Updated: Wednesday November 19, 2008 MYT 3:36:10 PM

Multi-cultural societies no longer the exception: Raja Nazrin

By SHAHANAAZ HABIB

PETALING JAYA: Mankind is failing badly at creating a sense of community in multi-cultural societies and great dangers lie ahead if it continues on this path, said Raja Nazrin Shah.

The Perak Raja Muda said multi-cultural societies were fast becoming the rule rather than the exception.

“Contrary to the rhetoric, however, it is not becoming a source of strength. Instead race, culture and religion have become the dominant discourse.

“When we think of social fragmentation as good rather than bad, something is awfully wrong. Our moral gyroscopes have gone completely awry. If we continue on the present path great dangers lie ahead,” he said Wednesday in his address at the Diversity Matters Forum on Diaspora in the Commonwealth at Monash University’s Sunway campus.

Raja Nazrin warned that society must avoid falling into a new and destructive form of “modern day tribalism.”

“Nothing is inevitable. Cultures can co-operate as much as clash,” he said.

He added that people need to reclaim religion from those who distort its truths and reject radicalism and extremism of all types.

“If there is someone in my society who is hungry, or unemployed or sick and cannot afford treatment, then it diminishes me even if he is of a different race or religion,” he added.

Malaysia, he said, is a prime example of how a diaspora of Chinese, Indian and other races have led to the creation of a more heterogeneous and prosperous state.

He noted that a pluralistic society is one that not only tolerates but appreciates and encourages the active participation of those of different races, cultures and lifestyles.

Fundamental to this, he said, is the principle of equality and fairness particularly in the application of the rule of law.

Touching on Britain’s Scarman Report which pointed out how minorities often had difficulty getting good behaviour from the police and felt discriminated against, Raja Nazrin said, while he did not want to reduce the problem of managing diversity to a matter of law, this, however was a “most basic building block underpinning pluralism”.

Raja Nazrin also said that the principles of equality and fairness suggest a preferred policy of integration rather than assimilation.

“Integration accepts and enlists; it does not coerce. It respects and values differences as legitimate. Assimilation, on the other hand, seeks to change language, customs, religions and even world views,” he said.

Even so, he said, integration is in many ways more difficult than “forced assimilation” as it ends up at times with countries having enclaves of isolated and alienated communities - each staying in its own little box - without contact with the others.

Raja Nazrin believed that integration should be a gradual process consisting of many acts over many generations.

He said people with different cultural backgrounds should be allowed to live a free life without being forced to do things they did not want to do but at the same time forging a community of people with shared values and interests should be paramount.