An English-educated barrister turned politician has touched off a heated debate by urging the closure of Malaysia's Tamil schools, saying they produce unskilled labourers and social misfits with no place in a dynamic and rapidly modernising society.
M. Kayveas, president of the small but influential People's Progressive Party (PPP), said the Tamil schools, started more than a century ago by pioneering English planters, had outlived their usefulness. 'While some Tamil school students have made it, many have ended up as social misfits, unskilled labourers and criminals,' Mr Kayveas said.
His comment angered Tamil traditionalists, who see the schools as the last bastion of their culture in an adopted land transformed by the twin forces of westernisation and Islam.
The PPP's membership consists largely of English-educated, middle-class Tamils who have long held that Tamil education is backward and unproductive.
Tamil-language support groups have lodged police reports against Mr Kayveas, saying it is sedition to question Tamil education.
The constitution says no person shall be prohibited or prevented from using, teaching or learning Tamil or Chinese.