Malaise

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Preparing for another children’s book, I assiduously started researching the delicate question of the origin of the term ‘Malay’. I went to the national library in Kuala Lumpur but I might just as well have gone to play golf! Like Thimphu’s national library (all ten square feet of it), Kuala Lumpur’s, whilst much larger, was at that time, pathetic. Thankfully it has improved. A little. It was certainly a far cry from the magnificent national library in Singapore, which was a place where you could lose yourself for weeks. Thirteen floors of treasures!

Research, even for children’s books—if not especially for children’s book—is essential. Dealing with the vexed question of race was behind my decision to write children’s books that highlighted the role of different cultures in Malaysia’s history. Hence the Raja Rajawali, Magnificent Melvin and Bok Bomo series have an array of characters from different backgrounds all (mostly) living in harmony and cooperation. A dream?

Short answer? Maybe!

I also needed to make sure of my facts, which is a very important consideration in writing books for smart kids. This was particularly true when working on my Raja Rajawali books. My publisher wanted a series of books set in a Malay country years before there were Malays, if you understand what I mean. I had to rethink so many things.

I beavered away checking every fact before committing it to writing, a skill you very quickly pick up. First, Sultans did not ride horses. No one did! The British introduced horses only in the 19^th Century.

Did the Raja’s shoes have shoelaces? No, they were also a later invention, but he did had have sandals and sandal straps. Were dragons the same as those in Western culture? Were they fearsome, fire breathing monsters? Not at all. Asian dragons could get upset and cause troubles like floods and droughts but basically they were benevolent beings who, in return for suitable worship and adulation, protected you. But watch out if you crossed them!

As for food! When was nasi goring invented? I had to be very careful when describing the good Raja’s morning snacks.

But then I had to deal with the issue of being Malay. That is a subject fraught with danger. Seeking help, I asked a Malay friend about the subject. I began by asking him whether it was a relatively new term.

‘How can you say that?’ He glared at me.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I lived for years in Indonesia. I know that the term ‘Indonesia’ wasn’t used till after World War II when the Dutch returned to reclaim ‘their’ East Indies colony back from the Japanese’.

 ‘So?’ he said, looking at me as if I was nuts. (Actually he often does that. It still worries me.)

 ‘Well,’ I said, speaking softly in case he heard me. ‘I have also heard (but I am not saying that I agree) that it was the Japanese who first used the term to describe the Sultanates as a ‘grouping’ when they occupied the Malay Peninsular—during the Second World War, obviously’.

‘Obviously!’ he shouted. He seemed to be getting a little tetchy. Was he a closet government operative out to trap an unwary comment and accuse me of some dreadful folly such as treason? Nah! There was no reason to worry about treason, but there is no pleasing some people.

‘So,’ I continued, the eggs crackling under my feet as the shells started to give way, ‘the British followed the example of the Dutch and French when they slunk back into their old colonies after the war. They were the first to coin the term: Federated Malay States’. I smiled triumphantly. ‘Am I right?’

‘Your point being?’ he asked.

I looked at him askance. Why was he being so obstreperous? Was I hitting a nerve? Maybe the issue confuses everyone? That was definitely a possibility. So I continued, watching every tic of his eye carefully and waiting to be pounced on by muscular men wearing sunglasses and with earpieces in their ears (which is a good place for them).

‘Do you want to be dazzled by more of my research?’ I asked.

He sulked into his Kopi-O but said nothing, so, like a bus-driver on the Butterworth Bypass with bad brakes, I barged boldly forward.

‘Anthropologists claim that early migrations into this area were from China. Correct?’

He looked around carefully checking the whereabouts of the thought police and zipped his lips. It did nothing to stop me. I was in full flow.

‘Other influences came from India and Arabia. Even the Polynesians got as far as Sulawesi’.

He got up and re-filled his Kopi-O, splashing it all over the place as his hands shook violently.

He still spoke not a word. I put on my ‘I read it in an authoritative book’ tone.

‘Some suggest that, taken as an aggregation of people of different ethnic backgrounds but who speak the same language and share common cultural and traditional ties, the Malays are a relatively new race, especially when compared to the Chinese, the Indians and the Arabs. The term ’Malays’ could even possibly cover the Javanese, Bugis, Bawean, Achehnese, Thais and so on’.

He choked even more on the O in his kopi which gave me more breathing space.

‘Maybe Malaysians really are Truly Asians? ‘ I beamed, pleased with my joke.

He raised his right eyebrow ever so slightly.

