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The emergence of a flourishing independent publishing industry in the last few years has gone hand in hand with a renewed interest in the art and craft of translation. Penang has an important place in the history of translation in South-East Asia and is well positioned at the forefront of a new wave of literary creativity. By: Gareth Richards and Izzuddin Ramli Transmitting Culture through Translation Translators are the unsung heroes of the literary world. Their products are widely enjoyed and consumed but their names are, perhaps for obvious reasons, less renowned than those of writers. And yet literary translators help write the world’s books for new readers. They do not just craft changes from one language to another – though this in itself requires great skill and sensitivity. Rather, they bridge cultures from different parts of the world. They are the transmitters of thoughts and ideas that connect and move human civilisations. And for that alone their work should be recognised and celebrated. Located where the monsoons meet, the Malay peninsula has long been at the heart of global history and long-distance connectivities. Initially the peninsula was a meeting point for seamen and sojourners, troops and traders, migrants and magnates, arriving (and departing) from the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. By the beginning of the sixteenth century European states and their armed chartered companies were also expanding into Asian waters. The peninsula and the wider archipelago became a crucial arena for competition and, sometimes, cooperation. This was the world in which modern Penang was born. It is arguable that the port cities of South-East Asia were as plural as any on earth at that time, and more so than most. It is well known that Penang’s early development was driven by trade (in spices, opium, textiles, tea and tin) and imperial competition. But the island also quickly established itself as a regional cultural centre. As the historian Sunil Amrith puts it: “A rich exchange of ideas and language was the result of transient encounters or cross-cultural relationships.” And the word – spoken, in manuscripts and printed – played a vital role in absorbing a wide range of cultural influences, acquiring new languages and spreading novel ideas. Above all, “command of language” was crucial for the consolidation of new communities and identities. An Emporium of Languages: Devotion and Commerce In fact Asian translation traditions were already established long before the various East India companies gained footholds and fortresses on South-East Asia’s littorals. After all, translation was vital in this world of strangers. Countless translations left their traces in one way or another, from the outside but equally importantly within the region itself. As the lingua franca of much of the archipelago, the role of translations from and into the Malay language can be best illustrated in two complementary ways. On the one hand, translations of Arabic texts,including the Quran, helped disseminate Islam through the region and Malay became the mediating language of devotion. Equally importantly, key religious works, royal genealogies and semi-historical epics originally written in Malay criss-crossed the archipelago and influenced other languages with a long writing tradition of their own, such as Javanese and Sundanese. In analogous ways, European travellers observed of the Tamil Muslims that “the Chulyars are a People that range into all Kingdoms and Countreys in Asia.” As a result, they “doe learne to write and Speake Severall of the Eastern languages.” Similarly, Chinese merchants had been trading down to South-East Asia for centuries, sojourning – and sometimes settling – during the course of their voyages. In contrast to some other languages, however, it is striking that very little Chinese written culture was introduced to the region. The Qing government had forbidden its subjects to teach Chinese to foreigners. As Lucille Chia notes, “Indeed, of the myriad commodities carried by Chinese junks in the Nanyang trade, books may have been the one item that was largely missing.” This would change with the large-scale arrivals of immigrants in South-East Asia in the nineteenth century when, as we shall see, a major local publishing and translation practice did emerge. The study and translation of Malay in Europe date back to the very first voyages to South- East Asia. As Annabel Teh Gallop – who as lead curator for South-East Asia at the British Library has done more than anyone else in recovering and interpreting early manuscripts – says: “Command of languages was an essential business tool for both merchants in search of spices and missionaries in search of souls.” The earliest Malay book printed in Europe is a Malay-Dutch phrasebook by Frederick de Houtman, published in Amsterdam in 1603, and an English version of this Dutch work became the first Malay book printed in Britain in 1614. It was only in 1701 that the first original Malay-English dictionary was printed in London, the work of Thomas Bowrey (1650-1713), an East India Company sea captain. He explained in the preface the urgent need for such a publication: “I finding so very few English Men that have attained any tollerable Knowledge of the Malayo Tongue, so absolutely necessary to trade in those Southern Seas, and that there is no Book of this kind published in English to help the attaining of that Language; These Considerations, I say, has imboldened me to Publish the insuing Dictionary.” After Bowrey’s pioneering work, it was not until the early nineteenth century that British studies of Malay developed in earnest, through the efforts of colonial scholar-administrators. This endeavour had a direct connection with Penang through the efforts of Thomas Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd, who both worked for the East India Company and first met on the island. For his part, Raffles collected vocabularies from all over the archipelago, including a Malay wordlist which appears to be in the hand of his Penang scribe Ibrahim; this volume is especially valuable for also containing an early register of inhabitants of Penang, listed by street name, with details of origin, occupation and family members. The Print Revolution If the early efforts at translation belonged largely to Asian oral and manuscript traditions, and printing in Europe, colonialism helped create print centres in South-East Asia itself. Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies was the first. But given what Rachel Leow calls “the unusual linguistic diversity to be found in Penang,” it is not surprising that the first print centre on the peninsula emerged there, more or less at the same time as in Malacca. Early pioneers systematically experimented with various printing technologies – xylography, lithography and letterpress – and acquired roman, Arabic and Siamese fonts as they geared up for ambitious publishing projects. The first printing facility was set up by an independent printer, Andrew Burchett Bone, who brought his own press to Penang in 1807; it was used in the service of the East India Company to publish governmental and commercial materials for traders and administrators. The following year, the French Catholic Missions Étrangères de Paris also established a printing press to disseminate its religious materials, and Protestant missionaries followed in their footsteps in 1819. Since the missions ran schools, they printed elementary texts on spelling and reading, in both Malay and English, as well as biblical translations. The new demands for Chinese printing in Penang offered an opportunity for another missionary, Samuel Dyer, to pioneer and introduce Chinese t y p e - f o u n d i n g in the Straits Settlements in the 1830s, which offered a cost-effective alternative to existing xylographic practices.1 From these modest beginnings, the print revolution – and the attendant explosion of translated works – took hold through the course of the next century and beyond. Printed materials were produced in every conceivable form: books of all kinds, religious tracts, reference works, pamphlets, periodicals, reports and newspapers. Printing technologies also had a direct impact on language itself. Malay was printed in both the modified Arabic script, Jawi, as well as romanised script, Rumi, and the medium encouraged the move towards the standardisation of orthographies. Similarly, printing technologies had a long-term impact on Chinese typography – a process that persists today with the variety and refinement of Chinese character systems in use. Two Exemplars of Early Literary Translation A rapid flowering of the publishing industry took place as a result of the print revolution. Ian Proudfoot distinguishes three streams of print publishing in Penang and the other Straits Settlements for the century or so beginning in 1820. These are the European presses, Straits-born Chinese (Peranakan or Baba) publishers and Muslim publishers. One characteristic feature of printed material that was produced and circulated in abundance in Penang and elsewhere was the sheer variety of genres and subject matter, including both fiction and poetry. And much of this material appeared in translation. This is best demonstrated in two fascinating exemplars of this eclectic publishing world: the development of literature in Malay by Chinese Peranakan, illustrated in the literary translations of Chan Kim Boon; and the work of the Muslim intelligentsia, led by Syed Sheikh al-Hadi, who would be the harbingers of later nationalist struggles. The emergence of a distinctive Peranakan translation tradition can be traced to the last decades of the nineteenth century, when a significant proportion of educated Chinese were reading romanised Malay. A very interesting figure among the early Peranakan translators was Chan Kim Boon (1851-1920), born into a merchant family in Penang and who went by the pen name Batu Gantong (Hanging Rock). He attended Penang Free School, where instruction was in English, and also had a good command of Malay and Chinese. After moving to Singapore to work as a bookkeeper, he began publishing his monumental Sam Kok (Sanguo), a 30-volume translation of the Chinese classical masterpiece Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the 1890s. It is not just the sheer scale of the undertaking – at 4,622 pages – that is impressive. He also offered telling insights into the very process of translation: he included lists giving Chinese expressions in the Malay version, with a translation in Malay and sometimes in English; he provided footnotes for explanations; and for the later volumes specified the Chinese characters for proper names, titles and functions. And the books were beautifully illustrated by drawings rendered in the style of woodcuts to complement the story and heighten the visual appeal. Chan evidently had an appreciative audience. A Malay scholar, Mohamed Salleh bin Perang, wrote in 1894: “I was very fond of reading Chinese tales, my favourite being the story entitled Sam Kok for this work contains much that is of value, including allusions and parables which should be heard by officials in the service of kings.” Though there were a few other notable translators during this period, such as Tan Beng Teck and Lim Hock Chee, there is little doubt that Chan Kim Boon became the dominant figure in the small Peranakan Malay publishing industry. Apart from Sam Kok, he also translated two other Chinese classics: Song Kang (Water Margin)and Kou Chey Tian (Journey to the West), and other texts that have unfortunately not survived. After his death, the translation of Chinese stories into Malay declined, due in part to the Peranakan community’s increasing preference for English-language books. In exactly the same period of the late nineteenth century a vibrant Muslim press and publishing industry also flourished in Penang. It is more accurate to describe this maturation as Muslim rather than Malay, since many of the leading personalities in the publishing world had mixed ethnic backgrounds, including Jawi Peranakan with Indian and Arabic antecedents. The sheer number of printers and publishers is quite astonishing. They included the Freeman Press (Acheen Street), Muhamadiah Press (Hutton Lane), United Press (Dato Keramat), Persama Press (Acheen Street), Bahtera Press (Acheen Street), Al-Zainah Press (Pitt Street), Percetakan Sahabat (Penang Street) and Al-Huda Press (Dato Keramat). All these presses were integrally involved in the production of religious texts, including translations that found a ready market in Penang’s local Muslim population as well as among hajj pilgrims, in addition to historical texts such as Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah. Even more significant was their role in circulating the ideology of Islamic modernism and reform that would lay the foundations for the later emergence of Malay nationalism. As Abu Talib Ahmad describes them, they were “forward-thinking” and became “crucial agents of change” in pre-war Malay society. Perhaps the leading carrier of the modernist message in the early decades of the twentieth century was the iconic figure Syed Sheikh al-Hadi (1867-1934), author, translator, educator, publisher and founder of the Jelutong Press. Born near Malacca, al-Hadi’s early life illustrates just how cosmopolitan the experiences of early Muslim reformers could be: he spent formative years in the literary centre of Penyengat, Riau, having access to a wide range of Arabic and Malay texts, books and newspapers in the royal library; he received a religious education in Terengganu; he travelled to Egypt and is reported to have met the leading reformist intellectuals Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, whose work he later translated; he was in Singapore as an editor of the modernist journal Al-Iman and as a teacher in a madrasah; and moved to Johor Bahru where he worked as a religious lawyer for private clients. Al-Hadi was, in short, a true organic intellectual. All this was a prelude to his time in Penang. In the mid-1920s he established the Jelutong Press, started his own monthly journal, Al-Ikhwan, the leading voice of Islamic modernism in Malaya, and then the weekly newspaper, Saudara. In an echo of an earlier age, its news reports, serialised stories and articles on religious reform – including translations of Abduh’s religious exegesis of the Quran – were read throughout the peninsula, southern Thailand and the Dutch East Indies, and by Muslim students in London, Cairo and Mecca. Translation activities were in large part motivated by the fight against orthodox Islamic teachings and were thus a means of influencing the wider reformist debates in Malaya. What is less well known is that the Jelutong Press also published a large number of works of fiction, including those of al-Hadi himself, which ranged from romantic stories to his monumental Hikayat Faridah Hanom, which was “read from one end of the Peninsula to the other”, and his series of Rokambul detective adventures. Hikayat Faridah Hanom, adapted from an Egyptian love story and characterised as the first “new hikayat”, is a fascinating and daring treatment of the quality of “human-ness”, the basis for a compassionate concern for others and a new morality. It became a benchmark for what came to be known as “cherita saduran”, with saduran implying not just translation but adaptation to the context of the Malay society of the time. Detective fiction was one of the most popular genres with the early reading public. And the most famous crime stories were al-Hadi’s Rokambul series. He took on numerous episodes of the intrepid criminal-adventurer-detective hero, Rocambole, created by Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail, most likely from Arabic translations rather than from their French originals. It has even been suggested that the portrayal of outsiders in detective fiction was an attempt to instil a culture of resistance in their readers, albeit on an imaginative level – a kind of “hidden transcript” as a critique of power. As an interesting aside, numerous Rocambole stories were also translated into Malay by Lie Kim Hock in Batavia and published in the early years of the twentieth century. It remains an open case whether al-Hadi – working some 20 years later – perhaps knew of Lie’s translations. Communities of Imagination The literary output of Chan Kim Boon and Syed Sheikh al-Hadi in the transformative decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries illustrates just how important Penang was in the dissemination of the written word, in sustaining nascent publishing industries and in bridging different languages. Of course, Penang was by no means alone in this domain. The other Straits Settlements – Malacca and Singapore – also supported thriving print centres, while the Sultan Idris Training College became the leading incubator for Malay writers and work in translation. As we have seen, all this activity was grounded in much older practices of literary production – in which the archipelago made extensive use of and was in turn shaped by Arabic, Indian, Chinese and European source texts of all kinds. These provided the materials for a sophisticated Asian translation tradition. Nonetheless, the impact of European colonialism – accompanied by modernising dynamics such as formal education and the print revolution – initiated a qualitatively new phase of literary production and translation strategies. The print revolution was, of course, a necessary precondition for this flourishing. But more important than the technology itself was the profound impact that print had for moulding people of disparate linguistic traditions into “deep horizontal comradeship” and communities of imagination, as Benedict Anderson memorably puts it. In the period leading up to the Second World War, translated work – both fiction and non-fiction – found a new readership in the rapidly changing world of Penang and the Malay peninsula. It represented a process of acquisition, incorporation and adaptation – one that would help form the post-war cultural milieu. *This article first appeared in Penang Monthly, November 2016.

