Thursday, April 30, 2009

Article on Ketuanan Melayu narrated by a voice machine

Below is a video version of my article written in 2006 on Ketuanan Melayu entitled "Nationalism and Tribalism" I found on youtube. Very interesting dictation technology translates text into voice.




Nationalism and tribalism
Azly Rahman
Nov 21, 06 11:32am

Umno Perlis delegate Hashim Suboh was quoted in a New Straits Times report as saying at the end of the debate on economy and education issues that "Datuk Hisham (Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Hussein) has unsheathed his keris, waved his keris, kissed his keris. We want to ask Datuk Hisham when is he going to use it?"

The Perlis delegate made the remark while saying "force must be used against those who refused to abide by the social contract" in relation to Hishammuddin's alleged weakness in dealing with demands from the Chinese schools. - malaysiakini report, Nov18, 2006.

That delegate's remark is an embarrassment to the peace-loving people of Perlis, let alone represents what the Malay is, intellectually. The Malays of Perlis elect their representative not to misrepresent them with a false image of myopia and paranoia, or amuk and latah. It shows how ill-prepared one is in dealing with sensitive issues. It is telling the people of Perlis that they need better leaders with better command of the vocabulary of peace and better understanding of what 'social contract' means. A close reading of the Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau would help the delegate write sensible speeches.

This bring us to the following questions:

What is a Malay? What is a Malaysian? What is a nationalist? What is a 'nation'? How are we becoming "re-tribalised" in this world of increasing restlessness over a range of issues that are not being resolved by the current regime. These are burning questions as we become more mature in discussing race relations in Malaysia – almost 40 years after the May 13, 1969 incident.

Ernest Renan, Anthony Smith, Benedict Anderson, Harry Benda, and John Funston – major scholars of nationalism -- would agree that Umno does not have an ideology except to sustain its elusive political superiority via the production of post-industrial materials and human beings.

Elusive word

Even the word "National Front" (Barisan Nasional) is elusive. It is surviving as long as means to cling on to power – by all means necessary – becomes more efficient and sophisticated. Its survival lies in the way people are divided, conquered, and mutated into 'post-industrial tribes'; market-segmented-differentiatedly-sophisticated enclaves that are produced out of the need for the free market economy to transform Malays and Malaysians into consumers of useless goods and ideology.

Post-industrial tribalism is a natural social reproduction of the power of the media to shape consciousness, and to create newer forms of consumerist human beings. Nationalism, including Malay nationalism of the Mahathirst era, is an artificial construct that needs the power of "othering" and "production of enemies" and "boogeymen and boogeywomen" for ideological sustainability.

But what is "nationalism" and does "Malay nationalism" actually exist in this century? Does the idea of 'natio' or "nation" or "a people" survives merely on linguistic, territorial, religious homogeneity when these are also subject to the sociological interrogations of subjectivity and relativity?

Nationalism is a psychological and cultural construct useful and effective when deployed under certain economic conditions. It is now ineffective as a tool of mass mobilisation when nations have gained "independence" from the colonisers and when the "enemy" is no longer visible. All that exist in this post-industrial, globalised, borderless, and mediated age of cybernetic capitalism is the idea of "post-industrial tribes" that live and thrive on chaos and complexity and on materials and goods produced by local and international capitalists.

Revise the old formula

We are in the 21st. century. About three years from now, we will arrive at the year 2010. The non-Malays and non-bumiputeras have come a long way into being accepted as full-fledged Malaysians, by virtue of the ethics, rights and responsibilities of citizenship. They ought to be given equal opportunity in the name of social justice, racial tolerance and the alleviation of poverty.

Bright and hard-working Malaysians regardless of racial origin who now call themselves Malaysians must be given all the opportunities that have been given to Malays since 40 years back.

Islam and other religions require this form of social justice to be applied to the lives of human beings. Islam does not discriminate one on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, creed nor national origin. It is race-based politics, borne out of the elusiveness of nationalism, that creates post-industrial tribalistic leaders; leaders that will design post-industrial tribalistic policies. It is the philosophy of greed, facilitated by free enterprise runamuck that will evolvingly force leaders of each race to threaten each other over the control of the economic pie.

The claim of 'civilisational Islam' or "Islam Hadhari" must be backed with a philosophy of development that restructure society no longer on the basis of newer forms of post-industrial tribalism that accords the political elites with the best opportunity to amass more wealth, but to redesign the economic system based on an efficient and sound socialistic economic system. It might even require political will to curb human enthusiasm of acquiring more and more of the things they do not need. In short, it should curb temptations to out-consume each other in the name of greed.

To be civilised means to wake up to the possibilities of humanism and not plunge into a world of more sophisticated racism. The universal principle of humanism requires the privileged few to re-examine the policies of national development that prioritise the creation of more real estate projects than the construction of programmes that meet basic needs of all races and classes of peoples. To civilise a nation means to de-tribalise the citizens into a polity that will learn to share the wealth of this nation by accepting this land as the "earth of mankind" (bumi manusia) rather that a land belonging to this or that race.

In a multi-racial, multi-religious, country such as Malaysia, nationalism is a complex yet withering concept. In a globalised world of globally- and government-linked companies this concept of "fatherland" or "motherland" is a powerful weapon of the wealthy to mount arguments that hide the real intention of empire-building. The lifestyle of the country's rich and famous require nationalist sentiments to be played up so that the more the rights are "protected" the more the political-economically rich few will have their sustained control over the people, territories, natural resources and information.

This, I think is the picture of post-industrial tribalism we are seeing as a mutation of the development, appropriation and imitation of the Malay feudalistic mentality. The clear and present danger in our post-industrial tribalistic world lies in old formula we are wrongly using.
The essential question now is – as a 'Malaysian nation'/Bangsa Malaysia haven't we agreed upon a common history and a common destiny?

