Malaysia to retain textbook with changes after Indians protest

Objections were raised to the novel 'Inderlok' by Malaysian Indians over the use of this word, and dissenters said caste system does not exist any more among the minority community in this Malay majority country.

The government said the book will not be withdrawn from the curriculum but required changes will be made to it.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the Education minister, said the novel written by national laureate Abdullah Hussein will remain as a textbook in the literature component of the Bahasa Malaysia subject for senior school students and would be introduced in the curriculum only after the amendments were made.

Muhyiddin said an independent panel would be set up to study the types of amendments and submit recommendations to the government.

"The decision to continue using the novel, with amendments so as not to hurt the feelings of the Indian community, is the best solution," he said in a statement.
He added that the panel would comprise linguists, academics, literary figures and representatives of the ethnic Indian community.

Multi-ethnic Malaysia has a 60 per cent majority Malay population while 25 per cent are ethnic Chinese and around 8 per cent are ethnic Indians.

The novel came in for criticism following the Education Ministry's decision to use it as a literature text, with several parties claiming that it contained words like 'pariah' which they said were sensitive to the Indian community.

Muhyiddin said the decision was made after taking into consideration the views of all parties, which acknowledged that the book was good in nurturing and strengthening unity among the multi-racial and multi-religious communities in Malaysia.He said any amendment would not affect the story and noble message the writer wanted to convey.
Interlok has characters from each of the three communities based in the then Malaya who all try to eke out a living for themselves.

He added that the consensus was reached after he, the president of the largest ethnic Indian based political party, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) G Palanivel and his deputy president S Subramaniam, met Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to discuss the matter yesterday.