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Abstract
This article aims to examine several interrelated issues pertaining to the historical development of pluralism in areas forming today´s Malaysia. Firstly, it intends to analyze the transformation of the formerly cosmopolitan populations of Malay port polities into the highly ‘racialized’ society of modern Malaysia. It also seeks to clarify the roots of ethnicity-based issues and relations in the country. Lastly, it attempts to challenge the very concept of Malaysia as a society primarily consisting of three ethnic pillars, dominated by the Malays, and ‘complemented’ by the Chinese and the Indians. I argue that the main driving force behind these tensions is the segregational colonial policies and the postcolonial arrangements of the Malay ethnocentrist governments, rather than ethnic and cultural factors as the ruling politicians tend to stress. I also contend that religious issues, especially those stemming from the dakwah movement, are gradually becoming an increasingly important factor in interrace strife.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
2. Noor, What Your Teacher Didn´t Tell You, 78.
3. J. C. van Leur (1955) referred to them as ‘harbor principalities’ (as quoted by Wolf and Eriksen 2010, 56), economically based on ‘sea trade and international traffic’, as opposed to inland (agrarian) kingdoms such as the Khmer Empire or Pagan, based on ‘hydraulic agriculture’ (as quoted by King and Wilder, The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia, 10).
4. Zawawi, “Globalization and National Identity,” 117.
5. Literally ‘the original people’, a term commonly used for the native tribal communities of West Malaysia.
6. Literally ‘sea people’; they were maritime communities, often living on boats, whose subsistence oscillated between fishing, piracy, maritime trade, collection of other sea ‘products’ and patrolling the straits for the contemporaneous ruler (Sriwijaya, Melaka, Johor etc.).
7. Reid, in Montesano and Jory, Thai South and Malay North.
8. The issue of Malay identity per se has been the subject of numerous high-profile monographs and studies by acclaimed scholars and is not the primary subject of this study. For a deeper analysis of Malayness, cf. Reid, “Understanding Melayu (Malay),” or Kahn, Other Malays. Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern .
9. The legacy of Buddhism, especially of the Mahayana type, then widespread in Sumatra, also needs to be taken into account.
10. See note 3.
11. Zawawi, “Globalization and National Identity,” 117.
12. Cf. Montesano and Jory, Thai South and Malay North, 2008.
13. Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree, 14.
14. Nah, “Negotiation Indigenous Identity,” 514
15. See note 13.
16. Bahasa Melayu has also become, due to historical reasons, the national language of Singapore but it is not the main medium of education and general public communication.
17. Reid in Barnard, Contesting Malayness, 3.
18. Cortesao, as quoted by Milner, The Malays, 84.
19. Kerajaan is a term derived from raja (king) and it carries several interrelated meanings, (a) a kingdom, (b) the state of having king as one’s ruler, (c) the kingdoms government, in which sense it also used in Malaysia. Here it also refers to government.
20. Barnard et al., Contesting Malayness, 5.
21. Ibid., 6.
22. See note 10.
23. Ibid.
24. Cf. Milner, 2008.
25. In Singapore they are better known as Jawi Pekan. Interestingly, those in Penang have gradually become so firmly integrated in the local ‘Malay’ community that they play an important role in local politics, while their Singaporean counterparts have rather alienated themselves from their Malay-Muslim fellow countrymen, allegedly by embracing more radical modernist ideas of Islam, looking to their Muslim-Indian homeland as a source of inspiration.
26. Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433/1335) was the commander of six large naval expeditions, sent to Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia and East Africa by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, which took place between the years 1405 and 1433.
27. Along with the princess, some 500 Chinese handmaidens were sent as brides to Melakan court officials, whose descendants had the privilege of using the prefix Wan (a rather high-ranking aristocratic title).
