Malaysia’s outrage over cultural sensibilities is the new normal in politics

There is a growing tendency among Malaysians to express outrage over things that hurt their cultural sensibilities.

If it is not about food, it is something else that gets the goat of politicians claiming to uphold the cultural purity of those who they say need protecting.

The plan, announced last month by Local Government and Housing Minister Nga Kor Ming, is to recognise the cultural significance of the Chinese “new villages”.

The backlash was almost immediate.

A petition against the plan has garnered over 32,000 signatures so far.

Last week, an MP from the Malay nationalist Perikatan Nasional opposition bloc triggered an angry response for linking the settlements to communism.

After World War II, the British colonial authorities herded hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Chinese but also Malays, into hundreds of settlements in a bid to sever support for a growing insurgency led by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).

Various academic studies on the British plan described the settlements as internment camps – most had strict curfews in place.

The conflict between the British and the CPM caused thousands of casualties among communist insurgents and Malayan security forces. Most of those killed were from local communities, along with a few British officers.

Present-day politics has relegated the shared sufferings of the Malay and Chinese communities during the insurgency to a mere footnote.

Malay nationalists routinely tarred DAP leaders as communists who were bent on removing the special privileges of the Malays, exploiting the trauma among older voters who had first-hand experience with the conflict.

That almost singular focus on making the communists the lifelong enemy of the Malays drove a deep wedge between the country’s