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MALAYOLOGY DI NUSANTARA
ESSAY SERIES NO. 1
OLEH JAMAAL BIN JAVIER
AN INVITATION TO PATH-BREAKING RESEARCH WORK:
THE NEED FOR CLARIFICATION OF THE TERM “MALAY”
THE NEED FOR CLARIFICATION OF THE TERM “MALAY”
Abstract:
This brief article invites researchers into the field of MALAYOLOGY, the study of the Malays of NUSANTARA, an academic-wise relatively unknown and almost non-existent area of study. Is the profusion of vague and/or ambiguous identity-terms a sign of defect or weakness? The very root-word of the field of study engenders confusion and needs analysis. The author needs no further neologisms and seeks only clarification. Confusion should fire curiosity and intelligent inquiry. The endeavor should open avenues for ground-breaking research that is basically historical in nature but also requires "social scientific" field work. This offers new opportunities for scholarly discourse and exchange.
One oft-heard phrase or remark common among many educated so-called Filipinos" of today is something to the effect that they are basically "Malay". Although Malays are normally identified with the modern nation-state called "Malaysia", their fundamental hallmark is their religion, Islaam: Malays are Muslims and Islaam in this part of the world is primarily identified with them by the other members of the community of nations. It is said that in Malaysia the Bahasa phrase "Masuk M'layu" is identical with "convert to or enter the fold of Islaam". In this Malaysian, or better, Malayan sense, the term "Malay" has a strongly religious connotation. However, in what has come to be called the “Philippines”, what is more popular among the Filipinos is the word’s racial connotation - that Filipinos are, like the Orang M'layu, black-haired, brown-skinned, round-eyed native Austronesian inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago and so on and so forth. Apparently, the word "Malay" has a religious meaning for most Malaysians whereas Filipinos take it to be a racial term. Now, which is which? Is "Malay” about race or is it about religion? Thus, "Malay" is an ambiguous term. And it needs to be clarified by MALAYOLOGISTS, if they value the very foundation of their area of study or field of knowledge.
Apart from the Orang M'layu of Peninsular or West Malaysia, another sizable group of people chiefly identified as "Malays" are the Bruneians, the native inhabitants and, as per international and national laws, legal citizens of the Sultanate of Brunei in Borneo island. It is most likely that they would take the term to mean like what their Malaysian neighbor-brothers do, for the very principle governing the Bruneian state is M'layu Islaam Beraja or Malay Muslim Monarchy. Brunei is a sovereign Muslim nation of Malays ruled by a Malay Muslim king who considers himself the paramount leader and proponent of the state religion, Islaam. Again, in this case, the term "Malay" is a religious word.
Now, who is correct? Is it the Filipinos, who are known to have endured some 400 years of identity-wrecking colonization by Spain, America and Japan, or their “blood-brothers” in the south from whom they allegedly had originated and had been torn asunder by white man’s colonialism in the not too remote past? Who has the legitimate right to be called or to call themselves “Malays”? Who uses the word correctly? Will Muslim Malaysians and Bruneians refer to brown native Christianized Filipinos, “Malay”? This is just one of the initial questions besetting an amateur researcher into MALAYOLOGY, the study of the MALAYs of NUSANTARA.
For the purpose of this brief essay, let us start with something definite or tractable. Given its general acceptance into ordinary, colloquial use, how did the term "Malay" become ambiguous? The source of ambiguity is traceable to the very origin of the word itself as used in popular language. It seems that the word in its inception was already not clear or well-defined. According to the standard account, the term "Malay" was first introduced and used by outsiders of NUSANTARA particularly by the Western Europeans, namely the British, to refer to the natives of Peninsular Malaysia. The word originated from the natives themselves but it was coined, popularized and applied by foreigners. The British in ruling over that part of the world had to deal with the Malays (i.e., Orang M'layu) of the Golden Chersonese peninsula and, having noticed the similarity if not identity in physical appearance of these natives to others in the neighboring islands of Sumatra and Borneo, applied the word as a blanket term for other similar peoples of the so-called "Malay Archipelago". Of course, subsequent studies, scholarly or otherwise, by the “Europeans” (an equally blanket term for Portuguese, Spaniards, English, French and Dutch – the Americans, Canadians, Australians were then still in the process of "creation") led to a better understanding of the inhabitants of the archipelago. They discovered that there existed still finer-grained distinctions between Patanis, Minangkabaus, Achehnese, Gayos, Bataks, Betawis, Banjars, Bugis, Makassars, Moluccans and so on - the nominalized “Malaysians” of the British Empire and the so-called “Indonesians” of the VOC (Dutch East Indies Company.) And in the "Philippine Archipelago", the Spaniards and Americans found out that the natives could be further distinguished, at least linguistically, into Ilocanos, Tagalogs, Bicolanos, Bisayans, Tausugs, M'ranaws and so on. The uninvited white colonizers from the continents of Europe and the Americas realized that, in the East Indies including the “P.I.”, they were dealing with a cornucopia of ethnicities, tribes, and nations whose cultures and languages were as diverse and distinct as they themselves were! The white Americans – actually migrant Europeans in a new continent, mistakingly called its native red skins as “Indians” believing that they were in India – when in fact, these New World inhabitants were simply not just Native Americans but could also be distinguished further into Cherokees, Sioux, Apaches, Comanches, Navahos, Seminoles and so on. [And maybe it was a case of simple political expediency that the Americans and Europeans agreed to clump together the "Southeast Asian” islanders into the four primary countries or nation--states of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines, all belonging to the ASEAN regional group. The ground-level complexity of NUSANTARA was too terroristic to ponder for the white masters way, way up in their seats of power!]