‘It’s funny you should say that,’ he said and put down his Kopi-O.

‘A friend in Johor considers himself Javanese, not Malay, even though he and his father and grandfather were born here. Of course, when the Government hands out benefits to prebumis he is the first in line’.

‘Of course,’ I smiled, showing my suitably serious and solicitous side.

‘So where does the word Malay come from?’ he asked adding, ‘according to your dubious researching skills?’

My smile was a winner. I use it often. He picked up his Kopi-O and measured the distance between us.

‘Maybe it is a tad romantic, but I like the view that the term ‘Malay’ is derived from ‘Himalaya’. The argument goes that, two thousand years ago Indian settlers teamed up with locals to establish a Hindu…’ (he frowned but I continued) … ‘empire called Langkasuka where Kedah now is’.

‘They referred to the locals as Malay, which means hill people in Tamil. I think the Himalayas are mountains, right?’

My attempt at humor flopped. At least he said nothing. He just continued to stare at me, his eyes taking on the intensity of a cobra about to strike.

‘I hope you are not suggesting that the Indians got this place going?’ he asked, quietly, his forked tongue flickering momentarily to his right.

‘Not entirely,’ said I sincerely, ‘but surely they did help a bit. Even the term Sultan originated in India. And while we are on the subject, what about the Chinese?’

‘What about them?’

We were on heretical ground here!

‘And the Arabs!’

He put down his cup deliberately and looked into is as if it contained the results of the latest by-election in Perak.

‘And Parameswara?’ he challenged.

‘He arrived on the scene in the 1400s, one thousand five hundred years after Langkasuka was established,’ I smiled.

‘And you have this on good authority?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ I smiled. ‘I read the Chinese Liang-shu’.

‘Whose shoe?’

We relaxed. ‘A Chinese history written in the seventh century’.

‘Ah,’ he said smiling. ‘Not written in Malay?’

‘Your point being?’ I asked before getting myself another 100 plus. When I returned, he had gone! Actually, this is not a subject to be treated lightly as I believe that whether Malaysia succeeds as the unified, multicultural society it aspires to be or not is a matter for serious discussion and thought.

One thing is for sure: some people have to be far more open than their rewritten history allows.

The year I arrived in Malaysia (2007) should have been a time for celebration in Malaysia. It marked the country’s 50th anniversary of independence from Britain and the birth of the ‘multicultural nation’. Multicultural? I saw very little of that.

Being an Australian, I was aware of the unsuccessful attempts at multiculturalism in my own country and saw in Malaysia an alarming slide in race relations in conjunction with the rising influence of Islam, a rise that seemed to have alienated ethnic Chinese and Indian citizens whose rise (at least apropos the Chinese) was in rising affluence.

People can be tolerant of each other, but at the same time ignorant about each other.

Outside work hours, each group has its own separate neighborhoods and social networks. The goal of integration remains unmet. Much of the unhappiness centers on what many see as the positive discrimination policies introduced in 1971 to raise the status of the Muslim Malays who make up 60 percent of the population against 26 percent ethnic Chinese and 8 percent ethnic Indians.

And what about the pre pre-bumis? The orang asli? The original people who predated the Malay peoples? They ‘do not count’ and that is disgusting.

Despite the leg-up, ‘bumiputras’ or ‘sons of the soil’—as Malays and members of so-called indigenous groups are often called in Malaysia—continue to lag far behind the Chinese, triggering calls for an overhaul of the system in which the big winners have been the politically connected Malay entrepreneurs who cash in on an array of subsidies.

It struck me that Malaysia must stop obsessing over how to divide the nation’s wealth and instead focus on how to boost the economy so that all would benefit.

Education and language was one of the most visible signs of the problem. Most Chinese and Indians sent their children to Mandarin and Tamil language schools while the Malays attend the national institutions. The government tried to establish ‘visionary schools’ where students shared sports fields, assembly halls and canteens, but conducted classes in their own languages. The initiative failed to get off the ground, partly because of a fear of a loss of identity among Chinese.

A military-style national service program for 18-year-old youths was introduced in 2006 with the aim of boosting racial integration. Students were chosen at random and taken to camps for up to three months in the hope they would learn teamwork and absorb each other's culture; however the scheme was plagued with problems, including reports of race-based fighting, riots and extortion which prompted opposition politicians to call for it to be suspended.

Malaysia boasts about its multiculturalism. The reality is sadly different.  And so is the ‘official’ line on ‘what is Malay’.