Managing ethnicity and nation building in the post-colonial period: Malaysia’s experience

• Main Author: Mamat, Rashidah
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DS Asia; HT Communities. Classes. Races
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/10423/1/R1.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/10423/; http://lintas.uum.edu.my:8080/elmu/index.jsp?module=webopac-l&action=fullDisplayRetriever.jsp&szMaterialNo=0000798391
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Building an ideal ‘nation’ in multicultural Malaysia remains a considerable challenge. Given that Malaysia is an ethnically pluralist society, the force of ethnicity is the key to any discussion of nation building in this country. Ethnicity mainly the Malays and non-Malays groups are marked with complex social patterns in which each ethnic group upholds their different cultures,languages, religions, regions and worldviews.Therefore, this paper argues that nation building in Malaysia is strongly linked with the framework of managing ethnicity to promote ‘one Malaysia nation’ or ‘Bangsa Malaysia’.In evaluating the Malaysian government’s efforts at nation building, this paper examines several Malaysia national policies that regarded as social engineering reforms after the May 1969 riots.These reforms were embedded in the formulation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and Rukun Negara (national ideology), the reformulation of the National Language and Education Policy, National Cultural Policy, Vision 2020 and the 1Malaysia concept.Despite having confronted the non-Malay communities as they saw efforts by the government to consolidate Malay nationalism into national policies as an attempt to turn nation-building into an ethnic project, these policies have been able to play a crucial role in rectifying the socio-economic imbalances and they have succeeded in achieving mutual tolerance (if not mutual acceptance) amongst various ethnic groups.