1.The Star Online (http://thestar.com.my)
Knowledge of our roots will benefit us, 2 March 2007
by JOHAMI ABDULLAH, Seremban, Negri Sembilan
IN very recent times, the starting date for the study of Malaysian history in the schools has been conveniently fixed around 1400 C.E. It probably coincides with the founding of the Sultanate of Malacca by Parameswara.
Today, Malaysian school children only learn a little bit about the early Proto Malays and then are conveniently taken on a historical quantum leap to the founding of Malacca.
Early Indian works speak of a fantastically wealthy place called Savarnadvipa, which meant “land of gold.” This mystical place was said to lie far away, and legend holds that this was probably the most valid reason why the first Indians ventured across the Bay of Bengal and arrived in Kedah around 100 B.C. Apart from trade, the early Indians brought a pervasive culture, with Hinduism and Buddhism sweeping through the Indo-Chinese and Malay archipelago lands bringing temples and Indian cultural traditions. The local chiefs began to refer to themselves as “rajahs” and also integrated what they considered the best of Indian governmental traditions with the existing structure.
I learnt Malayan history in the 1950s and taught it in the 1960s and 1970s in secondary schools. All the history textbooks at the time had the early Indian connection specifically mentioned in them. Teachers of that period taught about the early Indianised kingdoms of Langkasuka, Sri Vijaya and Majapahit that existed from as early as 100 C.E.
Anyone can see that Parameswara, the founder of Malacca, has a clearly give-away name that points to the Indian/Hindu influence. No one can deny this, and all our children need to know about this. They have the fundamental right to learn about this aspect of our history too.
Why don’t our children learn about these early Indian connections today? It needs mention here that this early Indian connection has nothing to do with the much later cheap Indian “coolie” labour influx that the British brought over to man the railways and plantations of Malaya from the late 19th century onwards.
The Malay language as we know it today is already fully impregnated and enriched with many foreign words. This is good. Malay, therefore, has been a bahasa rojak from early times itself.
Rojak itself (and also cendul) is a Malaysian food developed by an Indian Malayalee Muslim community known as the Malabaris who hailed from Kerala. They were also referred to as kakas. We now wrongly credit the Penang mamaks for this great food.
The only other bahasa rojak that can beat the Malay language in the matter of foreign word assimilation is the English language because it has “polluted” itself with words from just about every civilisation that exists or existed in this world.
The very word “Melayu” itself is most probably of Indian origin from the words “Malai Ur,” which means land of mountains in Tamil. Singapur, Nagapur and Indrapur are very common Indian names that have similar backgrounds.
The early Indians were probably inspired by the main mountain range that looks like a backbone for the Malay peninsula and thus named it Malaiur. The word “malai” is undoubtedly Indian in origin as is the case with the word Himalayas and we all know where it is situated.
The English word “Malaya” is a further corruption of the word by the British who themselves are very good at corrupting the pronunciation and spelling of and changing the names of indigenous places worldwide to suit their tongue’s capability. The Malay word “Melayu” with the missing “r “ is closer to the original name “Malaiur”.
To my knowledge, the hundreds of Malay words of Indian origin have not been catalogued by anyone except perhaps the noted Malay scholar Zaaba. Even if such an effort has been made, it is definitely not widely known or ever published.
Many Malay words, from describing Malay royalty (Raja, Putera, Puteri, Maha, Mulia, Seri, etc) and common everyday terms (bakti, suami, cuma, dunia, bumi, jendela, serpu, kerana), all have Indian connections. The undeniable Indian connection in the word “Indonesia” is also reflected in the name itself.
The Indian factor that influences even the prevailing Malay culture in terms of music, food, dress and certain other everyday practices like betel chewing and bersanding is another thing over which a loud hush prevails. Why?
Such knowledge of the roots of this great country, be they Indian, Chinese, Arab or whatever, can indeed very strongly facilitate the ongoing efforts of the Government to make our children think of themselves as Bangsa Malaysia more easily and more readily.
