Republic of virtue, 9/08

Who is our real Father of Malaysian Independence?

Posted by admin

Tuesday, 02 September 2008 10:04

We need to revisit the questions instead of finalise the answers. I think historians like Professor Khoo Khay Kim need to also understand what the new thinking about history and historicising now means. Here are my thoughts on this. Azly Rahman dr.azly.rahman@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/2007/09/140-ramadhan-of-our-ramallah.html The French thinker Voltaire once said: "There is no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility." And so, who is the father of Malaysia's independence? This seems to be the impetus of our national debate. Intellectually I see this topic as highly stimulating for younger generations of Malaysians who are beginning to get the feel of, and exposure to, the postmodern sensibility. If we desensitise sensitive issues, we will open up newer frontiers of thinking and understanding.We cannot keep on lodging police reports every time somebody brings up questions we cannot answer. This only reflects our mental weakness in dealing with emerging issues. We must think like scientists and philosophers in order to seek better political alternatives. Scientific breakthroughs are based on the constant revision of theories and that create 'Kuhnian Revolutions'. Similarly, as a thinking nation constantly trying to understand history as a mirror of our existence, we must create spaces of dialogue on these issues so that our minds may become sharper and less prone to the attacks of unseen waves of mental colonisation that will eventually lead to physical, moral, and material colonisation. Real issue We must come to terms with the issue of 'who is the real father of independence' and explore perspectives to this question. I am sure we will arrive at an answer. I will offer an answer at the end of this essay. I am however more interested in the question of what makes us reach the decision to honour Tunku Abdul Rahman. He is already honoured. I am more interested in the archeology of the ideology and the process, rather than the product of this thinking itself. Why him instead of others? What institutional arrangement of political-economic relations decreed that he would be the one to be remembered/named as the grand Malaysian hero of independence? There should be no controversy over the issue of deciding who must continue to be honoured as the father of Malaysian independence. We already have a whole city called Putrajaya as a continuing legacy - a testament of the rule of a 'prince' in the Malaysian cybernetic world recreated as utopia. Those who write history has already decided on how to inscribe the name on this new Malaysian landscape. We should now instead argue about paradigms and perspectives and the theories of knowledge at how we arrive at such a 'historical fact', instead of demanding this and that person to apologise for saying this and that. We need to seek the history/genealogy of these questions. We need to revisit the questions instead of finalise the answers. I think historians like Professor Khoo Khay Kim need to also understand what the new thinking about history and historicising now means. Here are my thoughts on this. Thinking about history The old paradigm of Structural-Functionalism in thinking about history will honour men, monuments, mishaps and movements. This paradigm looks at history as a system of evolving structures primarily from 'periodising' perspectives. Hence we are asked to remember dates, events, names (of mostly men, buildings and monuments,) that will create bodies of knowledge called 'historical facts'. Structural-functionalists would be interested in looking at the stability of the system and how to maintain a pareto optimum level of our understanding of history. There are fixed bodies of knowledge that must not be tampered with and there is not much room for creativity and critical sensibility in re-looking at history. Our history textbooks are written by structural-functionalists and the bodies of knowledge produced are canonised as 'official knowledge'. Hence, we have structural-functionalist historians such as Sri Lanang, Zainal Abidin Wahid, Zainal Kling, Khoo, the Andayas and others from the old school. Their role in society is to preserve official knowledge; in this case historical knowledge derived from and crafted based on selected memories called history. Then there is the Conflict Paradigm in historicising - one that looks at history as patterns of conflict between peoples, tribes, classes, and nations over resources and the dissemination of ideologies. Conflict theorists look at history as written by the winners and poetry written by the losers. Hence we have the development of ideologies of nationalism and nationalisation of ideologies written by those who won the historical march of progress based on the might of the ideology. I agree with Michel Foucault's idea of history as an enterprise that is based on the notion of power/knowledge and that we need to be more interested in the archeology of knowledge that produce documents of history. We need to also investigate the act of writing history. 