Republic of virtue 8/09

Malay nationalism a historical accident? PDF Print
Posted by admin
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 01:43

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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.

Azly Rahman
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/

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 – 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. One year 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 construction of a common history and a common destiny?

Or-- did we have a wrong version of Malaysian history funneled into us, through a historical error?


OUR USUAL REMINDER, FOLKS:
While the opinion in the article is mine,
the comments are yours;
present them rationally and ethically.
AND -- ABOLISH THE ISA -- NOW!

Comments (6)Add Comment
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written by 80srocker, August 05, 2009 02:02:07
Well-said, Dr. Azly.

Sorry for stating the obvious. As soon as Malaysians unite under one race as Malaysians, UMNO, MCA, MIC will have NOTHING to go on with. These bastards are doing nothing but coordinately stirring up racial issues to keep their "Ketuanan"/"We fight for your rights" trash on non-stop repeat. And so long as they maintain this, they'll use ISA, Utusan, police, MACC, JAIS, flip-flopping of languages used in school, etc. to bully us!
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written by hamid, August 05, 2009 02:17:22
Melayu UMNO = Melayu Bodoh dan tak sedar diri!
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written by densemy, August 05, 2009 14:06:54
Accident my foot. The widespread insecurity of Malays generated from the way they are destabilised as children to frighten them into believing in god permeates the whole of Malay societya and is the reason for their nationalism

Why do you think they cling together so closely in their family units, their kampong units and finally their nationalistic units. Partly its out of fear, partly its to protect themselves from the evil infidels and partly its to bolster their egos which have been so damaged by their insecurity

Why do you think malays have to constantly dominate everyone... even their own kind? They dont have the intelligence on the whole to dominate intelligently (that's another by-product of Islam) so they do it through violence and oppression

Its all to do with their insecurity and the arrogant egos that they cultivate to cover their insecurity. Their pride and dignity is a cover as is their resorting to tradition ( either tribal or religious) to dictate every move they make. Simply they are afraid to be independent, they are afraid to be innovative, they are afraid to be adventurous, they are even afraid to think for themselves. They simply act the way they are told to act... and always have done

If you still doubt this theory then try to explain away the horrendously awful behaviour in the last week by malays against everybody... even their own race

Malays are not lazy, they simply dont know what to do next
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written by densemy, August 05, 2009 14:49:48
Its Malay insecurity that has them sucking up to aunty UMNO all the time..."Never mind Mohd. if you cant pass the exams aunty will push you over the line and before you know it you'll have a degree" "Never mind Abdul, we'll give you a nice little contract to do some overpaid work for us... dont worry about the fact that you havent a clue about what you are doing... employ some illiterate Indons and blame them if any one questions you". "Sorry Zai, we are keeping the big contracts for our cronies, but if you keep on sucking up to me i'll think about giving you a bigger contract next time"

End result... the insecure have now become parasites on UMNO.. Nobody ever thinks of quality or of standard or even worries about finishing the job... So long as you get paid

Insecurity is the reason that modern techniques are so rarely adopted in this country. Never mind we can fall back on tradition ... Islam makes you learn verbatim by constant repetition so if its good enough for Islam its good enough for the Malaysian school system. Islam does it, so, lets have a competition, lets have an exam, cos that will help us overcome our insecurities but showing everyone how good we are... trouble is for every winner there are 30 losers. And what do losers do?.. They become more insecure ... of course!

Insecurity is the explanation why so much of that which is produced by Malay is crap... whether it be PS crap or material crap from the factories. No body has the confidence to pursue quality or efficiency

Insecurity is the reason why Malays drive as badly as they do... To cover their insecurity their ego's expand ten-fold and they suddenly become experts on all aspects of driving and the rules of the road. The fact that they can hardly control their cars seems irrelevant so long as ego reigns

Insecurity is the reason nobody BUT nobody in authority will delegate any responsibility to their underlings. They are terrified their incompetence will be exposed.

Outcome... everything in Malaysia takes ten times longer than it should
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written by renoir, August 05, 2009 21:09:59
There're Malays and they're "Malays." No, the Malays I know don't seek to "constantly dominate everyone." And it's my privilege to know such intelligent Malays, though none of them are politicians. It's the mark of an educated person not to tar an entire group of people with the same brush.

Some I don't know personally have, through their writings or actions, proven to be admirable persons as well. Who can fault people like Syed Husin or, for that matter, the tens of thousands who marched from Sogo to present their anti-ISA petition? Those who'd never seen such people, listen to what they say, observe their behavior, will never know their warmth, their charms, their humanity. The train that brought many of them to Plaza Rakyat or Yaohan - since the stops at Masjid Jamek and Sogo were closed - were full of such fun-loving yet determined and highly principled Malays. One old man refused a seat offered by a young non-Malay woman: he was going to die soon, he said, so he preferred standing up. All around him laughed, as they scoffed at the authorities' efforts to stop the march. So what if they closed those stations? We can walk over there (from Plaza Rakyat) in a few minutes!!! On that day, such simple folks proved that they belonged to an Alpha race, a race that truly believe, when fighting for justice, in "biar tulang puteh jangan puteh mata."

Hats off to those folks.
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written by asguard, August 06, 2009 09:06:52
UMNO does not stands 1malaysia nor the real malaysian malaysia concept..what is only sees that provoke more racial slurs from time to time, make use of its faithful dogs...MACC, POLICE, JUDICIARY, OR ANY OF GOVERNMENT AGENCIES to carry out its dirty work in order to shut out what it sees as threat its way or block it way!
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