2. Lim Kit Siang’s blog (http://blog.limkitsiang.com)
Linguistic Supremacy and Hegemony: The Roads Not Taken post-1969, 2 April 2008
by Farish A Noor
(Below is an excerpt of an essay I am currently writing entitled: “The Many Roads Not Taken post-1969”)
Our failure to develop a Malaysian language for us all:
One of the most glaring failures of the Malaysian nation-building project is our failure to develop a national language that is actually used as the lingua franca of all Malaysians. While the laborious debate over whether BM should be termed ‘Bahasa Malaysia’ or ‘Bahasa Melayu’ has been raging for decades, it is clear that Malaysia’s plural society remains divided along linguistic-cultural lines. The thorny issue of what constitutes the ‘mother tongue’ of so many Malaysians has led to at least one major political conflagration among the component parties of the BN, which in turn was used as the justification for the nation-wide security crackdown called ‘Operasi Lalang’ in 1987. Ironically it is well known to all and sundry that despite the ethno-linguistic posturing of the hot-headed communitarian leaders of the BN over the issue in the 1980s, these very same elites continued to speak to each other in English in private. The hypocrisy of our leaders – from all parties – on the issue of the national language is something that no mature Malaysian ought to be stranger to by now. In fact, the issue of our national language (or lack of) has been one of the many punching-bags of Malaysian politics and every single communitarian-minded leader has jumped on the linguistic-nationalist bandwagon at least once in his or her political career.
This is perhaps one of the saddest things about Malaysia’s postcolonial politics and the development of Malaysia post-1969: It has been the case that almost every single ambitious and aspiring politician in this country has sought to rise to power by playing the communitarian card, touching on the hot buttons of race and language. It was only recently that BM was re-designated as ‘Bahasa Malaysia’ after it had been re-defined by nationalist politicians as ‘Bahasa Melayu’. The merry-go-round turns until today, and it would be prudent for us to go back to our early history to recover the moment where this country missed the point and went off track for good.
Let us begin by remind ourselves of some basic historical facts: Bahasa Malaysia was and remains a hybrid language very much like Urdu, which was dubbed as the ‘language of the camp’ and which remains an amalgam of Hindi, Persian, Arabic and other languages of Central Asia. The Malaysian language is likewise made up of words that are derived from Sanskrit, Arabic and other languages of the pribumi communities of the Southeast Asian region. Today it also betrays signs of cultural influence from the West, with English, Dutch and Portuguese words thrown into its repertoire as well.
Starting from this premise, it is difficult to understand how the Malaysian language could have been seen and used by those who wished to foreground an understanding of Malay and Malay identity as fundamentally fixed, closed and pure. Yet this was precisely what happened as soon as the debate on the status of the national language began during the 1950s.
Post-1969 witnessed the intensification of the debate over the status of the Malaysian language. The proponents of the pro-Malay policy (who wished to define BM as ‘Bahasa Melayu’ and thus identify the language with one primary racial-ethnic community) came from all the ranks of the Malay-Muslim parties, organisations, NGOs and student movements. As was the case with many other issues that caught the imagination of the Malaysian public then, most of these debates took place on the campuses of the country and were led by right-wing communitarian ethno-nationalist students who were aligned to the various Malay cultural, linguistic and religious student groups on campus, such as the Persatuan Bahasa Melayu Universiti Malaya (PBMUM) and the Malay Students’ Association of UM (PMUM).
In 1974, the student leaders of PMUM and PBMUM protested against the government’s decision to allow the creation of Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) College that had been one of MCA’s major demands on UMNO. The Malay students of the local universities were particularly angry over the government’s decision to allow a Chinese college to use English as the medium of instruction at a time when efforts were being made to make BM the medium of instruction in all the other institutions of higher learning in the country. Earlier, the students had defaced most of the campus signboards that were still in English. They also condemned the TAR College project on the grounds that as a privately run institution it would only serve as an additional source of funds for the wealthy MCA leaders. This cycle of protests and demonstrations culminated in the seizure and occupation of the local university campuses by the student unions in September 1974. Universiti Malaya’s campus was taken over by PMUM members led by Kamarazaman Yacob, who then formed the Majlis Tertinggi Sementara (Temporary Supreme Council, MTS).
