional attachment that one may not normally give up for maximum economic or social benefits. Where it happens, David Goetze’s point about the “imperatives of inclusive fitness” is relevant, that is, when individuals make decision about which social groups to join, they consider two factors, namely, the level of relatedness (kinship calculation) and the resources of the group (functional calculation) (Goetze 1998: 68). In 1991, I visited the Tabun region in Limbang, Sarawak. The villagers here were once Tabun people who had become mostly Lun Bawang or people of other ethnic identities, such as Bisaya and Iban. At the Liang Datu community, there were around 200 people. The people were originally Tabun but through intermarriage with Lun Bawang, the majority indigenous people here, today the villagers speak Lun Bawang. At the time of my visit, there were only two persons who could still speak Tabun. When I asked one of them if he was concerned about the coming disappearance of the Tabun language, he said that they never thought about this issue for there was nothing wrong with the younger people speaking Lun Bawang, until the people from the Sarawak Museum came to interview them and ask such a question. When I showed interest to learn some Tabun language he reminded me to go back to the region soon as the old people who knew Tabun might not be around very long (Interview with Jabu and his friend at Liang Datu, 31 August 1991). The conversation reminds us that throughout history, while there were conflicts between people drawing rigid boundaries, there was also the process of people assuming one another’s ethnic identities. What is interesting here is that most people of Tabun origin choose to intermarry with and join the Lun Bawang whom they regard as culturally and biologically closer. This confirms David Goetze’s point about the imperatives of inclusive fitness mentioned above

Persistence of Racial Sentiments Evolutionary psychology helps explain why racial sentiments continue to be latent in human attitudes toward outgroups, and why primordial sentiments are so pervasive and can easily stir up concrete actions. The role of

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ideology and political-economic factors can’t be ignored, of course. But evolutionary psychology does help explain why people are so easily moved to distrust and fear those who are different. As Kevin MacDonald (2001: 72) points out, “The powerful emotional components of social identity processes are very difficult to explain except as an aspect of the evolved machinery of the human mind.” In other words, primordial tribal sentiment can be easily provoked when individuals are made to feel suspicious and insecure about an outgroup. The discussion in this book adds to the debate about voter support for authoritarian leaders (Worthen 2018). It is not just that the voters are drawn to the charismatic figures of authoritarian personalities. Popular authoritarian leaders could be ruthless at digging voters’ primordial sentiment until enough numbers are moved to support them. Nevertheless, ethnic problems and questions of national integration cannot be reduced to just evolutionary psychology, for explanations have to be found in the politics of ethnicity, in the context of political economy that allows ideologies (such as religion and race) to be mobilized by interested parties. There are legitimate articulations in support of an ethnic group’s interests, and when faced with external aggression, primordial sentiment serves to unify the group against an aggressive outgroup. R. Paul Shaw and Yuwa Wong have suggested “genetic seeds of warfare,” and they point out that “the capacity to fight has evolved through natural selection” (Shaw and Wong 1989: 6). Altruistic behavior in defense of one’s group serves inclusive fitness, and indeed the warlike genetic predisposition might have coevolved with parochial altruism (Choi and Bowles 2007). In fact, morality has a biological base in that values that promote reciprocity and cooperation for group cohesion serve genetic interests, as Richard D. Alexander (1987) has elaborated. Interestingly, Charles Darwin anticipated this for he wrote, “A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection” (Darwin n.d.: 500). Of course he was referring to the ancestral environment, not in situations where some groups possess military technology so advanced that they can wipe out weaker groups. Nevertheless, such values like courage, reciprocity, and patriotism have remained important in maintaining cohesion within groups and nations.

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Shaw and Wong point out that recognition markers (language, religion, phenotype, homeland, and myth of common descent) function to demarcate ingroup/outgroup boundaries (Shaw and Wong 1989: 102). This is very relevant to the understanding of ethnicity, and it shows that ethnic-­ group formation has a biological basis, that “biological relatedness may have given way to cultural ethnicity today” (Shaw and Wong 1989: 75). Azar Gat, too, shows that fighting has intrinsic aspects molded by natural pressures in human history (Gat 2006), and that ethnicity in general “is primordial in the sense that it has always been a defining feature of our species” (Gat and Yakobson 2013: 42). Thankfully, humans have evolved to such a stage where we do not engage in tribal wars constantly. But, as pointed out in this writing, exploitation of fear of other ethnic groups by politicians, seeking political office and in support of elite interests, are stumbling blocks to harmonious co-­ existence in multi-ethnic states. All states have to find ways to deal with ethnicity and national harmony, even states with a core ethnie majority have to deal with immigrants and minorities, as scholars like Azat Gat and Alexander Yakobson (2013), and Stuart J.  Kaufman (2015), have discussed perceptively. Kaufman’s work is most relevant to Geertz’s discussion of the problem of national integration in new states. Using symbolic theory—“the way relations between ethnic groups play out in any country depends on four main factors: symbolic predispositions, perceived threat, leadership, and organization” (Kaufman 2015: 12)—he analyzes why there is ethnic conflict or ethnic harmony in the Philippines, Sudan, Rwanda, India, South Africa, and Tanzania. Crucial to his analysis is the idea of symbolic predispositions (SYP) which are “durable inclinations people have to feel positively or negatively about an object” (Kaufman 2015: 13). Based on the symbolist theory originally proposed by David Sears (2001), although in anthropology Abner Cohen was among the earliest to analyze symbolic action in politics (Cohen 1974), SYPs help to understand why people respond to leaders and organizations that appeal to ethnic symbols. SYP goes further than Geertz’s primordialism in orientating our attention to predispositions, but a fuller understanding of this also needs an evolutionary psychology perspective about primordial tribal sentiment that had existed in ancestral environments. The intrinsic fear system (Panksepp and Biven 2012: 181) functions to protect the survival of all animal species, humans included. The fear of being wiped out or dominated by hostile outgroups makes it necessary for human populations to form ethnies. Tribal primordialism that developed

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in our ancestral environment has remained an innate disposition which naturally causes humans to fear outsiders who are seen as threatening or who are portrayed by politicians as threatening to one’s ethnie. Clifford Geertz writes about primordial sentiments and the problems of national cohesion in new states. The recent reaction to extreme multiculturalism and the influx of immigrants highlights the ease of politicians and organizations in bringing tribal primodialism to the surface. An important work that deals with this recent development in Europe is Frank Salter’s On Genetic Interests (2017). He is not in favor of multiculturalism and ethnic pluralism in Western societies because of the lack of effective control over immigration and minority free riding that are detrimental to protecting the genetic interests of indigenous Europeans (Salter 2017: 188). However, the problem of influx of refugees and migrants as currently happening in Europe is a complex problem that has to take into consideration international politics, and this includes the involvement of the USA and some European countries in the destruction and attempted destruction of selective regimes in the Middle East and Africa (as in Iraq, Libya, and Syria). Science should not be used in ways that lead to blatant support of racism and ethnic prejudice. Salter is, in fact, careful to be in favor of a mixed ethic that approves of genetic interests but “affords basic rights to all parties” rather than adopting a “pure adaptative utilitarianism” that “frustrates other interests so long as this maximizes adaptiveness of the greater number” (Salter 2017: 310). He also mentions about the need of strategies that “blunt aggressive military nationalism in the international arena” (Salter 2002: 137). Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who regards “federations of fairly homogeneous ethnicities” as an ideal arrangement, is of the opinion that the “survival of a multicultural world community should be one of the prime political goals of the world community” (Eibl-­ Eibesfeldt 2004: 289). Overall, the primordial tribal sentiment persists in humans. While this is not the cause of racial discrimination, it remains a potential for mobilization to exclude or be prejudiced against members of other groups. During times of uncertainty or difficulty (such as in an economic crisis), even a small minority can be portrayed as threatening the interests of a majority group. During elections, this can mean giving votes to candidates or the party that is most racial against a minority which has been singled out as a threat to the majority. In Malaysia and Indonesia, for example, ethnic Chinese are often portrayed by racial “indigenous” politicians as controlling the country’s economy and a threat to the Malays or “indigenous”

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Indonesians. Christians, the majority of whom are “non-indigenous,” are portrayed as a threat to Islam even though they are numerically such a small number that they cannot pose any real threat. But what the radical Muslims and racial politicians try to create is the fear of threatening the sanctity of Islam and hindering the possibility of having a real Islamic nation. Furthermore, Christianity is often associated with the West. The innate primordial tribal sentiment explains why people tend to be ethnocentric toward one’s own group and to fear hostile groups. This innate tendency, like our innate fear system, our innate ability to be violent as well as the innate ability to cooperate and to identify with certain groups are all adaptative mechanisms that grew out of our ancestral environments. However, it is not the persistence of these innate potentials that make us racial or violent, it is socio-economic and political factors that make people racial. In fact, in a modern state, the nation has become a large tribe that citizens can identify with, and to have an integrated and harmonious nation, citizens have to cross ethnic boundaries to also identify with this larger tribe. In the next chapter, we shall discuss the communal politics in new states, using Malaysia as an example, and see its implication on nationhood. While there are racial elites who try to stir up fear of communal diversity, there are others who promote solidarity across ethnic boundaries, to accept diversities in a nation that is nowadays very multi-ethnic.

References Alexander, Richard D. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New  York: Aldine De Gruyter. Alland Jr., Alexander. (1973). Human diversity. New York: Anchor Press. Banton, Michael. (1988). Racial consciousness. London and New York: Longman. Barth, Fredrik. (1966). Models of social organization. Royal Anthropological Institute, Occasional Paper No. 23. London: Royal Anthropological Institute. Barth, Fredrik. (1969). Pathan identity and its maintenance. In Fredrik Barth (Ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference (117–134). Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Choi, Jung-Kyoo, and Bowles, Samuel. (2007). The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science, 318 (5850), 636–640. Cohen, Abner. (1974). Two-dimensional man: An essay on the anthropology of power and symbolism in complex society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. First paperback edition, 1976. Darwin, Charles. (n.d.) The origin of species and the descent of man. New  York: Modern Library. [The Origin of Species was published in 1859 and The Descent of Man was published in 1871]

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De Waal, Frans. (1996). Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus. (2004). Ethnicity, the problem of differential altruism, and international multiculturalism. In Frank Salter (Ed,), Welfare, ethnicity and altruism: New findings and evolutionary theory (pp.  283–291). London: Frank Cass. Ellis, George and Mark Solms. (2018). Beyond evolutionary psychology: How and why neuropsychological modules arise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gat, Azar. (2006). War in human civilization. New York: Oxford University Press. Gat, Azar, with Yakobson, Alexander. (2013). Nations: The long history and deep roots of political ethnicity and nationalism. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Gibson, Thomas, and Sillander, Kenneth. (Eds.) 2011. Anarchic solidarity: Autonomy, equality, and fellowship in Southeast Asia. Monograph 60. New Haven, Con.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. Goetze, David. (1998). Evolution, mobility, and ethnic group formation. Politics and the Life Sciences, 17(1), 59–71. Goetze, David. (2004). Evolutionary psychology and the explanation of ethnic phenomena. Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 142–159. Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The Genetic evolution of altruistic behavior, parts 1 and 2. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1–51. Hirschfeld, Lawrence A. (1996). Race in the making: Cognition, culture, and the child’s construction of human kinds. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Jackson Jr., John P. (2010). Definitional argument in evolutionary psychology and cultural anthropology. Science in Context, 23(1), 121–199. Kaufman, Stuart J. (2015). Nationalist passion. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. MacDonald, Kevin. (2001). An integrative evolutionary perspective on ethnicity. Politics and the Life Sciences, 20 (1), 67–80. MacDonald, Kevin. (2008). Effortful control, explicit processing, and the regulation of human evolved predispositions. Psychological Review, 115 (4), 1012–1031. MacDonald, Kevin. (2013). Human general intelligence as a domain general psychological adaptation. In Joseph C. Kush (Ed.), Intelligent quotient: Testing, role of genetics and environment and social outcomes (pp.  35–53). New  York: Nova Science Publishers. Mithen, Steven. (1995). Understanding mind and culture: Evolutionary psychology or social anthropology? Anthropology Today, 11(6), 3–7. Panksepp, Jaak, and Biven, Lucy. (2012). The Archaeology of mind: Neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions. New  York: W.W.  Norton & Company. Pringle, Robert. (1970). Rajah and rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke rule, 1841–1941. London: Macmillan.

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Salmon, Catherine, and Crawford, Charles. (2008). Evolutionary psychology: The historical context. In Charles Crawford and Dennis Krebs (Eds.), Foundations of evolutionary psychology (pp. 1–21). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Salter, Frank. (2002). Estimating ethnic genetic interests: Is it adaptive to resist replacement migration?” Population and Environment, 24(2), 111–139. Salter, Frank. (2017). On genetic interests: Family, ethnicity, and humanity in an age of mass migration. London: Routledge. Originally published in 2003 by Peter Lang. Sanderson, Stephen K. (2014). Human nature and the evolution of society. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Sears, David O. (2001). The role of affect in symbolic politics. In James H.  Kuklinski (Ed.), Citizens and politics: Perspectives from political psychology (pp. 14–40). New York: Cambridge University Press. Shaw. R.  Paul, and Wong, Yuwa. (1989). Genetic seeds of warfare: Evolution, nationalism, and patriotism. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Tan, Chee-Beng. (1993). Introduction: Badeng migration and ethnogenesis. In Tan Chee-Beng (Ed.), The Migration of Kenyah Badeng by Vom Roy (xix– xxxiii). Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Malaya. Tan, Chee-Beng. (1997). Indigenous people, the state and ethnogenesis: A study of the communal associations of the ‘Dayak’ communities in Sarawak, Malaysia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 28 (2), 263–284. Tooby, John and Cosmides, Leda. (2005). Conceptual fondations of evolutionary psychology. In David M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Tooby, John and Cosmides, Leda. (2016). On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: The role of genetics and adaptation. In Evolutionary Psychology, vol. 4 (pp.  149–191). London: Sage Reference. Originally published in Journal of Psychology, 1990, 58(1), 17–67. van den Berghe, Pierre L. (1981). The Ethnic phenomenon. New  York: Elsevier, 1981. Whitehouse, Harvey. (2011). The coexistence problem in psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary theory. Human Development, 54, 191–199. Wilson, Edward O. (1994). Naturalist. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Worthen, Molly. (2018). Myth or fact: A strongman voting bloc? New York Times, December 18, 2018, pp. 1 and 11.