Melawan dan merdeka dari keakuran dan keterpesonaan terhadap politik sosok adalah tujuan baharu pada hari ini. Merdeka bermakna berdaulat. Manakala berdaulat bermakna bebas daripada penjajahan dan mampu untuk berdiri di atas kaki sendiri. Lebih enam puluh tiga tahun yang lalu, kata merdeka dan segala maknanya inilah yang ingin dirangkul oleh rakyat pelbagai etnik, budaya, dan agama di Tanah Melayu. Tidak ada tujuan murni lain yang diinginkan, selain untuk memerintah dan mentadbir diri sendiri. Matlamat itu akhirnya dicapai dan diraikan secara simbolik pada 31 Ogos 1957. Jalannya sudah pasti tidak pernah lurus. Ada keringat yang dititiskan. Ada darah yang tertumpah di setiap selekoh perjalanan. Kini, kita menjenguk kembali sejarah. Kegilaan kita menuntut kebebasan dari cengkaman penjajah bukan baru terjadi semalam. Tahun 1445 ke 1500, orang Melaka dan Pahang sudah membina benteng melawan penjajah Siam. Orang Johor sudah membantu Belanda melawan Portugis sekitar tahun 1600 hingga 1641. Kemudian, kita juga diperkenalkan dengan pahlawan-pahlawan seperti Tok Janggut, Dol Said, Lela Pandak Lam, Mat Kilau, dan Mat Salleh yang berjuang menentang penjajah British pada abad ke-19 dan ke-20. Dari tahun 1926 ke 1957 pula, gerakan kebangsaan Melayu melawan Inggeris pula mengambil tempat. Namun, kemerdekaan mungkin tidak akan diperolehi tanpa adanya baja yang menggerakkan anak-anak tanah jajahan. Baja ini tidak lain tidak bukan adalah keinginan yang berterusan untuk bebas dan semangat yang berkobar-kobar untuk melawan. Baja lalu menjadi waja. Hari ini, ianya kita kendong ke mana-mana. Politik Melawan Sebagai satu tindakan politik, menentang dan melawan bukan juga baru. Malah sebelum kita mengenal demokrasi, perlawanan sudah berlaku. Wujudnya juga dalam bermacam bentuk, baik yang sifatnya agresif dan defensif, ataupun yang mengambil bentuk nyata dan tidak nyata. Kembali lagi kepada sejarah, kita akan bertemu dengan kisah-kisah orang lari dari pusat kekuasaan, menebas belantara baru. Itu yang terjadi jauh sebelum penjajah Inggeris tiba, ketika rakyat di Tanah Melayu masih di bawah naungan raja-raja. Pada tahun 1811, sultan Perak mengeluh kerana lebih separuh orang Perak lari ke wilayah raja lain. Pada abad ke-19, sultan Deli dikatakan malu kerana rakyatnya berpaling tadah bencikan perangai sultan. Begitulah juga caranya orang Dayak bermain tolak-tarik dengan pemerintah. Jelik dengan tingkah laku pembesar, rakyat kemudian berpindah, bertukar pemimpin, atau memilih untuk tidak dipimpin. Setiap zaman memiliki bentuk dan tujuan perlawanan rakyatnya sendiri. Kita melawan, sekalipun dengan menulis. Setidak-tidaknya itu yang dilakukan oleh para wartawan dan sasterawan ketika menuntut kemerdekaan Tanah Melayu dari Inggeris. Menulis mengasuh mereka untuk kemudiannya memimpin gerakan-gerakan masyarakat. Kemunduran Politik Pengunduran British menghadirkan harapan baharu kepada tanah yang baru dirampas kembali ini. Kuasa untuk memerintah dan menentukan nasib tanah air kini diserahkan kepada rakyat. Kita mencuba dengan demokrasi bagi mengangkat seorang pemimpin. Rakyat sudah bebas memilih wakil melalui pilihanraya. Tetapi, dalam sistem politik baharu ini, yang diambil kira bukan hanya pengundi tetapi juga suara-suara. Malangnya, perubahan sistem politik tidak berdampingan dengan perubahan sikap dan pemikiran rakyat. Malah, perubahan-perubahan yang berlaku di sekeliling kita sentiasa ditanggapi secara berbeza antara satu sama lain. Ini termasuklah perubahan struktur politik yang telah membuka pintu untuk kita memainkan peranan lebih dalam membuat keputusan. Politik pada titik ini menjadi tidak lebih dari sekadar percaturan elit-elit politik yang berunding kuasa antara satu sama lain. Politik watak atau sosok mendominasi mulai bergerak menuju ke pusat politik. Hasilnya, awalnya demokrasi yang menuntut setiap warganegara supaya lebih giat menyertai, berubah menjadi ruang subur untuk mencambahkan keakuran. Keterpesonaan terhadap watak ini juga yang kemudiannya menjadikan kita akur bahawa elit-elit politik sebagai pemain utama. Malah, tidak sedikit daripada kita yang merasakan bahawa mereka juga adalah penyembuh bagi masalah-masalah peribadi. Di majlis-majlis, kehadiran wakil rakyat penting sebelum apa-apa acara dapat dimulakan. Begitulah dalam hal-hal lain. Kita berbicara tentang naratif atau penceritaan yang membentuk fakta dan mempengaruhi pemahaman kita terhadap realiti. Naratif adalah tentang makna bukannya kebenaran. Biarpun demikian, naratif juga yang menggerakkan massa. Lalu naratif bagaimana yang sedang dipaparkan dan sedang menyaingi yang lain? Maka, memahami dan peka dengan naratif yang cuba dipaparkan oleh elit-elit politik adalah penting dalam hal ini agar. Melawan Politik Sosok Di sini merdeka menuntut makna baharu. Melawan dan merdeka dari keakuran dan keterpesonaan terhadap politik sosok adalah tujuan baharu pada hari ini. Inti dari demokrasi adalah untuk membebaskan masyarakat dan melahirkan warganegara yang lebih aktif. Maka, sudah tentu peranannya bukan lagi milik seorang, tetapi setiap individu. Matlamatnya adalah untuk membina naratif kolektif baharu yang lebih pelbagai, dan yang pulang ke rakyat. Jauh dari hal ehwal orang atau parti, politik adalah tentang pemikiran dan falsafah, tentang dasar, dan tentang jalan keluar bagi kemaslahatan umum. Benar kita akhirnya memilih sosok di dalam pilihanraya. Namun, prosesnya tidak bernoktah di situ. Kita perlu merdeka sekali lagi. Kali ini merdeka dimaknai dengan membebaskan diri dan melangkah melampaui politik watak atau sosok. Kerana pada akhirnya tugas orang politik adalah untuk berkhidmat kepada rakyat, bukan sebaliknya. Selamat hari merdeka! *Esei ini pertama kali diterbitkan di Naratif Malaysia, 31 Ogos 2020.

