Mr. Karunanidhi! How ironical!

It took a lot of courage for the Indian diaspora in Malaysia take to the streets in such large numbers. Perhaps their true condition led them to this desperation.

Malay police used tear gas and water cannons on a 10,000 strong rally on Sunday. Over 200 ethnic Indians were detained for their protest, demanding equal rights. Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmed Badawi warned that he may invoke a security law, allowing indefinite detention without trial to halt street demonstrations.

But a Tamil minister in Malaysia has called the protests a farce. Samy Vellu, The President of the Malaysian Indian Congress denied he was out of touch with the increasingly agitated Indians in Malaysia. "They are just levelling unfounded excuses in order to popularise themselves. I considered them. They are not fighting for the Indians. They are fighting to create a problem,” said Vellu. [link]

It does not look likely that this incident will have any significant impact on Malaysian politics.

Interestingly, the protesters were not demanding special rights or even quotas. As a matter of fact, they were just calling for an end to discrimination and scaling down of some of the privileges enjoyed by the ethnic Malay-Muslim majority.

Karunanidhi made a feeble protest and an appeal to the PM. He didn't write a poem though. We recommend a very fine book for Mr. Karunanidhi, written by Amitabh Ghosh. To paraphrase an immortal line from the book: Minority love is not transitive. One may love his minorities, without his love being reciprocated elsewhere. Just a few months ago Mr. Karunanidhi had announced a 3.5% hard quota for the relatively affluent ethnic Muslim community in Tamil Nadu.