Homeland

Homeland, where is my homeland? After being in this world for close to 3 decades, I'm still searching for the answer. Generally, your homeland would be the country where you are born and raise. In the case of an African American, his homeland would be America, not Africa. These people will live the life like every other American would be. However, for my case, it's more complicated. The African, or any other immigrants like the Hispanics born in US, would be speaking almost the same language, their version of English of course, and assimilation to that country's culture is not issue, apart from the skin colour. They would probably share the same religion too, which make unity of diverse background even easier for that country.

In my country, it's different. It's made up of 3 major races, with the Malays being the native, or rather being much earlier in this land compared to the Chinese and Indian, which were brought in to toil the mines and estates in the late 1800s, another byproduct of British colonial rule. Unlike the US, these immigrants didn't assimilate, and the British didn't make sure this happen. Over the years, everyone lives their way of life and everything was cool as usual until the hatred begun.

Let's not delve into the hatred incident as everyone has their own version of it, but the fact remained, people died for nothing over it, those who died may not be the perpetrators but someone who were at the wrong place wrong time.

When this country achieved its independence, it was mutually agreed in the social contract to share this country among the races. But sharing can be very vague particularly when the economic pie was not proportionately shared and contributing to a source of hatred. The mystery is still playing in my mind whether the agreement to the social contract was really made in consensual or rather a ploy in accelerating the process of independence, knowing full well how the Malayan Union had been opposed initially.

Fast forward to today, does this country still belong to everyone? Does democracy really exist here? Is everyone treated equally here? Would the foreign Indonesian next generation of working residents qualify for a right of citizenship here and equally qualify for a share of this country? Would the Indons then be treated as bumi or non-bumi similar to other immigrants?

But for me, I'm more interested to know where is my homeland is? Hopefully I have the answer before I leave this world. I'm born here but my ancestors were from China, thus I'm labeled as a Chinese here. I grew up with the Chinese way of life, speak Cantonese at home (I'm actually a Hakka though but never had a chance to learn) and brought up in an English school. Thus, I know very little about PuTongHua or Mandarin, the official Chinese language. Being born to a Chinese would also mean that I was immediately being denied a chance to be a PM for the country (may still stand a chance if converted to a Muslim, like what happen to the previous Indian Muslim PM). Apart of that, I'm not eligible for other benefits such as equal listed companies shares allocation, equal access to public universities (funded by taxpayers' money) and discounts in acquiring properties.

The above may sound like little or nothing if you work hard here but for me, it's not about the money but the treatment. If I migrate to say, Australia, now, I may not qualify as a voter or have a voice in the future of that country, or other social benefits until being there for sometime since I am not a taxpayer there, but at least everyone is seen as equal, and if you're in anyway discriminated (genderly or racially), you can lodge a report. But here, discrimination happen in broad daylight and life goes on as usual, just swallow the bullet and move on. I could also do that but can you live another day of your life in a place contradicting your own principles. I'm already a father this year. I'm not sure how am I gonna answer my kid if one day he asked me about the treatment in this country and what have you done anything about it. And this lead me to another question, should I leave this place and migrate somewhere more civilised or should I stay back and fight for a change?

Fight? You only fight for your own homeland, so, where is my homeland? Is it somewhere in China or here?