ABSTRACT
At independence, Malaysian society comprised three major ethnic communities, namely, the indigenous community or bumiputera (lit. sons of the soil), who accounted for 50 per cent of the population, and two sizeable immigrant communities, one Chinese (37 per cent) and the other Indian (11 per cent). Since then, the censuses of 1970, 1980 and 1990 have shown that, in spite of the general increase in the population, from about 10 to 18 million, the ethnic composition has not changed significantly. However, to most Malaysians, it is the bumiputera and non-bumiputera ethnic divide that is perceived as significant, used in official government documents as well as in the idiom of everyday interaction, despite the fact that there is heterogeneity within both. Nonetheless, colloquially, the public refers to this ethnic divide simply as ‘bumi and non-bumi’, reflecting the delicate demographic balance between the two categories, each constituting about 50 per cent of the population. This has important wider implications in the social life of Malaysians, especially in political terms.