CHAPTER 3

Communal Politics and Nationhood: Malaysia

Abstract  The phenomena of stirring up primordial sentiments and communal politics are best seen in new states in which people of different ethnic, religious, and regional origins tried to form multi-ethnic nations after independence from colonial rule. Through the study of communalism and the process of democracy in Malaysia, this chapter illustrates the use of “race” and religion for political purposes and its impacts on ethnic polarization and the pursuit of democracy. While the Malaysian Constitution provides certain provisions favorable to Malays, the majority people; it was the failure of the National Front (BN) coalition government to observe the spirit of the Constitution of respecting ethnic diversity and cultural rights of all communal groups that created and perpetuated communal tensions. The Malay racialists were able to get the Malay-led government to introduce policies that, in effect, ensure Malay supremacy in national culture and public administration as well as perpetuate the affirmative policies for the Malays, which has enriched United Malays National Organization (UMNO) politicians and its cronies. This is intensified by the ketuanan Melayu (“Malay supremacy”) ideology. Institutional discrimination ensures Malay hegemony in all government organizations and government-linked companies, while Islamization reinforces Malay cultural stamp on the nation, alienating the non-Malays. The Malaysian case shows how democracy is affected by communalism. While genetics provides the potentiality of human groups to identify with groups and for

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nepotism to take place, it is ideology and politics that bring about a particular kind of group identity and politics. Keywords  Democracy • Communal politics • Ethnic relations • Nation • New states • Malaysia

New States, Communalism, and Nationhood The relationship between primordial sentiments and ethnic expressions can be seen in nation-state politics. In the new states, people tend to vote for candidates and political parties that they think can best protect their ethnic interests as well as bring about developments. But there are also people who vote across ethnic lines in the hope that the party or political alliance can bring economic benefits and promote ethnic harmony. They support civic nationalism rather than ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism is “open-minded, optimist and inclusive” while the latter is “basically inward looking, pessimistic and driven by suspicion” (Ratnam 2019: 54). In discussing the status of “integrative revolution” (i.e., “search for ways and means to create a more perfect union”), Clifford Geertz touches on Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, India, Lebanon, Morocco, and Nigeria. However, national integration cannot be understood merely in terms of primordial and civil sentiments or that civil attachment depends on the eradication of ethnic or religious attachment. The new states are not established nations like the USA or European countries like France, Germany, and the UK. They inherited colonial legacy in which people of different ethnic, religious, and regional backgrounds are “forced” by historical developments to form a single nation, a sort of multi-ethnic nations. Thus, whether a new state can develop into a stable nation really depends on the nature of its political organization and its embracement of civilian rule, on giving equal opportunities to all citizens with disregard to ethnicity and religion. This is not easy in the absence of such arrangement and where elites of the major ethnic groups compete for economic and political power. Depending on the institutional arrangement of governance and the adherence of constitution that upholds religious freedom and freedom of speech, all new states show different degrees of success or failure in establishing an integrated state. It is the functioning of state organizations and the extent of the politics of communalism that influence this development,

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not just simply because there are ethnic diversities and communal attachment. Some new states are hijacked by military dictatorship and political Islam so much so that the people are still struggling, even with blood, to have some form of democracy and decent development. Myanmar (formerly Burma), for example, which attained independence in 1948, failed to establish a stable democratic state and it has been largely ruled by military dictatorship since 1962. There was a brief period of semi-­democracy after the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the election in 2015. A military coup in January 2021 deposed her. The country remains in turmoil and the Karen minority is still fighting for a meaningful place in the new state. The government refused to accept the Rohingyas as citizens and the violent military crackdown in Rakhine state in 2017 brought world attention to the plight of this Muslim minority, many of whom have been forced to flee to Bangladesh (cf. Myint-U 2019). Indonesia, too, had a troublesome start at nationhood but recent political development provides a glimpse of hope. The country attained its independence on 17 August 1945. The main problem of national integration after independence was the struggle between the elites of factions to carry the new nation toward a more Islamic state or a secular one; the latter encompassed the Communist Party (PKI) and the military which was largely anti-communist. The attempted coup in 1965 resulted in lots of violence against the Communists and suspected leftists, and it led to the long authoritarian rule of Suharto until his downfall in 1998. Since 1998, Indonesia has moved toward establishing democracy and respect of minority cultural rights. The Chinese, for example, are allowed to celebrate their Chinese New Year and study Chinese. Chinese politicians are able to participate in national politics by joining mainstream political parties. More significantly, soon after succeeding Suharto as President in 1998, B. J. Habibie issued a presidential decree to forbid the distinction of indigenous and non-indigenous Indonesians as pribumi and non-pribumi. The most significant political development after the fall of Suharto is that, unlike in Thailand, the military has confined itself to the barracks. The end of press censorship, the exposure of military abuses, the phasing out of seats for the military in the House of Representatives and People’s Consultative Assembly, and the separation of the police force from the military, etc. all contributed to the military returning to the barracks (McGregor 2007: 223–224). However, religion and ethnicity remain bases of right-wing mobilization during elections. While there is electoral

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democracy, Islamic popularism is a problem that hinders bringing about meaningful democracy in Indonesia, and scholars have noted the polarization of society and regression in democracy (cf. Power and Warburton 2020). While President Jokowi is a popular president, in response to Islamic popularism his administration has “manipulated state institutions to silence political opponent associated with Islamic groups” and “promoted an alternative brand of reactionary populist politics that leverages a hypernationalist discourse about Pancasila and the undisputed conception of the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia” (Mudhoffir 2020: 130). As a result, there is a growing intolerance toward dissent and an increase in repressing critics. This shows that the promotion of liberal democracy is closely linked to the extent of eradicating communal politics that stirs up communal/racial sentiment. The disastrous impact of religious extremism on communal relations and democracy in today’s world is most evident in the role of political Islam, Islam as used by the state or political groups to pursue their political agenda or consolidate hegemonic control. The 1979 Khomeini-led revolution in Iran that led to the downfall of the Shah was supported by many people including intellectuals and leftists. But soon after the revolution Khomeini declared that “Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God,” and “Revolt against God is blasphemy” (Ghattas 2020: 36). Iran has remained an authoritarian country ruled under the name of God, and it has vast political influence in the Middle East. In fact, both Iran and Arabia play important roles in exporting political Islam, and this is very well analyzed by Kom Ghattas (2020). Arabia’s export of the exclusive form of Islam is not just in the Middle East but also in many parts of the world including South Asia and Southeast Asia. The negative impact of this influence is especially serious in Pakistan where Arabia always has tremendous influence in spreading its Wahhabi form of Islam, especially under President Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization policy. This led to sectarianization and a culture of intolerance against ethnic and religious diversity and even against Muslims who hold different religious views, and the situation has remained so to this day The negative impact of Saudi Islam (Wahhabism) is also evident in Malaysia. While there is no religious killing as in Pakistan, the trend of intolerance of ethnic and religious diversity on the part of a section of Malay Muslims in Malaysia is worsening ethnic tensions. This chapter focuses on analyzing communalism and integration in Malaysia to show the use of “race” and religion for political purposes and its impact on

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ethnic polarization and the pursuit of democracy. It provides a case study of communalism and the process of democracy in a new nation, and the analysis serves to provide food for thought about why communalism is so persistent and whether it can be eradicated.

Malaysia: Trapped in Communal Politics Malaya (the Malay Peninsula not including the island of Singapore) attained independence in 1957 through negotiation with the British colonial power and established a federation which preserved the Malay kings (known as Sultans in the states of Johor, Selangor, Perak, Kedah, Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan, Yamtuan Besar in Negri Sembilan and Raja in Perlis) (Melaka and Penang do not have kings), among whom a constitutional monarch known as Yang di-Pertuan Agung is elected once every five years. The territorial dimension of establishing a new nation is seen in the expansion of Malaya in 1963 to include Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak (both referred to as East Malaysia) to form the Federation of Malaysia. The racial Malays did not feel comfortable with the presence of the predominantly Chinese-populated island of Singapore with its charismatic leader Lee Kuan Yew who called for ethnic equality. Ethnic tension was high as the Malays were led to believe that Lee and the Chinese were trying to challenge Malay leadership. Consequently, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister, asked Singapore to leave the new federation in 1965 to form an independent state. This was a rare case in history whereby a prime minister of a federation gave away part of a country’s territory in order to preserve the political dominance of the majority people. To this day most Malays are not psychologically ready to accept a non-Malay as a candidate for prime ministership. While there was a willingness to identify with a new state in the post-­ war period, how the different communal groups could coexist had to be worked out. The British had encouraged the immigration of people from China and India to be engaged in its colonial economy, and this steadily reduced the overwhelming majority of the Malay population. By 1957, out of 6,278,763 people in the Federation of Malaya, the Malay population was just under 50 percent, the Chinese constituted 37 percent, Indians about 12 percent, and Others 0.2 percent. The Chinese were the main non-Malay group, and they were mostly urban-based, engaging in business. The Malays were largely rural-based and engaged in farming. The 1957 statistics show that only 20 percent of the Malays and about 68

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percent of the Chinese were urban residents (Ratnam 1965: 1–2). The statistics reflected the racial problem in forming a new nation. Malay nationalists were worried about Chinese economic dominance, and they were also very much concerned about forging Malay-ness in Malaya, while the non-Malays, the Chinese in particular, were worried about Malay political dominance which could affect their economic security. Negotiations between British-supported elites representing Malays, Chinese, and Indians led to the agreement of a constitution that provides Malay as the national language, guarantees freedom of belief but recognizes Islam as the official religion (not national religion), and there is provision for the special position of the Malays in the form of quotas for admission to public services, quota for issuing permits for the operation of certain businesses, quotas for scholarships, and so on. The special position was to be reviewed in 15 years’ time, leading to its total removal (Ratnam 1965: 108–109). The successful cooperation of the Alliance comprising the political parties of United Malays National Organization (UMNO), Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) representing the respective ethnic communities in the 1955 Federal elections provided the model for the communal political parties to cooperate in election and to rule the country that practices parliamentary democracy. Since Independence, the country had been ruled by the Alliance (replaced in 1974 by an extended alliance called Barisan Nasional or National Front) until the election of May 2018, when BN for the first time lost the general election. The new Malayan nation (later Malaysia) seemed to have the right conditions for becoming a harmonious integrative state. But this was not to be. In his 1973 reprint of the article in The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz added an update on Malaysia since his 1963 publication. He commented that Malaysia “may be in fact further away from communal accord than it was in the first years of its existence” (Geertz 1973: 286). Indeed, the gap between the Malays and the non-Malays (mainly the Chinese and the Indians) has remained, and ethnic tensions rise and subside depending on the nature of the politics of ethnicity. While the Alliance was convenient for governing the new nation, its development under the BN was plagued by constant ethnic disagreement among the communal blocks. The arrangement was not real consociationalism, which requires more or less equal power sharing, as analyzed by Arend Lijphart (1977).

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Communal Nation-building The main reason for the failure to develop an ethnically harmonious state was the failure of the BN government to observe the spirit of the Constitution following the hegemony of UMNO after the 1969 May 13 racial riot, which was in effect an indirect political coup that allows the racial Malay elite to assume hegemonic control of the government. Under the long reign of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad from 1981 to 2003, the affirmative policy for the Malays was made full use of under the Bumiputera (sons of the soil) policy. By the end of his premiership in 2003, the UMNO-led BN government had not only successfully created a class of Malay capitalists, but almost all government departments, statutory bodies, government-linked companies, including universities, are headed by mainly Malays. The Malay racialists were able to get the UMNO-led government to introduce policies that in effect ensure Malay supremacy in national culture and public administration as well as perpetuate the affirmative policy for the Malays, the majority people, which enriched UMNO politicians and its cronies. One of the Malay racialists’ moves in the 1980s was recasting practical political deals between Malay and non-Malay political leaders who cooperated to achieve independence and political rule as “the social contract,” interpreted as deference to Malays as the masters of the Malay homeland. This culminated in the Ketuanan Malayu ideology, which literally means “Malay supremacy” (Puthucheary 2008). The political dominance of UMNO facilitated the nationalistic Malay (read racial Malays) to push forward “Malay supremacy” policies, which led to Malaysia becoming an ethnocracy, a society “in which the apparatus and institutions of the state are dominated and controlled by an ethnic group to further its interests, power and resources” (Lim Tech Ghee 2022). This resulted in, in the words of Murray Hunter (2022: 127), “the Zimbabwisation of Malaysia,” with its highly regulated economy to protect and give favor to elite Malays. Islamization policy further reinforces a greater Malay cultural stamp on the nation, alienating the non-Malays. In fact, Islam as a religion in Malaysia is closely linked to the politics of Malay ethnicity. As Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid (2011: 77) points out, “UMNO’s version of Islam has proven time and again to exhibit ugly racialist undertoners.” Institutional discrimination ensures the Malay hegemony in all government organizations and government-linked companies. More and more non-Malays do not see government services as venues for upward

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mobility, and many depend on the private sectors for employment or go overseas for better opportunities. The UMNO-dominated governments had also ensured the increase in “Bumiputera” population through granting citizenship to Muslim immigrants while the overall trend of Malays to have more children helps too. The dismissal of Singapore from the Federation in 1965 and the grouping of all “indigenous “peoples (in contrast to Chinese and Indians) as Bumiputera no doubt helped to make this politics of demographic hegemony easier. Today about 69.9 percent of the citizens are Bumiputera (mostly Malays), 22.8 percent Chinese, 6.6 percent Indians, and 0.7 percent Others (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1017372/malaysia-­b reakdown-­o f-­p opulation-­b y-­e thnicity/). Despite such ethnic hegemony in government institutions and favorable demographic change, racial Malay politicians continue to articulate in ways that make Malay masses feel insecure about the presence of non-­ Malays and the small minority of Christians. It should also be noted that all post-colonial states are shaped by colonial legacy. In the case of Malaysia, it is not just the British divide-and-rule policy which brought about an ethnically polarized “plural society.” In the years before independence, especially after the failure to impose direct rule through its Malay Union project introduced in 1946, the British colonial power, with the intent of protecting its economic and political interest after colonial rule, decided to side with the Malay nationalists and the Malay Rulers to work out a political framework that ensures Malay cultural and political dominance. This included not only the use of Malay as the national language and the provision of Malay special privileges in the Constitution (the latter subject to review after Independence), but also an electoral system that weighted in favor of the Malay majority rural areas over more multi-ethnic urban areas. This means that, for example, a rural constituency of 20,000 voters gets to elect a Member of Parliament (MP) while a large urban constituency of 120,000 voters also elects one MP. Obviously, the system ensures that there are more Malay MPs in the Parliament. This is part of the structural arrangement that ensures Malay political dominance. This background provides a fertile ground for right-­ wing Malay politicians to pursue their racialist projects when a Malay-­ dominated coalition is weak or when it sides with them. The communal approach to nation-building leads to endless communal politics. Tension flares when some Malay politicians suggest to curb Chinese education or close down Chinese schools. The defense of Islam and promotion of Malay culture have remained effective means of

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mobilizing Malay support. For the non-Malays, the defense of their ethnic culture against what they see as Malay-dominated state hegemony is an emotional appeal for non-Malay support. Among the Chinese, the defense of the Chinese system of education has been an emotional issue. Thus, the politics of ethnic appeal is based on racial ideology, creation of fear, and intensification of ethnocentrism against ethnic others. This provokes the tribal primordial disposition to give rise to a racial state of mind which affects one’s action in election or in treating members of an outgroup. Creating Communal Issues When the UMNO government is weak, as was the case under the prime ministership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (fifth prime minister, 2003–2009), right-wing Malay politicians within UMNO, the ruling party, could become vocal and influential (cf. Hamid 2011: 73). Also when the government is unstable, as was the case under Prime Minister Najib Razak (sixth PM) in the few years before his downfall in 2018, it may allow ethnic issues to flare if they help to draw attention away from the accusation of corruption. In ethnically polarized societies, political leaders who are losing support often resort to creating instability to regain their political support. Multi-racial protests against Najib Razak’s government corruption and misdeeds led to the organization of UMNO-supported rallies which portrayed the anti-government protests as anti-Malay. For example, Bersih (meaning “clean” in Malay, being abbreviation for Gabungan Pilihanraya Bersih dan Adil, The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections), a movement which promotes clean election, democracy, and human rights, held rallies on 29–30 August 2015, which also protested against Prime Minister Najib Razak’s then alleged pocketing of a huge sum from a government investment fund. On 16 September 2015, a pro-government rally was held and young Malays were bused in from different states. Interestingly, the organizer was the Malay martial art group National Federation of Silat Associations. With such slogans as “Don’t Challenge Malay Rights” and “Damn the racist DAP,” it was a pro-Malay rally described as “Malay Dignity Gathering.” Democratic Action Party (DAP) is a predominantly Chinese-based multi-racial party fighting for ethnic equality, which UMNO has been portraying as anti-Malay. The message of the pro-Malay rally was not just anti-DAP but also anti-Chinese in general. (See, e.g., https://qz.com/502858/.)

