MERDEKA is more than a month away, but committees are perhaps hard at work on what committees do best.
Pontificating about the shapes and sizes of flags, and where they should be hung. About decking the streets with decorative bunting proclaiming the national day slogan crafted by men of plenty.
We have nothing against committees, but love for our country must be more than this. All these 61 years of freedom must have taught us to go beyond banners and buntings. True, such external expressions are powerful feelings of the heart. But love for Malaysia must mean more.
True love for the country perhaps resides in the historic day of Aug 31, 1957 when the cry of Merdeka!, Merdeka!, Merdeka! rang out of Stadium Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, declaring to the world that Malaya was from then onwards a free, democratic nation.
This is how this newspaper put our national elation on the day in words: ‘At the stroke of midnight, a great roar tells the world: We are now a nation!’
If there is a day that Malaysians should look back to, it is Aug 31, 1957. Because - as the first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj put it - that was the day Malaya turned a new page to step forward to take her rightful place as a free and independent partner in the great community of nations.
But the freedom to be our own had to be earned.There was sweat. There were tears. Happily, there was no blood spilled. Our founding fathers Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun V.T. Sambanthan and many others worked tirelessly to reclaim our land from the British.
As the Tunku himself put it in his Independence Day speech,gaining freedom for the nation isn’t the end. Independence is just a milestone, though a very critical one. Being masters of our destiny needs more.
The Bapa Merdeka put it eloquently: Work and strive with hand and brain to create a new nation, inspired by the ideals of justice and liberty a beacon of light in a disturbed and distracted world.
The Tunku left us with a formula, too. To succeed, he said then - which still stands true - we must move forward ‘with remembrance for the past, and with confidence in the future, under the providence of God’. This formula we must follow.
A nation’s past is more than mere nostalgia. It is a teacher of how a national life can be lived, together in all our varied hues. Such avenues of history need visiting. Because they hold lessons for all Malaysians, young and old.
Some lessons are best learned by proxy. Yes,fluttering flags and blinking neon lights are evidence of a nation at joy. But for the joy to be possible,and to continue,needs more than Churchillian blood, sweat and tears.
We must all turn nation builders. On Aug 31, 1957, we disrobed one type of empire - the British empire. We must now disrobe another - the limiting empire of the mind. With this done, we can take to the streets with our flags fluttering, letting out the old, great roar: Merdeka!, Merdeka!, Merdeka!