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Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia
Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia
Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia
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Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia

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"This excellent volume, edited by Ooi Kee Beng and Wan Hamidi Hamid, discusses what it means to be Malay in Malaysia. And in doing that, it seeks to be much more..Being a Malay is about expressing the cultural interactions and assimilations that undeniably take place among the various ethnie that inhabit and have inhabited Malaysia. It is not only about being Malay, or being Malaysian. It is about being humans." - Senator Ariffin Omar.
This collection of nine essays by young and 'youngish' Malays who are artists, novelists, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and social activists is a compelling read for observers and researchers of contemporary Malay and Malaysian politics and culture. ​

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 25, 2016
ISBN9789832344643
Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia

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    Young and Malay - Kee Beng Ooi

    9789832344377%2520(435x640)%5b1%5d.jpg

    This ebook edition is distributed by Gerakbudaya Digital Sdn Bhd, 2016. This ebook has a copyright with the publisher and is not transferable. It cannot be scanned, copied, uploaded, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, and licensed via the Internet or other electronic means or publicly performed or used in any way except with the written permission of the publisher. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

    CONTENT

    Foreword

    Introduction

    About the Contributors

    Becoming Malay

    Confessions of an Ageing, Nerdy Malay Punk Rock Fan

    The Real Malay Dilemma

    Growing Up Malay in the Mahathir Years

    Deconstructing the Malay Narrative

    Sapere Aude – Daring to be Wise

    Layers

    On Being Malay

    A Malay Boy in a Chinese School

    Edited by

    Ooi Kee Beng & Wan Hamidi Hamid

    Gerakbudaya Enterprise

    Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

    logo%20GB%20bw.jpg

    Copyright © 2015 Ooi Kee Beng & Wan Hamidi Hamid

    Published in 2015 by

    Gerakbudaya Enterprise

    2, Jalan Bukit 11/2, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

    Email: support@gerakbudayaebooks.com

    Website: www.gerakbudayaebooks.com

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

    Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia / Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    Young and Malay: Growing Up in Multicultural Malaysia /

    Edited by Ooi Kee Beng & Wan Hamidi Hamid

    E-ISBN 978-983-2344-64-3

    1. Multiculturalism–Malaysia. 2. Culture–Malaysia.

    3. Intercultural communication–Malaysia. 4. Malaysia–Social policy.

    5. Malaysia–Social life and customs. I. Ooi, Kee Beng, 1955-.

    II. Wan Hamidi Hamid.

    306.09595

    Copy edited by Nine

    Cover design by Fahmi Reza

    Layout by Janice Cheong

    Foreword

    Senator Ariffin Omar

    This excellent volume, edited by Ooi Kee Beng and Wan Hamidi Hamid, discusses what it means to be Malay in Malaysia. And in doing that, it seeks to be much more. Most importantly, it seeks to highlight how composite a concept ethnicity is, and how exciting individualistic culture is.

    The nine Malay authors’ reminiscences of growing up and being in a changing and complex social environment reveal that every Malaysian is a product of the thorough ethnic mix that he or she is born into.

    Other than being Malays, what is also common to Haris Zuan, Wan Hamidi Hamid, Zairil Khir Johari, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, Altaf Deviyati, Izmil Amri, Syukri Shairi, Raja Ahmad Iskandar and Edry Faizal Eddy Yusuf is the multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality of their Malaysian existence. This gives each of them unique experiences, and, despite the fixation with collective identity in the country, very unique individual identities.

    It is also very clear in the stories of these various contributors that being Malay comes into collision at many turns with the national state-sponsored project of being Malaysian. The individual struggle to find personal answers, compromises and meaning in the collective – and collectivised – conflicts and schisms in Malaysian society is a reminder of my own inner conflicts as I grew up in multicultural Penang.

    Yet being Malay is in essence anything but racial, for Malayness, clearly understood, is an amalgamation of the various types of ethnie that have graced this land. Being a Malay is about expressing the cultural interactions and assimilations that undeniably take place among the various ethnie that inhabit and have inhabited Malaysia.

    The contributors to this book proudly talk about their varied genetic backgrounds and indeed rejoice in their cultural interbreeding. Though in Malaysia, Malays are constitutionally bound to be Muslims, many of the writers do not deny that among their forebears are Chinese, Indians and Europeans who practised Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and what have you.

    As I read their essays, I feel that they write for me as well. My origins are varied too for I have always prided myself on having Indian, Spanish and Acehnese forebears.