'Historical facts' Do 'historical facts' exist? I think this is an oxymoron or a contradiction. It is a misnomer. We might talk about scientific facts or philosophical musings or religious doctrines, but not with precision talk about historical facts. Facts need to undergo several stages of verification and falsification. History is memory, and memories are recollections of selective perspectives that are formed through sense-perception. If we can forget precisely what happen last Thursday night and we do not have witnesses to tell us what happened, then we might have a poor recollection of the memory as well as inaccurate documentation of the events. That is the issue of knowledge/power in the language of post-structuralism. Then there is also the philosophical problematique of 'who gets to write history'. Marx would argue that history of ideas is the history of the ruling class. Many Marxists and Marx's revisionists have developed further this notion of historicising to its current status as post-structural theories of knowledge in looking at history. The work of George Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Howard Zinn have exemplified this perspective in looking at history. What does this mean to the current debate on who is the 'father of independence'? It means a lot to the way we perceive what history is meant to teach. Whoever owns the means of producing historical documents owns the means of producing the ideology that will produce the means of producing the consciousness of the people. Sri Lanang wrote history that produced the ideas that shape the formation of the ideology of Malay nationalism. Khoo wrote history textbooks that produced the ideas that produced our thinking of what we think Malaysian history is. We therefore have a perspective in which the authors (Sri Lanang, Khoo) produce the texts (Sejarah Melayu, Buku Teks Sejarah) that produce the consciousness of what Malaysian history means, including who to honour as heroes and who will be branded as villains in history. In the debates on philosophy and theory of history, there will always be Structural Functionalists and Conflict Theorists, between The Essentialists (Cultural Preservers) and Progressivists (Revisionists). No apologies needed We need not apologise to each other on this debate. It is embarrassing to the health of intellectual discourse. We need not call for a debate in Parliament on who is the real hero of independence. The current culture of parliamentary debates – of booing and yahoo-ing and name-calling – would not be conducive to the pristine-ness of this topic. It will be an unnecessary debate after all. Because we are not equipped with the paradigms canopying the issue. It is akin to saying that Batman is better than Spiderman in our intellectual pursuit for truth in the world of Marvel Comics. We ought to ask the right questions and elevate the discussions to a higher dimension - one that will focus not on issues versus non-issues but rather on the way of seeing things. I wrote about this in a column on teaching history. If we still insist on arguing in Parliament, we ought to ask questions such as these instead: • What makes us decide who is the hero and who isn't in Malaysian history? • Who benefits from the honouring of this or that person in history? • How does our history honour the real makers of history - the farmers, the rubber tappers, the tin miners, the immigrants that built historical monuments • How many of these unsung heroes perish as statistics in the process of glorifying this or that person? • How else may we look at history? • Is the history we have been asked to learn credible? • What might a revisionist history of Malaysia look like? • Who writes history and who pays the historians? • Where are the 'mothers' in history? • Why do we call history 'his' story and not 'her-story'? • Why do only some people or classes of people in history get to have their names inscribed onto buildings, monuments, roads signs, institutions of ideology, etc.? • What happened in history? I see tremendous value in teaching ourselves to ask these questions in history so that we may better frame issues that come our way at every Independence day. As a nation evolving through 'historical patterns' and 'cycles of interplay between technology and consciousness' rather than through the memorising of names of 'peoples, places and events' that has no real philosophical and therapeutic value, we need fresh new questions such as the ones I mentioned above. If we still insist that we have a parliamentary debate on this, we have actually not understood the history of the history of questions. I have a proposition for those wishing to find out who the real father of Merdeka is: