The recent furor caused by the Discovery Channel's mistaken insertion
of the Balinese Pendet dance into a TV spot for Malaysia has reopened
an old wound of Indonesians, who believe Malaysian has repeatedly
stolen Indonesian cultural heritage, including the song "Rasa
Sayange", the angklung, and the Reog Ponorogo dance, among others.
For most Indonesians, that the Malaysian government can claim these
things is bewildering. Regular Indonesians would undoubtedly associate
these three intangible cultural items with three different origins:
"Rasa Sayange" is Ambonese/Maluku, the angklung is Sundanese, and the
Reog Ponorogo is Javanese.
Most Malaysians, including the government of Malaysia, however, fail
to see these as being of different cultural lineage. They lump them as
belonging to Malay (Melayu) culture.
Malay culture is considered by Indonesians in reference to the dances
of Lilin, Randai and Serampang Dua Belas, and has no direct connection
to the Javanese gamelan, the Reog or the angklung. It is directly
associated with the traditions and customs of the ethnic group within
the boundary of the Malay peninsula. Malaysians seem to see a
different boundary for Malay culture. Why is this?
Knowledge and narratives of local culture in Indonesia are developed
in association with ethnic-based regional boundaries. They are
endorsed by the state and they are part of nation building.
From elementary school, Indonesian kids learn about national heritage
by memorizing the names of dances, folk songs and visual
representations of traditional costumes.
The practice of documenting and selecting material artifacts of local
cultures is part of the larger political process of inclusion that
stresses nationalism and the national unity of Indonesia. Selective
preservation of regional and/or local art forms, in constructing the
national culture, is therefore part of the politics of exclusion.
Recognizing this pitfall, however, the ways in which local culture is
framed in Indonesia are much less crude than in Malaysia. It is still
assigned and identified with a certain cultural context/geographical
(of origin). While being partial and reductionist, multifarious
contexts and diverse locales still have some space in the narrative of
Indonesian national culture.
Malaysia adopts a different route in approaching its national and
local cultures. The modern nation-state of Malaysia frames national
culture by clustering cultural artifacts into the Malay, Chinese,
Indian and indigenous tribe (orang asli) cultures. The term Malay here
differs from that of Indonesia, and refers to and is influenced by
several concepts.
First, as enacted in the term "Malay is Muslim, Muslim is Malay", it
is a form of ethno-religion. It is entwined with the concept of ethnic
nationalism that has become today's Malaysia's dominant state-religion
relations in which the state is fused to a particular ethnic group and
religion functions as a signifier of ethnic identity.
Any Javanese, Acehnese or other Indonesian who migrated to Malaysia
will be classified as Malay and are expected to be Muslim.
Chinese-Indonesians, though, can box themselves as Chinese, thus do
not have to be Muslim.
Second, it is used in association with the Malay race (bangsa Melayu)
instead of the Malay ethnicity (suku Melayu).
This concept originated in Blumenbach's racial classification system,
which divides the world's races into the Caucasian/white race, the
Mongolian/yellow race, the Malayan/brown race, the American/red race
and the Negroid/black race. His skull-based concept has been rejected
by many anthropologists who recognize the enormous complexity of
classifying races.
He considered the inhabitants of Southeast Asia, including the
Marianas, the Philippines, the Malukus, Sundas and Pacific Islands as
Malayan. Blumenbach wrote, "Malay variety. Tawny-colored; hair black,
soft, curly, thick and plentiful; head moderately narrowed; forehead
slightly swelling; nose full..."
The concept of the Malay race is also a historical heritage of
colonialism. European planters and British officials in Malaysia were
keen to obtain laborers from the Dutch East Indies because they were
regarded as being better suited to the climate and would assimilate
more easily with the local Malays.
Indonesian migrants were viewed as originating from the same racial
stock as the Malays, regardless of ethnicity. In early colonial
Malaysia, the Straits Settlements censuses of 1871 and 1881 both
listed "Malay, Achinese, Andamanese, Boyanese, Bugis and Javanese"
separately.
In the 1891 census, however, there were major structural changes in
the classification of ethnicities. The 48 different ethnicities were
sorted under the major (hierarchical) classifications of "European and
American, Eurasian, Chinese, Malays and other Natives of the
Archipelago, Tamils and other Natives of India, and Other Races".
The creation of the category "Malay and other Natives of the
Archipelago" and the inclusions of the various ethnicities in it
contributed toward formalizing the boundaries of Malay-ness. The
modern nation-state Malaysia cultivates this heavily politicized
classification by clustering Malaysians into Malays, Chinese, Indians
and indigenous tribes.
Tracing the origin of the term Malay as used in Malaysian context, we
thus can understand that the Malaysian version of Malay is more a
product of political reconstruction (of colonialism and a modern
ethnic nationalism) and is rooted in the politics of race and identity
rather than the geographical boundary of origin.
As people move around globally, cultures flow in all directions.
Tracing the histories and origins of culture is thus always a
complicated task. Lumping together various artifacts into one Malay
culture whose boundary is heavily politicized is certainly not the
most plausible method to complete the task. It fails to recognize the
complexity of the cultures of the archipelago, thus removing them from
their multifarious contexts and locales and uprooting these cultures
from the people who shape and are reshaped by them.
As for Indonesia, it is time to recognize and appreciate local
cultures not by treating them as symbols to justify unity and
diversity, but by supporting and caring for the people who work
tirelessly in preserving and maintaining these cultures.
