Who said Keling is a bad word? Why should it be?

Agree with the author. 

Who said Keling is a bad word?  Why should it be?
  
It has been in use in Tanah Melayu since time immemorial and -- admit lah people – many Malaysians still refer to Indians as Kelings in private anyway.  So no big deal.

There was a great Kalinga Kingdom near present day Tamil Nadu in ancient times.  In medieval Melaka, the Indian community was called the Orang Keling . . . and there is Tanjong Keling of course.  In Penang you have the Kapitan Keling mosque.  One of my favorite traditional kueh is called Telinga Keling.  Good stuff and goes well with my Lampung coffee.  Throughout Malaya you will find references to Ubi Keling, Pisang Kelat Keling, Jambu Keling, Kesumba Keling and even a Buah Koté Keling.  In social interactions you will come across Cerita Keling and Janji Keling and on the football field of old, dribbling the ball and going nowhere would be termed Main Keling.

So how come nowadays “Keling” cannot be used to denote Malaysians of South Indian origin?   

Actually, Keling is the proper word, a historical fact.  Indeed, the palace intrigues and political machinations of Kelings are integral components of Melakan history . . . and that is profound.  “India” and “Indian” are just meaningless colonial nomenclatures, just like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata were mispronounced as Bombay, Bangalore and Calcutta by tongue-tied Western colonialists. 

You see, the riverine system of present-day Pakistani Punjab was known as Sapta Sindhu (Sanskrit = “seven rivers”) in ancient times.  Early Persian travelers, due to the pronunciation rules of their own language, aspirated the “s” to an “h” and thus Sindhu became “Hindhu.”  “Hindustan” later denote the Sapta Sindhu land area.  The “Hindhu” connotation was never religious, and subsequently used by the invading Mughals to define the region’s indigenous people.  When the Greek army arrived in the region circa 500BC, they simply used Persia’s mispronounced “Hindhu” as the root word for their mispronounced “Indos” to signify the region.  This morphed into “Indus” per Latin spelling convention and this “Indus” later became the modern Western name of the seven-river system mentioned above.  When the Roman legions arrived, they further tweaked the Latin “Indus” with the -ia morpheme (hence “India”) to denote the land mass beyond the Indus River.   The British simply perpetuated this series of meaningless mispronunciations and merrily ruled over a subcontinent they Christened “India.”   And so we have it, folks . . . . an artificial Persian-Greek-Latin-Roman-Mongol-British concoction regurgitated from an inglorious history of conquests and subjugation by others.
    
Yes, “India” and “Indian” are just constructs of Western conquerors and colonisers, who were so dumb and irresponsible that they confusedly name peoples and places around the globe with the Indie root word.  Red Indian, West Indian, West Indies, East Indies . . . heck you even have the state of Indiana right smack in the Bible thumping American mid-west !

Jadi amacam machaa?  Lu “India” mana?  India India ka India Amerika ka India Karibia?

The truth is . . . there is no such thing as an “Indian.” 

India itself is traditionally called Bharat for thousands of years by the natives, hence the ultranationalist Bharatiya Janata party.  In the Indian Constitution, Bharat is the country’s official name, hence, per First Clause: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states.”   And on the 9th of January every year, the government of India hosts the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, a gathering of the worldwide diaspora of Bharat origin.  The timeless epic, Mahabharatta, refers to a great country or continent.  And now you know why West is Barat in the Malay compass, referring to that subcontinent beyond the western horizon. 

In old Melaka, you either have the Gujaratis or Benggalis (from the Bay of Bengal – today’s Bangla lah -- and not the Punjabis as mistaken by many) and the Kelings of the Coromandel coast in what is today’s Tamil Nadu.  No “India” or “Indian” anywhere.  So, rightfully the overwhelming majority of “Indians” in Malaysia, the 90% who hailed from former Kalinga or the Coromandel coast, should be called Kelings.  We have used this term for over 600 years and there is no reason why it should be replaced by a meaningless colonial construct that actually refers to nationals of another country thousands of miles west. 

You see, “India” is a country and “Indian” is a nationality.  There is no such thing as an “Indian” race.  There are hundreds of ethnic groups in India, from the Vedda aborigines to Tamils to Biharis to Gujaratis to Bengalis all the way to Mongoloid hilltribes of Assam who look no different from Pakchu Mat in Kemamang.  They look and talk and think differently from one another but they are “Indians” because “Indian” denotes nationality, as citizens of the Union of India.
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Now, back in Malaysia, why should MyKad-carrying Kelings call themselves “Indians”?  It’s impossible for them to be “Indians” because they are NOT citizens of India.  If I were to take up citizenship in India, even I would be called an “Indian” – a citizen of India.  The Malaysian Kelings should call themselves Kelings as they shouldn’t be misconstrued as citizens of another country thousands of miles away.

In this regard, the fruitcakes of Hindraf are correct.  They don’t call their group “India” anything.  They call themselves the Hindu Rights Action Force.  Precisely.  Hindu is the catch-all word.  So our local Kelings can call themselves Hindus if they want, but NOT “Indians.”  The Indian government itself doesn’t refer to the country’s diaspora as “Indians.”  As mentioned, every year on the 9th of January, the government of India hosts the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, a gathering of the worldwide diaspora of Bharat origin.  See?  Bharat.  Bharatiya.  Not “India” or “Indian.”

Now, . . . . would other “Indians” in this country adopt the author’s stance?  Accept historical fact and political plus linguistic logic and identify freely with the “Keling” race?
 
Well, they should. 

The logic is self-evident and can withstand any historical, linguistic, legal or Constitutional scrutiny.

As for the Malay majority and Malaysians of other stripes and persuasions?  I think they are a practical lot.  They understand social norms and the evolution of racial connotations over time.  While there is nothing in the Constitution or the Penal Code that prevents anyone from uttering Keling on the streets or calling people Kelings, society by and large refrain from doing so, just as American society discard Negro and Nigger from their public domain . . . although self-deprecating Blacks still taunt themselves with the word Nigga at every turn.

Well, the author has started the ball rolling.  And I think this deserves contemplation and perhaps some soul searching by Malaysians with ancestral roots in the Coromandel Coast and the great former Kalinga Kingdom.  Indeed, settling the Keling vs Indian tag will go a long way in establishing a more definitive and uniquely Malaysian identity for a people deeply rooted -- in one form or another -- in Malay history since antiquity.    

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