Conceptualizing the Malay World: Colonialism and Pan-Malay Identity in Malaya by Soda Naoki (review)

In Conceptualizing the Malay World: Colonialism and Pan-Malay Identity in Malaya, Soda Naoki begins with problematizing the conventional approach many have taken in assessing British colonialism in Malaya, and argues that the agency of the colonized in understanding, subverting or appropriating colonial conceptions of ethnicity must be considered. Indeed, the author is right to point out that often, scholars tend to propagate the idea that the British were able to define the contours of ethnic identities in their colonies without much contestations from the locals. While not denying the effect the colonizers had in producing, and reproducing, ethnic identities, this book details the specific mechanisms via which those understandings were challenged by locals as well. The story given is thus a more representative, albeit complex one. Studying the transmission of knowledge at the Sultan Idris Training College (SITC)—a training college for Malay-school teachers which was tasked to reproduce colonial understandings of ethnicity and gender—the author finds that locals, though influenced by colonial notions of ‘Malay-ness’, sought to redefine the meanings of ‘Malay-ness’. Through analysing the main textbooks used by SITC on history and geography, the author deduces that the concept of a Malay as a race became more prominent, and mediated the “gap between official census classifications and the popular consciousness” (p. 92). Territoriality became an important aspect of this understanding, as Malaya became the focal point. Additionally, the books advocated a progressivist view of Malay history, where the Malay civilisation gradually went through a positive evolution, beginning with the primitive Buddhist-Hindu kingdoms, and culminating in British rule.

The main protagonist of the monograph is the President of the first left-wing Malay national organization (Kesatuan Melayu Muda, Young Malay Union), Ibrahim Haji Yaacob. As an SITC graduate, Ibrahim did not merely accept the the colonial understanding of Malay-ness was, or what he had been taught, but rather, developed his own idea of pan-Malay identity. First and foremost, his ideas on Malay-ness involved a great degree of exclusion of the other races: the Malay identity was defined vis-à-vis the Chinese and Indians. Secondly, even though he was initially more supportive of British rule, his later writings had an anti-colonial bent to them as he began propounding the Melayu Raya/Indonesia Raya (Greater Malay/Greater Indonesia) concept. For Ibrahim, while he accepted that the premises of the colonial understanding of Malay-ness, which are race, territoriality, and progressivist history, he sought to redefine them. His idea of race and territoriality were broad enough to include Indonesians, and thus Malaya was not the epicentre. He opined that Malays in Malaya and Indonesians were part of the same nation. Furthermore, as he became more anti-colonial, he put forth the claim that colonization represented an age of decline for the Malays.

In essence, this book is a story of Malay identity: how the colonialists sought to impose their definitions of ethnicity on the populace, and how the locals redefined those understandings as active agents and not passive passers-by. The book deals with the “transmission, localization, transformation, reproduction and reconstruction” of knowledge (p. 158); it must never be assumed that just because there is a power imbalance, anything the colonialists tried to impart would be wholly accepted by the native populations. In the tradition of James Scott, politically unimportant actors can still prove to be significant, through various ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985).

The book most definitely achieved its objective in demonstrating the various contestations that took place with colonial impositions, through the adroit usage of the case of Ibrahim. Its relevance to current-day politics in Malaysia (and even Singapore, even though the author did not highlight this) was made explicit, and shows how the study is not merely looking back at history for the sake of it, but to make sense of the Malay world as we know...