29 March, 2008
Prof Chandra wrote in his March 28, 2008 reply to Jules Ong that "the historical background of the nation is an essential prerequisite for understanding justice and equality in contemporary Malaysia." He argued that it is "indisputable fact that Malaysia emerged from a Malay polity." And he further wrote that "the history and identify of the land impinges upon the present is something that I learnt as an undergraduate at the University of Singapore in the late sixties."
Well, I have just retired after serving in the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur) for 35 years, and I taught many generations of students taking my first year course on Malaysia that while it is absolutely true that the historical background of the nation is an "essential prerequisite" to understanding contemporary Malaysia, that history must start at the very beginning, when "God so made the World" so to speak. Whereas Prof Chandra's Malaysian history seems to begin with a "Malay polity."
Wrong, Malaysia's human history began in a past that academics still debate. Did the indigenous people's of the Southeast Asian archipelago migrate here from somewhere else, or (and this is the theory that I personally favour) did they evolve in situ, from within the region (starting with the Java Man, etc). Be that as it may, there was most certainly Indigenous peoples in all of Southeast Asia speaking hundreds of related, but distinct languages, and evolving their own location-specific cultures and ethnicities. Anthropologists now call these people "Malay" but this is not the "Malay-Muslim" polity that Prof Chandra seems to take as his starting point for Malaysian history. They are genetically members of the Malay race.
Indigenous Southeast Asia was influenced by progressive ways of cultural, religious, economic and political influence from outside. A process of Indianization (Hinduism, followed by Buddhism) began 2000 years ago, and coastal areas in mainland Southeast Asia, as well as in Insular Southeast Asia (the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, but not extending in any major way to the eastern-most islands) resulted in a hitherto multi-ethnic indigenous Southeast Asia being divided into Indianised (Hindu and Buddhist) Southeast Asia which adapted concepts of the state, of kingship, of social hierarchy, new cultural practices, and trading-based economic organisation that set these lowland, mainly coastal areas apart from the rest of indigenous Southeast Asia located well away from the coast, in the interior and mountainous regions.
Indian-influence in Peninsular Malaysia is nearly 2000 years old, and its influence on the language, culture and practices of the indigenous Malays are still there for all to see. In fact, Hinduism has had the longest presence of any of the world's great religions in Southeast Asia, and in Peninsular Malaysia, a fact that is all too often forgotten by Malaysian historians, perhaps even Prof Chandra, whose history, seems to begin with the coming of Islam to the Hindu kingdom of Melaka.
Islam in Malaysia is, compared to Hinduism, a relatively new comer. It too was brought, as was Hinduism, by traders from the Indian sub-continent, and it found a plural society, comprising indigenous and migrant Hindus, Chinese traders in the great entrepot of Melaka, and, lest we forget, animist indigenous people who formed the rural population majority in the hinterland.
The rest of the history of Malaysia we all know. Islam adapted itself to Indigenous-Hindu-Animist society, and more traders and peoples from other parts of Asia started coming to the trading ports of Southeast Asia. The Europeans soon followed in the 16th century, and I should state my place in this history by admitting to my family having arrived (as traders) in 1786 in Penang (and earlier in 1753 in Junk Ceylon, modern day Phuket, Thailand). Mercantile trading societies gave way to capitalism all over Southeast Asia in the 19th century, and there was a large-influx of migrant labour from China, and India, adding to the already present Chinese, Indians and other ethnic groups that 2000 years of trading had brought to Malaysia, and Southeast Asia.
Malaysia, therefore, has gone through two millenia of transformation, the indigenous peoples of the region being successively influenced to lesser and greater degrees by outside cultural, economic and political influences. The indigenous peoples, once a complex network of relatively independent ethnic and tribal communities living in self-sufficiency for the most part, or, at best, only engaged in very localised trade, became progressively divided into two groups, a "majority" indigenous group deeply influenced from outside (Buddhist kingdoms in Continental Southeast Asia, Islamic sultanates in Insular Southeast where there also remained pockets of Hindu kingdoms, such as in Bali, which ought to serve as a reminder to those whose history begins with Islam, of the region's long, and complex history), and the "other" indigenous peoples, those who defended, and held on to their indigenous beliefs, and ways of life. These progressively became a minority in lands they were once the absolute majority as more and more were converted to Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity in the case of the Philippines, but who till this very day still exist as Southeast Asia's indigenous tribal peoples, a reminder to the rest of us that they, and only they, can have any real claim to being the original peoples, the founding "polity" to use Prof Chandra's term, of not only Malaysia, but in all of the countries of Southeast Asia.
Prof Chandra is wrong when he gives almost sole attention to "Malay polity." Long before the Malay-Muslim polity he is referring to, there was, and there still exists, an Indigenous Polity. Yes, the Malays are part of that Indigenous Polity (the Malays are, after all, islamised indigenous Southeast Asias who have been living here for thousands of years). But, in the strange alchemy of contemporary race-based Malaysian politics, "Malay Polity" largely excludes the Orang Asli, and the indigenous tribal peoples of Sarawak and Sabah who have become marginalised in their own land, not just by recent immigrant communities of Indians, Chinese, and Others, but also by their fellow now-Islamized Malays who, for some inexplicable reason, see themselves as being "different" by virtue of religion.
The whole premise of Prof Chandra's argument based on the assumption of a "Malay polity" can be placed in doubt when one takes a longer view of Malaysian history. There has been a two thousand year presence of Hindu-Indian influence in some (not all) coastal areas of West Peninsular Malaysia. Islam's presence is less than half that of Hindu-Indian, and not that much longer than the presence in Malaysia of Buddhism (brought by Chinese traders), of Christianity (brought by European traders), etc.
Of course, be rest assured, there is a "Malay polity" because it is to the political advantage of race-based Malay politicians to declare that since they believe in it, it must be real, and it must be the basis for looking at things. This Malay polity, is, historically, very shallow rooted. Far, far deeper, and longer, and more logical is an "Indigenous Polity" but we never hear much about that in Malaysia. But if 2000 years of Malaysian history are taken as our reference base, from the dawn of the first arrival of Indian traders, to the present, the reality of Peninsular Malaysia, in particular, is one of growing multi-culturalism under the influence from outsiders, be these outsiders from India, from the Middle East via India, or from Europe via the Indian sub-continent too. When you take such a longer view, then, we can begin to see how the "Malay polity" paradigm that has dominated so many Malaysian historians over the past many decades can in fact be redefined into a more multi-cultural "Malaysian polity" that so many younger Malaysians, irrespective of race, religion, or socio-economic background would appear to aspire to.
In other words, dear Prof Chandra, you and I may have to concede that we are academics of a bye gone age, an age heavily coloured by the events that followed the elections of 1969, and an age that young Malaysians do not know, and do not want to know that Past which was our Present when we were in university.
They want to bury our past, and replace it with their Brave New World. Terms you favour such as "Malay Polity", and even the one I favour "Indigenous Polity" (I must admit again, a possible personal bias. My wife is a Tribal Southeast Asian) are simply not in their vocabulary. And we should perhaps face the reality of the passing of our time, and refrain from imposing on them the detritus of what young Malaysians know is our largely discredited notions of Malaysian history.
Richard Dorall
Lecturer, University of Malaya (1972-2007)
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