Melayu

Chapter 3 Malay Racialism and the Sufi Alternative

68 Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid Chapter 3 Malay Racialism and the Sufi Alternative Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid Historical Settings In studes of dentty constructon and evoluton of socal groups whose members are seen to possess shared features and characterstcs, the concepts of “race,” “ethncty” and “naton” often end up beng conflated wth one another. In Malaysa, the majorty Malay communty has commonly been referred to as bangsa Melayu, whch gets translated as both “Malay race” and “Malay naton.” When poltcans refer to bangsa, t s often confusng whether they are referrng to a racal or a natonal dentty. Such conceptual vagueness s smlarly wdespread n the dscursve lexcography of “Malayness,” whether n the academc or popular doman. Whle dfferentaton of groups based on culture, relgon and phenotype has been gong on ever snce regons of the Malay world became populated, systematc classficaton of peoples was first undertaken as part of a 19thcentury census categorzatons colonal project to dentfy, dscover and subjugate all lvng elements n colonzed terrtores. Scentfically justfied as an endeavor to push fronters of knowledge n the emergng field of anthropology, racal, ethnc and natonal categores were arbtrarly dentfied and even nvented to demarcate the then already dverse populatons of Malaya. The 1891 Strats Settlements census was a watershed n the offical recognton of “Malay,” “Chnese” and “Indan” as dscrete “natonal” categores, whch were transformed nto “racal” categores by the turn of the century.1 The colonal admnstraton manfestly gnored the sheer dversty wthn all three communtes. 68 Malay Racialism and the Sufi Alternative 69 Colonal legslaton desgned to handle affars of the separate communt es, such as the Malay Reservaton Enactment of 1913, helped to crystallze what began as nnocuous ethnc configuratons.2 It was colonal scholaradm nstrators such as Stamford Raffles and Wllam Marsden who constructed “Malays” as a dstnct naton by gvng them common hstorcal antecedents, geographcal orgns and cultural attrbutes.3 The colonalst dscourse was then transmtted to the Malay populace va Malay-medum textbooks whch nvarably became meda for nstructon n the Brtsh-controlled vernacular educaton.4 As an academc dscplne, Malay studes or Malaystcs has struggled to establsh an ndgenous dentty free from the shackles of colonal paradgms of knowledge.5 Malayness was eventually nextrcably bound wth three pllars: bahasa (language), agama (relgon) and raja (ruler); the dscursve detals of these, however, formed areas of contestaton among generators of colonal knowledge.6 The devastatng mpact of the colonal nvason of local epstemologcal space va a set of “nvestgatve modaltes,” to use Shamsul’s terms,7 s stll felt today n both the scholarly realm and practcal poltcs. More than any other analytcal devce, “race” has been the domnant tool of socal dfferentaton n post-ndependent Malaysan poltcal parlance n spte of the pejoratve connotatons attached to t. Hstorcally nterwoven wth mperalsm and the advent of 19th-century Socal Darwnsm, “race” dfferentates humans accordng to phenotype — physcal features and physologcal attrbutes whch ther owners are not n control of. Whereas an objectve enumerat on of races nternally homogenzes n-group members of a partcular race, eventually formalzng them through admnstratve and legal channels, “ethncty” “s explctly subjectve,” “acknowledges multple ancestres,” recogn zes groups as “porous and heterogeneous” and emphaszes “ambgu...