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The UMNO-led government had obviously allowed individuals and groups to stir up racial sentiments as long as it helped to rally Malay support. The controversial Indian Muslim preacher Zakir Naik, who was on the run from money-laundering charges in India, was granted permanent residency by the Najib government. He often made pro-Malay as well as anti-Chinese and anti-Indians racial remarks, even calling on Chinese Malaysians to leave the country. (For a report, see, e.g., The Interpreter, 25 September 2019.) His popularity among the Muslims is obviously very strong such that even the new Harapan government (see below) could not get him out of the country, a situation very similar to the Republican Party refusing to censure right-wing radicals in America, although the Malaysian case is more extreme as Zakir, a permanent resident, is a foreigner wanted for an alleged crime in India. There were also various incidents which could provoke racial violence. For example, on 28 August 2009, some Malays carried a cow’s head in their protests against the plan to build a Hindu temple in a Malay neighborhood. This insulted the Hindus as cows are sacred to them in religious context. (See Reuters, 10 September 2009, by Razak Ahmad.) More serious was a few incidents of a pig’s head left outside the front entrance of a few mosques in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere in Peninsular Malaysia. (See, e.g., Asia News.it, 27 January 2010; BBC News, 3 January 2012; BBC News, 2 February 2012.) The incidents erupted after the court ruled on 31 December 2009 that Christians could use the word “Allah.” The “Allah” controversy came about as a result of the UMNO-led BN government’s 1986 ban on Christians using the term “Allah,” which is derived from the Arabic for “God.” The term has been used by the Christians in their Malay Bible and in their religious gatherings in Malay. Thus The Herald, a catholic newspaper, sued the government after the ban, leading to the 2009 ruling in favor of the local Christian newspaper. Since then, in 2010, 11 churches and 5 mosques had been vandalized. The government appealed against the ruling, and in 2013, the decision in favor of The Herald was overturned by the Court of Appeal and the ban was reinstated. In 2008 there was a separate case. Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill, a Christian from Sarawak, had her Malay-language compact discs seized by the Malaysian authorities at the airport as the Christian recordings had the term “Allah.” Ms. Bill challenged the ban, and it was on 10 March 2021, after more than a decade, that the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that the word “Allah”—along with the terms Kaabah (Islam’s holiest shrine in

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Mecca), Baitullah (House of God), and Solat (prayer)—all words of Arabic origin, could be used by Christians. (See BBC News, 11 March 2021.) One would have hoped that this settled the issue, but in response to right-wing Muslims, the Malaysian government filed an appeal on 15 March with the Court of Appeal against the ruling that allowed Christians to use the word “Allah” (The Straits Times, 15 March 2021). The racial politics revolving around this “Allah” issue continues. Malaysia After 2018 The communal strategy worked for the Alliance and BN for 61 years, from Malaya’s independence in 1957 to the election of May 2018. The new ruling coalition Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) comprised Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, or People’s Justice Party), DAP, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM, or Malaysian United Indigenous Party, also abbreviated as BERSATU), and Amanah (Parti Amanah Negara or National Trust Party). The intensification of Malay supremacy politics had finally led to the non-Malays (Chinese and Indians) rejecting the ruling government totally, including the MCA and MIC in the coalition. At the same time, a large number of Malay voters, along with many other Malaysians, deserted the government as words emerged of its financial scandals. There were “at least US$4.2bn of questionable transactions” (Netto 2018) involving 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund; notable among these, nearly US$700 million disappeared from an 1MDB joint venture with Petro Saudi and reappeared in the personal AmBank account of Najib Razak, who was the then-prime minister (Vatikiotis 2017: 188). UMNO fell from power. The new government was led by Mahathir Bin Mohamad. With the 93-year-old former prime minister back in office, many Malays found it easier to believe that their interests would be safe with the new government. (For information on the regime change in Malaysia following the 14th general election in Malaysia on 9 May 2018, see Loh and Netto (2018).) The results of the 2018 national election seem to indicate the triumph of civil sentiments over primordial sentiments. But this is not really so, as communal politics persists. UMNO and the Islamic party Parti Islam Se-Malaysia or Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), then in the opposition, tried to convince the Malays that only they can protect their communal interests. A prime opportunity arose when Mahathir announced before the United Nations that the Harapan government would ratify the

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International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Mahathir said so at the end of September 2018. He changed his mind in late November, “after protests and threats of Malays running amok by UMNO president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi” (The Sun, December 4, 2018, pp. 1–2), although one can say the old PM also played race politics in this matter. A critical number of Malays appeared to be convinced that their people’s numerous government-­ sanctioned advantages were now at risk. This was so as they had been told by UMNO and PAS leaders, with the more radical voices alleging that the Democratic Action Party, a Chinese-led component of the government, was anti-Malay and anti-Islam. Even after the government announced that it would not ratify ICERD, UMNO, and PAS were still able to draw a hundred thousand outraged Malays to an anti-ICERD rally in Kuala Lumpur (New Straits Times 9 December 2018, p.  4). To date Malaysia remains one of the handful of countries to snub ICERD, and this includes North Korea and Myanmar. The Harapan government was short-lived due to the defection of some of its members of Parliament and its component party Malaysian United Indigenous Party (PPBM) joined forces with UMNO and PAS and other political parties to form a new coalition called National Alliance (Malay: Perikatan Nasional). Outwardly, its fall was due to conflict within PKR. In actual fact, this involved Malay racial politics, which sought to reduce the influence of the strong Chinese-based party DAP, portraying it as anti-­Malay. Bringing down Harapan under Anwar Ibrahim was the strategy to realize this aim, and this suited Mahathir’s plan of not passing the premiership to Anwar as agreed before the election. The President of PPBM, Muhyiddin Yassin, was sworn in as the eighth prime minister on 1 March 2020. As he claimed only a slim majority in the Parliament, he spent much of his governing in preserving his weak government. Malaysian politics remained unstable, and Muhyiddin had to resign in August 2021 due to the loss of majority support in Parliament. On 21 August 2021, his deputy Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a UMNO leader, was sworn in as the ninth PM. Communal sentiments continue, most Malays identify with Malay-based parties while the non-Malays generally support their non-Malay parties. Malaysia held its 15th general election on 19 November 2022, which resulted in a hung parliament. What surprised Malaysians is that the Islamic party PAS with 49 of the 222 parliamentary seats emerged as the single party which won the most seats. Most Malay voters voted for Perikatan Nasional or the National Alliance (PN) coalition which comprised

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BERSATU (Malaysian United Indigenous Party), PAS, and GERAKAN (Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia or Malaysian People’s Movement Party). The Malay support for PN led by Muhyiddin was largely due to the influence of PAS. The latter’s success was not just due to its Islamic appeal, but also due to its establishment of religious schools in many rural and some urban areas. The lowering of election age to 18 worked to its advantage as the PAS-educated young people were inclined to vote for PAS (Sadiq 2022). Non-Malays and liberal Malays were worried about PN taking over the government as that would mean PAS’ control of the government. As it turned out, the reformist-oriented coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH, with DAP and PKR as core members) led by Anwar Ibrahim was able to finally get the support of BN (the National Front led by UMNO), Gabungan Parti Sarawak, or Sarawak Parties Alliance (GPS), and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, or Sabah People’s Alliance (GRS) to form a unity government. Malaysians look forward to having a stable government that curbs corruption, respects ethnic diversity, brings about development, and upholds democracy. The new Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim provided a glimpse of hope when in January 2023 he launched the “MADANI” concept to guide his governance. MADANI is the Malay acronym for SCRIPT, which stands for sustainability, care and compassion, respect, innovation, prosperity, and trust. The goal is “to build a sustainable, caring and compassionate, respectful, innovative, and prosperous Malaysia based on mutual trust” (New Straits Times, January 19, 2023). A prime minister who intends on curbing racial and religious extremism goes a long way toward promoting social harmony. Whether Malaysia will be able to break away from the communal trap depends on all politicians to avoid stirring up communal issues. * * * The discussion in this chapter shows that the challenge faced by new states is how to establish a stable democracy, and multiple ethnicities are not the root cause of hindering integration. Factional and racial politics are the problems. Of the former, many new states are plagued by existing power elites (capitalists, landlords, and military leaders) who sabotage democracy to assume power to pursue wealth and power through the practice of corruption and the use of cronies. Keeping the armies to the barracks is a problem in a number of new states which are yet to establish strong democratic institutions. As to racial politics, ethnic management matters a lot in

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new states and this involves not only management of ethnic symbolism but also, importantly, providing equal opportunities for access to jobs and resources. Different ethnic management has different impacts on nationbuilding. In the case of Tanzania (Kaufman 2015: 209–236), for instance, “race” is deemphasized in national politics while in the case of Malaysia, the racial approach in favor of the majority ethnie has entrenched the country in endless racial politics and racial tension. There is also a class dimension as the affirmative policies in favor of Malays benefit mostly rich Malays and government cronies. It also erodes the economic well-being of the country. The discussion also shows that it is too simplistic to describe the integrative problem in the new states as the domination of primordial sentiments over civil sentiments. Ethnic identification is natural and by itself does not hinder racial harmony. It is communal politics that is the problem, that is, the politics of stirring up communal feelings against other communal groups. And communal politics is linked to bringing about or perpetuating political power to benefit certain class of political elites and their cronies or lobby groups, to enrich themselves at the cost of national well-being. The human primordialism that makes it possible to identify with groups or to support one’s group is not the cause of communal or racial problems. It is communal politics that is the problem as is well illustrated in the examples provided in this chapter. In other words, genetics provides the potentiality of human groups to identify with groups and to be nepotistic to members of one’s group and even to be altruistic beyond one’s group, but it is ideology and politics that bring about a particular kind of group identity and politics. Ideology and politics direct the tribal instinct to be expressed in a particular way. The problem in a new state is not about cultivating civil sentiments over primordial sentiments but cultivating civil sentiments over communalism. One can be nationally civil and at the same time hold dearly to one’s cultural root, that is, to one’s ethnic or religious identification.

References Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid. (2011). Malay racialism and the Sufi alternative. In Maznah Mohamad and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied (Eds.), Melayu: The politics, poetics and paradoxes of Malayness (pp. 68–100). Singapore: NUS Press. Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states. In Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (pp. 255–310). New York: Basic Books, Inc. First published in Clifford Geertz (Ed.), Old societies and new states (pp. 108–113). New York: Free Press.

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Ghattas, Kim. (2020). Black wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the forty-year rivalry that unravelled culture, religion, and collective memory in the Middle East. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Hunter, Murray. (2022). The Zimbabwisation of Malaysia. In Lim Teck Ghee and Murray Hunter (Eds.), Dark Forces Changing Malaysia (pp. 126–130). Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. Kaufman, Stuart J. (2015). Nationalist passion. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Lijphart, Arend. (1977). Democracy in plural societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lim, Teck Ghee. (2022). Malaysia’s Long-lived Ethnocracy. In Lim Teck Ghee and Murray Hunter (Eds.), Dark Forces Changing Malaysia (pp. 134–138). Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. Loh, Francis, and Netto, Anil (Eds.). 2018. Regime change in Malaysia: GE14 and the end of UMNO-BN’s 60-year rule. Penang: Aliran. McGregor, Katharine E. (2007). History in uniform: Military ideology and the construction of Indonesia’s past. Leiden: KITLV. Mudhoffir, Abdil Mughis. (2020). Islamic popularism and Indonesia’s illiberal democracy. In Thomas Power and Eve Warburton (Eds.), Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Regression? (pp.  118–137). Singapore: ISEAS Publishing. Myint-U, Thant. (2019). The hidden history of Burma: A crisis of race and capitalism. London: Atlantic Books. Netto, Anil. (2018). The black hole of 1MDB: Early signs of trouble. In Francis Loh and Anil Netto (Eds.), Regime change in Malaysia: GE14 and the end of UMNO-BN’s 60-year rule (pp. 22–35). Penang: Aliran. Power, Thomas and Warburton, Eve. (2020). The decline of Indonesian democracy. In Thomas Power and Eve Warburton (Eds.), Democacy in Indonesia: From stagnation to regression? (pp. 1–20). Singapore: ISEAS. Puthucheary, Mavis C. (2008). Malaysia’s ‘social contract’: The invention and historical evolution of an idea. In Norani Othman, Mavis C.  Puthucheary and Clive S. Kessler (Eds.), Sharing the nation: Faith, difference, power and the state 50 years after Merdeka (pp.  1–28). Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. Ratnam, K.  J. (1965). Communalism and the political process in Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Ratnam, K. J. (2019). Identity, nationhood and state-building in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. Sadiq, Jahabar. (2022). Perfect storm lifts PAS to new heights. The Malaysian Insight, 20 November 2022. Vatikiotis, Michael. (2017). Blood and silk: Power and conflict in modern Southeast Asia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

CHAPTER 4

Race and Democracy in the USA Compared to Malaysia

Abstract  This chapter uses the case of the USA to highlight that racialism also poses problems in the development of nationhood in an advanced democracy. The discussion provides a comparison with Malaysia, a small multi-ethnic new state. The comparison shows that communalism or racialism is a problem in both a new state and one with advanced democracy. It also highlights some similarities and differences in how racialism affects the functioning of democracy and the promotion of national integration. In both the USA and Malaysia there is institutional racialism. Racism has persisted in some US institutions, and many African Americans continue to experience personal racism in daily life. In Malaysia, institutional racialism has become more serious since the 1970s, a result of racial policies implemented by the Malay-led National Front government during its long reign. Primordial tribal sentiment is an aspect of human nature, but in a modern state, some politicians may appeal to race and religion to mobilize political support. White rightists in the USA see the increase in non-White immigrants as making America less White. In Malaysia racial politicians seek to incite Malay fear of the Chinese minority and Christians. Race and ethnicity challenge liberal democracy in both countries. Both reducing racialism and strengthening liberal democracy are necessary for promoting national integration.

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Keywords  Democracy • Institutional racialism • Racism • Malaysia • National integration • USA The nature of ethnic politics and intensity of racial sentiments differ from country to country, depending on the history and nature of state formation, the attitudes of political elites, the political structure as well as the presence of ethnic and civil organizations. When Clifford Geertz published his article on primordial sentiments in new states, it was generally assumed that the West had strong democracy and primordial sentiments were not a problem, that the USA, for instance, was characterized by civil sentiments and democracy. This is no longer true, and “primordial sentiments” have boiled up in the developed world too. “Across Europe and North America, whatever is fearful, whatever is foreign, whatever is alien and unsafe is being tagged with the label ‘Islam,’” warns Reza Aslan (2011: ixv). Muslims make up less than 2 percent of the US population and some 6 percent of Europe’s (Aslan 2011: 289). Even so they loom large in the imagination and warnings of Donald Trump and other demagogues who have inflamed a lurking fear of the outsider. The USA and Europe demonstrate that primordial tribal sentiment can be ignited when a changing political and/or economic situation leaves voters unsettled. The political use of “race” is not just a problem of new states as analyzed by Clifford Geertz; it can be a problem, too, in advanced democracies in the West. As long as humans are organized as groups, they will feel a tribal sentiment against ethnic or sectarian outgroups whom they are perceived as a threat, and tribal sentiment will take on ethnic and/or religious ugliness. But we now live in a cosmopolitan world and must transcend tribalism. A hundred years ago it was common to be openly racist but today it is politically incorrect to be so. Now the effort to promote ethnic harmony continues. This chapter uses the case of the USA to highlight that race and communalism also pose problems in a nation with advanced democracy and influence its functioning. Unlike Malaysia, the USA has the problem of racism which is based on biology, like seeing a certain ethnie as biologically inferior. Racialism is based on cultural ideology although it can be accompanied by racism. In Malaysia, ethnic discrimination is based on racialism, not racism. The purpose of the description of race and democracy in the USA is to provide a comparison with Malaysia, a small, multiethnic new state. The comparison will show that communalism, better

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described as racialism in the case of the USA, is a problem in both new states and states with advanced democracy. It will also highlight some similarities and differences in how racialism affects the functioning of democracy and the promotion of national integration.

Racism in the USA The USA has a long history of racism, as experienced by the Blacks from the time of slavery. Civil rights movement have removed most of the institutional forms of racism, for instance, spatial segregation like sitting in different sections of a bus, had been abolished. In theory Blacks have equal opportunities to employment and education although many are handicapped by poverty and racial discrimination. The election of Barack Obama to presidency was an important symbol of Black acceptability by a large portion of the electorate. This is a major step forward in race relations. Conversely in Malaysia, it is still inconceivable for the Malay electorate to elect a Prime Minister who is ethnic Chinese or Indian. Despite Obama’s exhilarating episode, institutional racism still persists in the USA. In his chapter on structural racism, Manning Marable gives a concise history of the problem in the USA and shows that structural racism is still present. There is employment discrimination as minorities are mostly screened out by the recruitment process, thereby not given the chance to prove their worth. Most banks ignore African-American neighborhoods, and Whites are generally given better credit histories than Blacks who have the same or more earnings (Marable 2002: 58–61). In daily life many Blacks, especially those in the lower-income group, still encounter White racist prejudice and discrimination. The many incidents of White police officers using excessive force on Blacks are the vivid reminder of race problems in America today. Video recordings of the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by police officer Derek Chauvin who kept kneeling on the back of Floyd’s neck even though the latter had uttered that he could not breathe, shocked not only Americans but also people all over the world, thanks to modern media technology (Fig. 4.1). The “Black Lives Matter” protests with the slogan “I can’t breathe” provided a vivid image of racial treatment of the Blacks. To be sure the slogan actually originated in 2014 when the unarmed Eric Garner was killed in a chokehold by a New  York police officer. Those were his last words. After Eric Garner and even after George Floyd, a few more Black Americans died violently in their encounters with police. However, this is

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Fig. 4.1  “Black Lives Matter” protest in Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington, USA. (Photograph: Joshua Phua, June 2020)

not White people imposing racism on the Blacks, as not all Whites are racists. This is the result of racial prejudice that appears to be prevalent in US law enforcement. There are relatively more criminals among the Blacks from poor neighborhoods, and the larger American society generally has the stereotype that Black Americans are more violent and are potential criminals. This may account for the racial prejudice against them. Of course, there are many other factors that require in-depth investigation, foremost is the persistence of structural racism in the US police force. The many cases of racist treatment of African Americans cannot be explained away by individual prejudices, there is obviously persistent White racism embedded in the police departments. It is so embedded that it is rather difficult to highlight and eradicate, only to reveal itself time and again when there are fatal cases of racist treatment. While the USA has a long history of racism, not all Blacks’ suffering can be blamed on racism. In the present-day USA, most of the injustices on

