A Rallying Cry!

The War Against Indians(2025)

150 Years of Betrayal, Suppression and Injustice in Malaya & Malaysia.

Author: Suthan Mookaiah

At the outset, the author does not claim the book as a literary work. He professes to merely inking his lived experiences. The sales of his books are a legitimate revenue source for him, as he funds upliftment programmes in Tamil Schools through his movement, Maatram.

Sollayah grew up in Taman West Country, a former estate land in Kajang. He saw the estates in Malaysia flattened in the heady days of Mahathirism. In the rapaciousness to make Malaysia a developed nation by 2020 and produce mega-millionaires of a certain denomination, the country was in heat. There was a land rush. Apparently, nobody, including the Indian leaders who were meant to represent them, had the inkling to think of the millions of Indians who had at least two to generations of a family whose world only revolved around the rubber estates and their surroundings.

Nobody thought of having the ex-estate workers vocational training or structured living programmes. Most economic developmental ideas initiated by its leader went into disarray. The Tamil schools were left unfunded with their structures in deplorable states. Community leaders of other groups were smart enough to care for the down line whilst the Indians were busy fattening their own coffers and running down each other.

The author's father had the wisdom to send his son to be educated in a national school (as compared to a Tamil school, as most nostalgic ex-estate dwellers would) despite the financial restraints. The author's father was odd-jobbing as a grasscutter. Suthan's studies enabled him to secure him a comfortable remuneration overseas. He returned to his homeland around the turn of the last decade and decided to pay back to the society he grew up in.

Through his movement, he tries to expose the decades of systemic marginalisation of the community after the collapse of the plantation economy. He tries to give dignity to Tamil Schools and stop the indiscriminate destruction of Hindu temples. The criminalisation of Indian youth is worrisome.

The author suggests the community to use the power of social to learn and disseminate useful information to hurl up the community to sturdy grounds.

He sells his book through the TikTok shop.

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Normalising woke culture?

Kadhalikka Neramillai (No time to love,  காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை;  Tamil, 2025)

Director: Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi

https://www.moneycontrol.com/entertainment/kadhalikka-neramillai-ott-release-
when-and-where-to-watch-this-romantic-drama-starring-jayam-ravi-a
nd-nithiya-menon-article-12936421.html

It would have been just another Netflix recommendation that I would have ignored. Having such an unoriginal name, which had been used before, did not excite me. For the ignoramus, in 1964, the Tamil cinema was taken back by Sridhar's superhit. Its psychedelic, picturesque Eastman moment came to be defined as Tamil cinema's first rom-com. The hit song. 'Visvanathan, velai vendum!' became to be sung as the voice of defiance of the oppressed.

My interest was piqued when a YouTuber of a channel I follow went into a tirade trying to tear down Netflix and its moviemakers for thinking out of such a crass movie. Other Tamil movie reviewers were kind to the movie, praising it for its modern approach to storytelling and refreshing filmmaking. They probably did not want to offend the First Family of Tamil Nadu, as the ruling CM's family is involved in the film's direction, production and distribution. My YouTuber accused Netflix and the producers of trying to tear down every fibre of decency and threaten to destroy the Indian way of life. The prescribed Indian or Tamil way of living, where a female is supposed to follow specific rules regarding sex, weddings and patriarchal lead, is torn down.

The movie starts with a rebellious daughter, Shriya, working as an architect in Chennai, asking her mother how sure she was that her unmarried daughter was still a virgin. The mother almost faints whilst the father ducks down, avoiding the confrontation that ensued. 

To put things in order, it is a story about a daughter who plans to migrate to the US after a civil marriage with her 4-year-old boyfriend and obtains her visa. One day, after returning from work earlier than usual, she finds her husband in bed with her best friend. She annuls her wedding.

The 1964 version

In another town, Bangalore, another architect, Sid, is all set to engage his model girlfriend. After a minor misunderstanding, the fiancée decides not to turn up. As is often the case, he goes on bedding beaux one after another for revenge. 

Meanwhile, Shriya realises that her biological clock is ticking away and wants a baby as soon as possible. What does she do? She goes straight for donor insemination. And guess whose sperm she receives? Don't ask how, but she receives Sid's from another state. Sid had once accompanied his gay friend to donate his sperm for future use. Sid does the same. This gay friend reappears later to marry his partner. This became a point of contention for the commentator as if the film is normalising gay weddings in India. For the record, while the third gender is recognised in Indian law, gay weddings are not. 

