Sabah.

 There is something almost theatrical about fear. It needs a stage, a spotlight, and preferably a microphone. Recently, a gentleman on Facebook shared a rant by a so-called Sabahan styling himself as a guardian of Sabah’s demographic purity after he discovered that India plans to open a consulate. A consulate. Not an invasion fleet. Not an airborne brigade of curry-smuggling philosophers. A consulate, a bureaucratic office with flags, paperwork, and people stamping documents.

And suddenly, migration hysteria blossoms like it’s monsoon season.

Now let’s breathe for a moment.

Sabah has not exactly been a porcelain doll kept in a glass cabinet. I was there a year or two ago to see for myself the environment. For decades, Sabah has absorbed migration flows from Peninsular Malaysia and from abroad. Entire political strategies revolved around demographic recalibration. Foreign nationals especially Muslims, were naturalized with astonishing efficiency when it suited federal arithmetic. The infamous “Project IC” wasn’t a bedtime story; it was documented, investigated, and debated in the Royal Commission of Inquiry. Where were the trembling guardians of Sabah’s sovereignty then? Were they on tea break?

It is fascinating how some people discover nationalism only when the imagined outsider fits a convenient silhouette. Do Indians have the word 'Scapegoat' printed on their foreheads? 

Sabah’s grievance is not with migration per se. It is with inequity. With resource extraction that benefited others more than the land from which it came. With oil royalties long contested. With infrastructure that lagged behind the wealth it generated. That is an economic justice issue, not a passport issue.

And while we are on the subject of identity, Sabah is not a cultural monolith. It is a tapestry. A very old one.

Among its indigenous peoples are the Dayaks, whose spiritual heritage predates both church steeples and mosque domes. The Dayak belief system, often referred to as Kaharingan in Borneo’s broader context, reflects an animistic cosmology deeply tied to land, ancestors, and the spiritual ecology of the forest. It shares motifs with neighboring civilizations, yes, Sanskrit words drifted across seas, iconography travelled with trade, and cultural exchange occurred during the era of the Kutai Kingdom (or Kutai Martapura, the oldest known Hindu Kingdom in Indonesia dating back to the 4th century). But resemblance is not surrender. Influence is not replacement. The core theology remained indigenous, rooted in river, mountain, and memory.

Migration in Borneo is not a 21st-century phenomenon. Austronesian movements likely flowed through Yunnan and across maritime Southeast Asia thousands of years ago. Anthropological and linguistic evidence suggests complex waves of settlement long before modern borders were imagined by men with rulers and red ink. The Dayaks were not alone. The Kadazan-Dusun, Bajau, Murut, and others form the indigenous mosaic of Sabah. Later came Chinese traders, Bruneian influences, European colonial administrators, and migrants from the southern Philippines and Indonesia. Sabah has always been a crossroads.

Now suddenly, an Indian consulate triggers existential panic?

Let us clarify something basic in international relations. A consulate is not an immigration pipeline. It is a diplomatic outpost providing services: visas, trade facilitation, cultural exchange, assistance to nationals. India maintains consulates globally, including in cities with no demographic upheaval whatsoever. The presence of a consulate does not manufacture migrants the way rain produces mushrooms.

And even if migration occurs, which it does everywhere, the relevant question is governance. Regulation. Economic capacity. Labour market demand. Legal frameworks. Not theatrical paranoia as what I witnessed in that shared post.

The irony is exquisite. Sabah already has a significant Indian diaspora, many of whom have contributed quietly to commerce, education, medicine, and civil service. Migration between India and Southeast Asia has historical depth dating back over a millennium through trade networks, religious exchange, and maritime connectivity. Tamil inscriptions have been found across the region. Sanskrit vocabulary permeates Malay. If cultural osmosis were a crime, half the dictionary we use today would be contraband.

What is really being stirred here is fear dressed up as patriotism. And fear is wonderfully profitable. It simplifies complex socioeconomic grievances into a convenient villain: “the outsider.” It distracts from structural inequities. It reframes economic mismanagement as demographic threat.

George Carlin might have said something like this: “When the house is on fire, some people don’t look for the arsonist. They look for someone with a different haircut.” The speaker while trying to deflect any slant of racism, was clearly so.

Sabah’s strength has always been hybridity. Its indigenous cultures survived Hindu influence, Islamic expansion, Christian missions, colonial administration, and federal politics. They did not evaporate. They adapted though painfully. Identity is not so fragile that it shatters at the sight of a diplomatic plaque.

If there is concern, let it be principled. Demand fair revenue sharing. Demand infrastructure parity. Demand transparent governance. Demand the full spirit of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 be honored. But do not reduce a sophisticated historical society to a cartoon frightened of an embassy stamp.

Migration has shaped Sabah. Trade has shaped Sabah. Cultural exchange has shaped Sabah. Now it seems your Prime Minister seeks to shape it for progress. What weakens a society is not contact, it is corruption, inequity, and manipulation.

And perhaps the real question is this: why does a consulate scare some people more than decades of economic imbalance ever did?

Fear, after all, is easy. Accountability is harder.

Sabah deserves seriousness, not stage fright.

The Gentile!

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