A Brief Introduction to the History Behind the Bumiputera Policy

You must have heard of Malaysia. She is known for her natural beauty, blooming with tropical rainforests and wildlife, and her rich cultural heritage, cooking up one of the most flavourful foods in the whole world. One would imagine satay, nasi lemak and many other Malaysian street foods. This is only possible because of Malaysia’s rich ethnic and cultural diversity - with 68.8% Bumiputera Malays, 23.2% Chinese, 7% Indians (Yee, 2018), and the remaining classified as ‘Other’. 

The Malaysian government categorises ‘Other’ into three separate groups, namely ‘Other Bumiputera’, ‘Other Citizen’ and ‘Other Non-Citizen’ (Malaysia, 2024). We will delve deeper into the contentious term Bumiputera, a word with Sanskrit origins that has come to mean the native indigenous people of the geographical region of West and East Malaysia. The word Bumiputera came to be so controversial because of the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) by the Malaysian government in 1971, which gave preferential treatment to Bumiputeras in Malaysia and has shaped the country’s social, cultural and political landscapes significantly. 

Before discussing the NEP, we must look deeper into the historical events that happened before the implementation of the NEP in 1971. The 1910-1930s saw a large wave of Chinese and Indian labourers working in rubber plantations and tin mines when the British ruled over British Malaya. The British colonial rulers created social and economic divides between the Malays, Chinese and Indians, as occupations were often divided by race (Tharoor, 2017). The Japanese further exacerbated this during World War II from 1941 to 1945; each race was treated differently due to the Japanese perceiving them to have different threat levels. The Malayan Chinese were treated the most harshly, as they form the most politically conscious ethnic group, largely loyal to China and Britain (Akashi, 1970), posing the biggest threat to the Japanese occupation. 

In 1946, The British proposed the formation of the Malayan Union, where every race had an equal chance to apply for Malayan citizenship (Carnell, 1952). The Malays were generally opposed to this because of the dubious methods Sir Harold MacMichael, former British Malaya colonial administrator, used to gain the Sultan’s approval, where the Sultan was allegedly threatened with dethronement (Omar, 1993). The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) political party emerged during this time as an opposition to the Malayan Union, which believed in Malay nationalism and privilege. 

Two years later, the Federation of Malaya was formed, granting special privileges to the Malays. UMNO largely influenced this formation by pushing the British to dismantle the Malayan Union. In 1957, Malaya declared independence from the British Empire under the leadership of Tunku Abdul Raman, Malaysia’s first prime minister.

He managed to unify modern-day Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore into Malaysia in 1963. Due to a majority ethnic Chinese population living on the island of Singapore, the People’s Action Party (PAP), a political party formed by Lee Kuan Yew and other prominent figures in Singapore a decade earlier in 1954, conflicted with UMNO over political boundaries and fundamental beliefs about racial privilege. Lee advocated for ‘Malaysia for Malaysians’, emphasising equal opportunities for all races, while Rahman advocated for ‘Malaysia for Malays’ (Lee, 1965). This eventually led Rahman to expel Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. The idea that the Bumiputera were ‘sons of the soil’ and thus should be given special privileges started to take off here, even though the Chinese and Indians were present throughout most, if not all, of the hardships that Malaysia faced, from hard labour to support the British Empire, to World War 2. We will now look into how that ideology was fuelled due to the different treatment of different races in Malaya by the British.

The Chinese community in Malaysia has been present since the 16th century, with voyage paths mapped out since the 15th century (Yee, 2018). Fast forward to the 19th century, the British colonial rulers preferred the Peranakan Chinese to be the middlemen in trade as the Malays were uncooperative with the British in trade (Kwee, 2015). European officials saw the opportunity to exploit the Chinese for cheap labour and harboured racist sentiments towards the Malays, viewing them as unreliable business partners, leading to increasing resentment by the Malays towards the Chinese (Yee, 2018). During this time, the Chinese became adept at doing privatised business and trading, learning English and Western conventions and practices due to their prolonged contact with the colonisers. Gradually, the Chinese were doing significantly better economically than the Malays in the Malays’ eyes. However, the Malaysian economy was actually dominated by foreign investors and a handful of Chinese businessmen in the 1960s (Jomo, 1990).

We can see that the Malay and Chinese communities who settled in geographical Malaysia had a long-standing feud since the early 19th century, primarily due to colonisation by the British Empire. This was tragically worsened after the Chinese Civil War from 1927 to 1949; the Chinese Communist Party emerged in 1949, which led to the Malay population viewing the entire Straits Chinese population as communist and dangerous. This further motivated the Malaysian government to discriminate against the Chinese population. The racial disparities and tensions finally materialised and erupted on May 13th, 1969, when a violent racial riot in Kuala Lumpur broke loose. The Malaysian government scrambled to find a fitting solution to combat political unrest in Malaysia and introduced the NEP in 1971.

Several versions of the NEP were drafted before 1971. The first draft of the NEP had a virtuous goal to uphold national unity through a two-pronged approach, aiming to reduce racial income disparities and poverty (Aun, 2021). This sounds fair in theory, as the Non-Malays were assured that they would not feel deprived of their rights and prospects (Aun, 2021), but discriminative economic restructuring resulted from the NEP: the Malaysian government mandated Bumiputera to have 30% equity ownership in Malaysia, a stark difference compared to pre-NEP Bumiputera, owning just 1.9% (Milne, 1976). Consequentially, there was a mandated transfer of economic power from the Chinese and other foreign groups to the Bumiputera solely on the grounds of race. Bumiputera are entitled to mandated discounts on housing. Even to this day, Bumiputera receives preferential treatment in education; Bumiputera constitutes a highly disproportionate percentage of 81.9% of students in public universities, due to a now-abolished quota system that mandated 90% of students must be Bumiputera. There is, however, a quota system that remains in the matriculation colleges, with a 90% quota for Bumiputeras, while certain foundation courses are exclusively for Bumiputeras (Tan, 2024).

It seems that the NEP was equitable in the early 1970s after the Chinese gained an economic advantage over the Malays due to perceived cooperativeness by the Europeans in a last-ditch attempt to end poverty in Malaysia. However, the NEP quickly became less about equalising the playing field and more about making the Bumiputera better off than the others, especially in today’s day and age.

The Bumiputera Policy has been deemed racist by some. Former Democratic Action Party politician Dr Boo Cheng Hau even compared it to South Africa’s apartheid (Insider, 2009). What are your thoughts? Do you think affirmative action in Malaysia is racist? Do you think it is ethical and fair to the other groups? Do you have a better solution to solve the racial divide? 

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