    I hope that readers of this laudable volume see a part of themselves in what is written and will come to understand that being Malay and existing as one should mean a willingness to accept the differences, views and philosophies to which we are all exposed. This is all a learning process towards understanding the richness and complexities that life has to offer. It is not only about being Malay, or being Malaysian. It is about being humans.

    1 July 2015

    Introduction

    Ooi Kee Beng

    It did not occur to me as a Chinese child growing up in Penang six decades ago that my experiences then were anything other than Malaysian. I assumed that most Malaysian children had experiences boringly similar to mine, and that their homes were filled with the same sorts of products bought from the generic corner sundry shop; that they watched the same TV programmes as I did every evening, ate more or less what I ate, were bullied by schoolmates and got bullied by them in return, and enjoyed the same lazy holidays I did. We played marbles in similar ways, caught spiders and put them in similar empty match boxes, and kite-fought together on the grass or dust padang with strings armed with glass powder.

    Certain things I knew to differ from home to home no doubt, especially concerning religious practice. But these seemed minor matters. I suppose a child generally assumes that his or her world is indeed a common one.

    The oneness of a country is of course an idea fostered by the government of any newly founded country. And so, Malaysian children in the early days tended to assume the existence of what had yet to be built – a cohesive society. Not necessarily a homogeneous one, but definitely a sufficiently harmonious one.

    In many ways, it was the same for adults. They kept to what they knew best, and kept out of zones of discomfort, and so they saw more harmony than might have been the case.

    The diversity and deep divisions in Malaysian society in matters of class and culture became undeniable on May 13, 1969, with the outbreak of racial riots in Kuala Lumpur. What was common among Malaysians was overwhelmed by what was contentious.

    And so Malaysia went down a new path. In the years immediately following May 13, much that was deemed wrong with Malaysian society was blamed on the plural society structure left behind by colonial expediencies. This was no doubt an extreme simplification of the situation, but the policy framework that grew out of the 1969 riots was nevertheless result-oriented, and proposed a hopeful timeline of 20 years – which incidentally was not kept to.

    Reforming Malaysia’s plural society meant the introduction of affirmative action. And this had to be comprehensive and in favour of the largely impoverished, rural and lowly-educated members of the Malay community.

    Looking back over the last few decades and at what has resulted, one has to wonder whether the idea of the New Economic Policy was for colonialism’s plural society to be replaced by an inclusive and pluralistic society, or by a quintessential Malay-centric nation state. Was there a shift somewhere along the way, and how did that shift take place? These are important points to ponder.

    This collection of essays does not deal directly with this highly interesting process, however. Instead, it explores individual experiences of what it is like to grow up in a country saddled with a national discourse that defines each person by race and that debates the goods and ills of development through the rights and interests of ascribed communities. Paradoxically, the community that experienced the political ascription of group identity most acutely and most inescapably is probably the Malays. Defining Malayness has been the central political process, and the defining of others was merely instrumental to this major undertaking. This is seen in how the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) came into being in 1946, and how this community-centric party-building process was continued by the Chinese a couple of years later in reaction to the Malay initiative.

    It is now six decades since the idea to define the Malay race in the country’s constitution was thought up and implemented, and Malaysia’s politics has been accordingly determined. But just as the political structure has been questioned in an evolving manner decade after decade, the group identity of the Malays has also successively been examined: at the political level no doubt, but just as interestingly also at the individual level.

    One can with very little controversy say that the Malay community in Malaysia has in recent years become an increasingly contemplative and self-exploring one – and publicly too. This may take the form of religious contentions that have tended to be followed by official chastisements; or the form of political organisations that have challenged but never toppled the ruling coalition. Or the form of biographical publications – in blogs or books, magazines and tabloids – by Malay writers, artists, academics, musicians and politicians, which portray individual lives within group homilies; and personal thoughts within national discourses, and coming from all parts of the country, writing in Malay and English.

    This volume continues that trend, but focuses on young and youngish Malay writers. These writers were asked to look back into their past, and to describe – or problematise if they so wished – what lasting impressions they have about growing up in a socio-political atmosphere where group identity, and not individual identity, is so strongly propounded and so starkly institutionalised.

    In doing this, I had the competent help of an old friend, the indomitable journalist Wan Hamidi Hamid. Together, we selected a talented group of young Malays, both men and women, to share their personal experience of being cheered towards racialism by the political regime.

    Each writer has chosen specific bits of their past to discuss. What they consider important differs, naturally, and that is what broadens and adds value to this collection.