Wira datang mengirim pesan yang lebih mendalam bahawa ada keinginan yang belum tercapai, ada pelbagai harapan yang sudah ternodai. Jika tidak melalui panggilan telefon, pesanan dan pertanyaan baik daripada orang yang dikenali dan tidak dikenali juga diterimanya di laman Facebook. Ramai daripada mereka belum tentu membawa hajat yang jelas. Dalam deretan panggilan dan timbunan mesej itu, ada yang sekadar menyampaikan khabar diri sendiri. Tidak sedikit yang membantu untuk bercerita nasib kurang baik orang lain di sekeliling mereka. Di laman sosial seperti Facebook, Instagram, dan Twitter, perhubungan menjadi lebih mudah dan pantas. Di tempat yang waktu seakan-akan tiada lagi itu, orang berkeluh-kesah, cuba mencuri telinga, mencari bahu, dan berkongsi berita. Sepertimana kita, ruang itulah yang digunakan oleh Ebit Lew — sosok yang sejak akhir-akhir ini menjadi buah mulut orang di mana-mana — untuk mendengar dan turut bersimpati. Namun, lelaki yang sentiasa bersama kopiah putihnya itu bukan sekadar personaliti media sosial. Dia tidak terpesona dengan rasa asyik memiliki jutaan peminat hanya dengan memperagakan pakaian-pakaian berjenama mewah. Lew, sebaliknya, menitiskan keringat di jalan dan di ceruk kampung, menyantuni mereka yang masih merangkak untuk hidup. Dalam kesempitan hidup pada waktu wabak, dia hadir sebagai wira. Kendatipun begitu, kisah “perwira” seperti kisah Lew bukan terlalu asing buat kita. Tidak lama dahulu, kita mengenal dan mengagumi Syed Azmi, seorang jurufarmasi yang memilih untuk keluar daripada keselesaan dan berbakti kepada kelompok masyarakat terpinggir. Begitu juga dengan Kuan Chee Heng, atau lebih dikenali dengan gelaran Pak Cik Kentang. Seperti yang lain, Kuan senang bersimpati dengan nasib masyarakatnya. Dia membelanjakan sebahagian hartanya kemudian diraikan sebagai seorang wira oleh penduduk setempat. Kita takjub mendengarkan kisah watak-watak perwira sebegini sama seperti orang Inggeris melihat legenda Robin Hood atau orang di sempadan Kedah-Siam pada awal abad ke-20 mengagumi Panglima Nayan. Sudah tentu bahawa cerita dan pengalaman watak-watak perwira ini berbeza antara satu sama lain. Namun, kita tidak memaknai wira sebagai dongeng atau sekadar watak penghibur seperti lelaki dan perempuan perkasa yang kita tonton di dalam filem. Dalam kehidupan peribadi ataupun bermasyarakat, wira datang mengirim pesan yang lebih mendalam bahawa ada keinginan yang belum tercapai, ada pelbagai harapan yang sudah ternodai. Lompang dalam Politik Sedari awal, ketika manusia mula membangun peradaban, kita membangun bersama kisah-kisah keperwiraan. Baik ketika berkeliling menghadap unggun api di dalam gua sehinggalah di kamar sebelum tidur, kita mendengar dan diperdengarkan tentang kisah-kisah sang perkasa yang membela nasib orang teraniaya. Tetapi apakah tujuan dan erti keterpesonaan kita dengan kisah-kisah wira ini? Mungkin ada yang sekadar mengambilnya sebagai hiburan. Ada yang meneladani. Namun wira juga dilahir, ditulis, dan kemudian diceritakan untuk mengubati jiwa. Lew, sepertimana wira-wira masyarakat lain yang kita kenal, hadir untuk mengisi keperluan ini. Sosok seperti dia menyembuh luka-luka yang datang daripada rasa takut dan putus asa masyarakat. Dalam setiap kepayahan, kita merasa bersama. Namun Lew, orang yang meyakinkan kita bahawa harapan tidak pernah mati ini, bukan watak asing. Dia bukan ahli politik yang dipilih setiap empat atau lima tahun sekali, tetapi lahir dalam kalangan kita. Seperti warganegara yang lain, Lew tidak menggenggam tanggungjawab rasmi politik. Lalu, luka-luka apa yang mahu disembuhkan Lew? Dari sisi lain, dia dan watak-watak wira yang dianggap datang dalam kalangan kita ini menjadi bukti bahawa ada kelompangan dalam politik atau cara kita menguruskan masyarakat. Rasa resah dan putus asa kita bermuara di sini. Kemarahan dan kekecewaan terhadap para elit politik dan keresahan terhadap perubahan-perubahan sosial yang berlaku secara mendadak inilah yang terjadi di pelbagai belahan dunia. Seringkali, keputusasaan berakhir dengan pergolakan, malah menggugat norma dan institusi yang sedia ada. Masyarakat menuding jari terhadap para wakil mereka ketika politik menjadi hanya sekadar ranah perebutan kuasa dan mula memundurkan. Watak-watak “anti-wira” kemudian muncul apabila politik kita sudah kering dengan watak-watak wira, dan kita kemudian beralih kesetiaan. Lew ialah watak yang tidak terelakkan dalam politik yang gagal memberikan kepastian. Dia hadir dengan menawarkan keinginan dan kerinduan masyarakat terhadap rasa kasih dan prihatin yang tidak diperoleh daripada para wakil yang mereka pertanggungjawabkan. Watak-watak sebegini menyedarkan kita bahawa adanya kelemahan dalam cara kita memastikan bahawa peluang pendidikan yang baik sampai kepada segenap lapisan masyarakat. Lew membongkar kegagalan politik kita dalam membahagikan kekayaan dan membanteras kemiskinan. Ia menyerlahkan bahawa pada waktu kemelut, ketika ada yang masih kelaparan, birokrasi seharusnya lebih mempercepatkan bantuan dan perkhidmatan, bukan lebih memperlahankan. Politik Sosok dan Demokrasi Sejauh kita mendambakan dan menyanjung watak-watak wira dalam kehidupan, kita juga bertembung dengan ironi. Dalam politik yang mengharuskan setiap warganegara berupaya menentukan nasib sendiri, kita sebaliknya terus mencari-cari sosok yang boleh disandarkan tanggungjawab secara sepenuhnya. Kita mengharapkan watak-watak seperti Lew ada pada wakil-wakil politik yang kita pilih. Namun, apa yang diperlukan oleh demokrasi untuk berjalan dengan baik adalah bukan sosok wira, tetapi warga yang bebas, berdikari dan aktif menuntut hak-hak mereka. Kekuatan demokrasi tidak terletak kepada individu-individu tertentu, tetapi kepada masyarakat, struktur-struktur politik yang kukuh, dan penghormatan terhadap institusi-institusi negara. Tadbir urus yang baik tidak memerlukan wira. Yang diperlukan adalah perubahan-perubahan institusi yang bermatlamat untuk menambah baik kemampuan pemerintah dalam menyampaikan perkhidmatan yang berkualiti. Maka, menggandingkan Ebit Lew dengan para wakil rakyat yang dipilih melalui pilihan raya untuk menguruskan hal ehwal kemasyarakatan sudah tentu tidak adil. Kita tahu bahawa seseorang wakil rakyat menggalas peranan yang jauh berbeza. Tanggungjawab hakiki wakil rakyat adalah untuk menggubal dasar baik pada peringkat negeri mahupun negara. Mengharapkan wakil-wakil ini untuk sentiasa turun menjenguk longkang yang tersumbat di belakang rumah kita misalnya adalah tindakan yang tidak kena. Budaya mendambakan seorang watak perkasa —orang yang akan sentiasa hadir untuk menyelesaikan kesulitan-kesulitan sekalipun yang bersifat peribadi — sudah berakar sejak lama. Malah, tidak memeranjatkan bahawa tidak sedikit daripada wakil-wakil politik yang senang dengan sanjungan sebegini. Namun, pada titik ini hubungan politik yang seharusnya bersifat formal menjadi tidak formal. Kata “tanggungjawab” mula digantikan dengan “tolong”. “Berkhidmat” kemudian difahami dalam erti kata memberi “kebajikan”. Pengurusan hal ehwal negara dan masyarakat diandaikan seperti mengurus sebuah keluarga. Pemerintah dianggap sebagai “penjaga” atau “abah” yang wajib untuk memastikan kebajikan “anak-anak” terjaga. Setidak-tidaknya itu yang sedang terpapar dalam politik negara ini. Sudah tentu bahawa hal ini berpenghujung pada kekuasaan. Namun, jika tidak dibendung, kita hanya akan terus melahirkan masyarakat yang pasif dan berserah. Maka, watak wira seperti Lew penting selagi ia mampu untuk menjadikan kita sentiasa awas.

Bagaimanakah kita merawat kesunyian dan memenuhi keperluan untuk tetap terus meneroka di kala terkurung? Tidak semua dan tidak selalunya orang senang dengan kesepian. Hidup terasing, terpisah, malah sekian lama tidak bersentuhan (atau bersalaman dan berpelukan) dengan orang lain kadangkala mencemaskan. Sebab itu, sebagai makhluk sosial, kita terus-menerus mencari jalan untuk berhubungan bagi memecah kesunyian dan untuk sentiasa merasa ada. Kesepian, seperti yang terpapar setiap hari, mampu membunuh biarpun ramai menemui ketenangan, ilham, atau kesucian dalam kesendirian. Pada waktu wabak, kesepian ternyata semakin memperkuatkan kedua-duanya. Malah, kesepian seakan-akan bukan sesuatu yang boleh dipilih-pilih, tetapi dihadapi dengan wajah yang bengis dan menanti untuk dilawan. Ketika sempadan-sempadan dikunci, pergerakan menjadi terbatas, dan dunia kita hanyalah ruang terpencil di rumah, kesepian mengintai-intai seperti seekor serigala yang menunggu untuk menerkam mangsanya. Jalur lebar dan media sosial sudah tentu membantu kita untuk terus berhubung dan mendapat perkhabaran tentang hal yang terjadi di sekeliling. Di situ, cerita dan berita tidak putus-putus datang untuk menghiburkan atau menimbus kesunyian. Namun, ironinya, kita juga tahu bahawa ruang-ruang maya tempat orang berkeluh-kesah itu turut sama memperkuat kesepian. Kita terjunam ke dalam telaga tanpa dasar, melewati rantaian pekikan yang tidak habis-habis menagih perhatian. Lalu, bagaimanakah kita merawat kesunyian dan memenuhi keperluan untuk tetap terus meneroka di kala terkurung? Sudah pastinya, jalan tidak hanya satu. Setiap orang memiliki cara atau sumber kekuatan tersendiri untuk tetap bertahan. Ada yang gemar bersendirian menjejak denai-denai di hutan atau menapak ke pantai. Ada orang yang lebih suka bersama buku, menonton filem-filem di Netflix, atau berbaring melayani muzik. Saya mencuba kesemuanya—terpulang kepada gerak hati. Dengan melakukan hal-hal sedemikian—mengulang atau menyambung baca buku-buku yang bertindan di atas meja, menghabiskan deretan filem yang selalunya saya tonton separuh jalan, atau memutar-mutar piring hitam setiap kali selepas makan malam—saya tahu bahawa sekurang-kurangnya saya memacak perhatian terhadap sesuatu. Kesepian hilang ketika dendangan lagu atau hidangan cerita pada helaian-helaian buku menggerakkan sepenuhnya fikiran dan tubuh. Daripada sumber-sumber tersebut kita dibawa meneroka, singgah di wilayah-wilayah yang tidak pernah atau tidak mampu kita capai dengan tubuh. Kita berkenalan dengan segala khayalan yang dihadirkan melaluinya oleh orang lain. Namun, sekuat mana asyiknya “pembacaan”—baik melalui lidah, mata, ataupun telinga, sudah tentu tidak memadai jika ianya sekadar dilakukan untuk mengalih perhatian atau menjadi suatu pelarian. Alih-alih, kesepian kembali menjengah setelah kita puas dan kehausan. Maka, jauh dari tujuan untuk mengalih perhatian atau melarikan diri, kesunyian dipecahkan dan pengembaraan bermula dengan pertanyaan; dengan rasa ingin tahu; dengan kegelisahan yang membuak-buak di dalam diri terhadap rasa tidak tahu tentang banyak hal. Hidup berlamaan dengan keresahan sememangnya tidak menyenangkan. Tetapi, seperti setiap langkah yang kita ambil ketika berjalan, pertanyaan adalah titik mula yang membawa kita meredah jalan-jalan dan pintu-pintu lain yang tidak pernah kita temui. Begitu hidup menyepi baik secara jasad mahupun maya pada waktu wabak. Ia mengajarkan, atau paling tidak, mengingatkan saya untuk menjadi seperti seorang anak kecil yang dunianya sentiasa penuh dengan pertanyaan. Di mata seorang anak kecil, dunia bukanlah hamparan jawapan-jawapan yang sudah pasti, tetapi maklumat-maklumat yang menuntut untuk dipersoalkan. Bagi kanak-kanak, dunia adalah hal yang tidak pernah selesai dan dengan demikianlah mereka menjadi dewasa. Sekilas pandang, mungkin tidak ada apa yang pelik atau terlalu istimewa dengan pertanyaan. Tindakan merenung kemudian mengajukan soalan-soalan kadangkala terjadi tanpa disedari atau tidak memerlukan banyak usaha. Hampir setiap hari kita bertanya. Kita bertanya khabar kepada mereka yang dekat, atau bertanya arah jika ke tempat-tempat yang tidak pernah kita kunjungi. Kita bertanya, baik kepada orang, ataupun pada hari ini kepada telefon pintar. Namun, kita tahu bahawa pertanyaan—sama ada dengan kata kunci apa, bila, di mana, bagaimana, dan siapa—tidak semestinya terbatas kepada hal-hal keseharian seperti itu. Pertanyaan boleh juga diajukan untuk perkara-perkara yang lebih mendalam, tentang realiti atau kenyataan yang sudah mapan misalnya. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan—biar secetek atau sedalam mana pun ia—mampu menghadapkan kita kepada pelbagai kemungkinan kenyataan dan sudut pandang alam. Malah, melalui pertanyaan yang terus-menerus diajukan kepada diri sendiri atau orang lain, kita akhirnya tahu bahawa kebenaran juga berubah-ubah dan tidak hanya satu. Malangnya, tidak seperti anak kecil, keghairahan terhadap dunia sekeliling barangkali melemah apabila kita meningkat dewasa atau semakin tua. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan semakin mengecut; cukup sekadar untuk hal-hal mudah seharian; hal-hal yang sifatnya lebih praktikal dan memberi untung segera. Pada titik ini, dunia sudah kehilangan misteri, atau lebih tepatnya kita sudah tidak tertarik untuk memecah segala misteri. Tambahan lagi, kerja berfikir dan menyoal tidak lagi dianggap sebagai tanggungjawab setiap orang. Sebaliknya, ia secara umum diserahkan kepada negara atau institusi seperti universiti (kalaupun masih berlaku). Mungkin kehidupan hari ini yang menuntut sedemikian. Apatah lagi ketika media sosial semakin menguasai. Di media sosial, kita tetap bertanya. Tetapi, jika tidak semua, sebahagian daripada kita cenderung untuk mencari jawapan mudah atau percaya dengan apa yang sudah dihidangkan. Di kala wabak, menghamburkan segala macam pertanyaan adalah salah satu jalan yang menghidupkan. Buat saya, ia memberi semangat serta kekuatan apabila dunia sudah menjadi semakin tidak menentu. Jangan-jangan pertanyaan tidak hanya sekadar membawa kita mengembara, tetapi juga menguasai. Masakan tidak, setiap kali ke Facebook—tempat orang melombong data itu—kita pertama-tama diajukan dengan pertanyaan: “What’s on your mind?”