Despite its underlying vagueness and ambiguity, the term "Malay" has persisted and even flourished in the discourse of the natives of NUSANTARA most especially in the Philippines. And though decades if not a century-old [e.g., Philippine national heroes Jose Rizal and Apolinario Mabini were familiar with the word and used it in their writings], the term still rings a bell with most Filipinos who acquire some measure of pride whenever they use it in reference to themselves. Rizal was acclaimed by Palma as the "Pride of the Malay Race" (a racial term!). There is a new 21st century college in Laguna called “Malayan Colleges” (a la MCKK?) displaying Rizal in its school logo. In the 1950’s, the original “communists” of Malaya, who were actually “Chinese”, called themselves the anti-Japanese “Malayan Peoples Liberation Army”. It may come as a shock to Malay chauvinists that Rizal, their fancied pride, was a sangley, an Indio-Chinese mestizo even though, especially in early youth, he looked very racially "Malay"! In fact, he looked more Malay in physical appearance than UMNO's founder Tun Hussein Onn who is a mestizo Turk/Circassian, or Anwar Ibrahim, also a mestizo Chinese like Rizal and ‘Pak ‘Lah, or even Dr. Mahathir Mohamad who is a mestizo Indian!!! Of course, the four Malaysian leaders would all reject the appellation orang asing and publicly declare themselves as pure Malay! Shockingly (and comically!), the core Malay country of Malaysia apparently was never in its quite recent history truly led by a “pure Malay”! [This writer possesses some truly important eye-popping historic(al) facts concerning the matter but he is suspending its disclosure for the meantime.] It therefore will not come as a surprise that an official spokesman of the Sultanate of Sulu, a historically-genuinely Malay Kingdom whose leaders are related by blood to the Malay Muslim Sultanate of Brunei and Manila’s old Malay Rajahs once declared on MEDIA that “Malaysia is a chimera created by the British.”! I once hazarded to propose to an MNLF friend that, of all its leaders, Malaysia’s father Tunku Abdul Rahman was the pure Malay. He corrected me by revealing that the Tunku’s mother was, in truth and in fact, a Thai descended from Thailand’s monarchy!! (Now, in what confusing, chaotic New World Disorder have we found ourselves as aspiring researchers of MALAYOLOGY?!) One MORO author titles his book with the lofty (or airy?), "Aristocrats of the Malay Race". Both MOROS and INDIOS are deemed Malays or belonging to the same race though Moros are Muslims while Indios are either Christians or animists. And both have been involved as bitter antagonists in possibly what may be the longest struggle in the world: the so-called BANGSAMORO struggle in Mindanao island, a conflict which can be interpreted as or can take on the scale of a religious conflict. Globalists might consider it to be a CRUSADE by Christians against the Muslims in this part of the world, with Moros and Indios, though belonging to the same race, acting the proxy roles in an eternal religious conflict. The Moros take special pride in their having preserved their Agama Islaam, totally unlike their colonized blood-brothers who adopted the religion of their enemies and are now apparently acting as proxy of anti-Muslim “Crusader-Zionist” Westerners in the Muslim Malay World or Dunia M'layu. Undeniably, Moros are the paragon or exemplars of Malays in the Philippine archipelago. This is a claim with clear justification since, among the inhabitants of the Philippine Archipelago who are closest to the Malay World, it would be the Muslim Moros for they were and are still originally Muslims and this fact jives with the Bruneian and Malaysian Malay’s construal of the word as basically and essentially a religious referential term. Some Philippine government-promoted websites assert that the racial composition of the (Republic of the) Philippines is “80+% Christian Malays” and “5+% Muslim Malays” - clearly a racial reading of the term. And the Muslim Malays of the Philippine Archipelago refer to themselves as either "Moros" or "Filipino Muslims," depending on whether they are anti- (rebels/separatists) or pro-GRP (i.e., coopted by the government!)