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the Blacks are racial rather than strictly racist. White supremacy grew out of White racism to keep America White, as exemplified by KKK White racist group. While members of White right-wing groups may have members who are racists, the movements are based on an ideology of maintaining White supremacy. These groups see the increase of non-White immigrants, especially Muslims, as a trend toward making America less White. Their media messages which warn Americans that the Muslims may take over America stir up fear of the immigrants. The election of Barack Obama, for sure, alarmed White rightists, who became an important base for Donald Trump. The divisive politics of Trump encouraged the White rightists to feel free to be openly racists. Trump’s exploitation of their fear of immigrants helped him to gain more supporters and spread such fear, of Muslims in particular. Indeed, Trump behaved like a third-world authoritarian leader who lied and stirred up racial tension to build up his political support. The focus on Muslim immigration served him and the rightists well as this combined ethnicity and religion to stir up the primordial fear of suspicious outsiders, which served to make a section of White Americans suspicious of Muslim Americans, to other them into an undesirable category. As analyzed by many observers and scholars, Trump attacked the mainstream media as producing fake news while it was he and his supporters who kept on doing that. The most vivid example of his attack on American institutions is his attempt to use all means, including trying to persuade his attorney general and election officers to invalidate an election that was fairly conducted. Trump’s divisive politics and attack on democracy is well summarized by Brian Klaas: “He has politicized core institutions of government…. Trump has hired his family members and cronies for positions that they are unqualified to occupy. And he has exported his attack on democracy globally, by acting as a cheerleader for despots abroad” (2017: 248). This sounds like a vivid description of a third-world despot! The politics of Trump was, no doubt, racial, and it stirred up the primordial tribal sentiment of Americans susceptible to such a provocation. The blame on China for the spread of Covid-19 and for the economic suffering of Americans also stirred up anti-Chinese feelings which resulted in being anti-Asians. The video recordings of some White and Black individuals’ street violent random attacks of Asian individuals shocked viewers worldwide. The racial politics of Trump had stirred up all kinds of racial hatred and buttressed White supremacy. Indeed, all sections of American society were affected by his racial politics. Even the Native Americans had

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not escaped the attention of Trump. Darren Reid, who describes Trump as “a historian of convenience” (2020: 5), points out that his view on tribal legitimacy depends on whether it serves his interests or not. He writes that “Trump’s view of Indian Country demands assimilation and surrender to the federal (or presidential) will; and it demands something very much like racial purity” (2020: 34). Trump’s right-wing politics aside, in recent decades American democracy has revealed its ugly side to the world. US democracy used to be the beacon of democracy that many in the world admired and sought to imitate. It is no more so. Despite the increase in gun violence and most Americans want more gun control, Congress has not been able to enact laws in this direction. The world watch in horror the frequent occurrence of fatal shooting of school children, and they cannot but lose faith in US democracy. American democracy has been hijacked by powerful lobbies that work to serve the interest of the rich and powerful, of which the gun lobby is an obvious example. Election campaigns are so expensive, as large amount of money is spent on advertisement which media companies increase charge during election periods. Politicians thus depend on fund donations, especially from powerful companies and organizations, that they in turn serve their interests more than those of the majority people. Daniel A. Morris (2015: 205) describes the situation vividly: “Congress must attend to the people’s interests and create law that solves problems that the people face. But the structural presence of money in politics thwarts this democratic task by distracting lawmakers. Rather than focus on the needs of their constituents, legislators must focus on fundraising.” Al Gore, who lost to George W. Bush in his bid for presidency, points out that a main problem of US democracy is the dependence on purchasing expensive television advertisement as “the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue,” hence the influential role of those who are able to contribute money (Gore 2007: 8). He also perceptively points out the negative impact of the dominant influence of television over the printing press which provides analyses and information necessary for the good functioning of democracy (Gore 2007: 102). He sums up very well the problem facing the USA: “Greed and wealth now allocate power in our society, and that power is used in turn to further increase and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few” (Gore 2007: 99). The USA has Congress to check on the power of the President, but when the political parties, Democratic and Republican, are so partial as to object to major bills that another party proposes without any regard to the

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people’s interests, this affects the healthy functioning of democracy. In recent years the world has seen the American Congress having problems passing the annual budget, and this makes one wonder about the functioning of American democracy. Fukuyama (2018: 493) describes this problem of politicians blocking the passing of a bill in a highly polarized Congress as “vetocracy.” As a result, American “institutions have failed to confront governing tasks like passing yearly budget” (Fukuyama 2022: 141). This, in turn, affects people’s trust in the system since their elected representatives do not seem to be able or be interested to work toward seeing to people’s interests. Indeed, prominent American political science scholar Robert D. Putnam in his book Bowling Alone (2000) describes an even more pervasive problem, that is, American communities’ bonds have withered and he points out that this will have serious consequences. He calls for Americans to have more civic engagement, to participate in public life which includes “running for office, attending public meetings, serving on committees, campaigning in elections, and even voting” (p.  412). Others call for “engaging citizens in collaborative governance” (Sirianni 2009). Obviously, there is a need to find ways to improve the functioning of American democracy. Suffice for the time being to use the American case to compare and reflect on communalism and democracy in Malaysia.

Ethnicity and Democracy in the USA and Malaysia The assault on democracy by President Trump has led to some people worldwide to have doubts about the system of democracy. While in China, I often heard comments that the political developments in the USA under Trump showed that democracy did not work to the benefits of the people. However, one should note the resiliency of American democracy. Despite the pressure by President Trump, the major democratic institutions did not succumb. The Attorney General and the election officers, who were Republicans, did not kowtow to his demand to change the election results or to proclaim that the election was rigged to help him remain in power. Joe Biden was affirmed as the new President despite the attack on US Congress by a mob of Trump’s supporters. If Trump were a leader in a new state with weak democratic institutions, he could have succeeded in his attempt to remain in power as an unrestrained despot. This shows that the issue of integration in a nation-state is not just affected by ethnicity but also the strength of democratic institutions. This is an important difference between advanced democracy in the West and

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the democracy in new states. In Southeast Asia, Myanmar and even Thailand have been plagued by military coups and unstable governments, making them difficult to attain economic development and eradicate poverty. Malaysia seemed to have a reasonable arrangement to be a modern and progressive state, but the implementation of Malay hegemony policy has increased ethnic tensions and hindered economic progress.   Ethnic relations in a state are very much affected by state policies which have ethnic implications. Indeed, in his discussion on civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism, K.  J. Ratnam (2019: 27) concludes that “ethnically-­inspired conflicts have constituted an important part of the political narrative of modern times.” Underneath all these ethnic expressions, there is the innate fear factor which affects primordial sentiment that influences individuals’ ethnic prejudice and their support of group mobilization for or against an ethnie. Ethnicity is thus both rational and emotional. The ease and intensity of inciting ethnic fear are more serious in most new states which have relied on “race” and religion for ethnic mobilization since independence, as in the case of Malaysia and Indonesia; hence, Geertz’s focus of analysis on ethnicity and new states was timely then and has remained so. The problems of race and democracy in the USA highlight the challenges of race, media, and democracy. A comparative analysis of the situations in the USA and Malaysia helps us to understand the complexity of “race” and politics. In the USA, there are institutional racism and personal racism. We have seen that over the years many aspects of overt institutional racism have been removed but there remains racism embedded in government institutions (such as police departments) and private sector (such as in employment practices). As to personal racism, there are individuals who are White supremacists, or for some reasons are anti-Blacks and anti-Muslims, even anti-Asians too. They bear racial hatred, and time and again, we have news of racial attacks on non-White individuals. Some of these attacks are in response to racial speeches and fake news circulated by the media, as we have seen during the period of the Trump regime. However, racial killing is not that widespread despite the attention it has received. What is commonly experienced by the Blacks, especially the poorer ones, is racial prejudice and discrimination in their daily life, as is well documented and illustrated in Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade (2019) (see Chap. 5 on “Racism”). Some of them experience racism directly while others can sense the racial attitude that is not openly

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expressed, as seen in avoiding interaction, not treating the people of color with dignity, and so on. The combination of structural racism and personal racism is well illustrated by Marable (2002: 219) when he points out that “poor whites and poor blacks living side by side both know that blacks have it worse,” because Whites have “an important material asset that allows many of them to escape the greatest liabilities and disadvantages of poverty—their whiteness.” With the same set of skills and level of education, Whites have a better chance of being hired. In Malaysia, there is no racial hatred based on biology. Inter-ethnic personal interaction is friendly despite ethnic tension at the structural level, that is, at the group level, thus giving rise to the image of ethnic harmony in cross-ethnic interaction. The non-Malays may be unhappy about policies in favor of the Malays, and some Malays may have negative views of Chinese cultural practices, but when they meet, these feelings are suppressed. As I have explained elsewhere, there are ethnic interaction norms that ensure smooth cross-ethnic interaction (Tan 1979, 2021: 229). In the USA, most interpersonal encounters are friendly too, but compared to Malaysia, there are cases of racial hatred expressed at individual levels from time to time. Most people, whether in Malaysia or the USA, conceal their ethnocentrism and racial bias, and these may result in racial discrimination against individuals of other ethnicity, such as some White police officers in the USA using harsher tactics on Black suspects or some street sellers in Malaysia not giving the same discount to individuals from another ethnic group. The USA has removed outright institutional discrimination, especially since the 1960s, thanks to the civil rights movements, although there is still embedded institutional racism. Outright institutional racism refers to racism that results from racial policies implemented through institutions which perpetuate racial discrimination (such as segregation law), while embedded institutional racism refers to unwritten racial discrimination which results from racial prejudice in institutions dominated by members of a majority ethnic group. For example, when the decision makers in an institution are predominantly Whites and few Blacks get recruited or promoted, there may be embedded institutional discrimination even though interviews are conducted to show fairness. Similarly, when the decision makers in an institution are dominated by men and few women get recruited or promoted, this may be due to embedded institutional gender discrimination even though there is no open policy to discriminate against women. Obviously, embedded institutional discrimination remains a

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problem in the USA. Dinesh D’Souza (1995) writes about the end of racism in the USA. This makes sense when we consider the removal of outright racial discrimination, but embedded institutional discrimination, no doubt, remains serious, and so Black civil rights movement remains relevant, although D’Souza’s criticism of the civil rights establishment as having vested interest in perpetuating Black dependency merits consideration. In Malaysia both outright and embedded forms of institutional racialism have become more serious since the 1970s (after the 1969 racial riots which marked the beginning of UMNO/Malay political hegemony), especially during the long rule of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, a politician who had done the most to racialize Malaysia. During his regime, the provision of special rights for the Malays in the constitution was used to push Malay supremacy through promoting the racial ideology of “Bumiputerism” (ideology of Malay rights as “sons of the soil”) and racializing national institutions as well as creating government and government-­linked companies to ensure Malay dominance at all levels. It has become an unwritten rule that government departments and even universities are generally headed by ethnic Malays, and Malay decision makers, no doubt, perpetuate the racial institutions and intensify embedded institutional racialism. With Malay supremacy so well entrenched in the system, it has become sensitive to question this form of racialism as it will be portrayed as questioning Malay rights. The politics of “race” is prevalent in both the USA and Malaysia. One difference is that there was a history of biological racism in the USA, that is, the White racism from the slavery period that regarded Blacks as biologically inferior. Today this is also expressed in what may be called social racism, racism that is not necessarily biologically based but is based on ethnocentrism and cultural stereotypes of others as inferior or prone to criminality, etc. “Racism” or rather racialism in Malaysia is essentially social, with racial Malays treating ethnic Chinese and Indians as “immigrants” rather than equal citizens even though they have settled in the country for three or more generations. In fact, Mahathir Mohammad, before he became Prime Minister, had argued that the Chinese have inherited good genes (such as intelligence) and good cultural traits (diligence, resourcefulness, etc.) from their ancestors in China who had learned to cope in harsh ecological and political environments, so much so that the Malays, who historically had lived in a non-competitive environment, need special protection in order to compete with ethnic Chinese (Mahathir

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1970: 16–31). This is, in fact, a kind of sarcastic racism which views another group as biologically superior and so should be discriminated against in order to protect one’s own “race.” Indeed, Mahathir used his long rule to implement his racial thinking to bring about a rich Malay elite through introducing measures to bring about a rich class of Malays and appointing party cronies to influential positions. Democracy in Malaysia today runs the danger of being dominated by this class of Malay elite who dominates Malaysian politics in the name of protecting the Malays but actually perpetuating racial policies to enrich and empower themselves rather than the Malay masses. In the USA, democracy has been hijacked by power groups that protect the wealthy people who form a cartel which controls not only US politics but also the world economy. However, these wealthy people do not rely on racial politics although they may support right-wing groups. The cartel and lobby groups are so powerful that they seek to control whoever rules the country, whether, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden. Racial politics feature prominently in both the USA and Malaysia, especially during elections. Both race and religion are used to mobilize political support or to incite racial sentiments. In the USA the use of religion and race was most fully manifested following the political ascendancy of Trump, and it was instrumental in securing the support of Christian and racial rightists. In Malaysia, UMNO and PAS politicians have been using religion (Islam) and “race” to buttress their Malay support, as we have seen. In both countries, religious and political right groups have continued to spread fake news to stir up distrust and insecurity. Innate tribal sentiment is incited to make individuals take a racial stand or to support a particular rightist position. It also makes the silent majority less prone to speak up against racial provocation, allowing the rightists, even if a small group, to have a strong voice. In comparing Malaysian democracy and communalism to US democracy and race problems, one finds that there are similarities and differences. Race and ethnicity challenge liberal democracy in both countries. Malaysian democracy is a new democracy, but it has survived, despite the executive abuses of power now and then. National election is conducted once in five years and it is generally fair, and people have become more conscious of its importance to democracy. Putting the former corrupt Prime Minister Najib Razak in jail through court procedure is a good sign of democracy. Defeated candidates concede defeats, and many Malaysians do not understand how Trump is still able to get away with his denial of

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defeat and his attempt at sabotaging the peaceful transfer of power by allowing his supporters to attack Congress when confirming Biden’s presidency. While I have viewed the USA as a matured democracy, it is actually a rather new democracy, which became a liberal democracy only after the 1960s when the Blacks were able to vote and blatant racial discrimination was removed. Interestingly, according to the 2022 democracy index compiled by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the USA is listed as a flawed democracy at no. 30 not much above Malaysia at no. 40 (The Economist Today, 1 February 2023: https://www.economist.com/graphic-­ detail/2023/02/01/the-­worlds-­most-­and-­least-­democratic-­countries-­ in-­2022; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index). There is a tendency to vote for one’s ethnic group. As major political parties in Malaysia are ethnically based, Malays tend to vote for Malay parties and Chinese generally for Chinese-based parties. From our description of evolutionary psychology, this is understandable. In the USA, there are no race-based political parties, but most Blacks tend to support Democratic Party that is seen as more liberal than Republican. This is very obvious in the 2000 election. According to Marable (2002: 86), “Ninety percent of all African-American voters supported Gore, versus a meager 8 percent endorsing Bush. About two-thirds of all Latinos and the majority of Asian Americans voted for Gore. By contrast, White America clearly saw Bush as its favourite son.” This is the same with the support of President Biden who won 87 percent of the Black vote in the 2020 election (Griffith 2022). Because of the identification of race with political parties, local Republican governments had tried to restrict the number of Black voters by making it more difficult to vote or delisting Black voters. At the same time “Republicans deliberately use racial fears and white opposition to civil rights-related issues like affirmative action to mobilize their conservative base” (Marable 2002: 89). Here is a clear illustration of provoking primordial sentiment for political purposes. This is already very obvious in Malaysia. There are also attempts to exploit the ethnically based constituency to gain political support. We have noted that there is strong weightage of rural constituencies to ensure Malay dominance in Parliament, and over the years UMNO through the BN government had also redrawn some constituencies to its electoral advantage, so it thought. Primordial tribal sentiment is an aspect of human nature, which in the ancestral environment serves to unify an ethnic community against hostile outsiders. However, in ethnic politics within a modern state, enterprising

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politicians may appeal to race, religion, or other and, too often, these appeals catch fire. That’s because the primordial inclination is there to provide the tinder. Human individuals are able to control or hide their ethnocentrism and even dislike of certain outgroups, and this effortful control is made possible by domain-general cognitive mechanisms, as Kevin MacDonald (2008) has analyzed. Racial or religious incitements easily erode such a control, especially in the case of those who are already unhappy about their economic plight which may not be directly related to the presence of an outgroup, often portrayed as a threat. In the next chapter we shall discuss how such primordial sentiment is so easily provoked.

