Temple riot exposes Malaysia’s Indian minority

Spasm of violence ignited by the proposed move of a century-old Hindu temple to make way for a property development has put the multi-ethnic nation on new edge

Recent violence surrounding the Seafield Hindu temple in Selangor, Malaysia, near the national capital, has put race relations in the multi-ethnic nation on a new edge.

How various actors ultimately respond, including the long-ruling, now opposition race-based United Malays National Organization (UMNO), will be a closely watched measure of stability in the weeks ahead.

The Seafield incident began in the early morning of November 26, when rioters damaged or destroyed 20 vehicles and vandalized buildings belonging to a property company that has been given rights to the land where the Hindu temple sits.

In the melee, rioters beat and critically injured firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim, 24, after they dragged him out of a nearby fire engine. Adib, an ethnic Malay Muslim, was to be married within a month of the incident, leading to sympathetic media coverage. At least a dozen were injured in the riot.

The land developer is One City Development Bhd, a firm registered in Malaysia that is ultimately owned by Ayala Corporation of the Philippines.

District police initially said the root cause of the violence was a conflict between temple factions. State police later said the “attackers” were Malay men, 83 of whom have since been detained.

Prosecutors have charged four men, aged 24 to 38 years, all ethnic Malays, in court on accusations of rioting while armed with axes and machetes.

The riot is the latest in a string of racially charged incidents involving land rights and the demolition of Hindu temples. Indeed, it was on a wave of Hindu resentment over temple demolitions in 2007 that the current Minister for National Unity, Waythamoorthy, first came into the public eye.

Waythamoorthy, also known as Waytha Moorthy Ponnusamy, is widely considered the leader of the Hindu Rights Action Force, or HINDRAF, a group of lawyers who mobilized thousands in 2007 in Kuala Lumpur to decry perceived injustices against minority Indians.

These include the assertion that Indians have been left behind economically while ethnic Malays were pulled ahead through the government’s New Economic Policy affirmative action programs.

Waythamoorthy even lodged a case in the United Kingdom, demanding compensation for British “negligence” during pre-independence negotiations with Malayan leaders which he says resulted in the present day impoverishment of Indians in Malaysia.

The government position, informed by police-work, is that the developer’s agents hired thugs – who happen to be ethnically Malay – to enable a more rapid handover of the site. Asia Times could not corroborate the allegation; the developer has denied any involvement.

UMNO often conducts its race-baiting via “sub-contractors.” The most colorful of them is Ridhuan Tee, a columnist at the UMNO-controlled Utusan newspaper and a professor at a public university.

On Ismaweb, an “Islamic” website which is widely believed to be publicly funded, he published on November 26 (the date of the 2 a.m. Seafield incident), a long and trenchant article in Malay mocking the idea of equality enshrined in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, or ICERD.

In the race-baiting article, he touched provocatively on Malaysia’s Hindu temples, Waythamoorthy and Hindu majority India:

“Every illegal, polluting (‘haram’) temple which has been demolished has been replaced with a larger temple and the number of Hindu temples now way exceeds the number of Muslim places of worship.”

“[Waythamoorthy] who is a renowned Islamophobe, consorts with the Prime Minister of India [Modi] who discriminates against Muslims by obstructing them from eating beef and by destroying their mosques and replacing them with Hindu temples.”