Shades of Citizenship: Betwixt the Civic and the Ethnic

In 1991, Mahathir Mohamad, then Prime Minister of Malaysia, declared his aim to transform Malaysia into a fully developed nation by the year 2020.² To achieve this goal, he identified nine strategic challenges that must be overcome, a key challenge being the creation of a united Malaysian nation, or a “bangsa Malaysia”, that would cultivate an inclusive national citizenship. Subsequently, several non-Malay individuals interpreted the concept to mean a future community of equal citizens where Malays would no longer possess special rights. The Malay reaction was initially low-keyed,³ but gradually ballooned to strident criticisms of non-Malays who equated “bangsa Malaysia” with equal rights for all citizens, regardless of ethnicity. On the contrary, they insisted that their special position and special rights, enshrined in the Constitution, cannot be questioned.

The “bangsa Malaysia” controversies highlighted once more the longstanding contest between the ethnic groups over the rights to citizenship status and the status of citizenship rights in Malaysia. To better understand the notion of “bangsa Malaysia” and the heated debates over it, this chapter will consider the colonial constructions of membership and disputes over acquisition of and terms of membership status in the peninsula. British indirect rule identified the Malay states with a particular ethnicity, defined by indigeneity, and established ethnic hierarchies between natives and non-natives in the colony. Consequently, colonial authorities used a mixture of jus sanguinis (right of blood) and jus soli (right of the soil) principles to classify the Malays and non-Malays into different classes of membership that have access to differential rights and privileges. Based on the principle of jus sanguinis, the Malays as the indigenous group were conferred special rights and preferential treatment, which were denied to the Chinese who were regarded as an immigrant group. Arguably then, British colonial policies and compromises contributed extensively to the development of a Malaysian citizenship that is wedged betwixt a civic element that regards citizenship as an effect of membership of a nation and an ethnic element that regards citizenship as an effect of membership of a native or non-native group.

Subjects, Protected Persons, and Resident Aliens in Pre-war Malaya

Prior to the Japanese invasion of Malaya, the peninsula was administered in the form of two distinct colonial entities: the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements⁴ and the British Protectorates of the Federated and Unfederated Malay States.⁵ By and large, the British colonial state classified an individual’s membership status in the Malay States and Straits Settlements according to jus sanguinis, jus soli, and place of origins. Those who qualified were classified into three classes of membership: subjects of Malay Rulers, British subjects, and Protected Persons. The three classes of membership were accorded differential access to residence and rights. Most importantly, the overwhelming majority of Chinese in the colony did not qualify for membership in British Malaya and remained as resident aliens.

In a Malay State, a Malay⁶ born in that State or born of a father who was a subject of the State would automatically qualify to be a subject of the Ruler of the State. Another category of persons who qualified to be subjects of the Ruler of a State was any person who belonged to an aboriginal tribe resident in that State. While the Malays in the Federated and Unfederated States were subjects of the Malay Rulers, Straits Settlements-born Malays were granted British subjecthood and thus, in principle, owed their allegiance to the British Crown.

In the Malay States, the principles of jus sanguinis and jus soli were not extended to the Chinese as the British and Malay authorities regarded them as belonging to an immigrant community (or kaum pendatang) that did not “belong” to the peninsula. That the place of origin of a person mattered was confirmed by the fact that it was generally much easier for local-born Malays, or even Indonesians, to become naturalized subjects of a Malay State than for Chinese born in that State. In addition, subjects of a Ruler were divided into Native and non-Native subjects, and only Malays were...