The United Malays National
Organization (UMNO) presents itself as the guardian of Malay interests, culture
and language. So what do the 1MDB and other scandals say about the fundamental
problems of this long-dominant ruling party, the institutional arm of the Malay
elite?
The disappearance of vast
sums from the accounts of the state-backed 1MDB investment vehicle, the murder
of a senior investigator, the murder by the Prime Minister’s security detail of
a pregnant Mongolian translator/model and former girlfriend of Najib’s close
associate, must say something about elite behavior.
They may be extreme events
but by no means unique in Malaysian history over the past 40 years. What were
then vast sums went down similar drains, more than one associated with Bank
Bumiputra, including the murder in Hong Kong of an auditor doing his job too
well. Plenty of other lesser financial scandals have emerged from specifically
Malay, publicly-owned institutions supposedly created to benefit the rakyat but
too often ATMs for the elite. They are mostly quickly forgiven and forgotten
Rather than looking for a
contemporary or political analysis of the causes of these various scandals, it
is worth casting a glance back at how some well-known Malay intellectuals in
the past saw their Malay leaders. Two examples, separated by 140 years, will
have to suffice.
The more recent, written in
1982, appears in Shaharuddin B Maaruf’s Concept of a Hero in Malay Society
tracing the influences on the Malay elite from the epic of Hang Tuah to the
later era where feudal loyalty was allied with a crass materialism. Some of the
feudal traits exhibited by Hang Tuah (and by equivalents at the Javanese
Majapahit court) included feats of drinking, gambling, hunting and lovemaking.
Do they still dominate?
Interestingly Shaharuddin
singled out not a Malaysian but the martyred Philippine nationalist Jose Rizal
and General Sudirman, Indonesia’s military leader in the war of independence,
as the wider modern Malay world’s leaders as selfless, determined and
principled. In contrast, he quoted the principal agent of British imperialism
on the peninsula, Frank Swettenham, on the eagerness of the Malay rulers to
accept British overlordship in return for position and income.
Shaharuddin himself echoed
other post-independence critics of the elite such as Syed Hussein Alatas, the
Malay academician turned politician who became vice-chancellor of the
University of Malaya and a founder of Gerakan, a multi-ethnic, reformist party.
Alatas wrote the Foreword to Shaharuddin’s book.
They both noted the conflict
between the feudal values of the elite, seen in their devotion to hierarchy,
show and dynasty, and the Islam it professed. Instead of acknowledging that
Islam’s strength lay in the diversity of interpretation of the Koran, it
insisted on a single one laid down by an intellectually bereft elite, more
interested in the furtherance of narrow Malay racial interests than in
religion. Personal loyalty to a leader also trumped laws and principles.
There was, wrote Shaharuddin
“no genuine interest on the part of the Malay elite to foster the intellectual,
humanitarian and scientific aspects of Islam … but only to organize Koran
reading competitions” – a stark contrast to the days when Islam was at the
forefront of intellectual and scientific advance.
Reading about the shopping
sprees of Najib’s wife Rosmah Mansor, of the spending of huge sums to join the
celebrity crowd in New York, mansions in California, Hollywood movies and
high-priced western paintings suggests that elite behavior has got even worse
since Shaharuddin wrote more than a generation ago: “The spirit of indulgence
leads it [the elite] to imitate the negative aspects of western culture while
the scientific and intellectual tradition is discarded… Being indulgent and
imitative, the Malay elite always seeks to identify itself with its western
counterpart.”
Nor was it just a problem of
aping western ways. Another was the desire to be grandiose and showy. “They
spend lavishly on buildings, cars, official functions and other expenditures for
prestige.”
Worse still, “celebrity
worship is widespread in Malay society” – as if foretelling the elite urge to
be seen in the company of such trashy western celebrities as Paris Hilton.
Shaharuddin’s criticisms were
however mild compared with those of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir 1796-1854) also
known as Munshi Abdullah. He was a Melaka-born translator and teacher who
worked for the British, notably with Stamford Raffles at the time of the
British takeover of Singapore. Abdullah was not a traitor to the Malays but one
so appalled by the condition of the Malay states that he saw cooperation with
the British as a way of improving the lot of the Malays through economic
progress, the end of internecine conflict and the spread of education and
knowledge.
An 1838 work following a
visit to Kelantan, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah ke Kelantan, had polite advice for
Malay rulers. But his better known autobiographical work Hikayat Abdullah
written in the 1840s was more scathing in its views of the monarchs.
“It is no light tyranny that
has been exercised by the Malay rulers, apart from a few who were good. Women
and children who caught their fancy have been abducted by force as though they
were taking chickens, with no sort of fear of Allah and regard for his
creatures. They have often murdered men whose offences in no way merited death.
They have plundered the property of other men, killing the owners or dragging
them off into captivity. If they owe money they refuse to pay it. They are very
fond of gambling, cock-fighting, opium-eating and keeping a host of slaves.
…There are many other disgraceful practices which I feel too ashamed to mention
in this book. They keep young girls, sometimes more than a hundred, as
concubines in the palace. They have relations with a girl once or twice then
for the rest of her life she cannot marry another man…
“Was there not a time when
half the world was under Malay dominion and rule? There are many books and
records which tell of the rulers of olden times, how great and powerful they
were, so rich and full of wisdom. Why have their lands been despoiled by Allah
ere now and passed into foreign bondage.
…Even in my own time there
have been several Malay principalities which have come to ruin. Some have
reverted to jungle where the elephant and tiger roam, because of the cruel
injustices of their rulers and chiefs; not merely distant places but, for
example, Selangor, Perak, Kedah as well as Padang, Muar, Batu Pahat and Kesang
and many others like them. Once they were rich and flourishing states with a
large population. Now they are states only in name. …
“Many are the places and
lands which have been destroyed by the depredations of the young scions of the
ruling house whose rapacious hands can no longer be tolerated by the people.
Other races, the English, the Indians, the Arabs, the Chinese do not conduct
themselves in the manner I have described. Only the Malays. Among all the other
races the ruler’s children are expected to be well educated and very
intelligent… If the Malay ruler do not keep their own children under control,
how can they themselves exercise authority over the people? As it is under
Malay rule ordinary people cannot lift up their heads and enjoy themselves…
Another failing commonly found among Malays is their inability to change or
modernise their idea or to produce anything new. They utterly refuse to abandon
superstitions of the past…”
And so on. Abdullah used many
more pages to denounce the rulers and attitudes of the Malay rulers and state
of society of his time.
There seems a continuous
theme from the 1820s until today. It might be argued that both Abdullah and
Alatas were not really Malays. Abdullah was of Tamil Muslim origin, Alatas of
Yemeni ancestry and born in Bogor. But the notion of a pure Malay race is a
fiction to which the ancestries of Prime Ministers Tunku Abdul Rahman, Hussein
Onn and Mahathir Mohamed attest. No one doubted the mastery of Malay language
and culture possessed by Abdullah and Alatas, nor their standing as modernist
Muslims with enquiring minds. Are there any such figures in Malaysia today?
–
http://www.asiasentinel.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment