Prof. Lim Chee Seng was a person of few yet many words. By few words since in the years that he sang as a bass with the Sanctuary Choir of Trinity Methodist Church Petaling Jaya,he seldom poked fun at others, or the conductor, unlike the rest of the back row recalcitrant basses who are/were always up to mischief.
Professori Lim, as he was known to us, will always be the steady one; calm and smiling no matter how hard the rest of the basses struggled with the music score.
And, i guess that will be how most of us basses will remember the Professori.
BUT, there was a much bigger and encompassing sphere of the Professori that we did not know. He was absolutely passionate that Malaysia as a country should go beyond race and that perhaps one day, all ethnic groups in Malaysia will be called 'Bangsa Malaysia'
I remember reading the article below in The Sun newspaper, and during choir practice how Professori Lim wanted to say more than this.
Listen to what he said..
As the nation celebrates 50 years of independence, it is not out of place to ask whether we are, in fact, one whole or several parts. Are we one nation or several "inter-nations" living under one roof?
Several crucial issues of constitutional significance have cropped up recently to focus the minds of all Malaysians on the subject of what it means to be a Malaysian.
The timing could not be better, when we are all looking back to that August day in 1957 and looking forward to the future to assess the state of our federation and nationhood. We are all actively thinking about the meaning of being fellow citizens in a modern nation state.
Some experiences, as the great Samuel Johnson said so memorably, can concentrate the mind wonderfully. As our nation turns 50, will it, if the world does not end before that, turn 100 or 500? We pray and hope that the country may long continue but as the ruins of some failed states and nations should tell us, nothing can be assumed or taken for granted.
I recall a dialogue session on a proposed national TV policy in October 2005 at the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry. There, someone who used to be very high up in the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) declared that there was no such thing as a Bangsa Malaysia. Indeed, how can there ever be one when dominant and prevailing structures endlessly reinforce our separate-ness and racial identities and insist that "bangsa" must always mean "race" and not "nation"?
The very word for "nation" in Bahasa Malaysia is problematic. "Bangsa" is at once the word for "race" and "nation".That is how the term is glossed in the Kamus Dewan (DBP Dictionary).
As a term, it provokes the lexical confusion that similarly plagues the Chinese translation of the word "sin" - "cheway" in Hokkien, meaning at once "sin" and "crime". No wonder many people cannot admit to any sin because they see themselves as truly never been guilty of any crime as spelled out in the Penal Code.
The lexical confusion is not just in Bahasa Malaysia but also in Malaysian English. Some of this confusion is institutionalised in the names of some major political parties in the country. Why is MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association) not CMA and MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) not IMC? If one must refer to race then, members of MCA should be Chinese Malaysians and not Malaysian Chinese.
I remember a conversation in Calcutta when this question first hit me like a thunderbolt.
I was Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies in English in 1995. Some colleagues were talking about the exchange of academic staff represented by my presence in Calcutta and someone remarked that there were no Indians teaching English at the universities in Malaysia at the time, though some were to be found in Singapore.
Without hesitation, I mentioned K.S. Maniam in my own department only to realise instantly that we were talking at cross-purposes. By long habituation, I had automatically referred to a fellow Malaysian as "Indian" whereas my interlocutor was talking about fellow Indians from India. I have had to learn to speak of all Malaysians as Malaysians, pure and simple, and to drop all reference to race.
K.S. Maniam himself explores this situation in his excellent novel, The Return, which is read in upper secondary schools in the country as part of the English Language syllabus. Ravi's father, Naina, desperately searches for his place in post-Independence Malaya. It is a search that ultimately ends in despair and madness. Unhinged, he imagines being praised by Mahatma Gandhi for having done well. However, he is told by Nehru to go away - to cut loose from India. He then imagines playing golf with the Tunku and being reassured about his place in the new country: "He told me not to worry. Everything would be all right."
But everything isn't all right for Naina. As he slips even more deeply into madness, he still struggles for a synthesis that prompts him to "recite a rhythm mounted on Tamil, Malay and even Chinese words".
The search for a Malaysian identity and consciousness also underlies both of Lloyd Fernando's novels, Scorpion Orchid and Green is the Colour. Although ultimately the quest remains unfinished (there are race riots in both books), the end is pursued with seriousness and tenacity. The message clearly is that we need to seek the elusive Malaysian-ness through every avenue open to us, in big ways and small gestures.The cabinet's decision to refer to Bahasa Melayu as Bahasa Malaysia is one such small gesture.
I have always thought that the pedantic insistence of linguists on calling the language Bahasa Melayu was mistaken.
One can be correct without being right. Would the Indonesians call their language Bahasa Riau? Bahasa Indonesia is, infinitely, more inclusively national. If linguists choose to be pedantic in insisting on Bahasa Melayu, one can only say that it marks the National Language as the language spoken by a section of the population, albeit a large section, and misses the inclusion of the whole population of Malaysia.
In the 21st century, should not less be made of the racial labels and more of the nation as a whole, less of component parties in the government and more of the Barisan Nasional?
Similarly, in the Opposition, shouldn't less be made of different parties along racial and religious lines and more of the truly Malaysian parties involving all Malaysians?
Are we overdue for a structural change and a paradigm shift in our mindset? Should we not all think of ourselves as belonging to one nation, first and foremost? When will the dream of the great and true visionary of Malaysia, Datuk Onn Jaafar, become a reality?(Written by Prof. Lim Chee Seng as published in TheSun in 2007)
(Professori Lim passed away on the 7th February 2011)