References Arnade, Chris. (2019). Dignity: Seeking respect in back row America. New York: Sentinel. Aslan, Reza. (2011). No God but God: The origins, evolution, and future of Islam. First published by Random House in 2005. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. D’Souza, Dinesh. (1995). The end of racism. New York: The Free Press. Fukuyama, Francis. (2018). Identities: The demand for dignity and the politics of resentment. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Fukuyama, Francis. (2022). Liberalism and its discontents. London: Profile Books. Gore, Al. (2007). The assault on reason. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Griffith, Janelle. (2022). Black voters give Biden high marks on the economy despite sting of inflation.” NBC News, 21 April 2022. Klaas, Brian. (2017). The despot’s apprentice: Donald Trump’s attack on democracy. New York: Hot Books. MacDonald, Kevin. (2008). Effortful control, explicit processing, and the regulation of human evolved predispositions. Psychological Review, 115 (4): 1012–1031. Mahathir, Bin Mohammad. (1970). The Malay dilemma. Kuala Lumpur: Federal Publications. Marable, Manning. (2002). The great wells of democracy: The meaning of race in American life. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Morris, Daniel A. (2015). Virtue and irony in American democracy: Revisiting Dewey and Niebuhr. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ratnam, K. J. (2019). Identity, nationhood and state-building in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

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Reid, Darren R. (2020). Native American racism in the age of Donald Trump: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Sirianni, Carmen. (2009). Investing in democracy: Engaging citizens in collaborative governance. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Tan, Chee-Beng. (1979). Baba Chinese, Non-Baba Chinese and Malays: A note on ethnic interaction in Malacca. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 7 (1–2): 20–29. Tan, Chee-Beng. (2021). The Baba of Melaka: Culture and identity of a Chinese Peranakan community in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: SIRD. First published by Pelanduk Publications, 1988.

CHAPTER 5

Being, Racialism, and Democracy

Abstract  To understand why primordial tribal inclination is so prone to be incited, a phenomenological view of self helps. The writings of Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty contribute greatly to our understanding of the Being therein, the unconscious self that is multi-layered and temporal. Racial ideology and communal insecurity contribute to our racial perception and attitude. It is the environmental factors that stir up anxiety and fear which bring about racial behavior. Nevertheless, if individuals can be socialized to be racial, they can also be socialized to be non-­ racial. Education and persuasion are thus very important. In both the new state (e.g., Malaysia) and the one with advanced democracy (e.g., USA), there are agents which stir up racial and religious sentiments. Nevertheless, democracy is, so far, the best institution for legitimate governance and to protect individual freedom as well as to promote peaceful living in a common state. While post-Mao China has brought about development and relatively more personal freedom, the Communist state does not allow free speech that questions its rule, and individual rights of minorities in sensitive areas like Xinjiang and Tibet are severely curtailed in the state’s fight against separatists and terrorists. People today live in nation-states, and how a state is ruled has a lot of influence on shaping our unconscious as well as our perception of self and others. But it is up to the people in each state to strive for a more ideal system of democracy. Keywords  Being • China • Democracy • Malaysia • Racialism • USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C.-B. Tan, Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2_5

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The Phenomenology of Racialism Why is primordial tribal inclination so prone to be incited? To understand this we need a phenomenological view of self. When teaching about ethnicity, I often referred to the 1967 movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which stars Spencer Tracy (Matt Drayton), Sidney Poitier (Dr. John Prentice), Katharine Hepburn (Christina Drayton), and Katharine Houghton (Joanna “Joey” Drayton). It is about the intended interracial marriage between Dr. John Prentice, a Black widower, and Joanna Drayton, a White woman. Joanna Dryaton’s father, Matt Drayton, was a newspaper publisher-editor, and his wife, Christina, owned an art gallery. In the 1960s, interracial marriage between Blacks and Whites was still largely not acceptable in the USA, and parents of John and Joanna understandably were worried about the difficulty their respective son and daughter would face. But the movie also reveals their racial bias. Matt was a liberal, but initially, he could not accept the fact that his daughter wanted to marry a Black man. Upon learning that John was a medical doctor, he even checked up to see if this young Black man was really a doctor. This reflects very well a common phenomenon of expressing a cosmopolitan view of race, such as saying that one accepts interracial marriage if it does not involve “my daughter” or “my son.” Beneath the presented self is the concealed ontological structure of Being, which influences one’s engagement with the world. The concealed self is revealed when “cornered,” as in this case, blatantly “provoked,” when the pretense of the presented self cannot be pretended anymore. When Matt was faced with the possibility that his daughter was going to marry a Black man, he could not continue to be as liberal as he had portrayed in public. “I” is not necessarily the self that includes all its possibilities. Thus, Martin Heidegger uses Dassein to refer to that entity “which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being” (Heidegger 1962: 27). The public presentation of self generally conforms to social expectations, that is, self is presented as conforming to a culture. This is the presentation of self in everyday life so perceptually analyzed by Erving Goffman (1959). Heidegger appropriately refers to this as the they-self in contrast to the authentic self. “For the most part I myself am not the ‘who’ of Dasein; the they-self is its ‘who,’” writes Heidegger (1962: 312). The Being therein which exists in every human being beyond the outward appearance of a person is multi-layered and temporal, existing alongside the world but is also already being in the world and is also being ahead of itself (i.e., futural).

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Human unconscious mind is constituted by one’s experience of the world which is already out there when one is born and which one always engages. The knowledge which one accumulates through one’s engagement with the world influences one’s perception and judgment, and so the state of the mind. All these contribute to the constitution of our world of being that influences our perception of social phenomena which are generally distinguished in polarized terms as we and they, or good and bad. The discussion of one’s being in the world and behavior is better expressed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s spoken cogito and tacit cogito: “Behind the spoken cogito, the one which is converted into discourse and into essential truth, there lies a tacit cogito, myself experienced by myself” (Merleau-­ Ponty 2004: 203). In matters racial, the authentic self may be concealed to give the image that one is liberal and not racial. Thus, questionnaire interviews about racial attitudes are never reliable as they cannot delve into one’s ontological feelings and awareness about race. The ontology of racialism is subjective and can only be revealed through subjective understanding. This is, of course, rather difficult. There are various ways of understanding the Being with regard to racial consciousness. Socialization and accumulation of racial experiences obviously shape racial attitudes. One who grows up in a White family which is racial against the Blacks may become more racial than one who grows up in a family that is concerned about racial conviviality. A Chinese Malaysian, experiencing discrimination arising from the Malay supremacy measures, may become more racial against the Malay ethnie even though he may have good Malay friends. A person who has bad experiences which he attributes to “race” will have all these added to the constitution of his Being. The experiences and feelings about a particular “race” or about other races, in general, provide the ontological bases for perception of the world and influence the response to perception of threat from an ethnie. When one joins a right-wing organization for one reason or another (finding the ideology attractive, friends’ influence, to have a sense of belonging, etc.), the extreme right-wing ideologies of race (such as White supremacy) and religion (anti-Muslims, anti-Christians, etc.), which are often fused, find their ways into one’s Being or reinforce the racial thinking that one already has. The racial being is cultivated over time to become Being-in-the-world and potentiality-for-Being. Even if one does not have any accumulated experiences of racial dislike, political mobilization and racial incitement that promote group interests and fear of threat from another ethnie contribute to acquiring a kind of racial Being. As noted

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earlier, primordial racial potentiality (the innate capability to identify with a tribe and defend its interests) does not by itself cause racism or racial tension. It is the environmental factors that stir up anxiety and fear which bring about racial behavior. In this respect, Heidegger’s explanation is again useful: “Fear is occasioned by entities with which we concern ourselves environmentally. Anxiety, however, springs from Dasein itself” (Heidegger 1962: 395). Anxiety is a state-of-mind which the environment has created and which may intensify fear. We thus understand why ethnicity is so persistent and how people can be so easily racially provoked. The presence of others (like immigrants) and political rhetoric serve to stir up anxiety and fear of one or more ethnies. One cares about not only one’s interests (and ultimately one’s life) but also one’s group, of which the largest unit of belonging in a nation-state is one’s ethnie. Everyday experiences provide the environment for shaping racial feelings. Thus, in an ethnically polarized society, racial feelings are constantly being charged, ready to be manifested when called to action or misled by fake news. But individuals behave differently. How do we understand the mass murder at the two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand on 15 March 2019? Yes, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a White Australian man, was a White supremacist, but not all White supremacists resort to killing. The killing of 25-year-old Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in a White neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia, on 23 February 2020 by three White men was especially disturbing. The killers, Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer, and his son, Travis, 35, a US Coast Guard veteran, pursued to kill Ahmaud Arbery in a pickup truck, while their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryans, 52, joined them in another vehicle and recorded the shooting with his cellphone. The intention to kill was clear and they did not mind it was recorded. On 24 November 2021, the jury of 11 White jurors and 1 Black juror found the defenders guilty (cf. CNN News, 25 November 2021, BBC News, 24 November 2021). This was a triumph of US justice, unhindered by race. But what made the three men decide to kill? Perhaps they thought that they could get away with it as they had good contacts with people in law enforcement to protect them. Indeed, the local police department did not make any arrest until the video of the shooting went viral, and the arrests were made only in May 2020. Or did they still have the fantasy of the past when White people could kill Blacks and get away with it? This sad episode calls for an in-­ depth investigation to understand the psychology of racial killing. The ease of obtaining guns in the USA, no doubt, contributes to the frequency

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of gun violence. The failure of US Congress to legislate stricter gun control despite the support for it by a majority of the American public (Newport 2021) reflects a serious weakness in American democracy, that is, the inability to function in the interest of the public because of the influence of powerful lobby groups, in this case, the National Rifle Association (NRF). The psychology and social background of each racist murderer need to be analyzed in depth. Perhaps at the time of killing, one, whose Being had been so influenced by racial hatred or by the ideology of racial exclusion, did not think that his action was morally wrong. He might or might not regret it at all, especially if he was motivated by a racial ideology. Anyway, racism in everyday life today generally does not involve killing. What makes racial individuals and groups influential is that most individuals do not condemn their fellow ethnic members for being racial. Perhaps one assumes that their fellow ethnic or religious members’ actions do not hurt one’s own group anyway, or one already has certain racial feelings against an outgroup, or one has been led to believe that an outgroup is a threat. Why is it that there are not many Muslims who speak up against Muslim extremists or for that matter, not many Christians speak up against the Christian right? Perhaps, in the case of Muslims, it does not matter to their own group or they do not wish to be seen as challenging their fellow Muslims, or they have been socialized not to question another Muslim’s status as Muslim. A few more words about ideology, being, and behavior are helpful. Some individuals are so ideological that the free will of being is submitted to a particular ideology, such as a dogmatic Christian who chooses to yield himself to always see the world from the particular kind of Christian perspective, that Christianity is the only truth and all perceptions need to be viewed through this perspective. We can label such an individual an ideological fanatic. One sometimes comes across this kind of Christians, and there is no point to have a dialogue with them. But not all who associate with racist or religious ideology are ideological fanatics. In politics, most such people are ideological instrumentalists, who use a particular ideology to further their own interests or political agenda. The principles of free speech and individual rights in democratic societies facilitate their exploitation of these principles to pursue their political agenda. Ethnocentrism and racism shape one’s being. Nevertheless, if individuals can be socialized to be racial, they can also be socialized to be non-­ racial. Education and persuasion are, thus, very important. This is especially

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important in countries which practice some forms of democracy which, at the minimum, have regular national elections. In these states, other than economic issues, race and religion often are used by politicians and interested parties to mobilize support, often by stirring up racial feelings against an outgroup to show that they are seeking to protect the group that they represent. It does not matter that the outgroup is a small minority that cannot really threaten the welfare of the majority. Christians are such a small minority in Malaysia and Indonesia, and yet they are portrayed by some unscrupulous politicians of the majority as if Islam is being threatened by their mere presence. The 2017 election of Jakarta Governor is a good case to illustrate the use of religion to mobilize racial support by stirring up communal sentiments. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as Ahok), a Christian of Chinese descent, took over from Joko Widodo as Governor of Jakarta (Indonesia’s capital) in November 2014, after the latter became President of Indonesia. In the 2017 election for the Governorship of Jakarta, Ahok encountered racial remarks against him. Conservative Islamic groups (such as Islam Defenders Front) and supporters of his Muslim opponent candidates attacked his double-minority statuses (ethnic Chinese and Christian) and argued that Muslims should not vote for a non-Muslim leader. Ahok asked voters not to be misled by those who misuse a quote in the Koran to call on Muslims not to vote for a non-Muslim. His video recording was doctored and he was accused of mocking the verse in the Koran. He denied blasphemy, claiming opposing politicians “incorrectly” using the Koran against him. About half a year after the tape surfaced, he was sentenced to prison for blasphemy. He lost the election to the former Education Minister Anies Rasyid Baswedan, an indigenous Indonesian. (For an account of this incident and the use of religion in political mobilization in Indonesia, see Michael Vatikiotis (2017: 289–291).) Ahok was released from prison in January 2019. In November 2021, the Timah Whisky issue in Malaysia shows how ridiculous some attempts at racializing issues can be. News of the Malaysian whisky winning the “Best Malaysia Whisky” award at the 2021 International Whisky Competition led to some Malay politicians trying to racialize the issue. Timah means tin in Malay but they argued that Timah is the abbreviated version of the Malay name Fatimah, which happened to be the name of Prophet Mohammad’s daughter. These few narrow-minded Muslims argue that the use of the name for whisky is an insult to Muslims and Prophet Mohammad even though, out of respect, no Muslim would

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refer to the prophet’s daughter as Timah. The insinuation is that non-­ Muslims have insulted the Malays and their religion. A female Malay Member of Parliament even said that drinking the whisky (referring to the non-Muslims, of course) is like drinking Malay women! Even the image of the White man in the label (Captain Speedy who was associated with the tin-producing region in Perak) is said to insult Muslims as he has a beard (Fig.  5.1)! While various individuals, including Malays, had spoken out against the ridiculous incitement, the incident shows how low some politicians are willing to go to incite racial and religious sentiments. Right-wing politicians do not always seek majority support. They work at winning over a small section of the population to support them and be sympathetic to their views, small but sufficient enough to swing the votes to their favor. In both Malaysia, a post-colonial new state, and the USA, an established and powerful Western state, race, and religion play a significant part in election and politics. Among the new states, Malaysia is special and fortunate in that its multi-ethnic citizens agree on a common nation and different factions of power accept civilian rule including the military, and in this respect, it is, politically, a fairly stable country. Many other post-­ colonial states still struggle with having a stable civilian government or are split by different racial or religious factions controlling the state. At the time of writing, Lebanon was destabilized by economic crisis and competition for power between the Christian and Muslim blocks. Sudan was having the crisis of a military coup while Ethiopia was destabilized by civil war. Myanmar was still ruled by an oppressive military regime which killed its own people. And the list goes on. Malaysia had the potential to be a successful liberal democracy, but the Malay supremacy agenda of UMNO during the regime of former Prime Minister Mahathir had sabotaged it. In the USA, it was President Trump, despite having only one term as President, who had done the most to empower the rightists and threaten democratic institutions.

Whither Democracy? Whatever its weaknesses, democracy, which allows individuals to elect their political leaders and provides an independent judicial system as well as guarantees the freedom of speech, is the best form of government to have evolved. While there are a few countries which still practice absolute monarchy, modern human societies have evolved from that to the rule of law with different degrees of success of attaining true democracy.

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Fig. 5.1  Timah Whisky. (Photograph: Tan Chee-Beng, January 2022)

Communism, as an alternative, is useful for reflection to improve the democratic system, especially if it has achievements in serving the people and ensuring a more equitable distribution of income. But it has proven to be not practical unless it opens up its economy to global capitalism, and its authoritarian rule is at the cost of free speech and individual rights. Military rule is not acceptable to the people who resort to protests in an attempt to bring back democracy. In Myanmar, for example, the latest military coup on 1 February 2021 had led to mass protests despite the military regime’s brutal crackdown. Myanmar is a classic case of colonial rule leaving behind a weak state with no agreement between the majority people and

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minorities on how the state was to be forged at the time of independence in 1948, and civil wars led to military dictatorship. So far democracy is the best institution for legitimate governance to protect individual freedom. Any alternate form of good governance must have a good system of choosing national leaders and a peaceful transfer of power, besides the protection of individual rights, which is the single most significant advance in political development that separates it from oppressive rule by sovereign leaders and military rulers. This is what is lacking in China, which hinders it from achieving a more ideal political system even though, since the 1980s, it has so reformed its communist rule that it has proven to be effective in bringing about economic development and modernization. Achievements in economic development and modernization are results of competent leadership, good planning, and effective implementation. They are not brought about by merely having democracy or communism. It is misleading to associate economic development with any particular system of government. Whatever system of government, it needs good planning, competent leadership, and effective governance to bring about economic benefits for the citizens. This study is concerned with “race,” religion, and integration in democratic countries. While not all countries are plagued by problems of race and religion, and many new states are yet to form stable democracies in the face of powerful factions to empower and enrich themselves and their cronies, “race” and religion challenge the practice of democracy. The examples from Malaysia and the USA show how this is so. In both the new state and the one with advanced democracy, there are agents which stir up racial and religious sentiments. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir spearheaded Malay supremacy during his premiership. He and his party’s right-wing politicians were most responsible for racializing the Malaysian nation. Worse still, in order to combat the Islamic party PAS, he and his deputy Anwar Ibrahim pursued an Islamization policy which racialized the bureaucracy and allowed the fundamental Wahabi version of Islam to strengthen its position in the country to the extent that it is able to influence policies and stir up religious issue, as Dennis Ignatius narrates so clearly in his book (Ignatius 2021). Fortunately, besides non-Malay organizations and individuals, various multi-ethnic NGOs and some concerned Malay individuals also speak up against this serious trend of racializing the nation and erosion of democracy. But this is an uphill battle as Malay supremacy is already so entrenched in the political system and bureaucracy.

