Contestation of Ideology, Freedom of Speech, Cultural and Situational Context

The issue of Interlok book is about a sentence saying that the Indian community in Malaysia comes from a pariah caste. The Indian community opposed this and requested that the book be banned because it causes discrimination. Read more in The Star Online.

Interlok textbook used in Malaysian high schools

A seemingly harmless word has evoked anger which we will discuss based on cultural and situational context. In my opinion, this is not an issue because this book’s audience are students and the purpose is to tell the Malaysia story and create harmony therefore there was no element of prejudice and discrimination inside. In the book, the author mentioned about the bad stuff of other races and hence it shows that nobody is perfect.

(photo source: http://massthink.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/what-does-it-mean-ideology/)

Matsumoto (2007) quoted that “because human social life is complex, the myriad of situational contexts in which individuals exist is associated with a myriad of cultural meanings”. The word pariah might cause anger among the Indian community, but being looked at a different way, the author wants to tell the story by being transparent so that the students can understand the history of Malaysia better.

Contesting ideologies today has reached a point where there is no freedom of speech. The author wrote the book many years ago and a particular group only seen it recently and voiced their anger over the issue.Conway et. al (2001) cited that certain groups use more cognitive thinking under certain context and vice versa. In addition, they suggested that cross cultural differences creates complexity in terms of how people think.The education ministry chose this book for the Malaysian students are under the context of 1 Malaysia in my opinion. The ideology that the author of Interlok has, has been supported by people in the education ministry which is why the book was chosen.

Under freedom of speech, the Indian community should also practice tolerance because the book’s purpose is not to derogate any parties but to instill harmony. Therefore there is a stronger reason to why the Indian community should not react in such way because we practice freedom of speech. We have the right to read, and banning books is not acceptable in my opinion what more it is a book that is aimed at something positive.

In conclusion, freedom of speech is an international law but under cultural and situational context, it may cause disturbance like the issue of Interlok. When someone contests their ideology, there is uncertainty to what events might occur and how people might react. It is still ambiguous to rank ethics and how free we are to express our thoughts. The future of internet advancement is taking things to a whole new level never seen before so we shall see what happens next.

Reference

Matsumoto, D 2007, ‘Culture, Context and Behavior’, Journal of Personality, 75:6, pp. 1-37.

Conway, L G, Schaller, M, Tweed, R G & Hallett, D 2001, ‘The complexity of thinking across cultures: interactions between culture and situational context’, Social Cognition, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 228-250.