1946, when it all went wrong for us
Wong Chin Huat, The Malaysian Insider
Where Malaysia is heading, with sensational news from Muslim-only Allah, Hudud for all, body-snatching, wedding gate-crashing, police defying the Common Law Courts, to now Muslims buying only from Muslims?
The common question asked by many Malaysians is either “what have gone wrong?” or “Where have we gone wrong?” The relevant question, to my mind, is neither of these but “when have we gone wrong?”
Yes, not what and where, but when. And my answer is 1946.
The ultimate question
What happened in 1946? The British who returned to Malaya after the war started their preparation for her decolonisation.
An utmost pertinent question emerged: can multiculturalism and common citizenship co-exist?
Put it bluntly, can the minorities ask for citizenship with equal rights if they refused to be assimilated?
The expectation of assimilation had its grounds, both globally and locally.
Then, the homogenous nation-state model – one nation, one state, one language, one culture — laid down by the French since their Revolution in the 18th century was the norm. Countries with diverse populations were anomalies.
Such a view was even shared by many liberals. Liberal thinker John Stuart Mill said, “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.”
In other words, cultural homogeneity or homogenisation is a pre-requisite for democracy.
Locally, thanks to the spread of both the Malay language and Islam in Nusantara by 17th-18th century, and later by the British colonial policy to back and consolidate the Malay kingdoms to facilitate their indirect colonial rule, Malays became a composite ethno-religious category.
If you embraced Islam and you spoke Malay, you could be absorbed as Malays. This was not limited to Minangkabaus, Bugis, Acehnese, Mendalings, Banjarese or later Javanese, but also the Arabs and Indian Muslims.
In early 20th Century, the last two groups were once called Darah Keturuan Arab (DKA) and Darah Keturunan Keling (DKK) and greatly resented by Nusantaran Malays for taking up economic shares as Malays.
The resentment against the Arab- and Indian-Malays subsided when the non-Muslim and non-Malay-speaking Chinese and Indians were seen as the real threat to the Malays.
Hence, by 1946, Malays – not withstanding their parochial loyalty to their states and cultures – had become a culturally defined “melting pot” ethnic group, not unlike America, France or even China.
The 1946 question, reframed in this lens, would be: should the Chinese and Indians be given equal rights if they refused to be “melted”?
The Yes and No struggles
Offering a liberal naturalisation scheme to the Chinese and Indians, the Malayan Union proposed by the British was a “Yes”.
Years later, “the Malaysian Malaysia” idea espoused by People’s Action Party (PAP) and later Democratic Action Party (DAP) is a “Yes”.
The Malays in 1946 answered the question with a loud “No”, which was embodied in the formation of Umno.
And the replacement of the Malayan Union by Persekutuan Tanah Melayu (Federation of Malaya) indicated the victory of the “No” camp.
It did not only establish Umno’s hegemony, but also dictated why we have a centralised and rigid federal system when most federations elsewhere exist to accommodate and manage differences between rival groups.
If accommodation was the goal, the Malayan Union – a multi-ethnic unitary state – should have been kept as the Federation of Malaya was really a federation of Malay ethnocracies.