I think the real fathers and mother of independence are the free spirits within all of us multi-cultural human beings; those existential spirits within us that refuse to bow down to any sign, symbols, and signification of colonization, be they in human or material form. The real parents of our independence are the spirits that acknowledge the universality of the struggle for independence and who explore the idea that the purpose of studying history is essentially to change it - so that its meaning will evolve closer to those buried and forgotten, under the might, memory and marketed glories of ideologies, inscriptions, institutions, and individuals. Must we then believe, as the great playwright Oscar Wilde said - that "…the one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it"? Comments (22) ... written by Rainbowseahorse, September 02, 2008 10:16:57 In very simplistic thinking: The bloody British were flat broke after WWII and would have literally kick Malaya out if they did not ask for Independence. So what was the big fuking deal about fighting for independence and all that crap? Just abunch of lies to glorify so-and-so! report abuse disagree 9 agree 55 ... written by Bigjoe99, September 02, 2008 10:43:37 Lets talk about the price of indepedence. How much more Chinese blood was spilled fighting against the Japanese compared to the what was really a multi-cultural demand for independence? report abuse disagree 5 agree 39 ... written by ahmadneil, September 02, 2008 10:48:04 Independence has no meaning if those fuking crooks still preaches racism. report abuse disagree 1 agree 51 ... written by cwy, September 02, 2008 11:02:16 Your father, a Malay chauffer for British colonist, an Indian rubber tapper or a Chinese tin-mine labourer can be the real father of Malaysian Independence! report abuse disagree 1 agree 47 ... written by joeawk, September 02, 2008 11:23:19 Merdeka? my foot. From the frying pan onto the fire is not merdeka. Merdeka for the likes of that UMNO Bukit Bendera mother ****er. There is no need for the MCA and Gerakan to call for UMNO to discipline the bloke. The UMNO chief has said that he will ask the bloke not to re[eat his statement. hahaha. That, we all knows totally inadequate and what MCA and Gerakan need to do is just leave the coalition. There is also no need for the DAP to report the bloke for sedition, what is the police for. report abuse disagree 5 agree 41 ... written by SocratesI, September 02, 2008 11:25:53 Independence Comes From Within Us, our indomitable spirit to be our own person and have our own ideas without bowing down to any despotic power who wants to rule us in body or in mind !! Therefore, the Real Father of Malaysian Independence is OURSELVES as long as we have that SPIRIT of INDEPENDENCE in our Psyche and our INDOMITABLE WILL to see it through !! report abuse disagree 1 agree 21 ... written by MsiaCTzen, September 02, 2008 12:12:58 Who is our real Father of Malaysian Independence? As far as i am concern is My Father. When he gave me my independent key and my University sponsorship. I was 18. At 21 he gave me a house and at 23 he gave me a car. The rest is up to me, he said. His advice was "Don't trust Barisan National and their coalition parties" Vote against them. A vote for the monkey is better the those Barisan Moron. report abuse disagree 4 agree 52 ... written by NSTPravda, September 02, 2008 12:26:34 Who is our real Father of Malaysian Independence? What father? What Independence? What nonsense? We are ruled by UMNO, a bunch of congenital retards Who behaved like a party of self serving bastards. At the beginning we might have some visions Now all we have is the politics of division All the regime knows is to grab and grab more Which account for our current problems galore The problem is that our leaders deny there are problems Not even when catastrophe is gnawing at their scrotums All they know is to preserve their loot in every way Pretending that everything is indeed semua-nya OK! report abuse disagree 2 agree 26 ... written by Uncle Tan, September 02, 2008 13:45:52 There are always 3 sides to a coin - the head, the tail and the edge. report abuse disagree 1 agree 5 ... written by cheekhiaw, September 02, 2008 15:10:56 LAND OF NOT SENSE BUT SENSITIVTY This land is full of sensitive people making insensitive remarks while demanding that others be sensitive to them. Voltaire might have also said 'There is no sensitivity, only frictions from varying degree of stupidity'. xxx report abuse disagree 0 agree 21 ... written by CPY, September 02, 2008 15:35:57 History will be somehow 'altered' by discarding 'undesirable section' or 'reinterpretation'. For now, the real Father of Malaysian Independence is Tunku Abdul Rahman, although detractors say that he is a pro-British figure which cooperated with them to 'retreat safely' & won't lose anything like in some countries. People like Hitler can be seen as someone contributiong to decolonisation