#18: After six decades, time to reconceptualise national identity

After six decades, time to reconceptualise national identity

Opinion  |  Azly Rahman

Published: 1 Jun 2018, 11:57 pm  |  Modified: 1 Jun 2018, 11:57 pm

   

"Political power is what we are only left with
One that will determine the fate of our nation
Wealth of this nation flows into the hands of others
Sons and daughters of the soil suffer in solace..."

- National Civics Bureau song, my translation

COMMENT | I do not think we have a clear understanding of what the lyrics above from a National Civics Bureau song in the 1980s means. I doubt if the songwriter even understands what a ‘people's history of Malaya’ means.

History is a complex syntagmatic pattern of interplay between technology, ideology, culture, inscription and institutionalisation, which cannot be easily reduced to simplistic lyrics sung in the manner of pre-war German nationalistic compositions.

History is about the complex evolution of the ruling class who owns the technologies of control. As Karl Marx would say, at every epoch it is the history of those who own the means of production that will be written and rewritten. The winners write history, the losers write poetry or study anthropology.

Back to the lyrics. After 60 years of independence, who is suffering in Malaysia? Who has become wealthy? Who has evolved into the robber barons? The language of power and ideology is at play in those lyrics, as it the definition of ‘bumiputera’.

It has become a problematic word in this age of deconstructionism, an age where “the centre cannot hold,” to borrow from WB Yeats.

Rock fans will recall the Scorpions' famous song “Winds of Change” serenading the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the breakdown of the Soviet Empire.

Now, we are forced to face the ‘wrath’ of the word ‘bumiputera’.

Process of rebirth

There is an old Malay practice in Johor of renaming a child 'buang' if his given name does not 'suit' him.

My grand uncle who passed away in the early 1970s was called Buang. His old name was deemed not to suit him, as he was often sick when he was a child 'carrying' his old name.

‘Buang’, of course, means 'discard'. But I would call this 'reconceptualisation', which we must do to the concept of 'bumiputeraism'.

Several semesters ago, when I was lecturing an undergraduate class in African philosophy, using Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, I began to understand how similar my granduncle's predicament is with that of protagonist Okonkwo.

In short, the term ‘bumiputera’ has to undergo reconceptualisation, or even a rebirth. The Indonesians already had their process of 'buangisation' as Bung Karno (Soekarno) envisioned.

We indulge in this ritual called 'elections', another problematic word, commissioned to be executed 'fairly'. But now that we are done with that, we have to realise that it is the unseen hands of local and international corporate-crony-crypto-conspicuous-consuming capitalist class that is corrupting our material, emotional, ideological and spiritual landscape.

Then we can start this postmortem process of 'buangisation' or 'reconceptualisation' of bumiputeraism.

The previous regime could not perform this process of Malaysian 'divining' and 'discarding'. It could not conduct this 'buangisation' because it no longer possessed a good spiritual core.

Its vegetative soul, as Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas would call it, is too calloused with the carcinogens of corruption, that its rational soul is forever lost and transported into this materially corrupt world, the kali yuga.

The ceremony must be performed by a group of philosopher-rulers whose idealism lies in the establishment of a 'republic of virtue'; one that drives its economic foundation from the accumulation of spiritual and metaphysical rather than the material capital.

The Das Kapital of the spiritual accumulation of wealth will be the product of this divination. Georg Hegel would agree with this idea of spiritual revolution. It cannot be performed by investment bankers-cum-politicians.

Names connote and denote something. They are words that Steven Pinker or Jacques Lacan or any semioticians or linguistic anthropologists would say carry metaphors and manifestations of history, material, power, knowledge and ideology. Worse still these words become institutions and become institutionalised into architectures of power and control.

Writers such as Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul have analysed this phenomena of architectures of power, as these structures relate to the nature of man within the context of the language in which he/she is situated.

'Bumiputera' is one such word. A problematic word. A word that assumes race and religion as one. To say that a Malay is generally a Muslim and hence a 'bumiputera' and therefore have special rights and privileges is an imprecise way of explaining a concept. It is an old-school approach to defining that word.

We must find ways to enrich the concept better so that it will become inclusive. Who toils for the soil? Labour, more than language, seems to be more a more linguistically just way to look at the definition of bumiputera and how we will go about the 'buangisation' process.

We need a premise for this process though. Let's begin with this phrase: "We hold these truths to be self-evident and divinely sanctioned that all Malaysians are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator the inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, happiness, justice and social equality, and we shall resoundingly declare that from now on we will be constructed as equal and be called 'the new bumiputera'...

This to me sounds like something Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as all the holy books would advocate, but with a Malaysian ethos as its foundation.

That can be our premise for this radical change. Which will lead to the second stage of the 'buangisation' process can begin.

Critique the ideology

We must do something different to ourselves if we are to move to the next level of evolution as Malaysians.

Let us reconstruct the old concept of 'bumiputera' so that we will have a better foundation in preparation for a redefinition in the Federal Constitution – so that the constitution can now protect all rather than the few.

Isn't democracy for the powerful few only good for plutocracy, kleptocracy and cronyism?

Who is a 'bumiputera'? After 60 years this term should have evolved and changed. The base and superstructure, the ideology and material foundation, and the body and spirit of this nation-state called Malaysia have changed.

The old definition has run its course. It is fine to see this as the right time to change. We must remember that words get refined and redefined in the course of history. Ask any linguist.

Words like democracy, freedom, justice and equality get reconceptualised after every social revolution. Words like Malays, Indians, Chinese, East and West Malaysians used as classification systems are good during the colonial period and in the early years of independence.

They have lost their connotative and denotative power as we approach our 60th year of independence.

Language is reality – words become flesh, inscriptions become institutions.

Redefine what 'bumiputera' means, so that we will not be forced to sing more propaganda songs.

After 60 years of Merdeka, aren't we all bumiputera now?