Sri Lalang and the Ethnic Issue

Published April, 2006

My guise is up as soon as I reach into my pocket. It’s just too Lonely Planet-perfect to resist: the smoky coals, the roasting satay ayam, the Malay man’s skilful fanning wrist. As I gingerly ease the camera out into the open, two young girls behind the stall shriek and take cover, suddenly self-conscious of the foreigner in their midst. After purchasing five satay sticks for one ringgit, I quickly wander off to explore another part of the bustling Friday night market where, as long as I don’t attempt any verbal communication, my Chinese blood can temporarily bleed into the crowd, passing me off as simply another local.

I linger with unnecessary caution at Sri Lalang’s main intersection, a crossing traveled more commonly by motorbike than by car. Helmet-less mothers, sometimes with as many as three child passengers: two toddlers up front against the handles and the oldest clutching on from behind, chug by dutifully. Most of the storefronts have closed up, leaving oil palm bunches out front for collection and the quiet rumble of Cantonese telenovelas and buzzing games from Japan to fill the warm dusk. Laughter erupts from a couple of weathered Chinese men in wifebeaters, sipping pulled tea in the coffeehouse of a tired-looking Malay sporting a black songkok, the rotund hat commonly worn by Muslims throughout Malaysia.

I notice how much more overtly race-conscious this past few weeks here has made me. Sectatranism dominates political debate and social discourse throughout this small island state with even greater command than it does in the United States. There, political correctness has only managed to stifle and elongate discussion (largely through clarificatory qualifiers repeated unto meaningless redundancy, such as “Now I’m not a racist, but…”) on issues such as affirmative action and poverty measurement, rather than lend the clarity and dignity of debate which may have been its original intention. In Malaysia, the Anti-Sedition Act is well-known for its selective use, often employed to prevent criticism of contentious state policies which selectively target bumiputeras (non-Chinese and non-Indians) as recipients of a variety of benefits. In the former, minority rights are the target of liberal protection; in the latter, majority (Malay) rights are guarded by an incumbent party whose platform is rooted in ethnic assistance.

Sri Lalang, whose name starts off sounding like that of another small Asian country but finishes with a certain Sino-lyricism, has a short but interesting history. It was founded as a concentration camp of sorts for Chinese by the British during the “Emergency,” the 12 year long civil war between Chinese communist guerrillas entrenched deep in the interior jungle and the waning British authorities. In its original incarnation, the village was fenced off, and those leaving and returning to the compound had their possessions inspected to ensure no food or goods were being smuggled out to support the revolutionary “terrorists”, who had been fighting since prior to the departure of the Japanese following World War II for an independent republic. Even bicycle tyre tubes were routinely checked in order to ensure that air was not being replaced with grains of rice.

My mother reminisces occasionally about how the leftists would come marching around the village, singing catchy anti-imperialist songs and encouraging the children to follow them – a “Little Red Pied Pipers” fairytale mash-up, one might say. Some of the more adventurous children would take up the offer, joining the others in order to combat capitalist oppression before the Federation crushed what little resistance was left. Perhaps because her father was a proud member of the anti-insurgent Home Front, my mother focused her time on school prefecture, tapping rubber and the acquisition of a bachelor’s degree overseas, eventually leaving Sri Lalang far behind.

I recently returned to the village without her. A quick motorbike tour of its small streets provided a microcosmic insight into the current state of the country’s race relations. New low-income Malay settlements were popping up on land previously used for rubber plantation, augmenting the previously Chinese-dominated town. The distinction is not difficult to see: their homes use slightly different architecture (though the same concrete and stucco material) and lack the red lanterns and altars which adorn practically every Chinese home. Prayer houses and mosques can be found nearby, rather than Buddhist temples that Chinese women could be seen making morning offerings at. Though I witnessed a couple of Indian siblings playing soccer on one street, the majority of them can still be found in a separate Tamil settlement across the highway.

