Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 13 October 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
What is 1MDB?
LOL

I have no idea.

Dear Kam,
Wait, what? Did somebody say vernacular schools should be abolished? Did I hear that right?
OMG

Once again some Umno members have called for the various vernacular schools to be abolished and be replaced with a single-stream system. The argument being that, well, blah, blah, blah. Assuming that the idea is meant to be taken seriously, then it is a hopelessly silly idea and it would be reneging on one of the fundamental bargains forged between our various communities at the time of Independence. If the argument is for better “national unity”, then abolishing vernacular schools would obviously do the exact opposite.

What is national unity? Is it an image where everybody looks and sounds exactly the same? That’s not Malaysia, never has been and never will be. Malaysian history has led to the fortunate convergence of many streams and unity has been found in its diversity. That is Malaysian history; it can be found in inter-connected relationships, mutual respect and in the babble of languages. Abolishing vernacular schools would be a revolutionary and fundamental break with our history, with our deep shared past. It’s a silly idea.

I recently spent a week in Penang. I stayed in the heart of George Town’s Little India as it prepares for Deepavali. I tried to imagine what a foreigner might think Malaysia is from the exclusive vantage point of Little India and after a few days, I think the foreigner would have to conclude that Malaysia is 85% Indian but he would be scratching his head trying to understand why there is a road named Armenian Street.

When walking along the streets of George Town, I got into conversation with an older Indian man whose first words to me were, “This place is a mess!” as we both struggled to find an unimpeded route along the five-foot way (newspapers from the 1890s complained about how five-foot ways were blocked by traders’ goods, so nothing has changed there). He turned out to be of a rare Zoroastrian descent, which meant that a very, very long time ago, his forebears had escaped persecution in Persia and moved to British-administered Bombay before moving again to British-administered Penang. Perhaps not his forebears but members of his community had arrived in Penang in the 1800s as entertainers with a new form of theatre called Wayang Parsi, performing comedies and dramas from the Thousand and One Nights. They were immensely popular in the region, their style influencing Komedie Stamboel in Java (who performed in Malay, not Javanese), and it became the travelling Bangsawan troupes here. I read about a Bangsawan (therefore Malay language) version of Hamlet where the actor spoke the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy into a telephone, which for me symbolises our hybridity in one snapshot. And the audience was Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Sumatran, Indian and even European. Bangsawan is not performed anymore but its influence can still be seen in the over-the-top acting style of a Malay movie and in the enduring popularity of Bollywood movies.

In the middle of George Town, trying to avoid traffic and the blistering sun, my newfound friend pointed out that within a hundred yards of where we stood there was a mosque, a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple and a Christian church. Where else in the world, he asked, could you find that? Maybe there is somewhere else but I can’t think where.

Penang is not a unique aberration in the Malaysian landscape. Versions of it can be found throughout the land, and for centuries, Penang was the gateway to Malaya. My mother, born in Wales, docked in Penang when she first arrived in 1957. She and my father were met by his family who had travelled up from Kuala Kangsar to greet them. It was my father’s first time back in Malaya after several years spent working in London. My father’s family had absolutely no problem with him marrying a non-Malay — none whatsoever. All they demanded was that they conduct a proper Perak-style Muslim wedding ceremony. After that, and after wilfully turning a blind eye to the fact that my parents had obviously already been cohabiting for some time, my mother was welcomed into the family.

If “national unity” is everybody looking the same and sounding the same, then I just don’t see it in our nation’s historical record and I certainly don’t see it in my family’s history. What I do see is hybridity, diversity, symbiosis, learning from each other, respecting each other. Basically, I see the fundamental tenets of civilised behaviour.

When I got back to KL, I had to collect a package from a Poslaju office. The room was very full as we all waited for our parcels. The young man who was calling out the names had an amused look on his face because each name was surprisingly complicated and hard to identify. With each name I was wondering what kind of Malaysian is attached to that kind of name? And then there would be some confusion when the IC name didn’t match the name on the address, because not all of us choose to go by our IC names. In that room was the immense diversity of Malaysia with our names denoting ancient cultural journeys through India, Europe or Arabia and then through towns in Peninsular Malaysia or Borneo. It was exhausting trying to picture all these journeys at the same moment.

And then he called my name, which was the first “normal” sounding name (even though it is Arabic, and I’m not an Arab). But then the young man looked at me, looked at my IC, looked at the name on the parcel and nothing seemed to match. Should I tell him that my mother is from Wales? That following an old Chinese superstition I was given a new name as an infant to fool any evil spirits, a name that is not on my IC? I didn’t have to bother because obviously the young man knew that just about anything is possible in Malaysia. He just found it amusing. And so did I.

Reprinted with the kind permission of