The vulnerability of Dr M?

In TMI's Umno today is about money, Dr M fires back at critics I read one of the saddest thing about Dr M.

Dr M is undeniably the toughest PM we ever had, one while as PM and even now as retired senior statesman, took/takes no prisoner. We have seen how he demolished Anwar Ibrahim for the latter's disloyalty to him, and how he single-handedly removed AAB from his PM-ship when Pak Lah didn't continue his (Dr M's) legacy.

Currently he is doing the same to Najib, with the aim of replacing the PM, one he is not satisfied with.

Najib has been called Mr Zig-Zag, a man known for his extraordinary survival skills, so everyone waits to see whether Dr M will succeed in his current campaign against Najib as he had with AAB, because Najib may be a different kettle of fish to Pak Lah.

Dr M is not only a highly intelligent, hardworking and astute politician, but an unique paradox because he has also shown unusual tolerance and forgiving care to those he considers as his loyal subordinates, even if they are professionally incompetent, intellectually lame and conduct-wise, immoral.

But at the bottom of his heart (Asian way of indicating 'mind') he has a very very sad vulnerability which must have tormented him over the decades of his adulthood.

What we might have suspected for years and even cruelly jeered at him but can now confirm, only because he Dr M himself reveals so, is the heavy emotional millstone he wore for the past several decades around his neck, namely his painful awareness of his (biological) non-100%-Malay ethnic origins. Though he didn't mention it, we know his granddad was a Malayalam, hailing from Kerala.

In the above TMI's news, Dr M has been reported as follows:

He also defended his right to criticise Najib, saying that when it came to national and Malay issues, he has the right to talk about them as he considered himself Malay, even though this has been disputed.

“About the country and the Malays, I am here, I am a Malay. Although some people say I am not. Legally I am Malay. I've struggled for this."

Finally that emotional burden has come out of his own mouth that he is a legal Malay and has struggled for his constitutional status.

However, unlike Ridhuan Tee, he had not gone around self-promoting himself as a Melayu. But I can only wonder what stress, strain and suffering he must have endured in silence through the decades because of this emotional vulnerability.

Strangely or should it be, I do not feel any animosity or ill-humour towards him for saying so. Au contraire I feel sad to learn what must have stuck bitterly in his heart for years.

In many other countries people of mixed ancestry live normal lives, and are even admired for their richer heritage. Yours truly for example possesses tomyam in my blood, wakakaka, but I have never felt any burden on my self worth because of my mixed ethnicity.

Look mate, Sultan Muzzafar Shah of the Malacca Sultanate had an Indian wife (daughter of a rich Indian merchant) and thus his son Sultan Mansur Shah was of mixed Indo-Malay parentage.

Since times long ago the Malays have had inter-marriages with Indians so it shouldn't be considered as a stigma, well, an emotional one anyway.

Just as another example, Sultan Muzzafar's grandson, Sultan Mahmud Shah had the hots for, and through a series of murders, eventually married the widow Fatimah, whose husband was 'off-ed' to enable the sultan to get her. Fatimah was the daughter of Tun Mutahir, Malacca' 7th Bendahara (PM). Both Mutahir and daughter Fatimah were Tamil Muslims.

Indian blood not only flows in many Malays but Indians had served as Bendahara in the Malacca Sultanate like Tun Mutahir (7th Bendahara of Malacca) and Tun Ali (4th Bendahara of Malacca). I believe Anwar Ibrahim also has Indian blood in his veins.

I guess I have to blame our politico-socio-cultural environment for 'punishing' Dr M, at least internally-emotionally for, I suppose, decades. It's a vile politico-socio-cultural environment when one's ancestry imposes guilt or lack of self-esteem on oneself.

'Roti' would be another nice name for the boulangerie, but alas is an Indian word