On Malaysia and the colonialism
The idea of Malaysia as a country only started on the early twentieth century. Before that, the Malay Peninsula consists of various autonomous kingdoms. All those kingdoms were governed by Sultans. Some of them were invaded by colonials, whereas another are strongly retains their sovereignty. Most of the kingdoms are indeed have British advisors. As the sovereignty exist, the power of the indigenous rulers must be recognised.
It is crucial to consider the narrative from indigenous sources. The literature and narrative should looked in the light of the local discourse and philosophy. The chains of the Eurocentric in ideas, models, problem selection, methodologies, techniques and even research priorities continue to capture the native mind until today. Critical studies in indigenous literature is must. This is important effort to stop the Eurocentric cognitive in Malay contemporary mind. For that, the historical event must looked from the eyes of the local sense at that time. This elegant and important method to analyse the historical event in is in according to the truth at that time (haqaiq al asyya’), as coined by Ibn Khaldun. This practice of doing justice toward historical knowledge is an adab toward historical interpretation.
One example topic for this is the interpretation on British colonialism in Malay peninsula. The indigenous perception at that time and dominant perception today can be totally different. This is the result of the problem mentioned above. In the early eightieth century Kedah, for example, the British was considered as orang laut. In the eye of the local ruler, the British is just at the same level with Bugis and Siak people.
So, the refutation of colonialism in Malay peninsula claim might be true. The peninsula colonialism of British, Dutch, and Portugal in continuous order just a myth. True indeed, some of Malay territories are being taken as British colony. But the common perception of Malay peninsula colonialism can be false. The reason is that not entire states in Malaysia was colonised. Hence, the critical studies should be conducted to deconstruct the general perception about Malaysia as a colony of the Empire in the historical discourse.
Another critical studies that is crucial is the idea of Malaysia post-Merdeka. All Malay’s kingdom, in fact, are not united or considered as one. They even have no single common rulers. Every kingdoms are on themselves. Their styles, society, political and social structure, and even laws are different. Sometimes they fight each other, another time they form coalitions to fight common enemy.
If to put in modern sense, they are like political parties, but with different paradigm. The major different are they defined by territory (or arguably, the recognition from their subjects), and have absolute power and autonomy over their subjects (peoples, economy, territory). Unlike modern parties that haven’t any power but struggling to win all the region, the pre-Merdeka Malay states were confined to keep their power of their own kingdom. There are no noticeable effort to form permanent united entity among kingdoms like what happen today.
The Malaysia concept of federal country might be foreign conception. This product of Eurocentric model was pushed by the pressure at that time to establish recognition from the dominant power. This idea is prevalent at that time because of British resident (advisor) and their political power. They also have colonised some of territory within this peninsula. The struggle to built Negara Malaysia could be considered as the struggle to push, or even divert the native paradigm of power structure out of history. This has created new discourse that enhance the dominancy of British colonialism narrative in the mind of natives, especially who has born after the Merdeka.
The implication of the changes in the paradigm of the power structure and history of the land is that it has instilled the inferiority inside the Malay natives and also provide the false conception about Malaysia pre-Merdeka world, which had changed from unique autonomous Kingdom to united colony of the Empire. This has produce captive minded citizen in Malay world vis-à-vis another colonised country. Other than that, the dominance of the modern nation states concept had killed the local conception of states. This also has changed the local perception about power relations. This thus set a nation course toward Eurocentrism, specifically on their political views. The long unique embodied political structure and sense was forgotten. This is the price that has to be paid in order to built Negara Malaysia.
It might be interesting to think on the question of possibility. What if Malaysia had never being established by the means of appeal towards the Empire? Might the pre-modern sense of Malay kingdom political structure preserved?