The purists also have issues with the casual portrayal of alcohol consumption by both sexes and across all layers of society. The familial decorum, such as the parent-child barrier often observed in traditional Indian families, seems to have disappeared. Single parenting is depicted as the most natural thing. It is trying to shove in the Woke's gender agenda. 

Most Indian movies end with all the characters agreeing that the Indian way of life is supreme as if to resolve all the issues. No, not here. The protagonist decides to live with the sperm donor as her live-in partner. 

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Another Martyr...

Amaran (Immortal; Tamil, 2024)

Director: Rajkumar Periasamy

A Tamil movie of the same name was made in 1992. It was a full-scale gangster movie that was initially banned from Malaysian theatres but finally screened after the censors went on a snipping spree. It was deemed too violent. The film ended suddenly as the final showdown between the hero (Karthik) and the baddies had too much gore. The Malaysian Censor Board butchered it so much that I watched a movie that was left hanging with an abrupt end, and the hall lights turned on, much to the audience's confusion about whether there was an emergency of sorts.

This time around, there was violence, gore and death, but it is a legitimate form of ending one's life; that is the government's sanction war against ideologies which are hellbent on destroying peace. We call this patriotism, not turf war.

I think one particular scene in the movie highlights the whole business of war and the use of religion in justifying war. An Indian soldier of the Muslim faith is captured by Islamic terrorists in the stone-pelting areas of Kashmir. The soldier is kneeling, with hands tied behind and head bent, waiting to be beheaded. He is chanting Holy Quranic verses. Holding a sword above the soldier's neck is a young jihadi who is cheered by a mob reciting the Islamic verses too. Which God are they fighting for anyway? If there is one up there, God will have a hard time choosing sides.

Maj Mukund Varadarajan

As a movie, it is produced in a very high-quality way. It narrates the life and times of now deceased Major Mukund Varadarajan of the Indian Army's Rajput Regiment. He fell during a counterterrorism operation in Jammu-Kashmir in April 2014. He posthumously received the Ashok Chakra award. His widow, Indhu Rebecca Varghese, tells the story, depicting their initial meeting at college, marriage, and long-distance relationship through his services in the Indian Army. It is a compelling movie which would definitely raise the spirit of any Indian worth his salt. 

There was nothing terrible about the movie. The chemistry between the actors Sivakarthikeyaan and Sai Pallavi, who portray Mukund and Indhu, is spot on. Watching the film without subtitles, one realises that the message gets clear and crisp, even when speaking Tamil and the other Malayalam. It is a truly Indian film, as Hindi, English, Tamil, and Malayalam are spoken within the same verse without causing any confusion. 

Detractors found nothing to complain about the movie. So they stooped so slow to complain that the film went beyond the call of duty to portray Muslims as the bad guys. Hello, the Kashmir issue has been initiated by a country that carved itself out of India on religious terms. Then, they complained that Major Mukund's caste did not get any prominence in the story as the filmmakers showed his family and the wedding celebration. It was an understanding between the family and the producers not to highlight their Brahmin caste.

This good Diwali movie will wet the eyes of those with sensitive souls. It is based on the book series India's Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh.

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Only when you need!

Indian 2(Tamil, 2024)

Director: S. Shankar

Even though his movie did not live up to its predecessor, which came out in 1996, there are a few instances in the film that make the Indian diaspora pause and reevaluate their behaviours.

Forget what is happening in India. It would be irrelevant for a person residing in India to assess and enumerate the changes in India since the original Indian movie came out 28 years ago. Let a Malaysian of the Indian diaspora look at what has changed since.

The theme of Indian 1 was to highlight how the system was broken because of rampant corruption and the lack of willpower of civil servants and public figures to change the status quo. It took a pre-independence freedom fighter to re-don his combat gear to highlight the rot to the public consciousness. In his own psychotic ways, Indian Tata (grandpa) brought the people in charge to task, even killing his own son approving the permit of an unroadworthy school bus, which killed many school kids.

That is when the sequel fits in. Corruption never really went anywhere. The police, who were supposed to be the last bastion to uphold law and order, are blatantly on the take and kowtowing shamelessly to thugs and politicians. Court cases are progressing nowhere. Dishonesty and untruths rule the day. The general public is getting hot under their collars. A group of vloggers who fight for social justice reminisce about the time when Indian Tata was around to save the day. As he was never caught, the public suspects he is still alive but had gone underground. They pleaded for Indian Tata to return via social media, of course.

It seems that Indian Tata is all well and hearty in Taiwan, living incognito and minding his own business. He is cajoled to return to India.

