To all super ultra-nationalists: ‘Malay-ness’ merely a weak ‘linguistic construction’

Is it not time, like an ideological excavator of ideas and a keen student of race and social dominance, an educator for peace and transcultural philosophies, and an initiator of multicultural revolutions – is it not time for all these that we deconstruct the meaning of “Malayness”?

From the standpoint of philosophy of culture, or ethno-philosophy, I propose that there is no real ethnic group called ‘Malay’. We have hybrids and border-crossers. ‘Malay’ is a historical construction of an “imagined community”.

Race is merely a ‘construct’. It may have been the most powerful ideological perspective to construct nations and build base and super-structural foundations of the modern state, but in the eyes of an evolutionary biologist, or a bio-semiotician, race does not carry much weight.

The problem plaguing Malaysians, hindering approaches to distributive and regulative justice that are ‘race-blind’ is this false consciousness of what a Malay is. The question of what a Malay is and what it is not has become a most contentious issue in the discussions of nation-building circa post-Mahathir era.

The lack of understanding of how one should view the New Economic Policy (NEP) and now the New Economic Model (NEM) – itself based on false premises on ethnicity and citizenship and Natural Rights – also makes the argument daunting, and of late dangerous.

Special rights

In governmental and non-governmental organisations championing the special rights of the Malays, there are members whose parents are not even called ‘Malays’. Their parents are perhaps Chinese, Malabaris, Tamils, Pakistani, Javanese, Ambonese, Communists, Socialists, Capitalists, Scientologists, Turkish, Siamese, Bugis, Melanau, Batak, Bajau, Iban, Portuguese, and a hybrid upon hybrid of all these.

The word ‘Malay’ as conceived and perceived these days, has become a political tool to destroy the economic and social foundation of this nation. In fact, immigrant groups coming into Malaysia will reconstruct themselves to become a ‘Malay’.

Constitutionally, a Malay is one who speaks the language, practices the religion of Islam, and performs the rights and rituals of this or that culture.

Psychologically and culturally one may not be so. NGOs fighting for this or that ‘already-enshrined-in-the-Constitution-Malay-rights’ are fighting for the dominance of the wealthy class and of robber barons financing the rise of this or that ‘new Malay consciousness’.

A Malay community is an imagined community. It exists primarily as a reason to exert social dominance. It rests upon myth, legends, and massaged cultural artifacts and scriptures, to propel that dominance.

The writing of Sejarah Melayu, designated as a ‘world heritage’ is a political act that is meant to consciously promulgate and propagate a myth of a nation that arises out of a bourgeoisie culture whose origin is drawn from myth, legends, and the supernatural.

What are all of us Malaysians – cross-culturally? Where are our ancestors from? Is a history of Malaya based on class rather than race or caste possible for Malaysians to co-construct?

Can we begin to have a dialogue on the economic, social, and technological history of the peoples of Malaysia conceived from the perspective of re-humanisation?

The essential question is: what are all of you ancestrally?

The potentials within

This brings us to how we view education as a process of “drawing out the potentials within”; as what educare from the Latin means.

We are excavating knowledge and reconstructing our realities so that we can ask the right questions, rather than living with incorrect answers based on false premises. Since Merdeka, we have been learning a lot from the issues we raise — self, religion, spirituality, politics, economics, culture.

Ultimately we are analysing ideology and trying to identify what is ailing this nation. Dialogue can be painful – but critical conversation is the bedrock of social progress, and academia.

In order to look at what’s wrong with the present, we must excavate the past – like an archaeologist of knowledge and power. If we must destroy heroes, villains, myths, legends, rulers, despots, and inscriptions and installations or even ancient scriptures that oppresses and mystifies, destroy we must.

Aren’t we human beings not Preserver, Cherisher, Destroyer, and Sustainer – all at once? We live in an illusionary word – a ‘maya’. Yet we are forced to find the truth in all these. How do we do this? Maybe by rebelling against all conventions and questioning the producer of those truths. That is the beginning of liberation.

Critical questions

Our history classes and courses in Citizenship/Malaysian/Ethnic Studies in our public universities love the strategy of “rote-learning”. Critical questions are rarely entertained nor asked, especially those that will deconstruct information that has been filter-funneled into the mind of students.

Rote-learning does not bring progress to the educational system. Rote-learning is a pedagogy borne out of the Industrial Age of the beginning of mass schooling and an ideology to train children to become merely good workers and obedient citizens. This style of learning and teaching will not create the most conducive environment to nurture brains to create new knowledge.

It is a good environment to breed followers, not leaders – let alone frontier thinkers. It is not a Constructivist approach to education. The teaching of race and ethnicity vis-a-viz Malaysian national development has been based on the Essentialist perspective of the ‘Malay-centric’ domineering ideology.

Rote-learning destroys the culture of critical consciousness in viewing ‘Malay-ness’ as a reality and not an illusion.

Perhaps critical/philosophical questions on this explosive issue of race and ethnicity for Malaysia are as follow:

How has race been falsely conceived and skillfully utilised as a tool of power and hegemony in an age of deconstructionism?

What economic, political, and cultural conditions and system create cases of massive corruption in all spheres of life and how might a total and radical restructuring of the system not only heal the system but also curb enthusiasm for crypto-crony-corporate capitalism and ultimately bring human beings back to their Natural Self and to Nature – by also destroying all signs, symbols, and semiotics of elitism and the insatiable urge to be greedy and corrupt?

How can Malaysian history be conceived from a technological, social, and humanistic point of view – as a history of classes of people rebelling against human bondage and servitude?