NST : Point Blank: Reclaiming Malay intellectual history
Yap Yok Foo
18 January 2003
Point Blank: Reclaiming Malay intellectual history
Johan Jaafar
I WAS amazed when a successful Malay businessman said that he had
nothing to be proud of being a Malay other than being born a Muslim.
He is not alone. "Malay" is fast becoming merely a social category.
The evolution and consolidation of this category is further promoted
and enhanced by the vernacular education system. And, of course,
politics. Malayness is defined in terms of agama, bahasa and raja
(religion, language and king). One becomes a Malay not by choice but
by birth. And being a Malay has its benefits. You have to be a Malay
to get scholarship, work and contracts. Thereafter, the same people
find nothing but fault with their race. This kind of thinking
permeates the uppity Malays — ironically, many of them are the product
of the most ambitious social engineering programme ever attempted by a
government — the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Certainly they have not read the writings of Abdullah Munsyi, who
lived and wrote his Hikayat Abdullah and Hikayat Pelayaran Abdullah
during the days of Stamford Raffles. Abdullah was so critical of his
race that many Malays condemned him as "budak Raffles" (Raffles' boy).
He was labelled a traitor of the Malay race. But no one can fault
Abdullah for his frankness, or his intention.
Other Malay nationalists and writers have since been writing about the
Malay problem. Syed Syeikh Ahmad Al Hadi and his colleagues in the
early 1920s, journalists and nationalists such as A. Rahim Kajai and
Za'aba took the Malay issues by the horns. They were critical of the
Malay mindset even back in the 1930s and 1950s.
The truth is — if one were to read the illustrious history of Malay
newspapers and periodicals — the debate about the weaknesses of the
Malays has been going on since the first Malay paper, Jawi Peranakan,
was published in 1879. The first half of the 20th century marked a
period of intense re-assessment and rethinking among Malays.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Malay literary works were saturated
with criti-cism of Malay excesses and failures. If anyone thinks the
Malays are shy of criticising and condemning their own kind, look
again at some of the best Malay movies, novels, short stories and
poems.
This is the Malay history not taught in schools. What we learn is
history that narrates events and dates, and nothing else. The
intellectual history of the Malays has been largely ignored. Little
wonder many Malays are clueless about the history and culture of their
own people.
They only encounter their own kind when they go back to their kampung.
For the movers and shakers, the placid life in a sea of calm and
tranquillity is nothing but a sign of backwardness.
The history of the Malay race is not about the rise and fall of the
kingdoms of Srivijaya, Majapahit, Sumatra-Pasai, Malacca or
Johor-Riau.
It is about the history of the people and their intellectual
contribution.
The intellectual history of the bestknown Malay sultanate — Malacca —
has never been written.
The textbooks are a concoction of parthistory, part-literature and
part-jingoism, and mostly boring stuff. A history student will read
about the when and how Malacca was conquered by the Portuguese.
Students of literature will learn about the exploits of Tun Perak, the
sacrifice of Tun Kudu, the brilliance of Bendahara Tun Mutahir, the
loyalty of Hang Tuah and the myth of Puteri Gunung Ledang.
But where is the history of the Malays? Malay historiography is one.
But as pointed out by J.C. Bottoms, "history to the Malays has not
until recently been either a science or an art, but an entertainment".
So, you can never position Sejarah Melayu (The Malay Annals), Hikayat
Raja-raja Pasai or Bustanul Salatin as history books per se. Despite
the hikayat's (literally "stories") fictional nature, these are actual
histories of the Malays. One needs only to discern fact from fiction
to understand that a court chronicler (widely known as Pujangga) was a
historian par excellence and an artist. If you lived as Pujangga did
in feudal society, to avoid the wrath of the raja, and to stay alive,
you had to be exceptionally good in the art of saying one thing yet
meaning another. He would have had to narrate incredible tales of lust
and greed subtly or using wit and humour expose the follies of his
rulers.
After all, he was there to provide legitimacy to the ruling elite.
The rich oral tradition of the Malays; the world-renowned pantun,
gurindam, syair and peribahasa; the world of Pak Pandir and Pak Kaduk
and the much- loved animal stories are part of the rich literary
tradition of the Malays.
Other than the hikayat from Java, India and the influence of Islamic
literature, the Malays had the first legal digest in the form of Hukum
Kanun Malacca.
Some of the best thinkers in the Malay world — Hamzah Fansuri,
Nuruddin Al Raniri and Shamsuddin Al Sumatrani — are forgotten.
The contributions of Muslim scholars and theologians have been largely
ignored. Perhaps, as the New Malays (whatever that means) clamour to
be part of a global citizenry, they have to understand where they come
from.
They have an equally rich history and tradition comparable with any
other race and civilisation.
But these do not make sense unless a comprehensive intellectual
history of the Malays is written or at least documented. Otherwise,
the Malays of tomorrow will be ashamed of being Malay.
* The writer is a farmer who cares about the reputation of his own
race. He can be contacted at zulujj@tm-.net.my.