“Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.” — Romain Rolland, French author

Happy Malaysia Day, everyone!

Each year since 1963, we have celebrated the coming together of four (now three) equal partners to make up a new sovereign nation called Malaysia. Now, 53 years on, we celebrate and remind ourselves of the triumphs of the past and the challenges of the future.

Our nation was born in times of hostility — the Cold War was still on and the Domino Theory that dictated American foreign policies had so much currency that the Americans went to war for the South Vietnamese against the North. 

And not all of our neighbours welcomed the new kid on the block. Indonesia even started a campaign against its birth — they called it “Konfrantasi” and their war cry was “Ganyang Malaysia”!

Along with all these, we still had to confront communist insurgencies within our borders. Talk about an eventful birth.

Now the Cold War is but a footnote in the annals of history and the Domino Theory has been debunked. Indonesia is an important economic and political ally — and yes, we were the first country in the world to defeat armed communist insurgents.

We now stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the free world, enjoying membership in the United Nations, making treaties with many and trading freely with our neighbours and beyond. We have indeed come a long way since 1963.

However, the freedom we enjoy today must constantly be fought for. We must continue to be on our guard against external ideologies and forces that threaten our peaceful way of life, and they are real.

Internally, too, we must fight for our freedom as we have done, time and again. Why? Because there will always be thin-skinned politicians, fanatics, extremists and militants who will try to undermine us. There will also be times when the state and society will try to curb individual rights. It is the duty of each one of us to protect our rights and to ensure that they are not trampled upon.

Now, more than any other time in our short history, we must engage each other if we are to continue to progress together. But our time, and not in Malaysia alone, seems to be marked by an upsurge of anger bordering on rage in certain groups, a polarising anger tolling the death knell for dialogue between groups across political and social divides.

The views of those who seek to divide by religion, ethnicity, class and gender are getting more and more strident. And it is hurting us as citizens.

I do not doubt the sincerity of people who hold these views or their possession of partial truths. What is troubling is that the passionate conviction with which these views are being expounded is closing the path to meaningful dialogue.

Convictions, as Nietzsche once remarked, are more dangerous to truths than lies. While a liar is aware of the truth even while he is lying, conviction blinds us to any other truth but our own. Friends, we need dialogues, and lots of them on all matters that impact us. Contrary to common belief, dialogue will unite us.

Unfortunately, what we have today is a preponderance of monologue, and much worse — to use a term famous in India — the divisilogue. Read some of today’s more galling news headlines to experience what I mean.

Dialogues, for most of us, foster the awareness of differences, whereas divisilogue seeks to highlight the differences in the service of dividing, of creating “us” and “them”. Dialogue is marked by civility and humility; divisilogue by a lack of respect for the ideas of others, an attitude of dismissiveness and contempt.

A dialogue happens when friends explore commonalities and differences with each other. It presupposes not only the presence of another person but also gives that person as much space as yourself and thus allowing for a verbal intercourse between yourself and the other.

In a successful dialogue, both parties would have changed, at least a little bit, after its conclusion. There is an evolution in the individual. Otherwise, what we have are monologues of two narcissists, each waiting for the other to finish, giving a perfunctory nod to the idea of listening while polishing his own lines and launching into a predetermined monologue.

Society does not exist without the individual. If the individual does not evolve, neither does society. But there is a strange dichotomy here. Society, it seems, is made to streamline people to show them the path of the majority. But when it is hijacked by a small coterie of people in power, society controls you, the individual. It does not welcome the evolving mind. Many an empire has fallen on the wayside of history when it refuses to evolve. The aftermath of the Arab Spring comes to mind and the fall of military rule in Myanmar are but a few recent examples.

The quest here is to try and break down all these conditioning, seek our own truth. It is a constant journey, seeking freedom to understand the truth. People hungry for power do not want questions to be asked. They make you afraid to ask by bullying, by intimidating, by hounding those who dare question their actions. It is really not the power of your voice but the fear of their “truth” being challenged that brings about these reactions.

And true theocrats will advise you: True faith is never so fragile, it is divinely ordained; it is only the superficial that gets frightened so easily.

So, fellow citizens, as we celebrate and honour the birth of our beautiful, multicultural nation, let us remind ourselves to continue to doubt and seek the truth, and not to tolerate but to accept each other as fellow Malaysians — our creed and our culture — for in this challenging world, tolerance is such a brittle word.

There is a beautiful line from the Ang Lee movie, Life of Pi: “Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing. After all, you cannot know the strength of your belief until it is tested.”

On that note, fellow citizens, allow me to wish all of us Happy Malaysia Day.

Zakie Shariff sits on the board of two local universities and has a deep interest in developing strong corporate leaders

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