"I Was Called A Keling In School & Here's Why Racism Is Not OK"

Racial labelling in Malaysia

Being born in Malaysia feels like a safe haven for many because different cultures coexist rather harmoniously. As citizens, we often take pride in calling Malaysia a diverse country and talk about how lucky we are to be able to share our cultures through our food options and the languages we speak, among other things.

But my idea of what Malaysia is completely changed when I was called keling by a Chinese girl for the very first time when I was in secondary school, and I found out it was a racist slur.

Why is the term keling offensive to Indians?

racism - indians cooking around a campfire
A Malaysian Indian family living in the rural area celebrating Pongal or the Indian harvest festival (photo for illustration purposes only).
Image credit: tian yake

For those of you who don’t know what keling means, here’s a brief explanation. The word keling is predominantly used by ethnic Malays to refer to Indians in Malaysia. It has a long history and dates back to the pre-colonial era when people from the Malay archipelago had trade relations with India.

While it was used commonly then to refer to the people from the Indian subcontinent, the word has evolved over time to become a derogatory term, much like the N-word used against people with African heritage in the western world. Nowadays, it’s considered a racial slur by most Indians.

Racism is still prevalent in modern-day Malaysia

racism - malaysian students
Image credit: Sanofi Pasteur

It took me years to understand what it meant and why people in multiracial Malaysia refer to Indians with all sorts of names including keling. But here I am in my late 20s after having encountered so much as a person with dark skin to finally talk about the problem that many choose to ignore – the labelling culture driven by a deep-rooted sense of racial sentiment.

You wouldn’t be surprised to learn that labelling is still prevalent in modern Malaysia with casual references to words that humiliate and hurt others in speech or writing. It affects everyone in Malaysia on different levels but what matters most is we should work actively to stop it from happening over and over again.

Being called a keling affected me negatively

malaysian students
A picture of me and my friends (Nadiha and Hong Chun) 10 years ago when we were 17
Image credit: Siva Selan

The one thing that has always made me ponder whenever I hear someone using the word keling or pendatang, another derogatory term often used against Malaysian Indians as a racial slur, is how people tend to forget the multiracial roots of our country when different ethnic groups fought side by side to attain independence.

Coming from a vernacular school, I never understood what keling meant nor was I given a warning by my teachers or family members that someone from another race might call me that one day. And when it happened to me, I was puzzled.

I asked some of my Indian friends in school if they had heard of the word before and what it meant. I even asked my sisters about it and after repeated encounters and help-seeking, after running through varying degrees of annoyance and anger, I vaguely realised that it was used against me as an insult.

I took my sister’s advice and told the girl who called me keling one day that if she kept doing it, I would not hesitate to report her to the class teacher. Perhaps it was because of the threat, or that she had sensed my anger, the girl stopped the name-calling at one point.

But I still vividly remember the way she used to say the word towards me along with other stereotypical sounds to make fun of me and my race though I do not possess a distinctive accent when speaking. I have thought about this many times and have asked myself why this happened.

Maybe the girl had picked the term up from friends or she had heard it being used in conversations to refer to Indians rather openly. I don’t know for sure, and I can’t say for sure that she had ill intentions when she called me by that word, but it certainly affected me negatively.

Ways to overcome racism and racial labelling in Malaysia

Racial labelling in Malaysia
Image credit: amrufm

In 2016, when I was at the peak of my university life, I watched several videos of a US educator named Jane Elliott, who spoke so brilliantly about racism and why it happens. She cracked down on the complex topic with an infamous exercise called the ‘Blue eyes/Brown eyes’ for which she even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Jane explains that fundamentally, racism is a learnt response humans exhibit when they are presented with a situation. It is something that we are taught to do in our lives from the things we encounter. For example, a white male may feel superior to a black male because he is taught about white supremacy. It’s a system that is set up to constantly work against minorities and people on the basis of their racial and religious backgrounds.

To ground the context in Malaysia, look at the recent controversy involving a politician from Kelantan who chose to refer to our national shuttler Kisona as “a keling who was picked up from an estate by the Badminton Association of Malaysia”. Though he apologised and resigned from his position as a divisional leader of his party, there’s something about this that we need to pay attention to.

In a report by Utusan Malaysia, Borhanudin Che Rahim was quoted saying that the word keling is used “commonly” in his state to refer to Indians in everyday conversations. This is a clear example of how racism is being taught. While it’s true that the word was used to refer to Indians hundreds of years ago, it’s no longer the norm in Malaysia if most Indians would easily get upset or even angry when they hear the word. Yet, we always hear excuses of how common these words are in certain parts of the country especially among people who have very little to no interactions with Indians.

It’s always a challenge to find a good starting point when talking about controversial topics like this. But if we want to open a conversation about racial labelling in Malaysia, it’s important that we pay attention to our words. Take a look at the US for example, where many white people would remove the N-word from their vocabulary because it is deemed offensive.

And I think this should already be happening in Malaysia, too. To be a more inclusive nation or Keluarga Malaysia as we call it, we must actively and consciously eliminate the use of derogatory words such as keling from our vocabulary instead of normalising it by giving “evidence” that “it was used commonly in the past” to justify its usage now.

At the same time, we should be empowered to teach our children that just because a person’s skin is of a certain colour, it doesn’t mean that we can call them names or slap labels on them like how we used to do in the past.

Calling out racism helps raise awareness on the issue

Racial labelling in Malaysia
Image credit: Thirty One Fine Bakes

There have been various incidents where racial labelling was put on display earlier this year. First, there was a controversy that involved a traditional Indian recipe that triggered a Malay woman to refer to Indians as penumpang in a live video on social media. Then came another person who had called non-Malays pendatang in response to a netizen who tweeted their frustration for not being offered a place in public universities despite scoring straight As in their SPM.

Both of these netizens were heavily criticised on social media for their remarks which is a good start to finding a solution but this has to happen consistently, including those in authority and businesses, so that the issue is never swept under the carpet again.

Being actively anti-racist and calling out those who feel that they are free to insult and use racial slurs on others without any consequences, especially online, in the name of “free speech” helps raise awareness on racism and racial labelling in Malaysia.

I was genuinely impressed when Thirty One Fine Bakes, a bakery based in Petaling Jaya, decided to stand up against racism and straight-up rejected a customer’s business because the latter said they had a racial preference when making purchases. This kind of courage and willingness is hard to come by in our country as we often prioritise our own well-being or profits more than anything else, but this is something we should learn to do if we want to be better Malaysians.

Encountering and combating racism in Malaysia

With a lot of news being reported on racism, it is quite uplifting to see that Malaysians can support each other to combat this behaviour altogether such as showing support for national badminton player Kisona who was subjected to racial slur on social media. Having open conversations about racism and racial labelling is important because just ignoring them will create far more negative consequences than we think.

Only when we speak up and have discussions, we can start finding solutions to the problem. It takes years of education and negotiations to create the awareness that we want to see in our people and to say no to policies that work against a certain group but if we are willing to work together as a community, we can create the much-needed change for a more inclusive Malaysia.