When Merdeka was granted half a century ago, we inherited a number of items of unfinished business, the most critical of which was the urgent necessity to create a united Malayan nation and, soon afterwards, a Malaysian nation.
The late Tom Harrison, the famous curator of the Sarawak Museum, described Malaysia as “a tangle of peoples” in an article published in the Malaysian Outlook, a small journal I edited in Australia in 1963, in a fit of patriotism. “Konfrontasi” was in full swing then, and, given the dangerously unpredictable and volatile behaviour of Bung Karno of Indonesia, our future as a nation was by no means assured.
Harrison was not thinking so much about the Malays, Chinese and Indians of the Malay peninsula, but rather the often forgotten peoples making up the many different tribal and ethnic groups with their many different customs, religious beliefs and languages inhabiting Sabah and Sarawak. Almost overnight, they found themselves the citizens of a new and, to them, somewhat vague political creation called Malaysia. The Kadazan Dusuns, Bajaus, Punans, Penans, Kayans, Muruts and various others, I fear, still remain very much outside our consciousness, even after more than four decades of Malaysia. Need I say more about this serious lapse of memory? What national unity are we talking about without them?
Continue reading “Some unfinished business: Untangling the peoples of Malaysia”