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In the USA, the threat to democracy is vividly exposed during Trump’s term as President and even since then. To be sure, the middle-class and lower-class people in America already felt insecure when Trump ran for President, and so conditions were ripe for him to exploit the fear of immigrants and to blame China for the loss of jobs. He was able to run as a populist who exploited social sentiments for his political ambition. He might not have any clear ideology, but he was able to get the support of right-wing groups with their racist or narrow-minded religious ideology. In other words, President Trump and his Republican colleagues as well as groups of White supremacists and Christian rightist individuals and organizations were the agents which promoted fake news to stir up racial feelings. The cases of the USA and Malaysia as well as elsewhere in the world show that spreading fake news is a serious threat to democracy. Freedom of speech has its limits, like not spreading fake news to create racial tension or religious conflict. But how to control its spread is quite problematic. Introducing a law that seeks to control spreading “sensitive issues” and fake news runs the danger of an oppressive government using it against opposition politicians and human rights activists. For example, in Malaysia, the Sedition Act first introduced by the British colonial government in 1948 had been used by the various governments since independence to curb opposition. There is also the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, and various individuals had been charged under this Act for “fake news” posted at Facebook and WhatsApp. With no specific definition of “content which is indecent, obscene, false, menacing, or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person” (section 211 of the Act), there is much room for the authorities to violate the freedom of speech. It is thus a challenge to devise a law to check sedition and the spread of fake news. This is even more problematic when a government is involved in spreading fake news. For instance, Twitter had colluded with Pentagon “to run network of false accounts around the world” (Mail Online News, 21 December 2022). This violates not only the practice of democracy in a country but more so the rights of people in other countries to peace and democracy, and it covers up US human rights violation overseas. The integrity of the attorney general is very important. In both Malaysia and the USA, the attorney general plays a very important role in maintaining justice and democracy, but he may submit to the pressure of the government to make decisions in favor of it or an autocratic leader. This is

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common in Malaysia, but the whole world saw how American Attorney General William Barr could be so supportive of President Trump that he always prioritized his decision in favor of the latter. However, he did an about-turn in early December 2020 to announce that there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and later resigned as attorney general, effective 23 December 2020. The future of democracy depends a lot on the integrity of officials whose decisions affect it. For the time being, mass media, human rights organizations, other NGOs, and concerned individuals have crucial roles to play to fight against fake news and defend democracy. Democracy is, ultimately, an ideal to strive for. No country has yet achieved an ideal state of democracy. All the major components of democracy, namely, political representation, independent judiciary, freedom of speech, and individual rights, have yet to be accomplished to reach an ideal democracy. The principle of majority rule through election still has problem of true representation. The problem of majority win is that the winning party may not actually have won the majority vote; it wins the constituencies with just a slight majority. This has happened in both Malaysia and the USA. In the 20 November 2021 Melaka state election in Malaysia, for instance, the UMNO-led coalition BN won 21 out of the 28 seats, and so had a two-thirds majority. Yet its popular vote was only around 38.39 percent. The biggest winning party UMNO which won 18 seats out of 21 received a popular vote of only 29.84 percent (cf. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_malacca_state_election). As to freedom of speech and individual rights, unlimited freedom is not practical and does not exist. We are in a world in which our being is already restrained by our social world. We cannot harm others in our pursuit of individual rights. We owe certain responsibility to the collectivity that we belong to. But as mentioned earlier, how to legislate laws to prevent the spread of fake news and racial or religious incitement? The containment of incitement of racial distrust remains a challenge. In other words, we still need to learn how to perfect the overall democracy system, and we await some wise people to reinvent democracy that really serves the people. Meanwhile, learning the practice of democracy in a number of countries helps to reflect on improving it. Each of the more stable democracies has something to offer. The 2022 democracy index compiled by The Economist Intelligence Unit shows that North Europe leads the world in having good practice of democracy, with Norway ranking number 1,

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Iceland number 3, Sweden number 4, Finland number 5, and Denmark number 6. The number 2 position goes to New Zealand in Australasia. There is much to learn from these countries.

Democracy in China? Although this study deals with politics of race and religion in countries which practice or claim to practice democracy, some comments on race, religion, and national unity in China serve to highlight some of the points discussed so far. In fact, many Chinese, having watched the functioning of US democracy under President Trump, are convinced that their Communist system is better. Indeed, what matters to ordinary Chinese is that the country is stable, the leaders are capable to manage the infrastructure and economy as well as defend the country, and people can find jobs. Freedom of speech to criticize political leaders or to have Western-style elections are not their main concerns. In fact, even many highly educated people have opined that Western-style democratic election is not practical for China as it will lead to chaos (luan). To understand these attitudes, one needs to note that since the 1980s the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government has brought about tremendous economic development. The campaign to eradicate poverty was carried out seriously and had yielded positive results. While there is no freedom to express opinions to oppose the government, the people in China today enjoy much personal freedom. In fact, over meals, friends may even criticize the government. What they cannot do is to express such views in the media. Given the much-improved livelihood and personal liberty today, compared to the Maoist period, there is much support for the government which has proved itself to be efficient overall and able to stand up to foreign powers. The Chinese people trust their government (cf. Mahbubani 2020: 154). The lack of freedom of speech to criticize the government does not affect ordinary people, but this affects only academicians and intellectuals, who have mostly given up about promoting democracy or have doubted “Western-style” democracy. Those who continue to criticize the Chinese government or who continue to promote democracy generally have chosen to live as exiles overseas. Since the opening up of China under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China has become an economic power and it has advanced its military technology too. The infrastructure and economic developments are for all to see and domestically the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enjoys support of

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its citizens. Sending astronauts to space and establishing a space station uplifts the pride of the Chinese people, not just in China but in the Chinese diasporas too. All these are achieved with capable leadership, strategic planning, and an emphasis on science and technology. Economically China is, by all accounts, capitalist albeit with “socialist characteristics” (such as state involvement). The state is economically capitalist and politically communist. Communist ideology is no more an essential part of its rule, although Communist symbolism remains important and students still have to study political Marxism. The legitimacy of CCP rule, other than its historical revolutionary role, relies more and more on its service to the people, which includes eradicating poverty and improving people’s livelihood. With regard to managing national unity, PRC classifies its population into 56 ethnies called minzu, with the Hans, the ethnic core, forming one minzu and the non-Han minorities 55 minzu. While the minorities had suffered during periods of leftist campaigns, along with the people in the rest of the country, PRC’s minzu policy has been fairly successful for national integration. The affirmative policy and the arrangement of minority political representation have helped win the support of people classified as minorities. In ethnic autonomous regions where there are more than 30 percent of minority population, minorities share in local governance. In fact, a county chief can be from a minority minzu. However, political control is rather tight in Tibet and Xinjiang because there are Tibetan and Uighur separatists who seek separatism from China. Although their number in the country is small, PRC government is worried about threats to national unity and Western provocation and their support of the separatists. The oppressive control of Uighurs and Tibetans is, no doubt, excessive but this is the problem of the lack of democracy and the nature of authoritarian communist rule. Political oppression targeted at Uighurs has been especially serious in Xinjiang since some radical Uighurs carried out a number of terrorist attacks in the 1990s and early 2000s, in the province and in major cities in other provinces: Beijing (28 October 2013, car blaze at Tiananmen Square), Kunming (1 March 2014, attack with knives at Kunming Train Station), and Guangzhou (6 March 2015, attack with long knives at Guangzhou Train Station). Western criticisms of China over Xinjiang, including US accusation of genocide, are so fused with their anti-China rhetorics, and I shall not analyze the fiction and truth of such accusations. It is, no doubt, that the lack of democracy and strong Communist control

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has led to oppressive measures being taken against Uighurs as a community. It is not a good time to be a Uighur as far as freedom to speak and travel are concerned. Outside the sensitive areas of Xinjiang, Tibet, and to some extent Qinghai where there are also many Tibetans (zangzu), minorities live under the same political condition as the Han. Political oppression makes the policy of minority representation meaningless in the “sensitive” areas. The response to Muslim terrorists in China also involves a stricter control of Muslim populations, not just in Xinjiang. The Huis, who are Muslims, are affected too. Mosques and Islamic symbols are de-Arabized. In Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, for instance, the domes above the mosques have been dismantled and the Arabic halal symbol is banned, only the Chinese characters of qingzhen which means halal are allowed. There has been a national campaign to Sinicize (zhongguohua) religions, that is, in the case of Islam, to relate the faith to patriotism and support of the Communist Party. Given the powerful political power of the Communist government, the Muslims in China have adjusted in a number of ways. For example, the national flag is displayed prominently at mosque sites while slogans are put up on the wall or notice boards to show that efforts have been made to relate religion to patriotism and Chinese characteristics. The strong Communist control does not allow ethnic articulation against the government, but this does not mean there is no ethnic tension. The voice for democracy has become rather subdued in China. This is not just because of government oppression against individuals calling for democracy. There is really no market for it now under Xi Jinping, and it is not worth risking going to jail for life for it. But as the CCP no doubt knows, if the economy is weak and the party loses its legitimacy of serving the people, its rule may be challenged. Various scholars have pondered about the prospect of democracy in China (see, e.g., Gilley 2004: Hu 2000; Zhao 2000). For the time being, the Communist Party’s success in economic development and modernization and the felt need for a strong China to deal with the threat from an increasing Western anti-China campaign do not help to convince most ordinary people in China of the need for democracy. As Shaohua Hu (2000: 149) puts it, “Democracy has not been a necessity, but a luxury, to the Chinese.” In recent years, the Chinese government has articulated its version of “democracy” in response to Western criticism of its rule. In 2019 President Xi Jinping introduced the concept of “whole-process democracy” to stress

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that China has democracy which is characterized by legislation enacted after careful “democratic deliberations.” In 2021, President Xi amended the term to “whole-process people’s democracy.” This Chinese concept of democracy is used to contrast Western liberal democracy by emphasizing China’s good governance and care for the welfare of the people. While good governance is important for a good democracy, it is not a defining characteristic of democracy as both liberal democracy and authoritarian rule can have good governance that brings benefits to the people. Indeed, as pointed out by Samuel Huntington (1993: 29), “democratic governments can be and at times have been corrupt, arbitrary, unresponsive, shortsighted, unfair, and incapable of taking decisive action.” Freedom of speech (including the freedom to dissent) must be considered basic to any democracy. Liberal democracy is a convenient term to refer to this kind of democracy although the term can be confused with libertarianism which overemphasizes individual rights and resists overreaching state rule. Indeed, the Chinese government is so sensitive to the idea of liberal democracy which it regards as Western that it does not tolerate people who promote it. University students writing theses are advised by their supervisors to avoid using the term in their writing. For convenience I use the term liberal democracy as a general concept without associating it with any particular state’s democracy. Of course a democracy must allow people to choose their government, usually through voting in national election. China’s “whole-process people’s democracy” claims that there is voting by the people, but it is one in which the citizens cannot challenge the rule of the Communist Party although there is some form of representation of delegates participating in making legislation. Anyhow, China is no more the kind of ruthless authoritarian rule that US government and its media continue to portray, as there is considerable personal freedom and some forms of political representation, even for minorities, although its “democracy” does not permit challenging the Communist Party nor the national leaders. Nevertheless, in China, there is silent discontent and the yearning for more freedom of speech among the intelligentsia. Ordinary people are more concerned with having opportunities to earn a decent living and may protest now and then to show their frustration over certain restrictions. A good example is the demonstration in late November 2022 over the long-­ term Covid-19 control, and the government responded by lifting the “zero Covid” policy (Normile 2022; The Economist Today, 27 November 2022). Nevertheless, it does not tolerate any challenge to its rule, and the

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effective system of placing party secretaries (shuji) at all levels of administration perpetuates the implementation of its firm rule. In fact, one can say that the maintenance of the shuji system ensures that liberal democracy cannot emerge. But, politics is unpredictable. Who knows? One day, a strong leader might decide that democracy is necessary! Or a democratic alternative might emerge following great economic and political developments. Indeed, one cannot rule out the possibility of a form of social democracy taking root in China, a democracy upholding its basic principles and balancing individual rights and collective interests while preventing indirect rule by powerful business and military elites through elected politicians. It will be a kind of liberal democracy that does not neglect collective interests and the unity of the nation. Perhaps this can be labeled liberal social democracy. Presently, there is strong support for the Communist government in its ability to ensure economic growth and stand up to a hostile West, led by the USA. * * * People today live in nation-states, and how a state is ruled has a lot of influence on shaping our mind as well as our perception of self and others. It affects our basic freedom and dignity. A state today is made up of people of diverse ethnicity and religions, and we need an environment which respect such diversities and embrace cooperation and solidarity across communal boundaries. Given the systems of governance we have in the world today, democracy, whether liberal democracy or social democracy, has proven to be the best form to promote basic human freedom, embrace diversities, and forge common nationhood. Military dictatorship is not acceptable as it not only disregards basic human freedom but also oppresses minorities. Communism in its more benign form, as in post-Mao China, brings development to the people, but there is no freedom of political expression, nor the freedom to imagine an alternative system. In its extreme form, as in China during the Cultural Revolution or North Korea today, it is a brutal totalitarian control that wipes out all civil society organizations and individual rights. Whatever its weaknesses are, a democratic system provides a better environment for the promotion of basic human freedom and cooperation between peoples. Attempts to eradicate communalism is best achieved in an environment in which diverse views, including those of minorities, can be expressed freely, and racialism can be challenged with objective information and reason. This will provide a less

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racial environment for the “evaluating self” (Kahneman 2011), and the expression of a self that embraces diversities and friendship irrespective of ethnicity and religion. Until an ideal alternative is found, democracy is still the best form of government to adopt. It is up to the people to strive for a form of democratic government that is run by competent leaders who care about development and people’s welfare. This includes curbing corruption and cronyism as well as eradicating all forms of racialism. In the final analysis, this is the ideal to strive for as true democracy is not just installing a ruling elite through an election. It should also be noted that democracy should not be conceived as Western as all good human inventions are for all humans to share, wherever it was first invented or founded; just like today we do not view a modern vehicle as Western even though one can say where a particular brand is made. Furthermore, no country has yet produced an ideal form of democracy, although some have done better than others. One should also guard against the use of democracy and human rights by big powers or certain interest groups, comprising politicians, arm dealers, and big corporations, to pursue their own agenda. The disastrous effects of US-led intervention in a number of Middle Eastern and African countries (for instance, Iraq and Libya) are for all to see. Democracy in a state, marked by fair elections, independent judiciary, and liberty (which must include the freedom of speech), is to be largely achieved by people’s power within the state, although genuine support of human rights NGOs from overseas and UN organizations, as well as sympathetic governments (who do not seek to dominate), are helpful.

