Merdeka
Minda Melayu!
(Liberate The Malay Mind!)
Merdeka Tanah Melayu! “Freedom for the Malay Land!”
That was
our rallying cry in the first half of the last century. That culminated in our nation’s
independence from British colonial rule in 1957. With independence came the
freedom to chart our own course. Through that precious gift, we achieved much.
We can be proud of having crossed numerous milestones and accomplished many
goals, some of which we would not have even dared aspire to had we remained
under colonial rule. Such are the promises and rewards of freedom.
By no means
were those goals and rewards assured. Today, many in Asia and Africa yearn for
what they consider (and with valid reasons) to be their good old days under
colonialism. To them, independence became (and continues to mean) not freedom
to pursue their dreams but brutal lawlessness and endless nightmares. To them,
merdeka is overrated.
Malaysians
need to be reminded of this harsh reality every so often, not to gloat but as a
warning that things could easily have gone the other way for the nation.
Malaysia could have been another Rwanda or Sri Lanka, wrecked with deadly
sectarian strife. Those countries have been independent too, some for longer
periods than Malaysia, and each fearlessly proud of their freedom. Increasingly
however, their pride is becoming hollow.
The
colonials oppressed us socially, culturally and for more than a few, also physically
and mentally. Our culture was denigrated and our faith pushed aside. Our
language was belittled if not ignored while our brave leaders who dared speak
out were imprisoned or banished. The colonialists were interested only in
exploiting our land, while our ways and society fascinated only their linguists
and anthropologists, quite apart from their eccentrics with their voyeuristic
curiosity for things exotic. Despite all that we survived. Indeed, we went
beyond; we ultimately prevailed and became independent.
Today we
may be free from colonial rule but we have willingly let ourselves be entrapped
mentally, this time by forces of our own making. We have let our culture be our
oppressor, and we are imprisoned by our religion. Our chauvinistic pride in our
language traps us from learning new ones, thus handicapping us in this global
age. Worse, by willfully wrapping ourselves in our national language we have
also consciously imprisoned our minds.
The
banality of our leaders’ corruption is now beyond our rage. When they are not
engrossed in enriching themselves at our expense, they are busy degrading us.
They belittle us at every opportunity for not measuring up to the standards
they have set for us. They however, conveniently disregard or are otherwise
contemptuous of those standards and values. Conditioned by the dictates of our
culture, we remain loyal to them.
If those irritants
are not enough, we are also being strangled by the rigidity, crudity and
intrusiveness of our laws; laws that are of our own making, or more correctly
that which our leaders have created and imposed upon us. As for our current system
of educating our young, far from liberating those precious young minds, our
schools and universities actively entrap them.
Then there
is the economy. Malaysia is rich with abundant natural resources and spared
nature’s many calamities. Yet Malays are increasingly marginalized. All the
socio-economic indices are not in our favor; worse, they are deteriorating with
alarming rapidity.
There was a
time when we were active in trade and commerce. That was how Islam came to us.
Malacca, then the center of our civilization, was a blossoming entrepôt port,
located in the protected waters in the path of the prevailing trade winds.
Today, rent-seekers, pseudo-entrepreneurs, and the various government-linked
companies (GLCs) define our “engagement” in commerce. Our capitalists are not
the genuine variety, rather what Yoshihara Kunio termed as “ersatz
capitalists.” We have our own term, Ali Baba “businessmen.” The quotation marks
are unnecessary as that expression is now a permanent part of our lexicon.
We are hooked
on special privileges like drug addicts their illicit fixes; we have been
indoctrinated to believe that our very survival depends on them. We fail to
sense that these privileges are but burdens impeding our very progress and
dragging us down. Instead we have been programmed to view them as floaters
without which we would have long ago been underwater. Our leaders have
convinced us, and in turn themselves of this myth; hence we clamor for more
privileges and ever-increasing “special rights!” Our struggle then focuses
solely on that: achieving more and ever
generous privileges, subsidies and bailouts.
Those are
the perceptions we have of the world and of ourselves. We plan our actions and
react to unfolding events based on those views. That is the self-narrative we
have crafted. We imagine our future based on that, and we do not like that
future at all. Our fear of it makes us hold on even more tightly to what we
have today, and then in a mistaken belief that our very survival depends on
those privileges, we demand even more. And the destructive downward spiral
accelerates until we are thrown into an uncontrollable vortex.
Things need
not have to be that way. We cannot change the current reality; those barnacles on
our society’s hull are as obvious to us as to others. We can however, change
our perception. Once we have done that, we will begin to see the world as
others do. We can then appreciate what had been obvious to others all along,
that is, those barnacles on our vessels are not keeping us afloat. Far from
that; they effect a heavy drag. Once we realize that we can then begin to aggressively
get rid of them as they have now become tightly encrusted upon and fast making
themselves a part of us.
We have to
remove our blinders so we can view reality under varying shades and angles of
light. Only then could we see the big elephant in the room in its entirety, and
not be trapped by the individual assessments of blind leaders groping its
various parts. Then we could appreciate and understand the beast in all its
beauty, totality, and yes, complexity. There will be disquieting disequilibrium
initially as old certitudes get mercilessly demolished. That could be
humiliating, and humility is a very good place to start the learning process.
Who knows, with greater understanding we might even be able to tame the
elephant and make it work for us by using its might to do the heavy lifting.
A free mind
is a prerequisite for us to see the world as it is and not as what we may
imagine it to be or what others tell us it is. Staying the course would condemn
us and future generations to the roles others have assigned for us, and we
would be perpetually at their mercy. Such a destiny and fate should haunt us;
hence the need to be obsessed with liberating our minds. Sans a free mind, we condemn ourselves and future generations to be
Pramoedya’s Sabuw and Inas.
Next: The Current
Malaysian Ship of State
Adapted from the author’s book, Liberating The Malay Mind, published by ZI Publications, Petaling Jaya, 2013. The second edition was released in January 2016.