Ethnicity in Malaysia is a fascinatingly complex beast. Whereas the post-native populating of the United States can be spaced reasonably accurately through a series of events (British settlement, Slavery, Irish potato famine, etc.), the same cannot be said of Malaysia. The distinction between the bumiputeras (“Sons of the soil,” meaning Malays and Natives) and the Chinese and Indians may be validated by ethnicity but certainly not through chronology: swathes of Chinese-Malaysians arrived through trade relations long before many current bumiputeras arrived from other reaches of the Southeast. At the birth of its federation, the Chinese actually comprised Malaysia’s largest ethnic group, until Singapore’s secession in 1965, selective immigration and declining birth rates landed the Malays in the lead. Such ambiguities comprise a large part of the reason why legislation which quite obviously privileges Malays—95 percent of government contracts, for example, are distributed to Malays—ahead of minority groups is greatly resented by the remainding 40 percent of the population.

Whilst being carted about by one overly-generous set of relatives and family friends after the other, I found the parallel dimensions of their Chinese existence quite striking. A Chinese in Malaysia may be born in a Chinese Maternity Hospital, educated entirely in private Chinese-language schools, eat and shop at Chinese businesses, read and consume exclusively Chinese media and observe only Buddhist practices before finally being buried, naturally, in a Chinese public cemetery. Malay need only be spoken during brief public exchanges, whilst English remains almost exclusively the language of science and foreign business. It is only when taking a break from my well-intentioned but cloying family that I was able to observe life outside of this transplanted Sino existence, wandering through mosques and Hindu temples in Kuala Lumpur between delicious roti snacking in Malay hawker stalls, admiring the graceful movement of the women and smiling at the oddly endearing veil-to-head-size ratio of pint-sized schoolgirls.

It wasn’t always the case that ethnic groups lived in such separated parallel dimensions, walking the same streets but in virtually different planes as they do now. I recently visited a street in the old capitol of Melaka where two temples, a mosque and a Tamil church laid practically beside each other. It seemed a suitable symbol of a pre-Federation Malaysia that my parents’ childhoods can harbor only nostalgia for at this point. My mother played amongst Malays and Indians and my father the same, but with Kadazans and other indigenous children thrown into the mix. When inviting Malay neighbors over for dinner, they simply made sure not to cook pork separately. It was a multiculturalism through small town practicality: folks tolerated each other because they had little reason not to, nor to interrupt their mutually beneficial economic relations.

This changed dramatically following the ascent of the United Malay National Organization (UMNO) party to national leadership. Islam became the national religion, Bahasa Malaya the formally recognized language. Malays were by law Muslims, the Chinese and Indians classified as “minority groups” and a series of legislation involving quotas and business schemes were introduced, supposedly to “pull up” the bumiputeras. Perhaps because of this, minorities banded together, setting up private institutions or even moving overseas where state ones denied them access, and marrying amongst their own rather than face forced conversion. I find it sad yet understandable that the Chinese and Malays in Sri Lalang socialize at separate cafes on the weekends, though see glimpses of good will in the oft-colour blind commerce of the weekly market. I took hope in the “plural society” speeches my cousin’s classmates made during a school competition, though their lofty assertions also struck me as even hoarier than the naive multicultural grandstanding that hides far deeper problems for Aboriginal communities across Australia, and Dutch-Muslim relations in Western Europe.

Prime Minister Badawi has made claims that his moderate Islamic vision for Malaysia will successfully equip it for a planned technological and industrialized leapfrog toward Western standards of living while remaining true to Malaysian moral and religious standards. In Sri Lalang, I found rows of new “garden” developments, where hardworking families were moving into Western-standard homes purchased on the back of years of honest hard work. I was reminded of something my 22 year-old cousin said to me quietly: “What’s the point of (sectarianism) anyway? We’re all Malaysian.” I think it’s even simpler than that. By keeping religion out of state affairs and focusing on a merit-based system of advancement, a lot of this current ethnic distancing could easily be closed. Rather than existing as an officially united but in practice segregated society of Malays, Chinese and Indians, the country could serve as a timely example of successful Asian development and moderate Islamic practice. Unfortunately, with a comfortably entrenched bumiputera electorate and meddling Malay elite, ethnic relations in towns such as Sri Lalang throughout the country will likely remain as segregated as at present for some time to come.

i) Malay: Melayu, referring to the ethnic group which currently comprises the majority in Malaysia, that is: not of Indian, Chinese, or “indigenous” descent
ii) Malaysian: A citizen of the state of Malaysia, referring to nationality. Ex: Chinese-Malaysian, Australian-Malaysian, etc.