8 comments:

T H E . M A L A Y . P R E S S said...

The essential question now is – as a 'Malaysian nation'/Bangsa Malaysia haven't we agreed upon a common history and a common destiny?

sejarah kita adalah satu propaganda untuk menidakkan satu common destiny yang amat ditakuti oleh golongan illuminati...

rpremkumar2u said...

Bravo. Magnificent.

Anonymous said...

Well written article although a little too high brow for the average to understand. In simple language, UMNO had now degenerated into something like the Nazis in Germany just before the second world war where jews are made into boggeymen/women to explain its (Germany's) economical and social failings, and unfortunately led Germany into much woes. I hope that all Malaysians will wake up to these BN divide and rule strategies, work together instead of blaming one another, for the failings of bolehland.

Anonymous said...

Let me say it this way:

Are we Badang meradang turning green coz we are envy?

Have any cranky character that we see in Blogland everyday today morphed at all over the last 5/6/7/8 years that we know them?

Or have their heads not forever chased their tails?

Few have ever changed the colour of their skins. That be also the true colour of their dangling foreskins surely.

Sometimes it’s better/safer to just be the Pak Pacak bodoh bangang pegang tombak dengan kerisnya disisip tegak berdiri tepi gate jaga pintu taman larangan tempat puteri mandi.

Maybe that’s where we get to observe/skodeng who goes in & out & eavesdrop on gossips about people who walk the Corridors Of Power.

& just do our assigned duty to His Majesty The King & country, take orders to just guard the gates against outside prying eyes -- while everyone inside ronggeng/tonggeng, enjoy the banquet & sing song ala melodi/whateva.

But that will never be. For we are mere ordinary thinking mortals slugging a living doing what we can do.

Neither a hero or pilot nor parker.

Nay, not even one who knows any nenek kebayan who sells jungle beauty products/love portions having charms that the women folks of kaum bangsawan will scream to buy.

No, no chance to get to know the beautiful sweet smelling princess with senaling eyes - even at the risk of losing one’s head.



Truth be told only 3 generations ago, many of those who are filthy rich today, each having RM100s of MILLIONS a piece, were mere rotten smelly bumkins.



How did they get to accumulate those filthy wealth that the majority can’t?


** How much did clever bi££ionaire Ananda really scheme the Treasury/Rakyat for the License to Own The Airwaves to print money -- charging unsuspecting maxis/hotlink forlorn subscribers that TV3 actively promotes every week to voice their love calls @ 15 to 35 sen/min when the true all inclusive amortised capex + opex < 1.5 to 3.5 sen? **



** How much did YTL pay for the Ever Illusive God Given Concession to freely convert Bumi Gas into filthy profits for Jew Lenders funding the Power Plants to earn obscene interest income out of thin air that IRS are so scared to tax & for Huge Foreign Power Sucking Industries employing alien workers on dirt cheap pay to produce polluting tonnes of exported goods Idiot Locals never get to smell

- yet all along, all the while they have been told, & retold, till these forsaken people are truly convinced/confused in silence that they have indeed enjoyed/been pampered with consumer subsidies of various shady shades of sham? **



** How much have the Clans of Pek King & Co, & cohorts, sucked from the natural habitats of the Kenyalangs?

What percentage of the resources they suck did they pay the Poor Suckers to get out of the rut they live in? **



& now CAN I ASK:



***** Q >> HOW MUCH did/will the Treasury earn to help the hapless for each & every Bank Licence all these years from the Oversea Chinese to the Hock Hua to the Kwong Yik to the United Asian to the D & C to the buried Bumiputra (unmarked) to the transformed Arab Malaysian Borneo Rashid Hussein Sama Langgang/Mendeling/Melanaus for the Irrevocable Right To Print Profits From Thin Air? *****



The Aggregate Credits/Interest Bearing Loans to The Selected Favoured/Connected Few that such banks usually extend in uncountable/unaccountable sums are colossal in relation to total mere pittance deposits they hold in trust.

Of course they will say all credits/loans are adequately collateralised/backed by assets/securities/projects/work in progress/invoices/receivables/what else you have they will accept - marked to market of course.

U can be sure of that ok? HeheH..

If anyone knows the extent of the foundation of the LIES/fiat money they heap against each other back to back, paid/unpaid > there’ll be riots & one will be charged for sedition or eco-sobo or something.

& when, not if,such Global Liberalized Banks/Profit Printing Machine (bumis have no share to make that kind of money ok) FAIL [as in Malaysia 98/America 09]…… then the Jews, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabs, Mongolian & whoelse the world over can in take over to extend MORE frenzy credit products (or now deemed “risk taking equity sharing” as Smart Nazir like to call it 'islamic')

-- to fund RM100m exceptional police stationss all over town (to improve security KPI ok?), submarine cables, fancy long span bridges across man made water bodies, even vendors of fine mobile kiosks and many other hair brained projects one can dream up to suck from Supplementary RM9 Revised Deficit Budgets/PFI -- please, please, please, please, please remember that it is always the poor Malaysian public who will ultimately pay for all you smart people’s scheming/follies aka bailouts.

Would you not accurately call that trump up enthusiastic dodgy deceptive REPEAT SLEIGHT OF HAND “Tai Chi Shanghaism”?

Anonymous said...

the answer is blowing in the wind

Anonymous said...

Bob Dylan › Blowin’ In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.


COULD ONE TRANSFORM MINDSET?

Anonymous said...

& TABIK Sdra Hisham for this timely piece: GLOBALISASI MODAL -
http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/21214/84/

petrus said...

"The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me." Rosa Bonheur

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