On Merdeka, the nation-state, the Brookes, and endo-colonialism

by Bunga Pakma

Merdeka Day 2009 comes in under a cloud.  In one sense literally—the Haze creeps back in though damped by the rains of the past week.  Figuratively, what could be gloomier than the cloud of events we have been enduring since July?  We are no closer to finding out the circumstances of poor Mr. Teoh’s death at this point in the investigation than at its beginning.  More people than myself recognize in this delay a tried and true tactic in the organized burying of truth.

Malaysia has been publicised around the globe for one bigot’s decision to have a Muslim woman caned for drinking beer. No, she didn’t get totally pissed, rev up her Pajero, and skid into a crowded night-market and kill 30 people. It is a peculiarity of Malaysian justice that it likes to make major examples out of petty offences.

Many Penans are starving.  The government has reacted with denial and a studied neglect.  What else is to be expected of them?  They are trying their hardest to kill the Penans anyway.  And this is a time when we’re supposed to show pride in our country?  I don’t need Merdeka Day, flags, marching, big-shots on daises, and stupid songs to be proud of this land and its people.  I stand with Mark Twain who said, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

Those whose interest is exercising, maintaining, or acquiring power over other people expect the rest of us to regard nation-statehood self-evident as the highest of Goods. Nationalism is an industrial-sized can of worms I do not wish to open.  Many thick books have been written about what a nation-state is, when the concept came into being, what social engineering is required to form a nation-state and keep it together.

All of these questions are complex, and matter for endless debate.  It’s enough to say that nation-states are a lot more artificial than their founders and rulers would like people to believe.  In the past two decades we have seen nation-states that we thought would outlast at least our lifetimes fall into pieces almost at a touch.  Consider the mighty Soviet Union. Yugoslavia’s dissolution led to much bloodshed.  Many African nations are merely lines on the map, and violence sweeps regardless over borders.

Peninsular Malaysians were overjoyed to see the British leave, and they had reason, if I read the matter aright.  Without actually massacring people, the Brits committed all the usual imperialistic outrages and mistakes.  The object of a colony was to be a source of raw materials for the “mother” country, and a market for its products, crudely, a kind of economic “protection” racket or “company store” scheme, patently unjust and humiliating.  When the Brits couldn’t turn the Malays into cheap labour for their plantations, they imported it.  A lot of Brits were stuck up.  Perhaps they felt obliged or permitted to be so in a native society so strongly feudal, but that’s no excuse.  There’s still enough resentment 52 years after independence that the “White Peril” can be wheeled out on occasion to rouse indignation and zeal for the régime.

Not so in Sarawak.  I was still young and unaware when the Brits departed.  In my maturity I have met several who stayed on, or returned to settle in Sarawak.  They are ordinary members of the community like everyone else.  I’ve met Peace Corps and VSO volunteers who come to visit where they taught school in the 60s and renew friendship with their old students.  Some of these latter are now at the top of successful careers.  They are affectionately grateful to their old cikgu’s, and the teachers (all getting on in years) are proud as can be of their students.  Former missionaries and veterans of Konfrontasi have come back and retired in Sarawak.  An old engineer spends over half his year here.  One of his reasons is that he has outlived everyone he knew in England, and all his friends are Sarawakians.  Who are his friends? People who used to work under him when he directed the building of Sarawak’s first trunk-road. Now they sit together and talk.

Old folks have told me many stories of the helpfulness, or amusing foibles, of Tuan So-and-So. These former DO’s and Residents have passed away.  But a great-great-grandson of Rajah Charles, Jason Brooke, came for a visit.  In the papers he described how cordially many Sarawakians welcomed him.

Semenanjung-ites are not likely to show the same esteem to a descendent of Swettenham, Clifford, or Birch. I dwell on this striking difference in attitudes towards orang puteh because it points to a radical difference between the natures of Malaya and Sarawak.  First, Sarawakians have always taken a relaxed attitude towards race.  There are far too many races in Sarawak and if Sarawakians made a big deal out of race, they wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.  Second, Sarawak was never a European colony, except, and in a merely technical sense, for less than twenty years.

Call James Brooke all the names you please, but understand that one name you can’t call him is colonialist.  He became Rajah entirely legally by a free grant of the Sultan of Brunei.  Neither he nor his successors did any of the things that colonizers do.  The Brookes banned foreign plantations from Sarawak.  They did not snatch land but encouraged the natives to develop small-holdings on their own lands.  In this they were so successful that when rubber was introduced and became a world economic necessity 100 years ago, Ibans in the Second Division planted rubber and grew so wealthy that they were lending money to shopkeepers in town.

In Kuching, businessmen such as Ong Ewe Hai and his son Tiang Swee carried on trade with Singapore so prosperous that they had to buy a steamship. From the beginning to the end of the raj Sarawak grew economically, slowly but steadily.  Look at Ooi Keat Gin’s Of Free Trade and Native Interests. The Great Depression shows up on the graph of growth as little more than a blip.

On the social side, respect for the natives was strictly enforced. A white man who treated a Sarawakian with insolence could expect to be sent home on the next boat.

Sure, Brooke rule had a downside we could talk about all day.  Charles Brooke was constantly making war against Dayaks who considered killing people for their heads to be their sacred human right.  The Brooke raj never had enough money to provide education or health-care.  But its gravest flaw was that it was that rarest of all forms of government, a truly benevolent autocracy.  Ordinary people did not have to think about politics, and when Brooke rule came to an end, the people had no experience of the responsibilities and perils of governing themselves.

The Japanese came and were driven out. Rajah Vyner dropped his country like a boy bored with his game. British bureaucrats in Whitehall reneged on the promise of full independence for Sarawak in a cynical cold-war move.  Independence came as independence in Malaysia, and it was not long before a new type of colonialism established itself.  This is what some have called endo-colonialism, in which an élite treats its own population as a resource to be exploited.

Who does not know the rest?  Yet as SKY has pointed out, once nations are formed, they almost never separate again into their parts without extreme violence, destruction, and misery. Let us hope a Merdeka Day wish that in time to come the true patriots will grow strong and restore our sadly battered liberty and equity.