We are “co-becoming”, and we may be losing it

I have long felt that the Malaysia our generation is living through may be a very special period.

The boundaries between communities are still there, and often remain very clear. Yet at the same time, many things that once belonged mainly to one community have slowly entered the lives of another.

Malay Malaysians encounter Chinese food and festive traditions. Chinese Malaysians have long made many Malay and Indian influences part of everyday life. Much of this has become so natural that we barely stop to think about it.

Bak kwa, for example, is a very recognisable Chinese festive food. In Malaysia, it has even developed halal versions.

I have always found this fascinating.

It is not one community assimilating another.

A Malay person who eats halal bak kwa does not become Chinese. A Chinese person who eats nasi lemak or roti canai every day does not lose their own culture.

People still keep what is theirs. They simply become willing to bring parts of someone else’s culture into their own lives.

I do not know whether an existing term describes this precisely, so I think of it as “co-becoming”.

It does not mean mixing everyone into sameness. It means that while we remain ourselves, we gradually create more things that are shared.

I think that is remarkably precious.

Many countries are multicultural, but not every place develops this kind of everyday exchange naturally. Not every cultural encounter can happen without forcing one side to give up part of itself.

Sometimes foreigners notice this more easily than we do.

Many visitors remember Malaysia not only because of a particular attraction.

They remember the whole texture of the place.

Different foods, languages, religions, celebrations and ways of living exist at the same time, but they are not completely separated from one another.

To us, this is simply daily life.

To many visitors, this is Malaysia.

That is exactly why our present political direction worries me.

Our daily lives have moved far ahead, but politics often remains trapped in ethnic competition.

Calls for Malay unity or Chinese unity, and warnings that one community must protect its interests, lead other communities to wonder whether their own space will continue to shrink.

Once this begins, it easily becomes a cycle.

The more one community stresses unity, the more others feel they must protect themselves. When smaller communities defend their education, language, culture and ways of life, that self-protection can then be interpreted as a refusal to integrate.

Eventually, everyone retreats further into their own community.

One reality cannot be ignored: communities do not have equal population sizes, political power or institutional protections.

When people worry that Chinese, Indian or other minority cultural spaces may gradually be eroded, I do not think that concern should be dismissed as needless anxiety.

A culture does not always disappear suddenly.

It need not begin with someone announcing that something is no longer allowed to exist.

More often, it simply becomes smaller. Fewer people use it. Its place in everyday life narrows. The next generation encounters less of it. Something that was once ordinary eventually appears only during festivals or special occasions.

By then, what we call Malaysian culture will have changed with it.

Malaysia’s distinctiveness has never depended on the strength of a single culture.

It exists because many cultures are still alive, and therefore still able to influence one another.

A person must first have something of their own before they can share it with someone else.

Only when every community feels that its culture is safe can people stop defending it at every moment and have the confidence to embrace something from another.

So what worries me is not whether any community is united enough.

I worry that if we increasingly treat ethnic unity as the answer to every problem, we will eventually consume the rare condition we have now.

We may be living through one of the most culturally alive periods in Malaysia’s history.

Our communities remain different, yet already share so much.

This condition has even become one of the reasons visitors are drawn to Malaysia.

But if politics continues pulling us in the opposite direction, what disappears decades from now may not be only the cultures of smaller communities.

We may also lose this natural process of co-becoming.

We will still be Malaysians, of course.

But the Malaysia people can recognise at a glance today may no longer be the same Malaysia.