Sacred cows, crashing boars and the NIMBYs : ethno-religious minorities and the politics of online representation in Malaysia

Abstract

Starting with the incident now known as the Cow’s Head Protest, I trace and unpack the events, techniques, and conditions surrounding the representation of the Indian community in Malaysia. I suggest in this article that the Malaysian Indians’ struggle to correct the dominant reading of their community as an impoverished and humbled underclass is a disruption of the dominant cultural order in Malaysia. It is also among the key events to have has set in motion a set of dynamics introduced by new media into the politics of ethno-communal representation in Malaysia. It is my contention that this is a situation that requires urgent examination and I attempt here to outline the problematics of the task.