Globalization and National Autonomy: The Experience of Malaysia

10. The National Culture Policy and Contestation over Malaysian Identity by Sumit K. Mandal

273 10 THE฀NATIONAL฀CULTURE฀POLICY฀ AND฀CONTESTATION฀OVER฀ MALAYSIAN฀IDENTITY Sumit฀K.฀Mandal INTRODUCTION This chapter turns to the National Culture Policy which is little remembered today outside of circles involved in cultural production in Malaysia, especially the arts community. A survey of relevant and significant publications of the past several decades shows no mention at all of the policy (Vorys 1976, Nagata 1979, Andaya and Andaya 1982, Crouch 1996, Hooker 2003, Abdul Rahman 2006). Laws passed in the areas of language and education as well as the Rukunegara [National Credo] are typically raised in discussions of culture in Malaysia but not the National Culture Policy (henceforth NCP). One of the reasons for the relative neglect of the NCP is that it was not enacted and therefore did not have the force of law. Rather, it was formulated and gained power largely due to the efforts of an exclusionary Malay cultural leadership. In addition, the NCP’s influence did not last beyond the 1980s when it met with strong social protest as well as the intensification of globalizing policies. Furthermore, the NCP has been overshadowed by the formulation and implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP). As a consequence, the cultural restructuring attempted in the 1970s has not drawn as much attention as the social and economic reorientation. The framework of the NCP remains in place but its force is much diminished today. 10฀GlobalNAn.indd฀฀฀273 7/23/08฀฀฀9:53:25฀AM 274 SUMIT K. MANDAL Why study a policy that has apparently had such a lacklustre history? The NCP was, in the 1970s and 1980s, a site of contestation over vital questions such as the culture and identity of the country. Although initiated by the government as one of the measures to encourage national unity following the racialized political crisis of 1969, the NCP became the source of a great deal of contention. Bodies representing the respective cultural interests of different ethnic groups claimed that the policy equated national culture with Malay culture to the exclusion of others. Meanwhile, the exclusionary Malay cultural leadership felt that the NCP provided an opportunity to address the historical marginalization of the Malay language and culture in the colonial era. Lloyd Fernando, then Professor of English at the University of Malaya, made the telling observation in 1969 that Malaysians who were not Malay, with a few exceptions, could speak only a smattering of Malay purely for utilitarian purposes (Fernando 1986, p. 86). The exclusionary cultural leadership was aggrieved by how the language and culture of the majority were held in disregard by the urban middle classes and elites (including Malays), and thus actively shaped the NCP after its own vision. This leadership imbued the NCP with a racialized nationalism that marginalized the cultures of the other ethnic groups in the country. This move departed so far from the liberal terms of the Rukunegara — promulgated in 1970 and widely accepted — as to contradict the position taken by the political leadership itself. It was not in the interest of the political leadership to have a counter-productive cultural policy in its drive for national unity. Nevertheless, elements of the political leadership appear to have been invested in the destructive racialization or at least tacitly approved of it. As it turned out, culture was an arena contested with considerable force because it was through language, cultural symbols and the arts that collective suffering and indignation was expressed. The NCP’s beginnings lay in an attempt to explore across artistic and cultural forms the significance as well as the means of developing a national identity in a country that possessed historical inequalities experienced along ethnic and linguistic lines. In contrast to many other former colonies, the nation was actively sought in Malaysia after independence rather than before. The NCP was therefore a belated effort at seeking a national identity through the arts. Instead of taking into consideration the experience of the once colonized population as a whole however, the Malay cultural leadership in question envisioned a national identity solely in its own image. While this leadership attributed to Malays a long-standing historical 10฀GlobalNAn.indd฀฀฀274 7/23/08฀฀฀9:53:25฀AM THE฀NATIONAL฀CULTURE฀POLICY฀ 275 stake in the country and the region, it saw the other colonized groups — such as Tamil labour — as immigrants who were extraneous to the Malay experience. Designed to alienate...