The weapon of the weak- new consciousness and liberation

Let me remind my readers of the reason why UMNO was formed in 1946. It was formed to prevent the colonial government from routing the Malay nation. In 1946, the idea of nationhood as understood in its modern meaning has not yet existed. What existed in the minds of Malays then, was the idea of a Malay nation being assaulted by the colonial government. The concept of a Malayan union would have eliminated the idea of Malay nation and reduced Malay rulers to the role and positions of stipend-receiving qadhis.

UMNO fought and prevailed over the idea of a Malayan union because it fought for self-respect and honour. It succeeded because UMNO's mission was driven by an overpowering desire to retain the malay armour propre. It fought for liberation from oppression.

It's all the reason why UMNO should understand what the majority of Sarawakians are craving for NOW.

Sarawakians are striving for their ownarmour propre just as UMNO fought for the Malay one in 1946.

This is the philosophical basis of the political developments in Sarawak at the moment. Just as UMNO fought for Malay self-esteem, that same desire must be recognized to exist in the bosoms of every self-respecting Sarawakian today.

Any self-respecting UMNO member must therefore stand in SOLIDARITY not opposed to the desire of Sarawakians to get the same self-respect. Otherwise, the Sarawakians are and will always be seen as small children and it is WE who treat them that way. Or more correctly, Taib does.

There was a comment from the usual cojones-less anonymous in my previous article imputing that I write as I do because I am still smarting for being dropped as candidate in the last election. This is a puerile imputation.

Smarting over for not being chosen isn't a strong enough motivation to explain my continuous and steady criticisms of what's wrong with and within UMNO. It's time for people like this commentator to search deep into UMNO itself and examine honestly what is it that makes UMNO so revolting to so many people. Obviously the presence of so self-righteous and bigoted people like him contributes to make UMNO what it is at present.

Let's pursue this philosophical argument further. What did UMNO fight against? It fought against colonial domination. Why was it important for UMNO to do so?

Let me quote Frantz Fanon, whose book The Wretched of the Earth, I think is read by so many people in the world. in a speech before the Congress of African writers, circa 1959, Fanon spoke :-

Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.

Is this happening to the people of Sarawak since Taib Mahmud took over some 30 years ago? Though not a colonial power in its true sense, Taib took over as the colonizing power. When he did, in the ensuing years as in a in the colonial situation, "dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonising power". In other words Taib did indeed become the new White Rajah. The once oppressed creature now adopts many of the values so detested by him and he now becomes the new oppressor. The once colonized person then "throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power".

UMNO should have understood this, because it started with the same fired up idealism to get rid of colonizing power. It must understand that colonial exploitation and poverty drive the native more and more to open, organized revolt. The necessity for an open and decisive breach is formed progressively and imperceptibly, and comes to be felt by the great majority of the people. Those tensions which hitherto were non-existent come into being. International events, the collapse of whole sections of neo-colonial empires such as those exemplified by Tunisia and Egypt and the contradictions inherent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold the native's combativity while promoting and giving support to a new consciousness.

What took place since Taib took over was the imposition of autocratic rule of one man which led in turn the imposition of neo-colonial values. It was a mistake for Taib and others to imagine such imposition did not create repercussions. It did and now, we are reaping what we sowed.

Consider the Sarawak literary scene, written or oral. from being merely a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. They started or encouraged a new level of consciousness. The new literature can even be oral such as that started by Radio Free Sarawak.

What is the nature of such literature? Typically, this literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. From romanticism to combatism.

This is the development that is taking place in Sarawak at the moment. The widespread revolt against Taib and by extension against UMNO and BN because they support the perpetuation of Taib's colonial values, is really an expression of the collective will to be liberated.

Hence we find the themes behind the social expressions being altered; we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the colonising power. Taib's neo-colonialist mindset was perceptive enough to have encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. By giving outlets for such expressions including stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions, such articulations are in fact assimilated by the Taib's government in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere.

But as Taib is to find out, such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard.

While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.

What replaced the pliant and submissive mindset is the taking up, powerful articulations and clarification of themes which are typically nationalist. This may be properly called a literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the whole people to fight for their existence as a nation. It is a literature of combat, because it molds a new national consciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging open before it new and boundless horizons; it is a literature of combat because it assumes responsibility, and because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space.

Stories, epics and songs of the people - which formerly were filed away as set pieces are now beginning to change. The storytellers who used to relate inertepisodes now bring them alive and introduce into them modifications which are increasingly fundamental. There is a tendency to bring conflicts up to date and to modernise the kinds of struggle which the stories evoke, together with the names of heroes and the types of weapons.

The storytellers, who were once stereotyped and tedious to listen to, completely overturned their traditional methods of storytelling and the contents of their tales. Their public, which was formerly scattered, becamecompact.

The people of Sarawak are now serious people and must be treated befittingly. The people of Sarawak, mainly the natives are at an important phase of their struggle which is to inject meaning into it. What can we learn from it?

A struggle which mobilises all classes of the people and which expresses their aims and their impatience, which is not afraid to count almost exclusively on the people's support, will of necessity triumph.

So why do we 'condemn' UMNO? Because now it is time to denounce certain Pharisees. By perpetuating the rule of the new colonial masters, we are in fact standing on the side of the oppressors. We, who started as genuine nationalists have now become retarded nationalists denying others a right to attain that national consciousness. We have to set our mistakes aright. By siding with Taib, we are making the fatal mistake of treating the expression of liberation by Sarawak as just transitory. That can prove to be our own undoing.

Of course those who are forever boxed-in their assumed self-righteous thinking will continue to support and abet the rule of people like Taib Mahmud. And they will forever condemn our continued criticisms as merely the activities of a person embittered for being dropped as candidate.

Posted by sakmongkol AK47