29. Hamka, as quoted by Wang Ma, “Chinese Muslims in Malaysia.”
30. Cf. Tan Ta Sen, 2009.
31. See note 19.
32. Milner, The Malays, 87; Barnard et al., Contesting Malayness, 7.
33. Barnard et al. Contesting Malayness, 7.
34. Cf. Reid in Barnard 2004; and Salleh Yaapar 2005.
35. Cf. Barnard 2006; Milner, The Malays; and Kahn, Other Malays.
36. See note 2.
37. Yeoh, Malaysia, Truly Asia? 5.
38. Hefner, The Politics of Multiculturalism, 15.
39. Cf. Reid Citation1988.
40. See note 37.
41. Zaleha, “Pluralism and National Identity in Malaysia,” 2.
42. Hirschmann, “The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya,” 337.
43. Ibid.
44. See note 37.
45. See note 36.
46. See note 37.
47. See note 10.
48. See note 40.
49. Yeoh, Malaysia, Truly Asia? 7; Zawawi, “Globalization and national identity,” 133.
50. Hwang, Personalized Politics, 26.
51. In principle, this attitude is reminiscent of the so-called trekkers among the Dutch population in the Netherlands East Indies who, unlike the blijvers (‘stayers’), i.e. Dutch settlers determined to remain for good, also considered their stay in the archipelago temporary, with a vision of making a fortune and returning to the metropolis on retirement. Due to this logic, the trekkers tended to assimilate themselves less than the blijvers, though the distinction might not have been as clear-cut, since many of them also cohabited with Indonesian women, taking on many of their habits, thus gradually creating the melange ‘Indies style’, another fine example of a hybrid culture.
52. Treggoning, as quoted by Hwang, Personalized Politics, 26.
53. See note 49.
54. See note 40.
55. See note 41.
56. See note 49.
57. See note 42.
58. There have been vivid and at times heated academic discussions regarding the origin of the spouses of non-Muslim, mainly Chinese settlers in Peninsular Malaya. For the sake of keeping to the main topic of the article, I will only briefly mention here in the footnote that according to most Malaysian Chinese authors most of them were probably ‘pagan’ women from the Batak areas of Sumatra and in fewer cases from Bali or the Chitty community (descendants of old Hindu families). The Batak and Balinese women were apparently slaves to be sold as servants or concubines, for whom marriage with Chinese was not only possible but might even have elevated their personal status. However, as Felix Chia writes, intermarriage of the early Babas stopped abruptly, as the next generation would take daughters from their own community as their spouses (endogamy) to perpetuate the community´s identity (Chia, The Babas, 4; Lim, Gateway to Peranakan Culture, 10).
59. See note 41.
60. See note 10.
61. See note 42.
62. See note 10.
63. See note 42.
64. See note 40.
65. Manickam, Taming the Wild, 22.
66. Although the impossibility of cooperation between the Malays and non-Malays is ruled out here, it is also important to note that there was an open enmity or even hatred between different linguistic groups of Chinese origin such as the Cantonese and the Hakka, as was demonstrated on the tin wars.
67. While the Pangkor Agreement made the sultan of Perak the first Malay ruler to accept British residency, the Chinese Engagement was a treaty that effectively ended the warfare between Chinese secret societies; it included mutual disarmament, stockade destruction, prisoner exchange and guarantees not to break the peace, under the threat of a heavy fine. Stabilizing the situation in turn facilitated the resumption of tin mining and other economic activities.
68. Negeri Sembilan (‘Nine Lands’) was formed from a confederation of nine originally Minangkabau principalities, including Sungai Ujong, and as such it became part of the FMS upon their creation in 1895.
