Evading facts on racial sensitivities can be counter-productive, says Dr Mahathir
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad
KUALA LUMPUR: Evading facts on racial sensitivities to the extent of losing lessons from historical truth can be counter-productive, said former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
He said if the people choose to forget or brush aside past experience, efforts to improve the prevalent atmosphere in the society would not get any better.
“Now we hear that in writing the history of our country, the sensitivities of all races must be taken into account.
“The question is to what extent the sensitivities supersede historical truth? If it goes overboard, history studied by our students will be fairy tales rather than the actual history,” he said in his blog, chedet.co.cc.
Citing conflicts on natives of the Malaysian peninsular, he said, “Is it out of sensitivity, we should not mention who were the natives, and migrants, who had settled down, used the local language as their own, and adopt part of local cultures and clothing.
“Now there is no more people like that because in this era such inference will not be acceptable to certain people,” he said.
He said some historical truth could be sensitive to the Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Kadazans and other ethnic groups.
“If all that are sensitivities to the races are filtered, then there is no more lesson to be learned by students,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said he had read history textbooks and found that many important events that occurred during the British colonial rule, the Japanese occupation, the Siamese incursion and after the British secured Malaya once again were not included in the books.
“I know what is missing or what is not given proper analysis as I went through these eras. I hope authors of new textbooks will uphold the truth while taking into account racial sensitivities,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said one of the lessons from history was that the people were now more apprehensive not to repeat the mistakes made by the people and government of yesteryears.
“If in the past, absolute monarchy often destroyed countries, the system was replaced with a system of government by the people. Without experience in history, changes in the government administration could not be made,” he said.
Learning from past experience is more conducive now as past mistakes are no longer practised, he said, adding that “We have learned from our experience and this experience is part of our history.”
Dr Mahathir quoted eminent Harvard philosopher thinker George Santayana’s dictum, “Those who forget history are destined to repeat their mistakes over and over again.” — Bernama