Land Of The Savages
To a contractor’s bulldozer operator, a candi in the Bujang Valley is a pile of rocks. Rocks are rocks. He was there to do a day’s honest work to remove the rocks.
Yussof Condred
Once, in a remote village of the Amazon jungle the native villagers trapped a beautiful bird of a species thought to have gone extinct long ago. The news raised a great deal of excitement among scientists of the west. When they visited the village with a view to studying it at close range they only found the feathers and bones of the bird. The native savages had eaten the bird! To them, a bird is a bird. You can’t expect them to understand and appreciate the significance of their find.
Closer home, to a contractor’s bulldozer operator, a candi in the Bujang Valley is a pile of rocks. Rocks are rocks. He was there to do a day’s honest work to remove the rocks. So is he any different from the savages who ate the rare bird?
Now going up another rank of hierarchy, the project manager was reported to have said he would have left the site alone if he had known. Since he didn’t know, in this context, is he different from the bird-eaters?
What about the well-educated officials who approved the project? Did they know?
President of Badan Warisan, Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid, was reported to have said ‘for the developer to plead ignorance was “no plea at all”.’
But mainstream Malaysian society is not interest in history or heritage relics. Are we satisfied with living in a land of savages?