69. See note 36.
70. Milner, “Colonial Records History.”
71. See note 37.
72. See note 36.
73. Heng, “Chinese Responses,” 35.
74. See note 36.
75. See note 41.
76. Maxwell, as quoted by Hirschmann, “The Making of Race”, 353.
77. Kennedy, as quoted by Hirschmann, “The Making of Race,” 320.
78. Singapore and the other remaining Straits Settlements were to remain outside the Union.
79. See note 3.
80. Gomez, Politics in Malaysia: The Malay Dimension, 21.
81. See note 3.
82. See note 37.
83. Bumiputera (literally ‘sons/princes of the soil’) is an ethnopolitical and legal term introduced by the Malayan government upon gaining independence in the late 1950s with the aim to give a special status to the Malays. After the merger with Sabah and Sarawak in 1963 when Malaysia came into being, the bumiputera also started to include West Malaysia’s indigenous peoples and the native (Austronesian) peoples of East Malaysia such as the Iban or the Kadazandusun etc. Altogether the bumiputera comprise around 65 % of Malaysian population. They enjoy special rights and quotas, which were introduced as part of the New Economic Policy in order to secure improvement of the dire economic situation of the Malays after the riots of 1969. Non-bumiputera include Malaysian Chinese, Indians (including those born and raised in the country) and other ‘non-native’ groups as well as migrant workers such as Indonesians without a residential permit.
84. See note 36.
85. See note 40.
86. See note 36.
87. See note 10.
88. Ibid.
89. The hybrid Malaysian regime has been variously characterized as ‘quasi democracy’ (Zakaria 1989), ‘semi democracy’ (Case Citation1993) or ‘modified democracy’ (Crouch 1993) but probably the most apt definition describing Malaysia’s illiberal democracy was the concept of a ‘responsive and repressive regime’, coined by Harold Crouch (Citation1996).
90. See note 3.
91. Ibid.
93. Dakwah (from the Arabic da´wa) is usually interpreted as ‘summoning (Muslims) to the right path’ (of Islam).
94. The Arabo-Islamic term halal pertains to a wide range of objects and issues from diet, methods of animal slaughter, clothing, finance, travel etc.
95. Malaysian Department of Islamic Development. It is a governmental body of the federal level, which was set up to mobilize the development and progress of Muslims in Malaysia. One of its official tasks is to protect the purity of faith and the teachings of Islam in the country, where Islam is the official religion. Every state and federal territory in Malaysia such as Selangor or Kuala Lumpur has in turn its own autonomous Islamic Department, such as JAIS (Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor). Some of its activities and competencies include organizing pre-wedding and family courses, halal certification and supervision of religious schools in the state of Selangor.
96. Cf. Kumpoh and Az-Zahra, “Conversion to Islam.”
97. People´s Justice Party, also known as KeADILan (Justice). It is a centrist multiethnic party, which promotes the abolishing of the affirmative policies and replacing them with a non-ethnic approach ideology. It is also a party which seeks justice for its de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim.
98. Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Pact) was an opposition coalition, formed by KeADILan, PAS (Parti Islam se-Malaysia, Malaysian Islamic Party) and DAP (Democratic Action Party).
99. Pakatan Harapan or (Pact of Hope) succeeded Pakatan Rakyat as the main opposition coalition of center-left parties, namely KeADILan, DAP and Parti Amanah Nasional (National Trust Party). Formed in September 2015 to gear up political support before the GE 2018.
100. Barisan Nasional (National Front) is a broad ruling coalition, led by the UMNO and complemented by a dozen smaller parties.
101. Gudeman, “Multiculturalism in Malaysia,” 143.
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Tomáš Petrů
Tomáš Petrů, Ph.D., is affiliated as Research Fellow with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czechia. Previously, he founded the Department of Asian Studies at Metropolitan University Prague (MUP), which he headed from 2009 until 2014. He is also assistant professor of Indonesian Studies at Charles University. In his research, Dr Petrů focuses on the interaction of politics, society and religion in the wider realm of Maritime Southeast Asia. In addition to his interest in more contemporary sociopolitical processes in Indonesia, Malaysia and recently also the Philippines, he has a passion for cultural history and ethnohistory of this region. He is editor of the volume entitled Graffiti, Converts and Vigilantes: Islam outside the Mainstream in Maritime Southeast Asia, published in Vienna in 2015 by Caesarpress.
Author’s postal address: The Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Pod Vodárenskou věží 4, 182 08 Praha 8 – Libeň, Czechia