References Gilley, Bruce. (2004). China’s democratic future: How it will happen and where it will lead. New York: Columbia University Press. Goffman, Erving. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New  York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Heidegger, Martin. (1962). Being and time. Translated from the German by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New  York: Harper & Row. New edition published by Martino Fine Books, Eastford, CT, 2019. Hu, Shaohua. (2000). Explaining Chinese democratization. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Huntington, Samuel P. (1993). American democracy in relation to Asia. In Robert Bartley et al. (Eds.), Democracy and capitalism: Asian and American perspectives (pp. 27–43). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Ignatius, Dennis. (2021). Paradise lost: Mahathir & the end of hope. Kuala Lumpur: Dennis Ignatius. Kahneman, Daniel. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow. New  York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Mahbubani, Kishore. (2020). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. New York: Public Affairs. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2004). Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic writings. Edited by Thomas Baldwin. London and New York: Routledge. Newport, Frank. (2021). American public opinion and gun violence. Polling Matters, 2 April 2021. [American public opinion and gun violence-gallup.com] Normile, Dennis. 2022. Models predict massive wave of disease and death if China lifts ‘zero Covid’ policy. ScienceInsider, 6 December 2022. Vatikiotis, Michael. (2017). Blood and silk: Power and conflict in modern Southeast Asia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Zhao, Suisheng. (Ed.) (2000). China and democracy: The prospect for a democratic China. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

Abstract  This study shows that it is social circumstances which evoke the evolutionary psychology disposition—primordial tribal disposition—that stirs up racial tension and conflicts. Thankfully, humans also have the innate potential to cooperate and establish friendship within and across communal boundaries. This has significance for nation-states in which conviviality between individuals of diverse communal groups is essential for national solidarity. Liberal democracy, which upholds the rule of law and individual freedom, provides a better environment for individuals of all communities to participate in national life and live with dignity. However, politicians may seek to gain support through inciting fear of one or more communities or of immigrants. Communalism is thus a challenge to democracy, hence our discussion of primordial sentiment, communalism, and democracy. There are some measures which can be taken to improve democracy. Both governments and NGOs should pay serious attention to promoting inter-ethnic and inter-religious friendship so as to encourage embracing ethnic and cultural diversities. Getting people to be better informed is necessary for the functioning of democracy. In this regard, reforming education to provide a cosmopolitan view of history and embrace communal diversity is important. Introducing and improving local government will, surely, ensure greater local involvement in governance, which may allow minorities to have a greater chance at participation. The question of racialism is ultimately very much tied up with social justice and the functioning of democracy. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C.-B. Tan, Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2_6

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Keywords  Communalism • Democracy • Inter-ethnic interaction • Identity • Local government • Primordial sentiment

Innate Disposition, Racialism, and Identity In seeing primordial sentiment as an attachment to cultural “givens,” Geertz gives the impression that such an attachment is the ultimate cause of ethnic conflicts. In actual fact, ethnic and religious attachments do not necessarily hinder ethnic and national solidarity. It is the amplification of racial and religious issues as well as the creation of circumstances that cause fear of an outgroup which evokes the evolutionary psychology disposition—primordial tribal disposition—which stirs up racial tension and conflicts. This perspective allows us to focus our analysis on the circumstances that allow this evocation rather than on the attachment to an identity. While tribal sentiment and ethnocentrism are often mutually reinforcing, certain racial ideologies, such as White supremacy in the USA or Malay supremacy in Malaysia, are used to intensify the ethnocentric tendency with the aim of excluding an ethnie which is portrayed as alien and a threat to one’s ethnie, thus, undesirable. Political rivals are similarly portrayed. In treating the primordial tribal sentiment as an inclination that has evolved in the ancestral environment, we are arguing about the relationship between our genetic potentiality and socio-cultural environment. In concluding her discussion of the evolution of racism (such as the political use of race), Pat Shipman points out, “A potential criminal, if such exists, will never terrorize or hurt if that potential is turned aside by altered circumstances and new empowerment within the bounds of society” (1994: 271). The genetic potentials of humans to identify with one or more groups (family, ethnic group, nation, etc.), to see one’s group favorably, and to cooperate within and across groups are important for the success of human groups. The presence of such genetic potentials does not mean that humans are racist by nature. It is circumstances that bring forth such negative potentials, which contribute to one’s Being-in-the-world as racial. Even if such circumstances do not lead to direct racial expression, they, nevertheless, contribute to the constitution of the concealed structure of Being, which in new circumstances may lead to oneself acting racially. Tension and insecurity can be created to provoke individuals to be racial and violent against members of another ethnie. This partly explains

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the irrational street attack on Asian Americans, following President Trump and his Republican colleagues’ accusation of China as creating and causing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ingroup favoritism and outgroup violence are very visible in human history, and many weak groups had been wiped out or reduced to marginal living, Australian aborigines and Native Americans are obvious examples. But humanity is also characterized by friendship and cooperation. This is most comprehensively analyzed by Nicholas A.  Christakis (2019). He points out that friendship and ingroup bias are universal (p. 314), and he is of the opinion that, in our evolutionary history, there is a bend toward goodness (p. 472). This is greatly facilitated, as noted in the beginning of this book, by the social evolution of institutions within and across nation-states that allow individuals to live and move about without fear of attack by hostile groups, albeit there are criminals everywhere. And within a nation, there are individuals and groups willing to cooperate to fight against racialism.

Communalism, Nation-States, and Democracy The innate potential to cooperate and to favor one’s own group over the other is relevant to the discussion of communal relations in nation-states in which group identification is extended to “nation” to the extent that people are willing to identify with it. Living in a common state, it is advantageous for the people to embrace peace, to live harmoniously and with dignity. This requires cooperation between ethnic groups and the promotion of civic nationalism. In reality, gaps in power relations have implications on ethnic competition for access to resources and articulation for cultural and ethnic interests. Ethnic nationalism has been an important tool in such a struggle, and the politics of fear works best in situations where people feel anxious about economic security and social stability. But in a democratic state, equal opportunity and justice for all ethnies are necessary for national integration and maintenance of peace. In modern states, good relations between individuals of diverse communal groups are essential for national solidarity. National politics play a crucial role here and it involves the question of democracy, whether individuals of different communities are treated equally and can participate fully in national life. In ethnically polarized societies, there is the innate fear factor which affects the primordial sentiment that influences individuals’ ethnic prejudice and their support of group mobilization for or against

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an ethnie. The ease and intensity of inciting ethnic fear are more serious in most new states which have relied on “race” and religion for ethnic mobilization since independence, as in the case of Malaysia and Indonesia, and hence Geertz’s focus of analysis on ethnicity and new states was timely, and this has remained so. Democracy as a political system is modern, but as an expression of social liberty, it has been part of the human history in the form of “three primordial freedoms” discussed by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021). These refer to “the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey and the freedom to create or transform social relationships” (p. 426). Using archeological and historical records, they show that some early civilizations, such as Mesopotamia, had practiced “not-so-primitive democracy,” and there was “participatory government” in ancient Mesopotamia cities (Graeber and Wengrow 2021: 297–304). The three basic forms of social liberty, they argue, gradually receded in human history because of bureaucratization and thus the impersonal organization of human societies (Graeber and Wengrow 2021: 417, 503). Modern liberalism is closely tied to democracy. It covers similar values of “primordial freedom”: freedom to move, freedom of speech, and freedom to organize, and it is characterized by the rule of law which protects liberty. But there is no perfect system of democracy yet, and humans have to continue to imagine and hope to bring about a better social reality. An important issue is how to balance between individual rights and collective interests, as well as to ensure that minorities are not discriminated. US democracy has exposed the weakness of extreme individualism to the extent of ignoring collective interests. Wearing or not wearing mask in time of the Covid-19 pandemic became an issue of individual rights and partisan politics. An overemphasis on individuals’ right to arm has plunged the USA into the most gun-violent society in peacetime. Francis Fukuyama makes an important distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism (libertarianism in the USA); the latter is characterized by “hostility to an overreaching state and belief in the sanctity of individual freedom” (Fukuyama 2022: 20). It is liberalism and not neoliberalism that is meaningfully linked to liberal democracy. As a system to ensure individual liberalism, democracy involves election of national leaders by all eligible adult citizens, and in order to check the arbitrary power of the ruling elite, there is separation of power among the executive, parliament (Congress in the USA), and judiciary. Participatory democracy through election is important but democracy must also uphold

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liberalism. However, party politics in racially or communally polarized societies is characterized by politics of identity. Politicians may seek to gain support from their communal bases through creating or intensifying fear of one or more communities or of immigrants. Communalism is thus a challenge to democracy, hence our discussion of primordial sentiment, communalism, and democracy. At the same time liberal democracy is necessary for the protection of all citizens irrespective of race or other communal identification. We have seen that in Malaysia, “race” and religion are often used by racial politicians to create fear of the other. Even though Malays have dominated national leadership and all branches of government administration, racial Malay politicians are still able to create Malay fear of Chinese as a community which is often portrayed as non-­indigenous and therefore, at least, somewhat alien. Christians may constitute a very small minority in Malaysia and Indonesia, but they are portrayed as a threat to Islam and Muslims even though Muslims constitute the majority of the population. In the USA, not only racism has persisted among racists, but right-wing groups have also expressed the fear that Whites could be replaced by people of color (cf. Fukuyama (2022: 96)). The evolutionary psychology analysis above explains the ease of people being racially mobilized, especially in time of insecurity created by economic recession.

Some Solutions Fortunately in nation-states like Malaysia and the USA, there are individuals and groups who accept communal diversity and there are friendship networks beyond ethnicity and religion. In Malaysia, we have seen that despite the politics of ethnicity and communal polarization, interactions among individuals of different communities are cordial, and there are considerable networks of friendship in local communities and places of work. There are also political NGOs (such as Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (Aliran) and Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM)) which promote democracy, human rights, and social justice. They also promote inter-ethnic harmony. In fact, there are various non-communal organizations and cultural groups which provide “everyday forms of interethnic peace building” in Malaysia (Loh 2010). In the USA, despite the right-wing individuals and groups stirring up fear of non-Whites and immigrants (especially Muslims), there are networks of friendship across religions. Even in the midst of islamophobia following the 11 September attacks, there are leaders of different religious

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groups which called for unity and peace. Robert D. Putnam and David E.  Campbell conclude their study on how religion divides and unites American society thus: “As Americans have come to live by, make friends with, and wed people of other religions, their overlapping social relationships have made it difficult to sustain interreligious hostility” (Putnam and Campbell 2010: 550). The power of friendship across ethnicity and religion cannot be ignored, and both governments and NGOs should pay serious attention to promoting inter-ethnic and inter-religious friendship to encourage embracing diversity as a major way to reduce communal distrust. In this regard, neurophysician C. T. Tan, who reflects on ethnic relations in Malaysia, considers emotion as key, and he calls upon the Malaysian authorities to promote greater opportunities for inter-ethnic interaction so as to advance friendship that transcends ethnic boundaries (Tan 2022: 121). In Malaysia, an important area where more inter-ethnic understanding can be achieved is through reforming education to allow students to increase their horizons to embrace diversity and to give respect to cultural diversity. But, since the 1970s, the Ministry of Education, under the influence of “Malay supremacy” ideology, has been focusing on the Malays and Islam in the development of the nation. History textbooks were rewritten toward this purpose, but the presence of Chinese and Indians and their contributions were given minimum attention (cf. Raman 2021). Obviously, there is a dire need to reform the education system in Malaysia. An education that teaches respect toward people of diverse ethnicity and cultures is obviously important in all multi-ethnic nations, the USA included. The significance of home socialization and school education is well illustrated by the story of Cody Johnson, reported in The Washington Post on 22 December 2022. The report analyzes why the Republican red wave did not materialize in the 2022 mid-term elections. Cody, a young White, who grew up in a poor Black and White neighborhood, and an electrician, with no college degree, like many in rural Georgia, was a Trump supporter. But in the 2022 mid-term election he decided to vote against the White Trump supporter as he did not want extremists in office. What is striking from the interview with him is not just that in his school days he had read The Hobbit and later in life the works of American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote about self-reliance and the integrity of the mind, but also his memory of his mother slapping him with a box of macaroni when he made a racial slur (McCrummen 2022). This account

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of Cody Johnson illustrates very well our discussion of life experiences and Being in Chap. 5. The socialization not to be a racist (experience from home socialization) and learning to be a person of integrity (education through reading) contributes to the many layers of Being in a person. The stock of perceptions and knowledge plays an important role in a person’s judgment in certain stages of his life, as shown in Cody Johnson’s case. Obviously, education (which includes socialization) about being non-­ racial and upholding justice and integrity is crucial to eradicating racialism and promoting justice. A problem that remains in liberal democracy is how to allow people to have more democratic participation. It is not an ideal situation when national leaders can decide everything without paying attention to the wishes of the majority of the people once they are elected. In the case of Malaysia, we have seen UMNO, the dominant Malay political party, used the decades of its dominance of the government, before 2018, to racialize and Islamize the country. In the USA ordinary citizens watch helplessly as their elected politicians play partial politics to serve the interests of powerful lobby groups. Some scholars have suggested decentralizing political power (cf. Ragoonath 2004; Loh 2017; Lim 2020). This will surely ensure greater local involvement in governance, which may allow minorities to have a greater chance at participation. The Federation of Malaysia had local governments (Norris 1980), but the UMNO-led government temporarily suspended local elections in 1965, and the Local Government Act 1976 made the suspension permanent (Hunter 2022: 12). The government argued that local elections would stir up racial tension. In actual fact, their suspension allowed the government to appoint Malay loyalists to control local government and racialize the country from the national to the local level. Obviously, bringing back local government elections is crucial to improving democracy and allowing people of diverse communal origins to participate in governance. Local government is a system that is necessary for meaningful democracy whether the countries practice federalism (e.g., Malaysia and USA) or not (e.g., Indonesia and Philippines). However, the US situation shows that political polarization along party line can lead to polarized treatment of controversial issues, like abortion or imposing restriction on access to voting, depending on which party controls a state. Ultimately, improving democracy involves embracing communal diversity and promoting communal harmony.

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Final Remarks In the march of humanity, there is always the struggle between the cosmopolitan and the tribal. A cosmopolitan view of humanity need not involve suppressing ethnic identity. As Kwame Anthony Appiah explains, one can be proud of one’s ethnic identity and national identity, and, at the same time, respect and accept people of other ethnicity and nationality. He calls this “rooted cosmopolitanism” (Appiah 2005: 213–272). Until the far-off triumph of mankind’s cosmopolitanism is achieved, we will always have the politics of ethnicity to study. While primordial tribal disposition is innate, racial expression is social in that it is brought about by circumstances that cause fear of outgroups and, consequently, to draw exclusive boundaries. Recent research has shown that “racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance” (Kurzban et al. 2001: 15387), and it can be “easily overwritten by new circumstances” (Kurzban et  al. 2001: 15391). In the case of ethnicity and nation-building in new states as studied by Clifford Geertz, it is crucial to have leadership and organizations that promote peace and cooperation rather than ethnic rivalry and conflict. In recent years, there has been a trend to emphasize conviviality over cosmopolitanism to see how people live with differences on the ground (cf. Nowicka 2020). In multi-ethnic societies, even though there is ethnic tension in the larger society, people in a locality can live amicably across ethnic boundaries. In my research in Malaysia I have found many such instances where Malays and Chinese live convivially in local settings even though there are structural conflicts between them at the national level. There are practices to promote such conviviality and I call them ethnic interaction norms (Tan 2021: 229). However, conviviality at the local interpersonal level does not mean that all such individuals will not respond to racial provocation aimed at the unseen group level. The ideal of cosmopolitanism as an overall value or as a utopia is important to help individuals see beyond racialism or narrow communal interests. To reduce ethnic tension, it is necessary to promote circumstances that reduce the fear of outgroup free-riding or even domination. Human beings have evolved into cooperative species (Bowles and Gintis 2011), and the units of cooperation can extend from family to larger groups up to the nation. There is, thus, hope for reducing ethnic tension in modern states, provided efforts are made toward that direction. Clifford Geertz does not think it is possible to replace primordial ties with civil ones in the integrative revolution of new states, although there is a need of

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adjustment between them so that the processes of government can proceed (Geertz 1963/1973: 308). Our analysis of primordial tribal disposition and ethnicity explains why ethnic sentiments are easily stirred up to serve the politics of ethnicity. It is crucial to promote civil sentiments, which is better expressed by Brian Klaas (2017: 251) as “civic engagement.” The challenge for a democratic state is how to engage the silent majority to take a stand (including casting their votes) against individuals and groups which are prone to use ethnicity and religion to pursue their racial and extremist agenda. Evolutionary psychology helps in our understanding of innate disposition that has evolved in our ancestral environment, and this is necessary for understanding ethnicity beyond the insight given to us by both Fredrik Barth and Clifford Geertz. It allows us to study the archaeology of ethnicity. We should, however, note the important point made by Donald Symons that “Darwin’s theory of natural selection sheds light on human affairs only to the extent that it sheds light on phenotypic design, and design is usually manifested at the psychological rather than the behavioral level” (Symons 2016: 110). However, ethnic conflicts cannot be explained merely by reducing them to psychological inclination. The complex issues of ethnicity have to be studied in the context of culture, politics, and economy. In this respect, anthropology can benefit from the findings of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary science, just like the latter have benefited from relevant anthropological findings. Our study shows that fear and primordial tribal identification are two innate potentials that drive people to be hostile to an outgroup that is perceived as a threat. Therefore, it is necessary to enable citizens to have objective information and assurance of friendly co-existence in a multi-ethnic nation in order to counter racial manipulation of public opinion besides feeling of distrust and even hatred. Access to objective information is necessary for strengthening democracy and countering racial politics in a nation-state. It is worth reminding that evolutionary psychology, unlike sociobiology, does not use fitness maximization to explain behavior. It does not normalize ethnocentrism and legitimize racialization. It explains why people are so prone to be ethnocentric and be incited to racial behavior. The innate tendency to be ethnocentric and supportive of one’s group is still with us even though, today, most people do not live in circumstances in which one group has to battle another to ensure members’ security. We have laws and cultural institutions to protect individuals in a state and across states. Furthermore, advanced military technology makes it