While right-wing ethno-nationalist students were calling for BM to be seen as the Malay language and elevated to the status of the primary language of the country, other Malay-Muslim organisations and parties followed suit. Both UMNO and PAS were likewise adamant that the Malay language be seen as the language of the Malays, and that the recognition of BM as the national language also meant that by extension the dominance of the Malay-Muslims had to be recognised and accepted by all Malaysians.PAS in the 1970s was led by the Malay-supremacist Asri Muda, who not only brought PAS into the ruling Barisan coalition but who also was a steadfast advocate for the special position and privilege of the Malay-Muslims. Asri’s constant attacks on the UMNO-led government’s record in the area of cultural and language development was one of the factors that put UMNO on the defensive and forced the government of the Tunku Abdul Rahman (and, later, Tun Razak) to act. In 1970, under pressure from PAS and the other defenders of the Malay language and culture, the government implemented the National Education Policy that made the promotion of the Malay language one of its key objectives. In 1971, Tun Razak followed this up with the Kongres Kebudayaan Kebangsaan (National Culture Congress) that paved the way for the Malaysian National Culture Policy which also privileged Malay culture and identity above others.
A close reading of the history of Malaysia during the years immediately after 1969 would show that practically every single Malay-Muslim leader of note: Mahathir Mohamad, Asri Muda, Anwar Ibrahim, et al. – were positioning themselves as the champions of their race, religion and language. But while Malayness and Islam could not be effectively hegemonised and used as a tool for dominance with a nation-wide impact, language could. By demanding that BM be seen as the language of the Malays and demanding that BM be given the special position that reflected the special position of the Malays, these ethno-nationalist supremacists were working to ensure that the Malaysian public domain and the Malaysian culture that developed in the wake of ’69 would be coloured with clearly identifiable Malay-Muslim hues.
The foregrounding of the Malay ethno-linguistic agenda also meant that the other ethno-linguistic communities were given two stark choices: Either to accept the supremacy of the Malay language as the national language or to opt out of the system and thereby relegate themselves to the margins of their respective ethno-linguistic ghettos. Unfortunately again, many of the leaders, spokesmen and intellectuals of the other communities chose to opt for the latter, and compounded the problem by retreating to their own linguistic enclaves.
From the 1970s to the 1990s we have seen the development of a lopsided Malaysia where one language – Bahasa Malaysia – was singled out to serve as the benchmark and collective marker of one ethnic-racial community. In the process of doing so, a systematic erasure and forgetting of BM’s hybrid and plural past and character was carried out, thereby reinforcing the impression that BM emerged almost exclusively, sui generis, out of the bosom of an undifferentiated and essentialised Malay cultural bosom. Yet all of these nationalists forgot (or chose to forget) the fact that BM was always a hybrid and eclectic lingua franca that bore the cultural traces of other communities, including the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Thais, Indonesians, Europeans and others. Instead BM was essentialised as a unique, pure, uncontaminated language-system that it certainly was not and has never been. (Any more than we can say that any other language in the world, be it Chinese, Japanese, Tamil, English, etc. were ever ‘pure’ either.)
Compounding this situation was the cultural-linguistic impasse that had been reached that forced the other communities of Malaysia to likewise turn to their own ‘mother tongues’ for support and succour. In time, there developed various lobbies calling for the protection of mother tongue education for practically every other racial-ethnic community in Malaysia; and to make things worse many of these linguistic-communitarian advocates betrayed signs of being just as demagogic, exclusivist and even as racist as their Malay-Muslim supremacist counterparts.
Malaysia’s failure was not to create a generation of post-1969 leaders who would have discarded the values and praxis of linguistic nationalism and who would embrace diversity and hybridity instead. What Malaysia needed most of all was a leader who would have been able to say to all the communities of the country: “The Malay language is not merely the language of the Malay people: Look at the vocabulary of BM and you will clearly see the influences of every other community of Asia. So let us accept this pluralism and diversity in our language, let us play with it and expand it repertoire of words, so that it will reflect the pluralism of Malaysian society even more”. But of course such a leader never emerged – instead we were served a host of communal-minded sectarian nationalists whose only penchant was to stand on the stage and demand special rights for their special community on account of their special history and special identity, and who not once took into account the needs of Malaysia as a whole.