“Translation becomes a way for us to access something that is very far away from us,” says Bilal Tanwer. It was, for the most part, translations that brought me to become a keen social and cultural observer, and a full-time fanatic of modern classic English literature as well as Malay literary history and development. I remember reading the renowned Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Keluarga Gerilya (Guerrilla Family) – which he had written in 1950 while imprisoned by the Dutch – during my starting years of undergraduate study. An Indonesian friend told me, “We were jealous of Malaysians who were very fortunate to get the chance to read the novel before Indonesians were able to get their hands on it. The Dutch went crazy with the novel.” Two decades after Pram wrote the last page, the novel slipped its way to Malaysian shores, and in 1983 Benedict Anderson translated Keluarga Gerilya into English, which made Pram’s ideas assessable for a wider range of readers. “Translation becomes a way for us to access something that is very far away from us,” says Bilal Tanwer, a Pakistani novelist and translator of literary works from Urdu. I listened to his talk at the Commonwealth Writers Conversations, held in Penang in March this year, and indeed, in a fragmented world, literary translation connects and brings people together. In the nineteenth century, the British colonies in the Far East were in dire straits, caught negotiating between preserving local cultural traditions that were associated with backwardness and Western influence that was deemed progressive. As a result, cultural exchanges and interaction through mostly literary activities within polities in the region began to move at a slower pace. For Muhammad Hj. Salleh, English was his starting point. “I came to Malay literature through the window and the roof, not the main door,” says the national laureate and translator. In 1977 he was a doctoral candidate writing about literature at the University of Michigan. Now he crosses cities in the European continent, either as a resident scholar or a lone wanderer. “I was a stranger to the Malay literary world because I studied English and later comparative literature. I did not write here (in Malaysia). I started writing when I was in England, and mostly because of the weather and personal detachment from the life at home and my little life among the English,” he says. Ironically, life in foreign countries showed him the way home and reminded him to appreciate and understand more of his motherland. In the Indian subcontinent, English is still dominant and has, in some ways, become the language of the elite, the bureaucracy and of serious literature. For India, learning English as the first language paves the way to the nation’s prosperity and is a vehicle for economic growth. The country has produced many great writers, such as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai and Amitav Ghosh; but they, however, came through the door of the West. Nevertheless, the outcome that every developing nation has to reconcile itself with would be the uncertainty with regards to the future of vernacular languages. The underutilisation of India’s languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Bangla and Urdu – particularly in intellectual discourse – would ultimately push them to the verge of irrelevancy, especially in modern usage. Emphasising this, Mamtar Sagar, Indian poet, writer, playwright, translator and an activist in the Kannada language, says, “To me, preserving and celebrating Kannada language also means retaining diversity within the language culture.” More pressingly, Janet Steel, programme manager for Commonwealth Writers, worries about social and cultural marginalisation. “Translation is vital for amplifying the less-heard narratives of civil society across the Commonwealth. Supporting it means supporting those voices.” Confronting Obstacles Translating and transmitting cultural values through works of literature in modern-day South and South-east Asia are no walk in the park, particularly when English, for a long time, has been rightly described as the third lingua franca and the language responsible for pidgins used in different places. One way to see the rising influence of English is in the way its vocabulary has infiltrated many other languages, to the extent of erasing many vernacular words and terminologies. “One of the traps that writers writing in English very often fall into is that they start describing local realities using references that are not local. The universal notion of Islam, for instance, becomes an explanatory way for most writers to write about a reality which might have something to do with Islam but does not necessarily explain the entire story,” says Bilal. Growing up in a non-English milieu, specifically in Karachi, Bilal believes that the act of writing itself, in large, is an act of translation. Every writer and translator finds the suitable language to picture their surroundings to their audiences. However, this is still an easy trap for many writers – particularly those who publish abroad – to fall into, especially when the audience does not share the same mother tongue. For Bilal, the best he can do is to be bold, localising the English. “When I’m writing, I’m trying to bring as much foreignness or newness into the English language,” he says. The fact that both writers and translators have to come to terms with is that different cultures have different concepts and worldviews that go along with their languages. Indeed, translation involves more work – translating emotions and values, not just words per se. Yet it is the common problem translators have to endure. Muhammad says, “When I read a literary text, I listen to the language. The Malay language must be smooth, gentle and musical. That’s the most difficult part of translating Malay texts – you need to listen to the rhyme and rhythm.” In another exchange, Muhammad told me that being a writer and translator, one has to dig for words that have vanished and are long forgotten. He himself would go to villages and speak to the people – one of the occasions was to collect Malay pantun (rhymes). “I translated the 500 page-long Epic of Hang Tuah; I took almost 15 years to finish it. I had to learn about Malay feudalism, including court language as well as the different titles of the courtiers. When I began translating, I was tall, dark and handsome. Lucky that I still am,” he says with a laugh. Connecting the Disconnect Through the works of such so-called cultural transmitters, readers from different parts of the world are now able to communicate and understand different cultures and traditions. “Translation helps bring the geniuses of the world into our languages and cultures, into our libraries and homes. With their works we are able to share the best that humankind has to offer,” says Muhammad. Unesco has named KL the World Book Capital for the year 2020, allowing the city to play a more active role in the literary translation industry. But needless to say, it requires not only the government to make this happen, but also individuals as well as literary agencies. The Commonwealth Writers Translation Symposium, which gathered more than 30 writers, translators, publishers and booksellers, was the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation, and hosted by Hikayat bookstore. It was part of the effort to investigate imbalances caused by the relative lack of literary translations in South and South-east Asia. As Bilal says, “This conversation between practitioners, editors and publishers of translation is an urgent and necessary intervention. It offers us an opportunity to begin a serious discussion about how we can build an infrastructure for translation to push against the myopias that box us in and make our worlds smaller.” Jayapriya Vasudevan, owner of India’s first literary agency and former festival director of Times Litfest in Bangalore, says, “This event is an important step for bringing this conversation forward in South and South-east Asia, and I hope it will mark the beginning of the much-needed support for translation and writers in the region.” As an amateur translator myself, this is a future that I look forward to. *This article was first published in Penang Monthly, May 2019.

“Orang Melayu kempunan kasih sayang” (Malay people lack love), that both high culture and popular Malay romance novels are so popular in local bookstores. Time and again, I lose myself in the maze of shelves at the bookstore. At one of the remaining major bookstores in Penang, I cruise – as usual – from South-East Asian to English literature, bypassing the home and cooking section and doing a fly-by at the comics before ending up at Malaysiana. The books are well arranged, and the colourful spines and front covers catch my eye. I hardly ever pay any attention to this particular section, but I grab a title off the shelf anyway – Terlanjur Mencintaimu (Unintended Love). It is a glossy, pale blue book with randomly arranged pictures of sunflowers. Standing next to it is Saat Hadirnya Cinta Dia, sharing similar characteristics with the former, but fancier. Somehow they remind me of home. These are the kinds of books that my mother used to – rather surreptitiously – immerse herself in back then, while making sure that I grew up according to Malay ideals. The Malay romance novel – whose contents are full of sexual lust, myriad conflicts and love-fuelled struggle for domination – was off-limits to underage kids. Comparable to the mushrooming “indie” pulp fiction, Malay romance novels remarkably occupy a large space on the shelf, outnumbering English classics and non-fiction titles. The Development of Malay Literature My curiosity of what makes Malay novels – particularly romance fiction – popular for so many decades brings me to the doorsteps of pundits as well as novelists. But first, a quick history: the first Malay novel, according to general belief, was Hikayat Faridah Hanum, an adaptation of an Egyptian novel published by Syed Sheikh Al-Hadi in 1925. It is the subject of an ongoing contestation – Hikayat Panglima Nikosa is said to be the earliest text, published in north-western Borneo in 1876. The Malay novel is, however, relatively new: “The old, artistic and aesthetic oral tradition in Malay society was the main influence on Malay novel writing. Subtly, this tradition survives in Malay society – especially in literary writing,” says Muhammad Haji Salleh, the national literary laureate whom I met up with over a cup of coffee in Ipoh. This characteristic is reflected in the works of Anwar Ridhwan and the late Shahnon Ahmad – both also national laureates. Shahnon, who began writing in the 1950s, had always maintained his voice as a narrator, while Anwar, writing one generation after Shahnon, narrates the story of a narrator. His first novel, Hari-hari Terakhir Seorang Seniman (The Last Days of an Artist), depicts the life of a penglipurlara (traditional storyteller) just before World War II, who wanders from one village to another – a period when the form of “people’s media” was threatened by war, changing lifestyles and the introduction of the radio. As with other works of literature, Malay novels, too, speak for their times. During both pre-colonial and colonial periods, the struggle for political domination, which often led to lethal conflicts, was inevitable in a region filled with myriad ethnic groups and religions. The anxiety of “disappearing from this world”, made explicit time and again in writings and speeches, strengthened the sense of identity among the Malays. Authors and narrators, who had been, for some time, political and religious leaders themselves, called for self-determination and liberation from colonial hands. In his two most well-known works, Putera Gunung Tahan (The Prince of Mount Tahan) and Anak Mat Lela Gila (The Son of Crazy Mat Lela) – published in 1938 and 1966 respectively – Ishak Haji Muhammad, better known as Pak Sako, glorified Malay culture by comparing it to English culture, which to him lacked quality. Both satirical novels were critiques of the British. There were also writers who were influenced by British propaganda, and who had written about the Japanese in an unfriendly way. “Malay novels touch on so many issues,” says associate professor Dr Rahimah Abdul Hamid, a literary expert at Universiti Sains Malaysia. “The themes keep on changing, depending on the concerns of the society the authors live in. Malay novels spoke of nationalism when there was an urge for the Malays to free themselves from colonial powers. Al-Hadi and Ahmad Rasyid Talu in his novel Iakah Salmah (Is that Salmah?) called for women’s emancipation. The same goes for other themes such as national unity and even