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necessary to negotiate and make alliances rather than to fight it out. But we do not know when a group may be faced with a situation where all members have to cling together for survival, and so the evolutionary inclination to support one’s group cannot be replaced by cultural institutions. But humans need to create conditions that make it less likely for individuals to be provoked to support racialism. Can racialism be eradicated totally? It is obvious from the analyses above that ethnicity will always be with us, and there are always issues of ethnicity to study! Since tribal inclination constitutes part of our EEA (ancestral environment), it is there to respond racially to evoked circumstances. The primordial inclination to identify with and favor one’s group is necessary for the survival of one’s group to this day and even into the future, although circumstances have changed for most people to live in peace with other ethnies in stable nation-states. The evolutionary psychology helps us to understand the persistence of ethnicity and related phenomena such as nationalism. Scholars who hold a cosmopolitan view of humanity generally condemn nationalism as hindering universal solidarity. “Nationalism is a great menace,” writes Rabindranath Tagore (1917: 133). He was concerned about the attainment of spiritual ideal of common humanity which was hindered by the problem of solving “race unity.” Nationalism teaches people that “a country is greater than the ideals of humanity” (Tagore 1917: 127) and this was unacceptable to him. Nationalism, as an ideology, is indeed a great menace. Yet the emotion to support one’s group against external aggression or oppression is natural and has primordial root, as we have discussed. However, the causes of racial expressions are social, and so racialism can be managed, even to the extent of no open hostility, by promoting an environment which values conviviality and cosmopolitanism. The fight against racial ideology is most crucial. Between racial ideology and ethnocentrism, the former is the real enemy, while the latter is usually not a problem unless provoked by racial ideology and situations of ethnic insecurity. Some forms of ethnocentrism that make people value their own group as better is unavoidable, and this is not a problem in ethnic relations as long as such ethnocentric feelings are not expressed in ways that are hostile to another ethnie. The challenge in a democratic state is how to bring about equal opportunity and justice for all ethnies and to fend off foreign aggression. There is also a need to prevent individuals and groups from exploiting the freedom of speech and media technology to spread fake news and racial hatred or distrust of other groups in the country. The question of racialism is,

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ultimately, very much tied up with social justice and the functioning of democracy. Like Tagore we value racial unity and common humanity, but the understanding of our primordial root helps us to understand that moral teachings alone will not help bring about such cosmopolitanism. It is necessary to constantly take action to change the social circumstances that breed racial distrust and injustice and to bring about meaningful democracy, which is about people having a say in how they are to be governed. Above all, it is about upholding the rule of law and about having the freedom of speech and the freedom to dissent. The problem of integration in nation-states, especially new states, is not just due to the presence of “primordial sentiments,” it is about the need to bring about what may be called cosmopolitan democracy which emphasizes accepting diversity and upholding justice for all.

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (2005). The ethics of identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. First published in 1997. Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. (2011). A cooperative species: Human reciprocity and its evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Christakis, Nicholas A. (2019). Blueprint: The evolutionary origins of a good society. New York: Little, Brown Spark Fukuyama, Francis. (2022). Liberalism and its discontents. London: Profile Books. Geertz, Clifford. (1963/1973). The integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states. In Clifford Geertz (Ed.), Old societies and new states (pp. 108–113). New York: Free Press. Reprinted in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973. Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Hunter, Murray. (2022). Malaysia’s stolen democracy: Local government. In Murray Hunter and Lim Teck Ghee, Malaysia towards GE15 and beyond (pp.  12–16). Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. Klaas, Brian. (2017). The despot’s apprentice: Donald Trump’s attack on democracy. New York: Hot Books. Kurzban, Robert, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98 (26), 15387–15392. Lim, Mah Hui. (2020). Local democracry denied? A personal journey into local government in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya (Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

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Loh, Francis K. W. (2017). Ethnic diversity and the nation state: From centralization in the age of nationalism to decentralization amidst globalization. Inter-­ Asia Cultural Studies, 18 (3), 414–432. 10.1080/14649373.2017.1346165. Loh, Francis K. W. (Ed.) (2010). Building bridges, crossing boundaries: Everyday forms of inter-ethnic peace building in Malaysia. Kajang (Selangor): Malaysian Social Science Association. McCrummen, Stephanie. 2022. In rural Georgia, an unlikely rebel against Trumphism. The Washington Post, 22 December 2022. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/red-­w ave-­m idterm-­e lections-­ 2022-­what-­happened/] Norris, M.W. (1980). Local government in Peninsular Malaysia. Hants (England): Gower Publishing Company Limited. Nowicka, Magdalena. (2020). Fantasy of conviviality: Banalities of multicultural settings and what we do (not) notice when we look at them.” In Oscar Hemer, M.  P. Frykman and Per-Markku Ristilammi (Eds.), Conviviality at the crossroads: The poetics and politics of everyday encounters (pp.  15–42). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Putnam, Robert D, and David E. Campbell. (2010). American grace: How religion divides and unites US. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ragoonath, Bishnu. (2004). Embracing civil society in  local governance: Challenges and prospects for increasing participation in the Caribbean. In Jack Menke (Ed.), Political Democracy, social democracy and the market in the Caribbean (pp.  141–162). Surinam: Democracy Unit, Faculty of Social Sciences, Anton de Kom University of Surinam. Raman, Santhiram R. (2021). From decolonization to ethno-nationalism: A study of Malaysia’s school history syllabuses and textbooks 1905-2020. Petaling Jaya(Malaysia): Strategic Information and Research Development Centre Shipman, Pat. (1994). The evolution of racism: Human differences and the use and abuse of science. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Symons, Donald. (2016). A critique of Darwinian anthropology. In Robert Kurzban (Ed.), Evolutionary psychology, volume 1 (pp. 99–112). London: Sage Reference. Originally published in Ethology and Sociobiology, 1989, 10 (1–3): 131–144. Tagore, Rabindranath. (1917). Nationalism. New  York: Macmillan Company. Reprinted in 1973 by Greenwood Press, Publishers. Tan, C. T. (2022). Ethnic relations: Emotion is key. Kajang (Selangor): Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Social and Policy Studies, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. Tan, Chee-Beng. (2021). The Baba of Melaka: Culture and identity of a Chinese Peranakan community in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: SIRD. First published by Pelanduk Publications, 1988.

Index

A Africa, 19 Allah, 32, 33 Altruistic behavior, 17 Amanah (Parti Amanah Negara/ National Trust Party), 33 Ancestral environment, 11, 17–20, 50, 72, 79, 80 Anwar Ibrahim, 34, 35, 61 Anxiety, 56 Arabia, 26 Arbery, Ahmaud, 56 Attorney General, 43, 45, 62, 63 Aung San Suu Kyi, 25 Authoritarian leaders, 17, 43 B Badeng Kenyah, 14 Barisan Nasional, National Front (BN), 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 50, 63 Barr, William, 63 Barth, Fredrik, 5, 6, 15, 16, 79 Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), 58

BERSATU, see Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, Malaysian United Indigenous Party (PPBM) Bersih (Gabungan Pilihanraya Bersih dan Adil, The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections), 31 Bill, Jill Ireland Lawrence, 32 Black Americans (African Americans), 41, 42, 50 Black Lives Matter, 41, 42 BN, see Barisan Nasional, National Front Brooke, James, 12 Bumiputera (sons of the soil), 29, 30 Bush, George W., 44, 50 C China, 3, 11, 12, 27, 43, 45, 48, 61, 62, 64–69, 73 Chinese Communist Party, 4, 64 Chinese education, 30 Christianity, 20, 57

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C.-B. Tan, Communalism and the Pursuit of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36239-2

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84 

INDEX

Christians, 20, 30, 32, 33, 49, 57–59, 62, 75 Civic nationalism, 24, 46, 73 Civil identification, 2 Civil sentiments, 2, 7, 24, 33, 36, 40, 79 Clinton, Bill, 49 Colonial legacy, 24, 30 Communal/communalism (defined), 5, 26, 27, 40, 75 Communal politics, 20, 24–36 Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Malaysia), 62 Communism, 60, 61, 68 Conviviality, 55, 78, 80 Cooperation, 15, 17, 28, 68, 73, 78 Cosmopolitanism, 78, 80, 81 Covid-19 pandemic, 73, 74 D Darwin, Charles, 14, 17, 79 Democracy cosmopolitan democracy, 81 liberal democracy, 26, 49, 50, 59, 67, 68, 74, 75, 77 liberal social democracy, 68 social democracy, 68 whole-process people’s democracy, 67 Democracy index, 50, 63 Democratic Action Party (DAP), 31, 33–35 Demographic hegemony, 30 E Education, 30, 31, 41, 47, 57, 76, 77 Ethnic associations, 13 Ethnic boundary, 5, 6, 20, 76, 78 Ethnic Chinese, 19, 41, 48, 58 Ethnic group (defined), 4, 13, 14

Ethnic identification, 2, 3, 5, 10, 14, 36 Ethnic interaction norms, 47, 78 Ethnicity circumstantial approach, 2, 6 constructionist approach, 6 instrumental approach, 5, 6 primordial approach, 2, 6 situational approach, 5, 6 Ethnic polarization, 27 Ethnic relations, 5, 6, 46, 76, 80 Ethnic vs. racial, 3, 11, 57 Ethnie (defined), 4, 13 Ethnocentrism, 10, 15, 31, 47, 48, 51, 57, 72, 79, 80 Ethnocracy, 29 European, 19, 24 Evolution, 3, 7, 10–20, 72, 73 Evolutionary psychology, 3, 7, 10, 11, 15–18, 50, 72, 75, 79 F Fear, 3, 7, 11, 14, 15, 17–20, 31, 40, 43, 46, 50, 55, 56, 62, 72, 73, 75, 78, 79 Federation of Silat Associations, 31 Floyd, George, 41 Freedom of speech, 4, 24, 59, 62–64, 67, 69, 74, 80, 81 Friendship, 69, 73, 75, 76 G Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Sarawak Parties Alliance (GPS), 35 Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, Sabah People’s Alliance (GRS), 35 Garner, Eric, 41 Geertz, Clifford, 2, 4–7, 18, 19, 24, 28, 40, 46, 72, 74, 78, 79 Genetic interests, 14, 15, 17, 19

 INDEX 

GERAKAN, see Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, Malaysian People's Movement Party Gore, Al, 44, 50 GPS, see Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Sarawak Parties Alliance GRS, see Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, Sabah People’s Alliance Gun control, 44, 57 Gun violence, 44, 57 H Habibie, B. J., 25 Headhunting, 14 Heidegger, Martin, 54, 56 Hunters and gatherers, 13 I Iban, 12, 13, 16 Ideological instrumentalists, 57 Ideology far-right ideology, 4 racial ideology, 31, 48, 57, 72, 80 Immigrants, 18, 19, 30, 43, 48, 56, 62, 75 Inclusive fitness, 11, 14, 16, 17 Indonesia, 2, 19, 24–26, 46, 58, 74, 75, 77 Integrative revolution, 2, 24, 78 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 34 Interracial marriage, 54 Iran, 26 Islam Islamic popularization, 26 Islamic terrorists, 7 Islamization, 26, 29, 61 political Islam, 25, 26

85

Wahhabism (Wahhabi form of Islam), 26 Ismail Sabri Yaakob, 34 J Johnson, Cody, 76, 77 Joko Widodo (Jokowi), 26, 58 K Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy), 29, 33, 48, 55, 59, 61, 72, 76 Khomeini Ayatollah, 26 Kin, 11, 14 L Lebanon, 2, 24, 59 Lee Kuan Yew, 27 Liberalism, 74, 75 Lun Bawang, 16 M MADANI (Malay acronym for SCRIPT), 35 Mahathir bin Mohamad, 29, 33, 48 Malaya, 24, 27, 28, 33 Malay nationalists, 28, 30 Malays, 13, 14, 19, 27–36, 41, 46–50, 55, 58, 59, 61, 75–78 Malaysia, 2, 3, 5, 14, 19, 20, 24–36, 40–51, 58, 59, 61–63, 72, 74–78 Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), 28, 33 Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), 28, 33 Malay Union, 30 Masculine traits, 15 May 13 racial riot, 29

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INDEX

MCA, see Malaysian Chinese Association Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 55 MIC, see Malaysian Indian Congress Middle East, 19, 26 Minority, 18, 19, 25, 30, 41, 58, 61, 65–68, 74, 75, 77 Minzu (ethnies in China), 65 Muhyiddin Yassin, 34 Multiculturalism, 19 Muslim immigration, 2, 43 Myanmar (Burma), 25, 34, 46, 59, 60 N Najib Razak, 31, 33, 49 National Alliance, see Perikatan Nasional, National Alliance (PN) National election (Malaysia), 4, 33, 49, 58, 67 National integration, 3, 5, 7, 17, 18, 24, 25, 41, 65, 73 Nationalism civic nationalism, 24, 46, 73 ethnic nationalism, 24, 46, 73 National Rifle Association (NRA), 57 Nation-building, 29–31, 36, 78 Nationhood, 20, 24–36, 68 Native Americans, 43, 73 Neoliberalism, 74 Nepotism, 14 New state (explained), 2, 24–27 New Zealand, 56, 64 O Obama, Barack, 41, 43, 49 1 Malaysia Development Fund (1 MDB), 33 P Pakatan Harapan, Alliance of Hope (PH), 33, 35

Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, Malaysian People's Movement Party (GERAKAN), 35 Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), 33–35, 49, 61 Parti Keadilan Rakyat, People’s Justice Party (PKR), 33–35 Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, Malaysian United Indigenous Party (PPBM), 33–35 PAS, see Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, Malaysian Islamic Party Patriotism, 15, 17, 66 Perikatan Nasional, National Alliance (PN), 34 Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (Aliran), 75 PH, see Pakatan Harapan, Alliance of Hope Phenomenology, 54–59 PKR, see Parti Keadilan Rakyat, People’s Justice Party PN, see Perikatan Nasional, National Alliance PPBM, see Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, Malaysian United Indigenous Party Primordial sentiments, 2, 3, 5, 7, 16, 17, 19, 24, 33, 36, 40, 46, 50, 51, 72, 73, 75, 81 Primordial tribal disposition, 3, 72, 78, 79 R Race, 2, 4, 5, 11, 17, 26, 34, 36, 40–51, 54–56, 58, 59, 61, 64, 72, 74, 75 Racialism, 5, 40, 41, 48, 54–69, 72–73, 77, 78, 80 Racism institutional racism, 41, 46, 47 personal racism, 46, 47

 INDEX 

racial killing, 46, 56 sarcastic racism, 49 social racism, 48 white racism, 42, 43, 48 Reciprocity, 17 Regional identification, 3, 5 Religion, 2, 4, 7, 17, 18, 24–26, 28, 29, 43, 46, 49, 51, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 66, 68, 69, 74–76, 79 Religious identification, 7, 36 Right-wing politics, 2, 44, 59, 61 Rohingya, 25 S Sarawak, 12, 13, 16, 27, 32 Self and Being, 54 Singapore, 27, 30 Sinicize (zhongguohua) religion, 66 Social justice, 75, 81 Sociobiology, 10, 79 South Asia, 26 Southeast Asia, 2, 3, 26, 46 Special position of the Malays, 28 Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM), 75 Suharto, 25 Symbolic predisposition (SYP), 18 T Tabun, 16 Tanzania, 18, 36 Tibet, 65, 66 Timah Whisky, 58–60 Tribalism, 15, 40

87

Tribe, 13–15, 17, 20, 56 Trump, Donald, 2, 40, 43–46, 49, 59, 62–64, 73, 76 Tunku Abdul Rahman, 27 U United Malays National Organization (UMNO), 28, 29, 31, 33–35, 48–50, 59, 63, 77 United States (USA), 2, 7, 19, 24, 40–51, 54, 56, 59, 61–63, 68, 72, 74–77 V Vetocracy, 45 W White right-wing group, 43 White supremacists, 46, 56, 62 X Xi Jinping, 66 Xinjiang, 65, 66 Z Zakir Naik (Indian Muslim preacher), 32 Zia ul-Haq (President of Pakistan), 26 Zimbabwisation, 29