When Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s proposal for a multiracial hostel to foster better national integration among pupils in secondary schools under the 1Malaysia spirit could make front-page headline news in the mainstream media, it is testimony of how far Malaysian multiracial nation-building had deviated and failed in the past five decades.
As Malaysia is internationally publicized as “Malaysia truly Asia” show-casing multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual unity in diversity, multiracial hostels should have long become an accepted part of national life.
Instead, they seem to have become an increasingly extinct species after over five decades of nationhood to the extent that Najib’s proposal for a multiracial hostel in Kuala Lumpur appeared to be a great brain-wave of his 1Malaysia slogan.
Malaysia has traversed the road from multiracial hostels in the early decades of nationhood, celebrating Malaysia’s diversity of races, languages, cultures, religions, cuisines to increasingly mono-ethnic hostels where tolerance and acceptance of unity in diversity have assumed decreasing importance.
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