All these pronouncements seem to confuse and deter rather than enlighten and invite or attract the reader to the field of MALAYOLOGY because not only is the ambiguity of the word "Malay" hereby laid bare and exposed but that other vague if not equally ambiguous terms like “Moro”, “Indio”, “Filipino”, “mestizo” and so on are introduced to further burden one’s vocabulary. Is MALAYOLOGY then simply a neologistic nonsensical play with words a la many newly-created, globalization-tailored university courses? What then should a researcher-Malayologist do given this initial haze (a la Sumatran or Kalimantan or even Khalifornian smoke from burning Bushes)? To a real intellectual, confusion should trigger curiosity and questioning and arouse intelligent inquiry which, in turn, should lead to methodical intellection and reflection and, finally, scholarly research work.
We have been mentioning Malaysians, Bruneians, and Filipinos and it seems we have forgotten or omitted another or the other big group of "Malays" (at least, that is how outsiders might call them) - the “Indonesians”. Indonesia is claimed to be the biggest Muslim country in the world counting some 200 million inhabitants. But the term “Indonesia” is derived neither from the language of (Muslim) Arabic nor even (NUSANTARAn) Bahasa but rather from (Orthodox Christian) Greek! The etymological root of the word is Indos + Nesos which means “Indian islands” in Greek. [NOTA BENE: GREEK and not even TURK!] So, going back to the original line of inquiry, what about the case of Indonesians - do they consider themselves as "Malays"? Are they Malays like Filipinos and Malaysians? Sad to say, but the answer is and this is the truth: Indonesians particularly the natives of Jawa island who politically dominate the country, whenever they hear the term "Malay", associate it with the natives of Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia. Years back, I once asked an Indonesian friend who was a graduate scholar in Manila about the Malays, as to who they were, and he told me that these were the natives residing along the "pantai" (beach) in Sumatra island. (He said that he was not Malay although he looked very much like one. In fact, he looked like a M’layu Betawi or even a Peninsular Malay!) So, to an average Indonesian especially one not coming from Sumatra, a Malay would be a native inhabitant residing along the coastlines of the islands of the Indonesian archipelago! But this conception is basically correct or true since the Malays of Sumatra are those natives living along the northern coastlines of the island. The Malays of Sumatra are chiefly identified with Indonesia’s Riau province, the area from whose bazaar lingo the basis of Indonesia’s national language was derived, and they have established cities like Palembang, Pekanbaru, and Lampung. In fact, according to standard literature, the so-called "Cradle of the Malays (or Malayan Civilization)" is Jambi, close to Riau, where the historic River Siguntang is situated. [This is the Indonesian version (?), of course, since Peninsular Malaysians will have this cradle in the northern state of Kelantan! Again, which which is which?] Also, it seems that there exists a rivalry as to who is more Malay between the Minangkabaus and the Riaus! And the Minangs, who have their own Negeri Sembilan state in Malaysia, are taking over Acheh’s long-standing claim as the “Serambi of Makkah”! [The rivalry is so similar to the one obtaining in Mindanaw between the M’ranaws of Ranaw and the Tausugs of Sulu as to who is more Muslim Moro that I am inclined to believe it is all part of a bigger divide-and-conquer strategy operating at ground-level.] Anyway, in the cosmopolitan capital of Jakarta, the group of people most correctly identifiable as “Malays” are the Orang Betawi (“Batavia” originated from Betawi?) who admittedly are true Malays originating from Sumatra or Peninsular Malaysia or even Borneo and who settled along the coast of Batavia or Jayakarta or Jakarta.
With all these mish-mash of facts and conflicting data and terminology, it appears we are sinking deeper into the quagmire of more confusion, contrary to what should be expected of a field of knowledge! To make matters worse, there exists another big group of people, also basically identifiable as "Malay" and orthodox-categorically “Indonesians”, this time from the island of Sulawesi, who played and continue to play an important role in the whole NUSANTARA: the BUGIS. [A personal note: When as an OFW working briefly in the holy city of Madinah al-Munawarah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and feeling a bit homesick, I took a walk around one of its malls looking for some familiar Southeast Asian face. For almost a whole week I had been seeing totally strange Arabic scripts and all swarthy, bearded Arab faces with a sprinkling of countenances from the Indian subcontinent. My homesickness did not last long for a welcome sight came along my way: I saw one Filipino-looking man, a denims-clad “Pinoy” strutting towards my direction. I enthusiastically greeted him “Kabayan!” and, to my complete surprise, he replied in Bahasa! It turned out that he was a Bugis working in the Kingdom as a family driver for an Arab family and on a brief visit to the holy place!] Indonesia’s vice-president Yusuf Kallah is a Bugis and so was the successor to then long-running Suharto, the brilliant (some say in Bahasa, “gila” (crazy!) B.J. Habibie, a super-bright German-educated technocrat with a Ph.D. in aeronautics who hails from Pare-Pare, Sulawesi. In physical appearance, the Bugis appear to this writer as some of the most truly “Malay-looking” natives of NUSANTARA, after having seen and made comparisons between others from Acheh, Minangkabau, Kelantan, Johore-Malaka, Jawa, Kalimantan and so on.
