The TRUE MALAY identity

When Afrah Saldin took to the stage at the George Town Festival recently, her lilting voice and gait exuded every bit of the gentle charm that one expects of a traditional Malay songstress.

With her soothing, tremulous voice, Afrah serenaded the crowd with swaying renditions that bore the very character of Malay sounds like those of the "keroncong" – earthen, dreamy and melodious.

But what particularly made Afrah a centre of attention at the "Malam Melayu" musical show that evening was that while she is Malay, she is not from Malaysia.

Afrah is a Sri Lankan.

Her family is among the small community of Malays born and bred there, tracing their lineage within Sri Lanka for generations, and today speak the language in their own distinct, colloquial style.

Afrah and the Cape Malay band from South Africa, Desert Rose, who also performed at the show, represent a reality of Malay ethnography and history that is lost among most Malaysians today.

And in an environment where Malaysians have been brought up with a somewhat clichéd understanding of what it means to be Malay, encountering such kin from other surprising parts of Earth, cannot help but stir the essential query. Who really are the Malays and where do they come from?

The regimented definition of Malay

This quest for deeper understanding of the Malay identity is one that pure-bred intellectuals today are increasingly yearning to seek an answer for.

At 32, politician Zairil Khir Johari represents the youth within this movement who are seeking a genuine understanding of what constitutes being Malay.

"I too wish to understand more deeply our cultural heritage," said the CEO of Penang Institute and MP for Bukit Bendera at a related forum 'Arus Melayu' that was held here during the festival.

In the context of Malaysia, the question may be deemed to be resolved in view of the Federal Constitution which has already provided a definition of the Malay people – that they must profess Islam as religion, practise Malay custom and speak the Malay language.

According to Zairil, if one examines this official definition, it is very interesting because it is not at all related to a deeper concept of the race.

Instead, it represents a political concept that was designed to classify different ethnic groups as one cluster based on religion and language as common denominator, he said.

"However, if we trace the origin of this definition, we will find that it is actually sourced from the Malay Reservation Enactment 1913 which was legislated by the British government.

"Therefore, this definition of Malay that has been inherited can also be said to be a colonial concept that has appeared for bureaucratic convenience."

Embarrassingly enough, one wonders if this regimented definition of Malay would conflict with the understanding of Malay in other countries.

For in Malaysia, Javanese, Minang and Bugis people may be considered Malay. But this does not at all happen in Indonesia where Malay refers to a specific ethnic group or racial clan, Zairil noted.

"The Javanese people in Indonesia do not at any time consider themselves Malay like the Javanese people in Malaysia," he said.

More disconcertingly, a Malay from another country who is not Muslim cannot be considered a Malay in our country because he does not fulfil the condition for religion to be identified as part of the race, he adds. "However in Malaysia, Malay and Islam are interchangeable."

"Hence arises the problem of how the concept of Malay as a political definition can be consistent with the concept of Malay as an ethnic definition."

The roots of Malay culture

The search of where the culture comes from seems to have been more fulfilling for one thinker from an older generation – Muhammad Haji Salleh.

The 71-year old national laureate and revered poet has long been tracing the origins of the Malays.

In particular, he has travelled and chronicled the evolution of the "pantun" – the lyrical quatrain whose subtlety and power has been seen in the oral traditions of common folk and royalty alike across the entire Malay archipelago.

"The genius of Malay literature lies in the pantun," Muhammad told the forum. And it is from this tradition that he has come to surmise the origins of the language and the culture.

The early identity of the Malays is likely to have sprung from those who lived around the Melayu River in Jambi on Sumatra island, he said.

It was from here that they moved to Palembang, also in Sumatra, where the great Sri Vijaya empire thrived between the 7th century AD and the 13th century.

Intriguingly, Muhammad has reason to reckon that even before this occurred, the Malay language may have been practised in Borneo. This is because the earliest traces of the language have been found among the Selako people of western Borneo.

"How it came to Jambi and Palembang is a mystery," he said. "I venture that the pantun also comes from there."

It was perhaps from Sumatra that the early Malay migrations to what are now Pahang and southern Thailand, as well as Indrapura in present-day Cambodia, took place.

And subsequently, the diaspora over the centuries saw Malays spreading to Sulawesi, the Cocos islands, Nusa Tenggara Timur, the Christmas islands, and even to faraway outposts of the world like Sri Lanka, Surinam and South Africa.

No sense of the past

For Eddin Khoo, a moot point of this issue today is in prodding present-day Malaysian society to break through the typecast impression they have been fed with of our culture and history.

Khoo is the founder of Pusaka, a centre dedicated to traditional art forms such as wayang kulit, mak yong, main puteri and menora.

As an activist working to conserve many of these dwindling cultural disciplines, he has a heart-wrenching insight into how the modern world is letting slip from its grip many of humanity's intangible treasures.

For instance, he pointed to the writings of Tome Pires, the 16th century Portuguese traveller, who described the port city of Melaka of that time as a throbbing cosmopolitan place, an "emporium of spices" - and where at any given spot there were at least 90 languages being spoken.

Indeed, the diversity of people in this settlement, the sense of excitement, enthusiasm and adventure among those predecessors who occupied this land in that ancient time, is something Malaysians today cannot grasp.

"This is not the Melaka that we know or understand from our history textbooks today," said Khoo.

The poignancy of this scenario is reflected in Khoo's recollection of how his own Malay students, when he was once teaching in Universiti Malaya, had shown no significant sense of the past, nor a sense of who they are.

"You ask a Malay student what is your history, and they have no knowledge of their earlier generations, or their past to speak, nor are they interested," he lamented.

"There is no liberty given to the young. There is no space for freedom to search the self, given to the young."

One may be forgiven for pointing a tired finger at the overwhelming socio-political influence cast over society, forcing Malaysians to think of race in silos.

"In Malaysia when we speak of ethnicity, we speak of fortresses," he stressed. The Malays, the Indians and the Chinese are caught in such identity traps that they are unable to go out and explore themselves in unadulterated ways.

How severe is this cultural malaise? Have Malaysian Malays been chronically diverted from the original soul of their race?

Or are they just undergoing a course of social evolution that is part and parcel of any civilised people?

- FZ.com