romance. “Even now, politics remains the dominant theme. When a novel speaks about society, it can’t discard politics. Malaysians talk about politics most of the time – like A. Samad Said, who comments on political issues in this country with his sharp and spectacular writings,” says Rahimah. Through love stories, authors of Malay novels voiced the calamities caused by war, demanded complete social change or spoke of inequality, discrimination and poverty on behalf of Malay peasants. In the 1930s Hamka described the discrimination against mixed-race persons in Minang society at the time, as well as the subservient role of women through the failed love story of the main characters of Tenggelamnya Kapal van der Wijck (The Sinking of the van der Wijck), Zainuddin and Hayati. Perhaps it is partly due to what Muhammad jokingly puts as, “Orang Melayu kempunan kasih sayang” (Malay people lack love), that both high culture and popular Malay romance novels are so popular in local bookstores. “After the war, especially in the 1950s, with the influence of Writer’s Movement ’50 (Angkatan Sasterawan 50, Asas ‘50), the main concern of writers of the time was to develop a Malay society away from poverty. “The writers found a sense of individuality in their literary works, both in prose and poetry. It was a period when people were looking for the meaning in being an individual. The sense of a free and independent self, in some ways, gave birth to Malay romance novels,” says Muhammad. In the course of their development, romantic elements, more often than not, flow through Malay novels. As universal as it is, love has become an important theme not only in Malay literary repertoires, where one would find Uda & Dara, but also in Arabic and English cultural contexts, where “Laila and Majnun”, as well as Romeo and Juliet, have always been presented as symbols of true and ideal love. But in all consciousness, Malay romance novels should be separated into high-culture romance and the popular, money-driven ones, labelled by mainstream writers as “novel picisan” (dime novel) – poor quality writings which lack literary value. “The most general categories for Malay novels are, firstly, high culture; the other one would be popular culture. Works written by the national laureates fall under the first category whereas Malay romance novels are dubbed as popular novels,” says Rahimah. Compared to popular Malay novels, which are business-centric and possess fleeting mass appeal, high culture literature pays attention to aesthetics and fine language, yet engages readers in important themes happening within society. The widely translated Malay novel, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (No Harvest But A Thorn) by Shahnon, for instance, has been a main reference for discussions about poverty in the Malay peasant community. “Authors speak on behalf of their societies. Look at A. Samad Said’s Hujan Pagi (Morning Rain), which points to a period when the media exhibited the boldness of speaking to the authorities. Today, the tables have turned: the media now speaks for the authorities,” says Rahimah. The Suffocation of Sentience Everything that is suppressed has the tendency of turning into a ticking time bomb. Being a poet and proponent of literary education and Malay language, Muhammad senses that the science-focused education system in all levels is the reason why society is gradually looking to literature, bringing forth many new readers and writers who, surprisingly, have no literary background. Until now, the arts and literature are still negotiating spaces not only in schools and universities, but also in the wider public domain. “There is a huge gap in our souls. We are deprived of aesthetic, spiritual and ethical values, which science cannot provide us with. Physics and geography, for instance, cannot teach us about love and humility,” he says. However, the intensifying sense of individualism, moral policing and book banning in the Malay cultural milieu have now become extensive. Between 1971 and 2017 the Home Ministry banned at least 1,695 books, including Malay language novels such as Legenda Mona Gersang (The Legend of the Sultry Mona) by Mahmud Mahyudin and Korban Cinta Palsu (The Prey of Fake Love) by Iza Sharizad in 1984. Rahimah recalls how Dr Mahathir Mohamad, during his first premiership in 1998, responded to the publication of SHIT, the bestselling notorious novel of Shahnon. The political satire, written in openly taboo language, was an expression of his disgust of the political scenario in Malaysia at that time. Surprisingly, when people urged him to ban the novel, Mahathir refused, learning from Tunku Abdul Rahman who had once banned his The Malay Dilemma. For Rahimah, as she puts it, “the ugly is the beautiful”. In the present day, local Malay language authors such as Faisal Tehrani are facing the same issue. In a cafe in George Town, I sit with Regina Ibrahim, a Penang-based “indie” fiction writer who has authored a number of novels and shorts, including the bestselling Perjalanan (Journey). Listening to her story about the development of Malay novel writing, particularly among young independent Malay authors, was fascinating: for her, the change is not particularly obvious in terms of style, despite the growing quantity of Malay language novels published each year. “Young Malay authors generally practice self-censorship and are afraid to expose their thoughts, trapped as they are within old frameworks,” says Regina. The linguistic originality and moral questions of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange partly inspired her to claim that “literature is a space for you to be ‘true.’” As she writes real life events – particularly on sexuality and to inform parents and children of other issues that are unheard of – the freedom of expression is non-negotiable. Having said that, the number of new authors in the country is on the rise, thanks to vibrant literary festivals and publishing houses – both of which promote literature and connect established and emerging writers. The number of Malay novels written by women is increasing too. In Malaysia and Indonesia, young writers are building networks and influences, getting more creative with wordplay and everyday issues – indicating that there is still hope for Malay literature, particularly novel writing, to survive in the future. And maybe one day, we will be able to read a Malay novel that puts a benchmark on what good literature is. *This article was first published in Penang Monthly, November 2018.

Migrants from Borneo – home to over 60 proud ethnic groups – make an exciting mark on Penang. By Izzuddin Ramli, Nurul Fadilah Ismawi Leaving home is painful but unavoidable for many: the unbearable longing for familiar comforts both tangible and intangible, the rhythmic music of the sape’, the sounds of the forest, the songs of the people and the hypnotic dances of celebration. But leaving home can also mean forging a path towards new opportunities. Many come to Penang to build a home away from home, and unwittingly provide local people with a sampling of their rich and vibrant cultures. Far from the Eyes, but Close to the Heart Penang is not entirely physically dissimilar to Borneo. Both are islands, Penang’s beaches are reminiscent of Manukan’s and Sipadan’s, and its pre-war buildings bring back memories of strolling down Main Bazaar in Kuching. But the homesickness remains. To alleviate this, Borneoans in Penang, most of whom are students and civil servants (such as nurses, teachers and military members), meet often to celebrate their cultures. Linalin Kaca is an Iban student from Sibu, Sarawak who is currently studying at Universiti Sains Malaysia. Every weekend, she gathers with her fellow Sarawakian friends: “We have a club called Perkumpulan Anak-Anak Sarawak (Perkasa) and I am one of its exco members. The club organises Sarawak cultural activities such as ‘Malam Bumi Kenyalang’ just so we can bring our home to Penang and strengthen the bonds between fellow Sarawakians,” she says. “Malam Citra Bayu”, organised by Pertubuhan Siswa-Siswi Sabah (Persis) is the equivalent of Perkasa’s “Malam Bumi Kenyalang”. Apart from rituals, song and dance are inseparable in Borneoan culture: shows are written, sung, played and staged everywhere; connecting musicians and listeners, participants and observers. Their music distinguishes them from the rest of the world and keeps memories of home alive. The annual Gawai and Keamatan Festival held at Fort Cornwallis in May brings together Penangites, Sabahans and Sarawakians who have made the state their second home. The festival serves as a platform for Borneoans who come from various social and economic backgrounds to mingle. Dancers enchant the audience with their talents and traditional attire during the festival’s Cultural Night. Linalin was one of them: “I dance at home. Here in Penang, I teach traditional dances to those who are interested in learning them,” she says. The sumazau dance is one of the best-known traditional dances in Sabah. It belongs to the Kadazan-Dusun ethnic group, and is usually performed during traditional ceremonies to honour the spirits as well as to cure illnesses. As for the Bajau and Suluk of Sabah, the daling-daling, pengatay or mengalai dances are vital in their lives, staged and showcased everywhere, as glamorous and ritualistic as the mangunatip or Bamboo dance of the Murut people. In Sarawak, the ngajat is the most popular, having its roots in Iban culture. Sarawakian Malays, on the other hand, are famous for their lyrical bermukun or bergendang performances. Most of the music from Sarawak and Sabah’s tribal groups includes vocals for epic stories and narratives; songs are mostly based on life cycle events and rituals associated with religion, healing, rice-growing, hunting and war. Sounds of Borneo Sada Borneo, a Penang-based band playing traditional Borneo music with a modern twist, made their name in the music industry when they became semi-finalists at the show Asia’s Got Talent 2015 – the only Malaysian group to do so. “We were only students back then. We drove a van from Penang to KL to try our luck at the audition just for the fun of it,” says Allister from Sarawak, the sape’ player, bassist, percussionist and guitarist of the band. What started as a hobby took a more serious turn as they unintentionally made their way to fame. Sada Borneo has since gone on to participate in various local and regional contests, and perform globally. Established in 2011 in Penang, Sada in the Iban language means “sound”, but Bob Harris from Sabah, who is also the band’s percussionist, jokingly says that the word also means “fish” in Dusun. The band consists of Sarawakians, Sabahans and a Kedahan, and they play traditional music instruments such as the sape’, kompang and bungkau, alongside modern instruments. Nick Fadriel from Limbang, Sarawak, the guitarist and one of the sape’ players of the band, says that it is now also one of the band’s duties to bridge Borneoan culture with West Malaysia. “We used to play music because it was fun. It’s different now – we feel responsible for preserving the traditional music that we showcase to our listeners, and I like to think that it is also one of our duties, apart from entertaining, to introduce Borneo’s music to the world.” The band is planning to make Penang their second home permanently, as all the members feel that Penang is a better place for musicians and every one of them is comfortable being there. “Most of us graduated from university years ago,” says Alvin, a Sabahan who is the keyboardist of the band. “Penang or KL is a better place to keep our traditional music alive.” A Taste of Home Linalin and the members of Sada Borneo both gave the same answer when they were asked what they missed most about home, apart from their family: the food. Pansuh, hinava and midin goreng belacan are some of the names that trigger gastronomical cravings. While there are a few restaurants serving Sarawak and Sabah dishes in Penang, the taste is just not the same: “We cook our food here, but there are some ingredients that we cannot find in Penang. Every time we get the chance to go back home, we will stock up on ingredients and bring them back,” says Allister. Penang has as a rule been welcoming of people from all around the world, including Sabah and Sarawak. In fact, the Penang state government has promised to organise and support activities that benefit both Penangites and Borneoans. Whether they stay or leave in the end, they are forever Borneoans at heart and are simply continuing the legacy of their ancestors to bejalai – to leave their longhouses in search of knowledge, adventure, fortune and glory – in foreign lands. *This article was first published in Penang Monthly, August 2017.