because he started a war, many countires like India become independent which is split into 2 countries later, China regain Shanghai(it was a consession, de facto colony) & several consession, except, Macau, HK & lands ceded to Russia. report abuse disagree 0 agree 2 ... written by sonofman0, September 02, 2008 16:21:45 "Must we then believe, as the great playwright Oscar Wilde said - that "…the one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it"?" Better still, like native historians of old, we should "retell" it from generation to generation to counter the "political" stories that are palmed off as "official" history. Where better can we do this but within the family: from parents to children to grandchildren in the privacy of the home? We must be particularly careful not to swallow totally "the father of this" and "the father of that" designations. Remember "the Great White Father" stories the native Indians had to swallow. What "Great White Father"? Now they and we, know better. But for them at what great expense! Let it not be so for us also. report abuse disagree 0 agree 5 ... written by densemy, September 02, 2008 17:03:16 The bad news for you is that the young generation of Malaysians couldnt give a monkey's f**k about the future of this country. They are altogether too selfish and they have had their abilities to think for themselves and think into the future repressed by domineering forces in this society On an internet website frequented by young Malaysians, I recently posed this question "The question is should religion and state be two separate entities??" This website has an active discussion forum on a whole range of issues. These forums are frequented by young 20 to 40 yo predominantly Malays with a higher than average standard of education. In fact this is one of the few places where young Malays can actually speak openly about the sensitive issues that are so often banned by mainstream Malaysia The response was abysmal. Apart from the usual rash of insults and attempts to change the subject which are the way that young muslims deal with their issues. The only relevant response I got out of maybe 200 postings was: "I'm, Happy There's Still Religious Bodies Controlling The Citizens. So They Will Not Over React And Thus Will Control Our Harmonious Multi Racial Society. " I'll leave you to decide how much promise this statement holds for the future of this country report abuse disagree 1 agree 10 ... written by sambal muncha, September 02, 2008 20:13:56 Nice writing, Azly. With due respect though, it would be somewhat nice to have readers participate in a relevant manner in this potentially thought provoking forum, rather than turn this into a platform for empty political bickering. report abuse disagree 0 agree 6 ... written by samesamemam, September 02, 2008 23:24:19 interestin stuff, critical questions, radical epistemologies...can the subaltern speak...I guess, simply put, the wrong questions were asked by the wrong persons of wrong things...who is the father, mother or bastard of independence...most comments have raised an even more radical, and perhaps more justified, question - "what independence are we talking about"... report abuse disagree 0 agree 3 ... written by harrbm, September 02, 2008 23:56:08 >< Wow ! I am allowed to comment! I can write what think I want to tell ! It sure feels good to be able speak out my mind. Who is the father of independence? I was told he was Tunku Abdul Rahman not Lee Kuan Yew. But really, i feel that Onn Jaafar should be the father of independence. Of course Chin Peng has a part in it too. What do you think? anyway, why does it matter ? > report abuse disagree 0 agree 5 ... written by temenggong, September 02, 2008 23:58:30 An answer to the immediate question would be as follows. The formation of the Indian National Congress in 1886 led to the freedom movements all over the world in all the colonies, including China. The next major and defining moment would have the Yalta Talks where Franklin Delano Roosevelt demanded that the european powers dismantle their colonies as a condition of America's entry in WW2 in Europe. Roosevelt would be the 'father' of Malaysia's independence. American involvement was underscored again in 1965 when Robert Kennedy warned Indonesia about belligerence against Malaysia when he was in Tokyo! This eventually led to Sukarno being deposed by Suharto. The local 'Bapa' may be Putera-AMCJA in the period 1945-1947. Everything was settled by this date. The only thing left was the handover date and the party to handover it to. In 1948 it was decided to hand over to the imbecilic Umno composed of school teachers. report abuse disagree 0 agree 6 ... written by ROBERTNGTG, September 03, 2008 07:52:26 I have a proposition for those wishing to find out who the real father of Merdeka is: I think the real fathers and mother of independence are the free spirits within all of us multi-cultural human beings; those