An average jet-setting citizen of the globe who holds the simple or simplistic view that archipelagic Southeast Asia is inhabited by Bruneians, Indonesians, Malaysians, and Filipinos who are all racially-homogeneous Malays is in for a gigantically global surprise. She is in deep ignorance of facts - anthropological, linguistic, sociological and even political, economic, religious, and historical! Broad and simplifying terms can lead to misconceptions and confusion. The NUSANTARA is one of the richest, most diverse and thus, identity-confusing places in the world. (Indonesians should be credited for the “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” slogan for their nation because it is only the Indian subcontinent that can rival Indonesia’s complexity as a political territory - a real challenge for unitary governance.) Lastly, as one final example of NUSANTARAN complexity: What they normally call "Malaysia" (minus the unwanted foreign guests like Indians, Chinese, Eurasians, and everyone else in-between) is in reality a multi-layered veneer of ethnically-diverse cultures, histories, and influences from the different parts of NUSANTARA: Acheh, Jawa, Minangkabau, Banjar, Kalimantan, Bugis-Makassar and others – all ethnically distinct sovereign peoples! And, in West Malaysia, there are Orang Suluks, M’lanaus and Sama Lauts and Badjaws to boot to further complicate matters! (Not to speak of the Orang Dampuans and/or those from Champa of old.) In the field of learning and education, one normally analyzes or breaks down a complex or complicated topic or subject matter into smaller, more manageable notions, a reduction to simple concepts and ideas. But MALAYOLOGY as presented here appears to be not a legitimate academic discipline but rather a field of chaos or disorder. Now, this is but the sign or indication of a “new” area of study. It simply demands new conceptual categories or schemes and terms - a real challenge for path-breaking research and original, creative thought.
So, is MALAYOLOGY just a hopeless task of facade- or myth-creation? Is it a mere exercise in futility for ex-colonial slaves seeking after some face-saving avenue of consolation and masquerading as a scholarly pursuit for school transferees or drop-outs? Not really. MALAYOLOGY is the (conspiratorially?) long-neglected and taken-for-granted study of a sizable division of the human race populating the dual oceanic realm termed by Europeans as “Oceania”, “Austronesia”, or “Malayo-Polynesia.” Those who yearn to discover and learn more about (a) people(s) who allegedly are some of the best maritime navigators of the world providing more than half of the globe's sailors and hard-working and reliable OFWs in the Middle East and East Asia and professional migrants in Europe and the Americas, who populate foreign lands not as exotic residents of exclusivist chinatowns or depressed ghettos but as well-integrated, law-abiding legal citizens. And, contrary to the Eurocentic claim that it was a 16th-century Portuguese explorer under the pay of a Spanish king who first circumnavigated the world, NUSANTARA has to offer none other than Enrique de Malacca [allegedly a Cebuano (or a Malayan, depending on whether the claimant is a Filipino or a Malaysian)], a generic Malay, as the rightful claimant to the title. Indeed, MALAYOLOGY is a field of study that is still in its infant stage. It offers scholars tremendous opportunities for original, pioneering intellectual work. Who knows if the reader, using only first-hand personal experiences, might be able make an original foundational contribution?
KEYWORDS: Dunia M’layu, Indio, Malay, MALAYOLOGY, Moro, NUSANTARA
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THIS IS AN UNFINISHED ESSAY (AN EXERCISE IN ESSAY WRITING IN ENGLISH HAR!: )
***PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE***
The brief essay above which I have given a copy to the Iranian Ambassador to the Philippines a few hours before in the occasion of their ASHURA is a compression of some of my ideas regarding Malays & Malayology... I always ask myself, WHY ARE THE GENERIC MALAYS SEEMINGLY OUT OF THE DISCOURSE OF GENUINE SCHOLARS/SCHOLARSHIP??? The rest of the world apparently know us as "Malaysians, Indonesian, Bruneians, Filipinos" etc etc... My question to the WORLD: WHY DON'T YOU HEAR IT FROM US?... I really feel we had and have been UNrepresented (and not even MISrepresented!!!)
I hope that this BLOG will introduce the intelligent reader to the field of MALAYOLOGY...
UMNP
