I read with much intrigue what a local Malay Singaporean wrote. To tell the truth, much of the writer's views i share, except that my ability to articulate ideas with such precision, and vocalize, in writing, at the level of what i would deem academic excellence, can be regarded cerebrally inadequate.Haha.... nevertheless, i would express my acceptance to the writer's views i point.
reality hurts,reality bites but reality tells you the truth, more often than not reality hides itself in 'the boot of a car'. Well i see Singapore in that context, like a car being driven by the engines of 'post-modernism, post-cold war ideals and the so-called "multi-cultural" petrol' but at the same hiding in it's boot, it's past! See.. that's not where i'm going but i'm leaving that for highly-inquiring minds out there to go figure. At least read up on singapore's history, say 400 yrs ago, where Mr.Sang Nila Utama first landed, to how a "backward-fishing village" somehow, by the motivation of industry-buliding, competition and the need to thrive in by constantly mirroring trends in Western, "advance etc", nations, to becoming a first class metropolitan, "free" of colonialism.
the thing i'm touching on is this, what impact has the colonialist and the immigrant settlers left us Malay Sinagporeans with hitherto. b4 that let me quote a paragraph i obtained from the writer's paper:
"Every colonized people- in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality- finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation...If he is overwhelmed to such a degree by the wish to be white, it is because he lives in a society that makes the inferiority complex possible, in a society that derives its stability from the perpetuation of this complex, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race; to the identical degree to which that society creates difficulties for him, he will find himself thrust into a neurotic situation." (Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks 18, 100).
Well, what really happened, at least to me, is the death of the Malay identity, the lack of acknowlegment to it and the lack of efforts to live up to the Malay ethnicity in the background of a Chinese dominated society. Malays - pple, history, culture, traditions, fashion, trends, language, literature, arts,etc - have been displaced! and this displacement phenomena is taking it's soul out of the nation, if not the pple and more relevantly the Malays themselves. And what's left are just little concessions where recognition is prized at occasions- more often frivolous ones- in schools, small scaled performances,post-graduate analysis which goes no further than the confines of the four walls of cement and paper respectively.
Indeed the lingua franca in modern day singapore is mandarin, next comes english and in school, parliment to high-society to the middle-class all speak english. Evidently, the purpose of constitutional recognition of the malay language as th official anguage and the mainstay of the "majulah singapura" as the national anthem seems as a attempt to salvage what's left of the Malay past that Singapore/temasek/Nanyang( God know's what?) used to pervade this entire region.
The failure to recognise this past and the mistake of taking the point of raffles' colonisation as YR 0 in singapore's chronology, has it's consequences. Of course, there will be much abuse to the system( i quote the writer) if privileges were given to the Malays, like our bumiputras across the causeway, but at the same time the notion or the reality of tokenism is profanication to the Malays if not to the extend of 'menconteng arang di muka'.
The truth is the Malays have a place, let's take an example, in terms of literature. maybe it does not reflect the emancipation of literary forms but it's deep intimacies are noteworthy.
The fact that s'pore being geographically located in the middle of what we call the Malay Archipelago and it used to being part of some massive malay empire, are too worth delving.
There are also many 'wiped-out' malay landmarks, like kampong glam and kampong java which by the works of so called preserving it is 'progressing' at a very slow pace, even till now, which are left unexplored and God knows what architectural magnificents we have under the mounts of Fort canning,the bulidings of Bras basah and Bugis village.
What i see is the reluctance of the political superiors.what i also see is the lack of activity or voice in the Malay community in pushing forth their identity in mainstream society- which is already predminated by our 'significant other(s)'. what i can conclude is that passivity leads to eventual advocation to cultural destruction and possibly extinction, or we Malays couldn't just be bothered. Evolution of languages, cultures and sorts do occur but i think it happened to fast for Malay singaporeans, to the extend that they allow others to de-culturise them, allowing others to define their culture for them at the expense of losing the Malay identity altogether. Lucky for us we still have the Malay annals to tell us what we actually were and what we were capable of doing and how we've changed ourselves throughout these years, or else we'll begin to wonder if there's a Malay Civilisation in the first place!!!( what more it's so evident that if a tourist steps his foot in Singapore he'll be more inclined to assume Singapore's "Chinese-Heritage" and those who visited the Singapore Asian Civilisation Museum will evidently observe the substantially numerous amounts of Chinese artefacts).
As for myself, it's true that ive already crossed the Malay-Western border(you figure which side i'm on) and that my attempts of salvaging my Malay identity manifests in the form of trying to assimilate with my Malay counterparts in school and in the multitudes of cultural activities that i try to immerse myself in but ever-so often seem to automatically find myself at the surface again with a life bouy labeled 'western pop culture'.
The fact is i do not like myself to be labelled Malay singaporean on my pink ic, for with it, does not come pride, but abject humiliation inflicted on me by my own pple and me of course and always being scrutinised and that whenever success comes, it is always a triumph against the "evil" or "inadequacies" that my ethnic group brings.Extremely or maybe aptly put, malay singaporeans are being marginalised, critisised and what have nots! it's a wonder why we have a minister-for-MUSLIM Affairs but not one for Chinese, christians, hindus and sorts. you go figre!!
i would like to end with another quote from the writer's paper:
"Without a Malay past, without a Malay future, it is impossible for me to live my Malayness. Not yet yellow, no longer wholly brown, I am damned."
And that in this exclamation of annoyance, it is apt that i one day pack my bags and leave for another country and bring my 'doomed indentity' with me. See you in America....if not elsewhere!!