What’s more authentic in the Malaysian landscape than a traditional Malay house? Balik Pulau always holds unique experiences for me. The sight of the paddy fields, coconut trees, picturesque beaches and its gracious residents have never failed to transport me to another dimension. It is a natural museum where one can recall the memories of childhood – wading into a canal and catching birds and dragonflies. It is a place where the past enriches the present. Within the freshness and the authenticity of Balik Pulau’s ecosystem sits a treasure trove of traditional houses withstanding the test of time, their stories waiting to be heard. Eagerly, I walked into the small Malay villages scattered there. “This is a family house that was passed down through the generations; I am the third,” says Abdul Rahman, a house owner on Jalan Bharu. “The original house was a bit different. I had to do some renovation because the wood of the walls and pillars were decaying. But the Northern style is still preserved.” Living in a modern concrete house sometimes makes me wonder how much of traditional architecture has been lost. The design-with-nature approach found in traditional Malay houses is best reflected in how the house fits the climate. As I sat cross-legged on the porch or anjung in Abdul Rahman's house, I was stunned by the ingenuity of a design that can’t be rivalled by modern architecture: fresh natural air flows through the main entrance to the core of the house and then blows out through the kitchen windows, cooling the place. It is the deep understanding of and respect for nature that underlies traditional Malay architecture. One has to have a comprehensive knowledge of nature and ecological balance to build such a place. “In the old days, people relied on nature for their food, medicine, and building and household materials. They were all obtained freely from the jungle or their backyards. We were very close to nature,” explains Abdul Rahman. Traditional and hybrid Malay houses can be identified by their roof shapes. The basics are the bumbung panjang, bumbung lima, bumbung perak and bumbung limas. In Penang, traditional houses are known by at least two other specific names based on their unique forms – Rumah Gajah Menyusu and Rumah Bujang Selasar. Now in Balik Pulau, traditional houses have become major tourist attractions. Abdul Rahman says that many film production companies choose his house as a filming site, especially during the fasting month, to catch scenes of children from different ethnic backgrounds celebrating the eve of Aidilfitri. Indeed, his house reminds me of my days as a child playing in the yard during Hari Raya. As clichéd as the scene may be, it is something that many of us now long for. While some parts of the house may have been renovated, that authentic feel is hard to miss and was exactly Abdul Rahman's motivation for preserving the house. In a kampung, it is difficult to distinguish what is public from what is private. I was quite surprised to find that I did not need to park my car outside the house compound when I arrived at Abdul Rahman's as the compound was open and unfenced. This is clearly a reflection of the community’s appreciation of belonging over personal privacy. Another resident I met, Siti Rohani, says that “neighbours are usually related, cousins or distant relatives; but sometimes they are just friends. Even so, the relationship is like we are relatives. We help each other, exchanging food especially when we break fast.” Back home in my kampung, neighbours drop by through the back door with no one questioning their conduct. But there are things that need to be worried about. Modernity, economic demands and the desire for a better life influence people, especially the younger generations, to move to big cities for better jobs. This has left traditional houses to be maintained by the old. Abdul Rahman says even though his son is married and based in Penang, he prefers not to stay in the village and lives in a more developed area instead. As a result, many house owners in Balik Pulau have begun organising homestays for tourists instead of letting their homes rot from disuse. As the Malaysian timber industry is highly export-oriented, timber such as cengal, meranti, damar laut and petaling – the main materials for traditional wooden houses – are hard to come by in the local market. This poses another challenge for those wishing to preserve traditional houses. The local market is deprived of high-quality hardwood. “The high cost of timber makes it hard for me to renovate the house, even to change a single floorboard. The best I can do is replace it with a different type of wood that is cheaper,” says Abdul Rahman. As the community works to maintain its way of life it also makes Balik Pulau’s good qualities – its ecological stability and the gentleness of its people – endure. It is a gem, thinly veiled by modernity. *This article was first published in Penang Monthly, June 2016.

“As an editor, I love print because it's a medium that I understand and can relate to. Creating a print magazine comes naturally to me. It's like cooking your favourite dish; you don't have to think about it" I was invited for a visit to the official venue of the George Town Literary Festival 2017 by Gareth Richards, an editor, bookseller and the co-curator for the festival. The festival’s director, Bernice Chauly and the co-curator, Pauline Fan were also present. I arrived a bit later and was greeted by Gareth himself. There was a newspaper-sized paper folded under his armpit. I could not exactly guess what it really was. All I could see was part of an illustration that looked like Angkor Wat with a half revealed title, and that was enough to arouse my interest. We toured the rooms in the old colonial building that is located at Gat Lebuh China for a few minutes just to get a clearer picture of the festival that took place later in November. We finished the tour and went outside for a puff. That was the moment when Gareth unfolded the paper he was holding and proudly showed to us, “Mekong Review”, as written on the front page. “A quarterly literary magazine from the mighty river of Mekong” he introduced. “It is available in my bookshop for RM20”. I looked passionately at the magazine while he was describing and slowly flipping each page, scanning all the essays, book reviews, poetry and interviews. “This is a magazine that covers political and cultural issues in the Southeast Asia region, particularly Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, look at it!”. My curiosity towards the magazine grew bigger not because of its contents that I had not had a chance to look at, but because of the physical presentation of it; the size, artworks, type of font, etc, all of the aspects that had contributed to the elegance of the print. I went home to dig for more information from its website. The next day I dropped by at Gerakbudaya bookshop and happily got myself a copy of each available issue. “Penang literary scene would be more exciting with the existence of this magazine”, I thought as I walked out from the bookshop. “At least we have more stuff to read and more importantly, we can get to know our neighbours rather closely. The neighbours that we hardly ever talk to”. *** A few months passed, I met a guy in his early fifties during a photo exhibition in Penang. He was sitting alone at a corner, unenthusiastically finishing his black coffee, though soon I found out that he had not yet found his real drink. He was dressed in a blue t-shirt with a red-patterned Cambodian scarf wrapped around his neck during the scorching hot afternoon, the kind of style that would be donned by mad writers. As I approached and greeted him, he stood up and introduced himself in Australian accent as Minh Bui Jones. A former journalist, co-founder of The Diplomat and a beer aficionado, Bui Jones now edits the rising Phnom Penh-based magazine. He lives in Sydney, Australia but frequently finds himself sitting in Penang’s Antarabangsa-liked ‘bars’ and cafés everywhere in Southeast Asia and Europe. He drags his luggage full of Mekong Review, crossing streets and alleys, finding bookstores to place the magazine. Now the magazine has reached its international audience in prominent cities like Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Saigon, Singapore, Sydney, London, Stockholm and Los Angeles. I pulled a stool and sat beside him. A small crowd of attendees were coming in and out, chitchatting while observing the photos that narrated the Malaysian underground punk music scene displayed on the wall. A ska-punk song was playing softly from another corner, cheering up the attendees. The rest of my visit at the exhibition was spent with him, talking about the magazine that I had just fell in love with, writing and our favourite drinks. “Readers are becoming more technology savvy. E-books and digital publications are getting popular. Why did you choose to print while it is economically impractical?”, I asked Bui Jones after a few words of self-introduction. “I love print.”, he answered. “As a reader I love its physicality, the fact that I can hold it, take it with me wherever I go and pass it on to a friend. I love it also because it's uncomplicated, like it doesn't require electricity and I don't need to turn it on - it's just there.” I took another sip of my coffee which started to taste bland. I nodded and let him share his thoughts. Conversations around us turned into white noise as I found myself listening to him. “For myself, I absorb better what I read when it's on paper. It's partly habit and partly the medium - there are no ads and distractions. When I read things off the screen I tend to skim read and I tend to rush through it, so sometimes there is pleasure in it at all”. Bui Jones paused for a moment. His eyes were fixed on one of the pictures, I assumed his mind was elsewhere. “As an editor, I love print because it's a medium that I understand and can relate to. Creating a print magazine comes naturally to me. It's like cooking your favourite dish; you don't have to think about it”, he said passionately. “What I also love about the magazine is the history behind it. How many magazines were cultural products of their times, organs for political and social causes, often progressive ones. A magazine ought to embody a cause, a belief or at least a sentiment. As a journalist, I see a magazine as supplementary to a newspaper. The latter tells us what happened, the former why it happened.” “But every time I cook without thinking, my dish would turn into a disaster!”, I interrupted jokingly. Today, when mostly everything, from newspapers to books are digitalized, Mekong Review boosts our excitement of reading printed words on papers. This is even more obvious when Leonid Bershidsky in his article titled “How print beat digital in the book world” published in The Sydney Morning Herald summarizes that in 2016, the unit sales of printed books in the US increased by 3.3 percent while e-books appeared destined for an even bigger decline than the 14 percent drop registered in 2015. The rise of print book sales and decline in e-books in the past few years is a good news for kindle-naïve readers like me. In Malaysia, despite the irony of censorship law that has been practiced since before the independence and the government attempt to adapt to a modern knowledge-based economy, the number of publication of materials in print form shows an increasing trend every year and accounting for more than 99 percent of total annual sales worldwide, as reported by Malaysian Book Publishers Association. Started as a magazine with a relatively small editorial team, with the help of family and friends, and money was always brought up as the main constraint to run the magazine like other mega loaded fashion magazines, Bui Jones had to find his own ways. While subscription for digital version helps to pay the contributors, he still relies on friends to “smuggle” the printed magazine, crossing borders by land and sky to its destination, pro bono. Sometimes he delivers himself and words of mouth is the main method of advertisement. “But you are now living in Australia. Why choose Southeast Asia as the focus of the magazine?” I wondered curiously. “It is simply because of who I am and where I was living at the time when the magazine was created. I'm Vietnamese by birth and Australian by nationality. And although I have spent four-fifths of my life in Australia, the Vietnamese heritage has always been there and seems to grow stronger by the day”, Bui Jones dug deeper into his past. “And I have lived and worked in Thailand and Cambodia, and travelled to Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia frequently. Each of these countries mean something to me. For instance, Malaysia was the country that my family and I landed in when we left Vietnam as refugees, as boat people. The Mekong Review was conceived and created when I was living in Cambodia, in 2015.” “Is it a medium to connect countries, particularly writers in the region?” I asked. I wonder whether he has a bigger reason than just holding a physical copy, or if he aims to connect Southeast Asian countries and hunt local writers out of their hidings, the young and the established. “That I can't say, because I don't know. I think Mekong Review, like other publications and cultural endeavours, by simply existing we are doing something, though what that something is it's hard to know. I get asked this question quite often and I really don't have an answer for it. Maybe if we're still around after 10 years I might have a better idea.” For Bui Jones, creating the magazine that is getting well-known is not a walk in the park. He looks for potential contributors himself and let their creativity churn as the writers themselves decide what to write instead of assigning them with topics. This requires him to read and research on topics that he is unfamiliar with. The process excites him more than the final result. “All I can hope is that people find us useful and interesting.” he added. “Yes, you are!”, I praised. *** After 3 years of its founder travelling around the region, shaking hands with people who have turned into the very building blocks of the magazine, now Mekong Review is found in every corner of Southeast Asia. Its horizon has expanded beyond mainland Southeast Asia to include Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and its readers are scattered, waiting eagerly for the next issue, all across the globe. And after a month of idle, I bumped into him again, crossing Kapitan Keling street walking towards Gerakbudaya bookshop. This time, he dragged a bigger luggage of Mekong Review, readied to be restocked at the shop.

The Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore allowed the Malay left to thrive, if only for a brief moment. The road to Independence was long and hard, and the left’s communist connection did not improve their lot. By Koay Su Lyn, Izzuddin Ramli The fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942 saw the release of Ibrahim Yaacob and the resumption of Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM)’s activities.1 For the sake of political expediency, KMM quickly ingratiated itself with the Japanese authorities. This marriage of convenience was also said to stem out of Ibrahim’s intention to play triple agent. While the experience boosted the confidence, knowledge and influence of the Malay left, it was not until after the war that they achieved their pinnacle of political success before being demonised on the Malayan political scene. The Malay Left during the Japanese Occupation The Japanese policy of giving KMM a free hand during the early days of the Occupation bolstered their social influence among the Malays. For once, the aristocracy and bureaucratic elites fell out of favour; on the other hand, KMM members were bestowed with official roles such as “community leaders”, and were supplied with cars and amenities as community organisers and interpreters. Their influence thrived following mass rallies, with large numbers of Malay youths topping the party’s list. The substitution of existing Malay newspapers with Japanese-propagated ones, established under the influence of Ishak Haji Muhammad, further boosted their stand. However, fraternising with the enemy was not without any disenchantment. The regime’s brutality and refusal to back Malay independence, contradicting their earlier promise to liberate Malaya, disappointed many – including Mustapha Hussain, KMM’s vice-president, who felt that “Japanese victory was in reality, not their victory”. The collaboration persisted for the sake of their fellow Malays and often, personal gain and safety. The marriage was shortlived following the banning of KMM in June 1942, and support evaporated overnight, revealing its widening rifts. Nevertheless, KMM’s success in instilling semangat perjuangan (“fighting spirit”) among Malay youths during their brief stint enabled the movement to sustain itself under the umbrella of the Giyu Gun or Pembela Tanah Air (Peta), a Malay volunteer army formed in December 1943 and led by Ibrahim himself. The arrival of the Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Semenanjung (KRIS) in June 1945 gave KMM a fighting chance. The former sought to promote Malay-Indonesian patriotism and frame a constitution for an independent Malaya and Indonesia, to be revealed in conjunction with the Indonesian Declaration of Independence in August. Unfortunately, all was crushed by Japan’s surrender and the proclamation of a republic of Indonesia without Malaya and Borneo. The British return crippled the left, and leaders of KRIS and Peta were arrested. Doubtful of his future, Ibrahim left for Indonesia, leaving the baton to a new crop of leftists who restructured their strategy towards a new Malaya. From KMM to PKMM The Malayan Spring witnessed a new dawn for the Malay left where ideas and activities were reflected unconventionally with prewar restrictions on expression, assembly and association lifted and the Indonesian Revolution in full swing. Decolonisation was the trend and the left saw another golden opportunity to revive their struggle towards a Republik Indonesia Raya under the Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM), led by Mokhtaruddin Lasso, former Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) recruit and Malayan Communist Party (MCP) leader; and renowned scholar and political activist, Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy. PKMM was not communist and far more inclusive than its predecessor, embracing Malays from all social backgrounds and classes, binding them under the spirit of nationalism. This new culture took root and while many PKMM members perceived the communists as harbouring un-Islamic elements, they also recognised MCP members such as Abdullah CD, Musa Ahmad and Dahari Ali as influential mass organisers. The liberal atmosphere also permitted the revival of new periodicals such as Suara Rakyat, crucial in stirring the sentiments of the Malays. Soon, other pro-PKMM publications such as Kenchana, Plopor and Utusan Melayu under Yusof Ishak became purveyors of radical ideas. Not only were ideas of freedom and unity towards independence articulated, but concepts forbidden during the war such as the role of youths and mass support for Malay rights could be restored. Support was immense from the working classes and peasantry, with Malay youths flooding the party’s youth wing, the Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API) led by Ahmad Boestamam, and the women’s wing, Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS) by Aishah Ghani and later, Samsiah Fakeh. It also increased its influence by capitalising on trade unions via representation in the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU) and the Barisan Tani Se-Melaya (Batas). Soon, an ideological confrontation was inevitable with Umno, campaigning for a Federation of Malaya in lieu of the Malayan Union. The left saw the Union as a vehicle towards the Melayu-Raya dream. Declaring the monarchy’s irrelevance, PKMM was convinced of a nationwide revolution once all the Malay states were unified under a single entity of an independent Malaya, thus rendering a merger with Indonesia possible. The showdown came in June 1946 when PKMM decided against joining Umno. However, Umno won the day with the British, and the Union was withdrawn. The Beginning of the End While PKMM still commanded mass support, discord entailed between Burhanuddin and Boestamam, ending in the latter’s resignation in December 1946. This minor setback did not hinder subsequent unity. Dissatisfied with its exclusion from the Working Committee and Consultative Committee in drafting the Federation’s constitution, PKMM formed a coalition of Malay left-wing parties known as Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (Putera) in February 1947. Joining forces with the non-Malay All-Malaya Council of Joint Action (AMCJA), mass rallies were held, stirring public opposition against the Working Committee’s constitutional proposals. Their temporal success was highlighted by the drafting of the radical People’s Constitutional Proposals. Its failure to garner concessions from the authorities led to mass agitation with a one-day nationwide strike, the Hartal, in October 1947, with businesses coming to a standstill and all places of amusement being closed. Nevertheless, the coalition’s increasing demands for democratic reforms and immediate independence provoked the authorities to stigmatise it as a “communist invention”. While most of the Malay left were never communists, but were instead nationalists with radical socialist views, the increasing Cold War paranoia blurred this crucial distinction in favour of the Umno elites. While the left’s public image suffered under British propaganda, the rise in labour strikes, mass demonstrations and proliferation of communist propaganda and anti-government activities attributed to the revival of the Trade Union Ordinance which crippled most labour unions. Later, the Malayan Emergency of 1948 dashed the hopes of the leftist movement altogether. With one-third of core PKMM, API, AWAS and leftist members incarcerated, many avoided political activities. Given the bleak future and disappointments within, some crossed over to Umno instead, such as Mustapha Hussain who contested against Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1951, and Aishah Ghani, who became a supreme council member and led their women’s wing. Minorities such as Rashid Maidin and Abdullah CD continued the anti- British struggle in the jungle with the MCP. Demonised as the communist bogeyman, the fragmented left gradually lost their influence as Umno gained traction among the Malays. Decline The Partai Rakyat Malaya (PRM) marked the left’s final comeback. Led by Ishak and the released Boestaman, the party advocated a strand of Indonesian socialism which promoted the welfare and interests of the poor. Burhanuddin, in fact, played an instrumental role in its establishment, although given his pro-Islamic views, he later joined the Pan Malayan Islamic Party (PMIP). Given the lack of proper outreach to the non-Malays, PRM gained little attention and made few inroads until its coalition with the Labour Party of Malaya. Unfortunately, all was not to last. A revolt by A.M Azahari, a PRM activist in Brunei, soon implicated the party in militant activities. A massive crackdown followed and Burhanuddin, Boestamam and other party associates endured another round of incarceration that lasted throughout the Indonesian Confrontation. Weakened by the crackdown, the Confrontation terminated their Melayu-Raya dream.32 Continued government suppression and demonization of their “militant communism” soon nailed the coffin shut. As leftist sentiments continue to provoke subversive communist-inspired impressions, the Malay left still faces various political stigmatisation, although their struggle today is no longer anticolonial but one for social justice. While such a calling is still very much manifested in the Malaysian political scene, whether the Malay left has a chance of making a comeback remains to be seen. *This essay was first published in Penang Monthly, September 2017.

Many Malays opposed to colonialism in the pre-War period were considered communists by the British. Despite the failure of their various agendas, their early contributions were broad and lasting. By Koay Su Lyn, Izzuddin Ramli Being anti-colonial, the Malay Left was classed either as communists or at least as fellow travellers of the reds. The basis for this claim? Undeniably, being leftist or against the status quo was not enough to make one a communist. So who or what was the Malay Left, really? The Rise of the Malay Left For starters, the Malay Left ought to be understood against the backdrop of the heterogeneity of Malay society before the Second World War. By 1941, three separate strands had appeared to challenge those in power. The first was the Kaum Muda, a group of Middle East-educated scholars with Pan-Islamic sentiments who sought solutions to the social and economic backwardness of Malay-Muslims via Islam. The second was the radical intelligentsia inspired by the Indonesian nationalist movement. Lastly, there were the English-educated professionals and civil servants of the Malay Administrative Service. While political consciousness in Malay society developed at a relatively slower pace, the seeds of Malay radicalism were sown mainly through vernacular education – through the establishment of madrasahs, where ideas of Islamic reformism, nationalism and anti-colonialism were imputed and internalised. The Role of Madrasahs Unlike the “pondok” systems that confined their lessons to religious matters, madrasahs also taught secular subjects such as history, geography, speech-making and literature. It inculcated interest in worldly affairs, with religious reformist instructions that stimulated students’ interests in political matters coupled with an implicit religious motive – and a readymade leadership. This provided fertile ground for the seeds of radicalism to sprout; notable Malay Radicals such as Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Shamsiah Fakeh received their early education in these schools. As one would expect, the teaching staff at these schools were also exposed to reformist ideas and promoted the nationalist political culture that was taking shape. For instance, those employed in Madrasah al-Ihya Sharif in northern Perak had spent time in the Arab world and embraced the ideas of the Kaum Muda. Students were similarly encouraged to promote political awareness in the community through mainstream associations such as the Persaudaraan Sahabat Pena Malaya, which emerged as the “first Malay mass movement in the Peninsula”, providing a platform to address the socio-economic and political challenges confronting the Malays. Literature and Mass Media Ironically, the formation of Sultan Idris Training College (SITC) in 1922 by high-ranking education officer Richard Winstedt also worked in favour of the Left. Unlike Malay College Kuala Kangsar, SITC admitted students from all levels of Malay society with the policy of retaining them in traditional roles as peasants, fishermen, land tillers and manual labourers. Nevertheless, under O.T Dussek, the principal from its inception to 1936, “every activity that is genuinely cultural and genuinely Malay has flourished in an astonishing manner”. Dussek’s tenure witnessed the transfer of the Malay Translation Bureau from KL to SITC, with renowned linguist and thinker, Za’aba, as its head. A large amount of revolutionary and reformist literature from the Middle East was then translated and consumed by students and teachers like Abdul Hadi Hassan and Buyong Adil, broadening their horizons with fresh ideational frameworks that formed the rhetoric of the Left. In light of increasing education opportunities, the growth of printed mass media further illustrated these radical sentiments. Among the most important of these publications was the al-Imam (the Leader), a magazine and the main mouthpiece of pioneering Islamic reforms in Malay society. Upon returning to Malaya, Kaum Muda proponents saw that Malay-Muslim society was lacking in consciousness, particularly regarding social and economic matters. Malay leaders, their failure as role models enhanced by their sense of inferiority as well as their fascination with colonialist culture, became another core reason for resistance. Kaum Muda was predominantly led by Sheikh Mohd Tahir Jalaluddin, Syed Sheikh bin al-Hadi, Haji Abbas bin Mohd Taha and Sheikh Salim al-Kalali, while the al-Imam urged readers to re-evaluate their religious beliefs and practices that might have led them into social and economic backwardness. Featuring calls for Muslims to acquire knowledge, and warnings against ignorance and negligence in obtaining knowledge, the magazine became a medium where criticism was aimed at the docility of traditional and conservative Muslim religious scholars, the ulama (Kaum Tua). There was also the al-Ikhwan, where al-Hadi promoted the concept of women’s emancipation. Disenchantment with British colonialism and the traditional political and religious establishments, and anger over demands being made by immigrant races stirred the Malay Left further into action. Their distrust of the British and dissatisfaction with British-groomed bureaucratic and aristocratic elites mounted; the elites were perceived as colonial puppets and traitors to their own kind, alienated from the masses. Here, a stark contrast can be drawn with Indonesia, where Western-educated intellectuals empathised politically and culturally with the masses and even spearheaded anti-colonialist movements, whereas in Malaya, the “large number of Western-educated Malay, most of whom were from feudal well-positioned families, indicated cultural and political indifference”, leaving the struggle for independence to be borne by teachers and “small-time” leaders who identified with the rakyat. There was fear and resentment against the immigrant races agitating for more rights and privileges in the state councils in the early 1930s, and this sparked concerns and vehement reactions in the Malay press, especially Majlis, Saudara and Majalah Guru. These and the Great Depression, during which many mining and rubber-tapping jobs were lost, provided fertile ground for the rise of the Left. The Early Radicals The formation of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM) signalled the beginning of organised efforts to propagate radical sentiments among the Malays. Established in 1938, KMM was geared towards the early termination of British rule and the realisation of Melayu-Raya (the greater Malay state) encompassing British Malaya and Indonesia.17 The emergence of Partai Nasional Indonesia led by Sukarno in 1927 equipped KMM with brewing inspiration for their radical stance. Giving strong support for the anti-British struggle without pledging any loyalty to the sultans, the background of the KMM’s founding members is particularly noteworthy: the majority of them were journalists and college graduates with peasant backgrounds who had been exposed to the reformist ideas of nationalist movements in Turkey, the Middle East and Indonesia. A crucial factor behind their pro-Indonesian stance was the fact that many of them were educated in SITC and exposed to the concept of “Nusantara”. Its founder Ibrahim Yaakob himself was a graduate of SITC before he embarked on his journalistic career. Co-founders like Hasan Manan, Karim Rashid and Isa Mohammad were first-generation migrants from Indonesia. Disillusionment with the British administration was another push factor. Ishak Haji Muhammad (Pak Sako) for instance, left his job in the Malayan Civil Service and joined Ibrahim’s cause after finding the deception and social discrimination too bitter to swallow. Undeniably, KMM’s leadership consisted of self-made men, and the party’s inception witnessed an ideological spread among “low-class subjects” and like-minded members of the intelligentsia such as teachers and journalists. KMM was in no way communist. Their leftist stance however led them to associate themselves with other anti-British elements – even the Japanese. In fact, Ibrahim established secret ties with Japanese agents in Singapore even prior to the Occupation, which enabled him to buy Warta Malaya to intensify anti-British campaigns. The party was also secretly affiliated to the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), and these collaborations soon alarmed the authorities. Having established branches throughout the peninsula and after holding two Malay Congresses between 1939 and 1940, KMM’s leaders were arrested and imprisoned under the Defence Regulations of 1940, which crippled their activities until the Japanese invasion in 1941. Nonetheless, it was only after the war that the Malay Left managed to gain a significant foothold in Malayan politics. *This essay was first published in Penang Monthly, August 2017.