    Since the Mahathir Mohamad period ended in 2003, the flow of biographies and autobiographies by Malaysians has been impressive. Many of these are by Malay individuals, and tend to have ‘Malayness’ as the focal point, exploring the communal identity and its politicised existence.

    Indeed, Mahathir’s own autobiography was a much-awaited book. Its reception was mixed, no doubt, but it was certainly a product that came at a specific period in Malaysian history, paradoxically in the aftermath of his time in power, and profoundly characterised the need felt by Malaysians in general to reflect on the past. This includes Malays of Mahathir’s generation; but examples of biographical books by Malays from younger generations are far from rare.

    Some such autobiographical books that come to mind are Syed Husin Ali’s Memoirs of a Political Struggle; Zaid Ibrahim’s I, too, am Malay; Awang Goneng’s Growing up in Trengganu; and, going down in age, Dina Zaman’s I Am Muslim. Recently, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press has been publishing in Malay (with some English translations) excellent auto/biographical series on prominent Malays such as the late Ghazali Shafie, and Malay leftists and ex-communists, among others.

    There are many more such books which have appeared in bookstores and on the streets over the last decade or so. This present volume is a small collection of reflections by generally young Malays, both men and women. Whether they belong in a rural or urban setting is not obvious, and whether they have grown up to be politically active in a traditional sense is not apparent either.

    What is important is that this volume highlights individual experience above communal and other group affiliations, and seeks to remind readers that we all tread a line between being a person and being a member of multiple communities at the same time. In Malaysia, the obsession with race has not only made its peoples less inclined to analyse the country in individualist terms but also less conscious of the multiplicity of group identities inherent in each individual life.

    Malaysian political discourses swing erratically between ethnocentrism and ethnic pluralism. The net result has largely been an uneasy balance between the two positions. The one has not been able to deny the other, however much it may wish to.

    The Alliance solution that facilitated the granting of independence in the 1950s was an innovative middle ground, but its inherent weaknesses destroyed it by the end of the 1960s. The Barisan Nasional solution that followed was essentially a different animal, which tended, as time went on, to encourage more and more Malay ethnocentrism and less and less public discussion. With the rise of a Malay urban and educated middle class by the 1990s, new political expressions came inevitably to the fore, and these did not allow themselves to be easily categorised as pro-government or pro-opposition, pro-religion or pro-secular, or pro-Malay or pro-pluralism. Malaysian society today continues being diverse, but in new ways, to be sure; and its divisions run deeper in too many instances.

    Not unexpectedly, quite a few of the writers mention Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as a strong presence in their childhood memories, impressed as they were positively and negatively by him either as a personality or as a re-definer of Malay and Malaysian identity. The man was undeniably dominant; and both before and after his time as Prime Minister (1981–2003), he played a key role as an opinion builder.

    The nationalist plural society that the half-hearted attempts at the eradication of colonial plural society have founded in Malaysia is an interesting one nevertheless. It is a reality that the whole country has to live with. Full of contradictions, to say the least, it has nevertheless not led to any major riots since 1969, and although emigration has been high and sustained, Malaysia’s economic development has been impressive. In recent years, however, worries have run high that a limit is being reached and a new discourse now needs to be hastily introduced which will reverse the excesses of the past decades in matters of race and religion.

    Malaysia has changed much since the 1950s and 1960s, and many of the points made in these articles are a revelation to me. I am however also struck by how much of what is described is immediately comprehensible to me, and how much feels almost like my own personal reminiscences, although I am not a Malay or Muslim, and am of another generation.

    It strengthens my suspicion that at many levels in Malaysia, especially in urban and semi-urban areas (and these are expanding), a gradual integration of the various communities has actually always been taking place – to the dismay perhaps of politicians who depend on racialism to stay relevant. This persistent hybridisation and inter-communal negotiation is an organic process that has been going on even before independence.

    The case of Malaysia should interest all sorts of social scientists, for there is much in its history and genetic make-up that is unique.

    Nowhere else in the world, if I am not mistaken, has it been deemed necessary to define technically – and in effect ascribe – the majority community in the national constitution. This was done in the case of the Malays. An identity defined through legal technical criteria is quite a socio-psychological event. Having one’s identity defined in legal terms and in advance must impress greatly upon a young mind. Having that communal identity endlessly mentioned throughout one’s life as the wherewithal of national policy while one lives and breathes in an ethnically pluralist society may be expected to create ceaseless dissonance.

    This is a book that highlights subjectivity. It is written by young Malays, but not necessarily on general topics of interest and relevance to Malays, for the point of this project has been above all to capture individual

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