What is the nature and character of nation-building in Malaysia? To what extent have the different ethnic groups — Malays, Chinese, and Indians — developed a meaningful stake in the overall system? Does the current nation-building model engender positive and harmonious inter-ethnic relations between the three principal ethnic groups? By using the case of Indian Malaysians, it will be argued that the current nation-building model predicated on the basis of advancing Malay dominance/hegemony runs counter to their political, economic, cultural, and social interests. In the last two decades or so, as a result of the implementation of policies and measures in favour of Malays, Indians have become politically marginalized, economically deprived of opportunities, and culturally alienated. Indian involvement in criminal activities has nothing to do with their particular cultural or ethnic disposition; it is more related to the way urbanization, commercialization, and ethnic discrimination have impacted on them.

Concept of Nation-Building

The concept of nation-building is as relevant today as it was two or three decades ago. During the initial period, the concept of nation-building was invoked to mobilize ethnic groups to shed their cultural and ethnic differences in favour of some common denominators. However, persistence of ethno-nationalism leading to protracted ethnic conflicts in many parts of the world led some analysts to assume that the nation-building project hatched on the basis of certain cultural experience might not be suitable for multi-ethnic situations. Scholars like Walker Connor and others have argued that the nation-building project that sought to ignore differences might sow the seeds of destruction of nations (Conner 1994, pp. 29–66). Needless to say, the shift to examine and analyse differences was also precipitated by epistemological critiques of the philosophy of positivism, the focus on feminism, and the attempt to give attention to cultural and identity politics.

Eventually, attention to differences turned out to be counter-productive. Intense ethnic conflicts in different parts of the world leading to terrible loss of lives, the subjectivity and irrationality of ethno-nationalism, and the necessity for different ethnic groups to coexist with one another on the basis of certain common denominators helped to re-invoke the concept of nation-building once again.