Artist Fahmi Reza attracted international attention when he was prosecuted for his work portraying the former Malaysian prime minister as a clown. After the 9 May election, but Fahmi's motivations remain the same: "to use graphic arts as a weapon to fight against injustice". The fall of the Barisan Nasional government in Malaysia’s recent general election was heralded by many—especially those who had long been in opposition politics—as a historic victory, the culmination of years of hard work. But for graphic designer, street artist and political activist Fahmi Reza, the struggle goes beyond a change in government. Regardless of who is in power, his political activism, done through his art, continues to hold everyone to account. “We celebrate the victory of the people after decades of struggle. But my loyalty is not to any particular regime, political party or leader. I will continue to criticise the new Pakatan Harapan government and its leaders if they act like dictators,” says Fahmi. He’s been concerned with social and political issues from his earliest work, created in 2004: “My stance does not change—to use graphic arts as a weapon to fight against injustice, oppression, human rights abuse, racism and any acts denying the people’s freedom of expression.” Fahmi’s provocative political art has often landed him in trouble. In 2004, for example, he created a series of designs as a protest against police brutality—one such poster depicted a police officer pointing a gun in a pose that resembling American artist J. M. Flagg’s iconic 1917 army recruitment poster featuring an illustration of Uncle Sam. For that, he was arrested and beaten by the authorities. 12 years later, he was again summoned by the police over his most celebrated and influential work, Kita Semua Penghasut (We Are All Agitators). It ridiculed then-prime minister Najib Razak by portraying him as a clown. The image was produced as a poster and went viral online; a single act of defiance was turned into a social media icon, reproduced again and again as it passed from one to another. The authorities took a dim view: Fahmi was fined MYR30,000 (USD7,520) and sentenced to one month in prison. But such work—fearlessly irreverent and satirical—has contributed towards the social and political mindset shift that ultimately led to Malaysians voting out their long-time rulers. Humour and politics The use of satirical graphics and cartoons as a form of political expression is not new. Long before Malaya gained independence from the British, cartoonists used both the Malay- and English-language press—notably Utusan Melayu and Lembaga Melayu—to trigger public debate through satirical graphic commentaries on the economic, politics and social issues of the day. Humour was sometimes a useful way of escaping colonial censorship. From the 1970s onwards, a new wave of “humour magazines” emerged, most famously Gila-Gila. Their artists drew on folktales, fables and film parodies as the basis for sharp social commentary. Zunar, Malaysia’s most well-known political cartoonist, had a regular column with Gila-Gila early in his career. Thanks to a combination of rising print costs and the reach of the Internet and social media, graphic artists like Fahmi emerged online after the decline in popularity of the humour magazines. They quickly found a new audience: young, politically engaged and socially diverse. It was an opportune moment: the Reformasi movement of the late 1990s had begun to challenge a static, repressive political landscape. Street protests and political conversations added bite to the politics of change. Cartoonists and graphic artists from various social and political backgrounds seized the moment. Participation in the art-making process Studying in the United States in the late 1990s, where he was exposed to the political punk music scene, influenced Fahmi’s political activism. He began designing for punk gigs and bands. One of his first pieces was a striking album cover for the band From Ashes Rise: a monstrous insect sucking the blood out of a Planet Earth portrayed as a skull. The cover signalled some of Fahmi’s enduring motifs: the punk feel; the stark black-and-white drawing; the themes of life and death; the direct critique of exploitation. He was paid in vinyl records. Back in Malaysia after four years in the States, Fahmi’s graphic work took off from modest beginnings. His work might start off as a single image, but he’s a master of multiplying its reach: posters, placards, banners, T-shirts, badges, and, inevitably, online digital images. He harnessed local and global political understandings of resistance, and plunged himself into political activism. “The use of crowdsourcing in the art-making process aims to cultivate a ‘participatory culture’ as the main element in creating an egalitarian and horizontal participatory democracy,” Fahmi says. “It is important for the people to be more active participants or producers, instead of being passive consumers, as well as to use their power, knowledge and wisdom in decision-making processes.” Fahmi suggests that “most of my graphics and posters function as a medium for the people to speak. So their participation in the art-making process is vital in order to make the end products relevant and representative.” He engages his audiences through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. This allows them to be part of the process, from collectively selecting the subject matter, such as during the creation of ABC Politikus Malaysia—an “A to Z” colouring book of Malaysian politicians—to the final stages of printing and dissemination. This participatory method creates in his audience a sense of ownership over Fahmi’s artwork. In Kita Semua Penghasut, for example, Fahmi encouraged people to download and print the image as stickers, or print them on to T-shirts. He waived his copyright, so people could use the image for free. Many small printing companies also supported his cause, donating profits from T-shirt sales to community activism projects or charity organisations. The pen is mightier… The decade between the 2008 general election—the first time the Barisan Nasional failed to win a two-thirds majority in Parliament—and today has seen a remarkable rejuvenation of politics in Malaysia. Some of this took place on the elite political level; opposition political parties forged new alliances and became more proactive in pushing a reform agenda, gaining more hands-on experience through running state governments. But change also happened at the more informal, grassroots level; in fact, one can argue that this ground-up growth led to a more sustained social and political transformation in Malaysia. Many fresh and innovative forms of political involvement emerged, especially in the urban centres: alternative music scenes; punchy fiction and poetry published by independent imprints; thought-provoking performance art; and, of course, graphic art, propelled by its simplicity and immediacy. Malaysians, often treated as passive receivers, need to be turned into informed and active participants, with a critical disposition towards all forms of political power Fahmi, for one, believes in a people-centred democracy, where empowerment is key. Malaysians, often treated as passive receivers, need to be turned into informed and active participants, with a critical disposition towards all forms of political power. “Audiences participate at many different levels, from sharing ideas and information, consultations, to the level in which they themselves take control of the discussions and come out with decisions. And I only materialise them into graphics,” he says. Some of his projects are clearly driven by everyday forms of resistance from below—mobilising what James Scott once called “the weapons of the weak”. For example, drawing on the inspiration of political developments elsewhere, Occupy Dataran, a grassroots movement where people gathered at Dataran Merdeka (Merdeka Square) in Kuala Lumpur to experiment with models of participatory democracy, was an initiative “to explore the true meaning of democracy beyond the representative system, to redefine democratic participation beyond elections, and to increase and deepen public participation in political decision-making. To give power back to the people.” In a different vein, Chow Kit Kita was a community-based project with children that used photography, video, graphics, mapping and performance to change perceptions of Chow Kit, a neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur often linked to crime and drugs. Meanwhile, Missing Mushroom was partly a protest against rampant over-development (and its attendant system of kickbacks) and a challenge to create more green spaces in the city. Other work often deals with the dysfunctional character of Malaysian politics and its leading personalities. The ABC Politikus Malaysia, for instance, uses one of the sharpest weapons in the political lexicon—satire—to lampoon leaders without fear or favour: the letter K stands for koruptor (corruptor), unsurprisingly former Prime Minister Najib Razak, while D stands for diktator (dictator), illustrated by former and current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The people’s opinions were gathered to decide who would be represented by which letter in the book. Malay as the language of communication Fluency in both English and Malay has given Fahmi an advantage in spreading his political messages. He intentionally uses Malay to engage with and appeal to a more diverse audience. In Malaysia, language is a major barrier dividing urban and rural communities, who all too often appear to inhabit completely different worlds—while the more affluent urbanites are fluent in English, rural Malaysians lacking opportunities of global exposure and education are unable to acquire those linguistic skills. “Even though the majority of youths are well-versed in English, the Malay language remains the common language for Malaysians, even for those who speak English as their main language,” says Fahmi. “The use of English may exclude almost half of my audience. Graphics or any form of visual arts is a universal language. Although one may not understand the language that I use, the graphics can still deliver the messages.” His conscious decision to use Malay doesn’t mean that his work is narrowly parochial. On the contrary, it has resonated far and wide. The Kita Semua Penghasut project gained support and praise from international journalists and human rights groups after his arrest. Some commentators in the international media have compared his work to that of the famous street art provocateur Banksy. The struggle continues For Fahmi, despite the stunning people’s victory in peacefully ousting the Barisan Nasional, the struggle for real social change continues. It’s hardly “mission accomplished”—Fahmi sees the future as a long and winding road—but a culture of protest and resistance has been instilled among the citizens, introduced over years of activism and broad-based movements like Bersih. Protests and community organising across the country signal that people are no longer afraid to express their dissatisfaction towards the government, and are empowered to use their voice. “With the emergence of new social movements that are more powerful, more effective and last for the long haul in our struggle, I hope to see the future of Malaysian politics head towards a more grassroots citizens-based democracy instead of the current elitist democracy,” says Fahmi. “In a country that is ruled by the corrupt, the most patriotic that the people can be is to disobey the government” A sustainable democracy exists when people are empowered to have input in decision-making processes, rather than being forced to leave it all to a political elite. Fahmi believes that there’s a need for all Malaysians to answer the call for political emancipation, rising social consciousness and the creation of genuine alternatives to broken institutions. “I believe we need to nurture more activists and develop more ‘rebel designers’ to fight for change in this country,” he says. “I hope to see more artists and designers getting involved in the struggle, with the courage to stand up against injustice, to use their art as weapons for change.” Fahmi also believes that democracy only works when there are active and critical citizens, regardless of the current government’s party colours. As a normal citizen, he says, “the people need to know that loyalty towards leaders and the government is not an act of patriotism. In a country that is ruled by the corrupt, the most patriotic that the people can be is to disobey the government, just like they proved in the election.” *This article was first published in New Naratif, June 2018.