After returning to what he does best with ancient Indian martial arts, Varma Kalai, he soon realises that the table has turned. When an apparently wrong person is arrested, Indian Tata becomes India's most hated person. People start chanting, "Go back, Indian! "

The film hits you at two levels. You soon realise that the world and all its affairs are too intertwined. No one saviour can come and save the day. A slash-hammer approach to right the wrong is too simplistic. It is naive to think people do not want to be good and do the correct thing. They simply cannot. Like a Jenga structure, the whole system is maintained in position by complicated ad-hoc, haphazardly placed Jenga sticks. It stays intact as long as the sticks are well placed. Forget about getting it in symmetry or making it aesthetically pleasing. It is what it is.

The phrase 'go back to India' or its Malay translation 'oi, balik India!' has a familiar ring to those who grew up in Malaysia. Quite often in our childhood, we have hurled abuses like these from mobs or groups of young Malay boys all riled up in the spirit of, say, football or hockey games. Even though no one who is non-Indian would tell it on the face of a fellow Malaysian Indian, offensives like these are tolerated.

It is also a lesson that I learned in life that people will hold you in high esteem only if it suits them and would not have a second thought to drop you like a hot potato when your services are not needed anymore. So do not gloat in the praises of others. The same mouth that uttered niceties, in no time, will be cussing you, maybe spitting at you too!

[P.S. An episode in the Mahabharata comes to mind. While travelling from Dwarka to Indrapura, Krishna and Arjuna overheard a fellow traveller singing praises of Karna, Arjuna's arch-enemy. The traveller was talking about Karna's philanthropy. An incensed Arjuna told Krishna that his statement was unfair. After all, Karna's wealth was not his as he had inherited them. He did not earn them. People should be praised for what they have earned or worked hard for. Arjuna had worked to be the great warrior he was. People should be praising Arjuna, not Karna. 

In his great wisdom, Krishna put Arjuna to the test. Arjuna was shown a mountain of gold to be distributed to the needy. He was given a whole day to complete the task. Getting meticulous in the task, Arjuna tried to divide the gold according to people's needs. He gave halfway as none of the recipients were happy. Those who got less, whom Arjuna thought deserved less, wanted more. Those who got more wanted even more. 

Soon, Krishna assigned the same job to Karna. Karna completed the task in a jiffy, and everyone was happy. What Karna did was to get someone who was already in the charity business to finance him to continue doing his good job with Karna's assistance. The moral of the story is that there are people assigned to do certain jobs. Let them handle it. Do not think you have to solve everybody's problem. Not everyone is cut for the job. You will end up unhappy, and so will others.]

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Hey, eat your words!

He had heard of it all. At every corner, the naysayers were there. They were free with unsolicited advice that he should not forget where he came from, that the pinky would only grow to the size of the thumb, and that a sparrow should not dream of flying majestically like an eagle. 

As if the road ahead was not uncertain enough, these doomsday philosophers jumped on the bandwagon to sow the seeds of doubt. Already in turmoil, trying to pull oneself by the bootstraps, the negative vibes are the last that anyone wants to hear. But they yak on...

He was raised in an environment where he was told to respect others and not to tell somebody off on the face; he would just smile it off. 

The element of doubt still lingered, however. The quandary was whether he was indeed doomed to fail. With perceived divine guidance, he persevered. He had the grace of his family as well.

The answer to his doubt must have been answered finally. Not only has he proved his critics wrong, but he now has proof of the whole world’s accreditation to show. All the naysayers can now eat humble pie. The journey to the pinnacle had been fraud with shrapnels and heartbreaks, but what the heck. Hoisting the trophy was all that worth it.

GOPIO, Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, in its continued journey to open cooperation among the people of the diaspora, during its annual conference, honoured POI icons from various industries - security, logistics, telecommunications, etc., from the world over. 

Dato M. S. Murthi
GOPIO International Business Excellence Award 2023
Legal Practice

                         

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Going places?

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa

To see Praggnanandhaa, an 18-year-old chess whiz from Tamil Nadu, proudly posing in front of the international press with a big white ash stripe spread across his forehead as a symbol of his faith for a photo shoot reminded me of the numerous times I felt ashamed of wearing vibuthi in public during my childhood. 

