3D mentality and grimy boundary

A FOREIGNER will be quite spot on describing parts of Kuala Lumpur (KL) as Downtown Dhaka. Right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, you will more than likely find shop fronts with signages that shout out foreign words in intricate cursive font. With a little bit of imagination, you’d be able to make out that these `come ons’ advertise services like repatriating cash to Chittagong or whose kitchen promises a nutritious meal of lentil soup; all to cater to a decidedly foreign pecuniary interest or dietary predilection.

We have Petaling Street as Chinatown and the whole of Brickfields promising the vibrant chaos of Little India. It would not be far off to describe the confluence of streets from Central Market in Jalan Hang Kasturi all the way to the still-existing Lin Hoe shoe department store in Jalan Hang Lekiu as a bastion of all that shouts; `This is Bangladesh!’

It is a given that the local Malay populace in any big city would never have countenanced a situation where the original Chinese denizens could ever be displaced, more so in commercially thriving KL. Look now – at how whole streets in the heart of old KL have been flushed clear and in their place are row upon row of shops that are outwardly owned, operated and patronised by Bangladeshis; and perhaps not a few Nepalis as well.

THE KL FACE; IT IS A-CHANGING

Welcome to the Malaysia that apparently can’t say no to this relatively cheap and easy font of manpower with undoubted capacity for truly hard menial endeavour.

But before we delve deeper let’s address the Malaysian ignorance about our Bangladeshi brethren, the country and its people.

Firstly, how many `red-necked’ Malaysians amongst us still ascribe the Bengali (pronounced locally by some as Bengoli) ethnic classification to our friends of the Sikh faith (they who profess to follow the teachings of Guru Nanak). The Punjabis – refer to all who trace their ancestral roots to the land of Punjab (so there are Sikh Punjabis as well as Muslim Punjabis) that is now located in both India and Pakistan. (It was upon separation in 1947 that a large portion of Muslim Punjab was carved up between Pakistan and India.

The story of the creation of Bangladesh however goes back to the days of the British Raj during the partition of India into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Muslim Pakistan was delineated in two separate halves (East and West) without regard that East Pakistan had nothing much in common with West Pakistan save for a shared religion.

MIGRANTS IN OUR MIDST

So now you are at least able to distinguish between Bangolees (sic) who come from Bangladesh (but more accurately those whose littoral roots are connected to the Bay of Bengal) from Punjabis from Punjab and who to Malaysians are mostly Sikhs.

Digression out of the way, back to our quest to understand this influx of migrants that is exercising our politicians, unions and even Papagomo (for reasons of decorum we will not make more intimate mention of him until his fate in relation to a viral video on the maltreatment of an alleged randy foreigner whose nationality is the topic of discussion is decided one way or the other).

Remember the green shirted petrol pump attendant whose command of the local language was confined to greeting you with the interrogatory ‘..hijau? (green)’ three months ago? They must have landed on our shores from either Dhaka or Cox’s Bazaar and that would have been our first wakeup call to their presence in our midst. (I for one cringe when we refer to them in the 3rd person as Bangla; which follows that I hesitate to use the pejorative term for Indonesians when addressing janitors in our midst who perhaps hail from Palembang or Madura or Jawa Timur).

Foreigners who brave the rough seas, run the gauntlet of perfidious labour agents or wave goodbye to kith and kin forever certainly look to their host nation for succour. More so when they land on the shores of countries like Malaysia that is haven compared to the troubled lands they have bolted from.

We are dealing with livelihoods, nay lives here. It is therefore quite unseemly that for some, the fate of a huge pool of people from Bangladesh – and elsewhere; is being decided for its potential of yielding economic booty .

For our politicians, administrators, unions and Papagomo who are now caught in the local polemic in attempting to unravel the issue of migrant labour; look to Emma Lazarus.

`Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ – The New Colossus; Statute of Liberty.