Had we taken the opposite path towards the recognition of diversity and pluralism that is already pre-existing in BM, imagine what could have developed? Working from the premise that BM was and is already a hybrid language with no fixed sematic and semiotic frontiers, the vocabulary of BM could have been expanded and deepened further with the introduction and adoption of more words from other languages. As it was, BM remains clearly one of the proto-Indonesian languages with strong traces of Sanskrit and Arabic thrown in. Had the designers of this new national language been given the incentive to adapt the language further, BM today would have more words that are derivative of Mandarin, Hokein, Cantonese, Tamil, Urdu, Javanese, Bugis, Acehnese, Thai, English and others.
Unlike the Indonesians next door who demonstrate an acute understanding of the plasticity of language and discourses, our national language was instead frozen in time and embalmed in official documents. Over the years what has actually developed has been the street ‘bazaar’ Malay which now serves as the real – albeit uncritical and depoliticised – lingua franca of the Malaysian people.
How sad that after half a century of coming into being, we still do not have a national language where every Malaysian citizen can find herself or himself.
3. Malaysia Today（http://www.malaysia-today.net）
Unban The Bible Sales To Muslims、2 April 2008
by Farouk A. Peru (www.peru.name)
With the recent progress made by the opposition in the last general elections, I believe that a more benevolent , tolerant Malaysia is emerging.
The ultra-nationalist, somewhat Islamo-fascist style of thinking must be put behind us forever as we evolve into a higher mold of thinking.
One of the things which was indicative of BN’s closed-mindedness was the banning of the sale of the bible for Muslims. The PM very unambiguously said that the ‘bible was not for Muslims’. In wake of the last general election results, I suggest a thorough review of this policy.
As a Malay-Muslim, I believe that the study of the Bible is very helpful in the understanding of not only Christianity which is obvious, but also the understanding one of the roots of Western civilisation itself. The bible was for at least a millenium and a half, the cornerstone of Western thought. Even the appropriation of Greek philosophy happened so extensively because scholars wanted reconcile Christianity with the universal tenets of logic and to use the bible as an answer for philosophical problems. Even to this day, there are Christian scholars whose incursions into the field of philosophy contribute to the perpetual evolution of Christian thinking.
As also mentioned, bible contains the crucial principles of Christianity. While catholicism also draws on the teachings of the church elders as well as the bible, Protestant denominations tends to focus on the teachings of the Bible itself which is what Martin Luther strived for. Luther’s faced numerous dilemmas which can help us to think about our religious experience today. This division in principles led to some very interesting debates between the Catholics and Protestans and the fruits of such debates would be such great stimulus to all our minds.
Around the bible itself grew a tremendous complex body of literature such as a few types of exegesis, theological discussions and various kinds of criticisms. Examples include historical criticism, textual criticism and psychological criticism. These types of criticisms helped see the Bible under a new light. This body of literature I believe has helped stimulate the minds of the embryonic West during the periods of Renaissance and Enlightenment. Ultimately, these people used their strong foundations and springboarded into modern philosophy we see today.
Of course, the best reason of all to unban the sale of the bible to Muslims would be allow us to simply build better relations with Christian fellow Malaysians. After all, when we see the ideals which the Christians aspire to, would our hearts not warm to them? I believe it would.
As RPK mentioned about how the NEP is nothing but a milk bottle we won’t let mommy take away, this religious molly-coddling is tantamount to hiding behind mommy’s skirt and not daring to allow our minds to digest notions provided by other ideologies. It shouldn’t be just the Bible either but Muslims should be allowed and even encouraged to study any and all religious texts. Lets hope with the winds of change which are upon us, we can move beyond this parochialism and allow our nation to mature.
(End)
