What does the politician Mat Sabu have to do with Chinese education and the current controversy over the Unified Exam Certificate (UEC)?

My answer is that the Defence Minister and Parti Amanah Negara president was once my Bahasa Malaysia teacher.

No, I did not engage him as my private tuition teacher or anything like that. Instead, Mat Sabu did something much more valuable: he made me feel that Malay was also “my” language, something that “belonged” to me as a Malaysian.

This came about by chance actually. I am a curious traveller and sometime in the mid-1990s, I came across a pasar malam stall in Terengganu selling “colourful” casette tapes.

Not only was the tape cover a bright orange, but the title was equally vivid, something about Mat Sabu and “khalwat”.

It seems that the politician, then with PAS, had been caught “in close proximity” with a woman at a hotel room in Kelantan, and he was on a nationwide roadshow giving ceramahs (talks) about how the whole case had been “set up” by his political opponents.

Those who have listened to Mat Sabu’s ceramahs know that he can be equally fierce and funny, serious and satirical.

For instance, in the mid-1990s, he was attacking Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim by mockingly imitating rolling Rrrrrr’s, a rhetorical device favoured by the then Deputy Prime Minister.

In recent years, he had lamented that no matter how much he and his (then) Opposition colleagues had exposed corruption by Umno leaders, the Malays would still cling on to the party that claimed to “protect” them against the Chinese “threat”.

So he resorted to satire to shock his audience, saying, “Yes, it is Chinese leaders who take away scholarships from Malay students. It is Chinese leaders who reduce subsidies to kampung Malays. It is Chinese leaders who swindle money from government companies.”

Needless to say, I became a fan of Mat Sabu. Over the years, I have spent quite a bit to buy casette tapes and then VCD’s (made by third parties) of his ceramahs, before they became available on Youtube.

The point is, he was speaking not only the language of Bahasa Malaysia (BM), but the language of justice for all regardless of race, which he said was the true message of Islam.

This resonated with me, and I slowly began to regard BM as a language that “understood” my perspective as a Malaysian Chinese.

Before that, I had viewed BM as something that I “had to” learn, to get that compulsory credit in the SPM exam (I got a C3 by the way).

My real BM tuition teacher in the mid 1980s used to ask us to read Utusan Malaysia and watch RTM news to improve our fluency. I tried, but soon faltered, as the whole tone of coverage was, well, one-sided and geared towards the “official” view.

This was the era when there were few local private colleges and issues of entry into government universities by racial quota played upon the groans and grumblings of Malaysian Chinese students.

This was also the time when politicians like the then Home Minister, the late Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, proposed that the Chinese lion dance be changed to a tiger dance. The reason given was that “there are no lions in Malaysia.”

The reaction to that “tiger show” suggestion was that even more Chinese joined lion dance troupes to “defend” their culture (in contrast, Singapore finds it harder to get youngsters to take up this “old” art form).

But with Mat Sabu, finally, I felt here was a Malay leader who was speaking a language that could also articulate my concerns. BM was no longer just the exclusive preserve of the Malays, it had also become "my" language.

Though my written Malay was quite alright, my oral Malay was stiff and formal. But because Mat Sabu’s ceramahs made me "accept" BM a lot more, my spoken fluency in the language naturally improved. For this, I have to say: Terima kasih Abang Mat!

This brings us to the question of Chinese education and the current UEC brouhaha.

As a “half-banana” (who can speak but not read Chinese), I don’t have personal feelings about this exam.

But I can understand that it’s good for immigrant communities in Malaysia to master both BM and their mother tongues - even more so now that China and India will become superpowers of the 21st century.

This is what drove me to learn Mandarin (enough to ask for directions and order food but not to discuss philosophy though).

However, the “nationalists” insist that national unity is best achieved by imposing a single language - BM - on everyone.

Recently, Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaacob called UEC a "unity destroying agent" which is based on the Taiwan model.

In response, MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong had to correct him, pointing out that the UEC model is not from Taiwan but teaches things like the Melaka Malay sultanate and the independence of Malaya.

Apart from this resistance to recognise the UEC, there have also long been (occasional) calls to abolish Chinese and Tamil schools.

But evidence clearly shows that just having one national language does not automatically create unity. Otherwise, the whites, blacks and Muslims in the USA who all speak English, should have the most harmonious racial relationships in the world!

Similarly, Muslim and African immigrants feel marginalised in France even though they all speak French. Nonetheless, there was apparently race-neutral meritocracy when it came to selecting the national football team, which resulted in France winning the World Cup.

And now that French Muslims and Africans have contributed to national glory, some are saying it’s time for the white French to stop discrimination, to drop their “ketuanan” mentality left over from colonial times.

Actually, we don’t need to look so far when it comes to language and unity.

In the mid 1960s, the Chinese in Java were not allowed to use their mother tongue publicly and they were even forced to adopt Indonesian names to assimilate. But all that didn’t stop them from being the target of racial riots in Jakarta, Solo and elsewhere in 1998.

What all this shows is that language (alone) is not the main factor in forging national cohesion. Rather, I would suggest that mutual respect, fair play and a sense of being equal partners is what leads to building a united (and great) Malaysia.

This is best seen in Switzerland, where despite having four official languages - German, French, Italian and Romansch - everyone feels proud to be Swiss.

Even though the Swiss Germans are the dominant group there, they don’t impose their views on their countrymen who speak other languages. Instead, power is decentralised, and every one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons (states) has a high degree of autonomy.

Unity amidst different languages is also seen in Sabah. Apart from Malay and English, a huge variety of languages is spoken here, such as Kadazandusun, Murud, Rungus, Bajau, Suluk, Tausug, Bugis, Iranun, Bisaya, Hakka, Cantonese, Hokkien and Mandarin.

However, I am told people of all races, including the Chinese, are happy to speak Sabahan Malay - bule bah kalo kau (Google it).

This is not because they are forced to, but because there is a sense of identity and belonging in being “Sabahan”. (A sense of unity as the underdogs due to feelings of being “bullied” by West Malaysia adds to that, as was seen in the last elections.)

So there we have it.

National integration is not something that can be forcibly engineered by injecting toothpaste of different colours into a fixed-shape mould.

Rather, it should be something that evolves organically and peacefully, when all races feel valued and respected in this country, rather than scolded and talked down upon.

That’s how Mat Sabu’s ceramahs made me feel that Malay was also a language that “belonged” to me.

When everyone feels they have a real stake and a place in this nation, then naturally we will all want to speak the same language - with pride - to each other.