existential spirits within us that refuse to bow down to any sign, symbols, and signification of colonization, be they in human or material form. SPOT ON DR. THAT IS THE TRUE SPIRIT. WHY ARE WE STILL HAVING NARROW MINDED LEADERS WHO STILL PARROT AND CHAMPION ONLY FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH PRESERVATION/KIND/BREED AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS?? AND THESE SO CALLED LEADERS ARE SITTING AT THE VERY TOP OF THE ECHELONS IN THIS COUNTRY?? WE HV TO KICK OUT SUCH TYPES FOR GOOD. report abuse disagree 0 agree 5 ... written by densemy, September 03, 2008 09:37:40 The Father of Independence. He is nowhere in sight Muslims favourite passtime is looking backwards... after all, isnt that what the Q'ran teaches them. The answer to every possible situation lies in a book written in the 6 th C AD, a book which is the direct word of god and as such cannot be questioned. And ever since Merdeka, muslims have been looking backward to the great and inspiring leaders who lead them out of a dismally dark past into the bright future as Malaysians, the owners of a new country with unlimited potential. You have lauded your leaders of the past as though they were semi deities and you have overlooked all their shortcomings. Its only since the shortcomings of the more recent leaders have become too long to ignore than this country has begun to think for itself. So what is this Independence you so proudly talk of? It seems to me that you threw off the yolk of a benevolent colonialist who in its short reign over this country provided you with more institutions and infrastructure than ever existed in the previous 700 odd years of Malayan culture The Brits provided you with a road and rail system which never previously existed, they provided you with a set of institutions which were the envy of many third world countries. A fair and just judiciary, an honest and effective police force, we wont say too much about the army. But the system of education they bequeathed you was world class and good enough to spawn the NUS, one of the top universities in the world. They improved the economy of the nation to a level never before believed possible. And their final gift was a Constitution of which any democratic country would be proud And then along came one man... and he personally tore all that was good about Malaysia apart. He promoted a new colonial master but this time it was a malevolent master. This new master tore apart all the institutions that helped make Malaysia a civilised nation. And this new master destroyed all the gifts that the Brits and your Constitution bestowed on you. All this was done under the guise that it was good for you Malaysia is further from Independence now than it ever was in the early 1950's report abuse disagree 4 agree 22 ... written by Taiping60, September 05, 2008 00:10:37 To me, the real father of independence is Raja Petra. What Tunku Abdul Rahman gave the nation the independence from the British. What Raja Petra did is to give Malaysians the independence to express themselve and the independence to make decision otherwise March 8 and the Permatang Puah will not happen the way it did. report abuse disagree 0 agree 6 ... written by Fairminded, September 05, 2008 20:33:19 The biggest problem with a post colonial country which had gained independence is that the political party that negotiated the idependence tends to think that they owned the country and any opposition or criticism of their policies is interpreted as disloyalty to the country. They are the new colonial masters. It is not only Malaysia. It is depressing. Malaysia is an idependent country? Dont kid yourself. It is a colony of the UMNO/BN. Time to fight for our real independence. report abuse disagree 0 agree 1 ... written by Loh, September 07, 2008 22:16:43 ///I think the real fathers and mother of independence are the free spirits within all of us multi-cultural human beings; those existential spirits within us that refuse to bow down to any sign, symbols, and signification of colonization, be they in human or material form.///-- Azly Rahman The free spirit, if there exists, stays on. If it is something natural, then the true spirit to be free cannot coexist with the desire to 'colonize' others. The fact that racism is getting worse can be attributed to the desire to exploit, which goes against the natural tendency to respect free spirit. The father of independence is the person who cared not only for himself but also for the welfare of others. He dared to think that change was possible, and was willing to sacrifice, if unavoidable, to achieve his objective. The others joined in for the hope that they might eventually gain something which were not available to them then. The so-called free spirit might help to explain the intiative needed to undertake the task, by the person who had the courage to embark on an unknown journey. That spirit does not present in every person.