Coming from a country where my ancestors were bought in as bonded labourers, I did not have many role models to follow, I was ashamed to be an Indian. The fact that many fellow Indians in my neighbourhood were loud and boisterous and had many rows with the laws did not help my perception of the race of my parents. The sing-song undulating tone of my mother tongue was a point of mocking and sneering by many. The behaviour of the few who make it a point to be noticed with their loud colour, unmistakable scents, and high-decibel speeches in buses made me want to disappear. 

Mother's eyes say it all!

The elaborate display of my religiosity was also a sore point. The near histrionic display of faith via visual and auditory exaggerations did not augur well with my mother's intention to inculcate dharmic values in me. She was fearful that all the Western education that was sweeping the world would make me a brown-assed white man who frowned at anything Indian. I knew I was. 

The opening of inner realisation, the opening of the mythical third eye, happened in my late teenage years and the years after that. One by one, I was exposed to more and more people who looked like me and spoke like me. Hey, my people were doing ok, I thought. Still, there was demarcation between outwardly displaying Indianness and accepting all as one, that we are the same. 

The world changed. Identity politics became the norm. My country, where I had grown up, had slowly become fundamentalistic in mindset. People had no qualms saying they, us, we and our people. People were one-tracked into dividing and subdividing amongst themselves. At about that time, being a Hindu became hip. Slowly people tried to publicise the hidden pearls of wisdom behind Hindu acts and rituals. 

An artist's conception of the Chandrayaan 3 lander
and rover on the Moon. ISRO

If the 1990s and the early 2000s, people of Chinese descent in my country were flying high with the phenomenal achievements of their ancestral country, China, from the yolk of hopelessness during the Great Famine and Cultural Revolution to becoming the factory capital of the world. Similarly, the second decade of the 21st century is a time for India to shine. Standing at the cusp of a successful landing of an AI-guided unmanned lunar mission and the precipice of a possible international chess champion, most Indians wear their identity on their sleeves. Nobody is ashamed to spread his vibuthi, sandanam or kumkum liberally on his forehead anymore. 

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Indian Fables

Vetalam dan Vikramaditya (2020)
Author: Uthaya Sankar SB 

I remember a time when a newly married couple rented a room in our house. My sister and I, 4 and 6 years old, respectively, were dying to hear the wife's stories that she did tell without fail every evening, with our persuasion, of course. She had a peculiar way of making us glued to her stories. We affectionately addressed her as ‘Atteh’ (Auntie, father’s sister or maternal uncle’s wife). 

Every evening, after she had her shower as she returned from work, it was storytime. Her stories usually carried a message, and many of them were Indian folk tales, including ‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’. 

‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’ stories always carry a moral dilemma that needs critical thinking. We were often disappointed as she never told us the answers to the questions she put forward. She would ask us to think carefully.

That is the thing about these stories. Legend has it (it is probably a historical statement now) that King Vikramaditya was a King based in Ujjain. A fun fact is that Ujiian in Madhya Pradesh is sometimes referred to as the navel of Earth or Greenwich of India. Before 1884, as per a 4th-century treatise, Ujjian was considered the prime meridian. Even today, the panchangayam (Hindu almanack) is based on Ujjian time (29 minutes behind IST).

Vikramaditya in Ujjian

Many kings took the honorary title of Vikramaditya. Hence, there was confusion about who the real Vikramaditya was. It is agreed that he probably ruled around the first century BC under the Vikrama Samrat era.

In the 'Vetalam and Vikramaditya' stories, King Vikramaditya is summoned by priests to capture a playful and sly demon from a cemetery by daybreak. The King manages to trap the demon, Vetalam. The trouble was that the talkative imp had a penchant to escape from the clutches of the King. The King was relentless, however. The demon made a deal with Vikramaditya. It would narrate stories that would need answers, to which the King had to answer. The King's head would explode if he gave the wrong, but Vethalam would escape if the answer is right.

The night goes on with Vedalam telling stories, expecting answers, the King giving the correct answer, Vethalam escaping, King capturing him again, and Vethalam starting a new story. Thus it went on the whole night. By the way, the King was not allowed to speak. It was done telepathically. Towards early morning, they had built a rapport and joined forces to crack the priests' ulterior motives.

One of the stories is similar to the story of P Ramlee's 'Keluarga 69' and K Balachander's ' Apoorva Ragam', where no answer is expected. One cannot put a name to a relationship when a King marries the daughter of a mother who marries the Prince. The offspring of the King, if it is a son, is also a stepbrother of the Prince and grandchild to the King's daughter-in-law; very confusing! 

P.S. A Tamil proverb describes a person who is unsuccessfully trying to reform as 'Vethalam recoiling into a marunga tree'.

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