Tag: colonialism

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Economics

[2677] Should we bring development to them?

Europe was uncontested center of the world during the periods leading up to the 20th century. It was the fountainhead of human civilization. Their progress allowed them to become the foremost colonial powers of the world. The British Empire itself was so vast that as the saying goes, the sun never sets on it.

European achievements created significant inequality in the world. It was an inequality between peoples. It was the modern world versus the primitive world. It was the world of steam engines against the bullock carts.

That inequality later introduced one strong justification for European colonialism across the world. It was the white’s man burden: it was the responsibility of the white people to civilize mankind as a whole.

The world has changed since then. Almost all countries belonging to the Western world are now mired in economic turmoil while many countries of formerly colonized peoples are now actively lobbying to become the new center of the world.

But the idea of the colonialist’s burden never truly died long after the age of colonialism. Underneath what appears a racist idea is the assumption that all of us must live in a certain way. All of us must want the convenience of modern life. That convenience ranges from clean running water and stable electricity supply to good education and health services. We must strive for a minimum level of modern standard of living. We want and need development, as the assumption goes.

To put the idea in a less racist connotation, the white’s man burden was really a forced technology transfer that was meant to raise the recipients’ standard of living to one which the givers’ deemed as acceptable. The modern society looks at its primitive counterparts and decides, ”We can improve their welfare if we educate them.”

It is a narrative the group with the significant advantage says to the less well-off one in the style of a father telling his child, ”I know what is best for you.”

The colonial masters are no more but the paternalistic idea of spreading the light, so-to-speak, remains. In modern Malaysia, it comes in the fashion of the center developing the periphery. It is about those in the Klang Valley and other urban areas civilizing those far at the edge of enlightenment.

Development agenda in Malaysia, after all, has mostly been dictated from the seat of power. The many five-year plans over the years are some of the proof on how centrally-driven the Malaysian development process has been.

This is not so much a condemnation of those plans. Clearly many aspects developments require considerable centralization. But that does not negate the paternalism goes along with the developmental dictation.

Consider also the rhetoric surrounding the idea of gratefulness by those in power: all of us should be grateful to the bringer of development. Whether or not the rhetoric is reasonable, it highlights how strong the assumption that we all want and need development is.

But it is hard for the beneficiaries of progress to be grateful when they stand apart from that assumption on development. There are those who do not want development even if it improves their welfare.

Take for instance a hypothetically significantly isolated village in the Malaysian interior far from the smallest of towns. Perhaps a hypothetical Malaysian example does not quite make it. Imagine instead real indigenous communities in the inaccessible interior of Brazil and Papua New Guinea whose lifestyle has not changed by much for over thousands of years.

An earnest development push will see roads snaking into the interior to reach these communities. A tarred road will come. Next, a constant electricity supply. Soon, telephone line and maybe not long after that, the internet if there is no mobile coverage to start with. All of that will bring the community closer to the mainstream modern world and threaten to make the old way of life into something that fits the exhibition requirement of a museum. The mainstream culture can swallow whole most ferociously.

If certain communities refuse progress, should the modern society leave the indigenous society alone? Or should the modern society take up the old white man’s burden as theirs — ours — to carry?

Agreeing to the communities and leaving them largely alone does not seem very humane in the long run. The inequality between the modern society and the isolated communities, which is already big, will widen. That inequality will if it has not yet, disfranchised the communities. They will lose their voice among the noisy and sophisticated modern society. The danger is that when they scream, nobody can hear them.

But to bring in progress to them regardless of their wish is the height of arrogance. It is a very authoritarian idea that outsiders know what is best for those communities and that the outsiders should dictate the course of those communities.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in the Selangor Times on April 12 2013.

Categories
History & heritage Society

[2432] The evolution of cleanliness, according to Farish Noor

It is always a pleasure to listen to what Farish Noor has to say. He is a kind of a hip academician that challenges and entertains the mind. He makes history subversive and so making it much more interesting that the dull official version sanctioned by the establishment. I like subversion, even if I myself am increasingly conforming to societal rules… for a libertarian, that is. Last weekend when he held his regular public lecture at the Central Market Annex was no different.

He has a hypothesis on the understanding of the concept cleanliness and its evolution since colonial times. I do not buy it outright because it is, well, too clean and too specific. If you have a certain set of events, you are likely to be able to accommodate a lot of themes if you are creative enough.

Farish wanted to tie that lecture with the Bersih movement. I thought that was all too convenient. It sounded as if he was working the problem backward rather than deriving it from the root. Given this, there has to be more than a theme to sew it all together cleanly and tightly.

Nevertheless, the hypothesis of his is interesting enough for me to have a think and to modify it so that to make it more general. I find the looser understanding of his hypothesis which I consider as the gradual inversion of top-down approach of governance into the organic one as a more convincing narrative.

The whole premise of the lecture was how the idea of cleanliness was originally state-centric. European colonial powers in Southeast Asia considered the tropical environment with some disgust. The tropical jungle with sweltering sun conjured insect-infested environment, always associated with diseases like malaria.

The colonial powers brought with them new ways of life, apparently more ordered and cleaner, free from the naturally dirty tropics.

These powers introduced systematic town planning and better sanitation in Southeast Asia. Farish showed a photograph or maybe a painting contrasting clean European-designed building painted white erected in Southeast Asia with wooden Malay homes built haphazardly with coconut trees growing here and there randomly. If I may exaggerate, cows roamed free in the Malay village. European colonial powers took the former as clean, and the later as dirty. Farish more than hinted the racial superiority European colonialists held against the native then.

He argued that the introduction of modern medicine through colonial state apparatus further strengthened the European notion of cleanliness. The scientific nature of modern understanding of medicine intertwined with European understanding of cleanliness. Traditional Southeast Asian medicine was looked down at due to its dependence on beliefs regardless of its efficacy (here was where I first disagreed with Farish’s lecture. While a lot of these kinds of medicine are effective, many more are based on grandmother’s belief and downright fraud). The colonial powers undertook upon themselves to apply modern understanding of medicine and hence cleanliness to clean up the colonies. Hence, the introduction of town planning, for instance.

For him, cleanliness is not confined only to physical cleanliness. He argued at the public lecture that the definition of cleanliness was more wholesome. It also includes moral and spiritual aspects. It is this definition that allowed him to tell a story of evolving definition of cleanliness. He defended his definition by highlighting that the local inhabitants’ understanding of the term cleanliness included moral and spiritual cleanliness: a soul or morality untainted by the bad intention or even touched by the devil so-to-speak. He cited various customs as a lemma to his larger point.

Farish believed the notion of cleanliness that the European colonialists brought to this part of the world was a facade to cover up the dirty business of colonialism. While the colonial towns and capitals were neat, the political and economic exploitations were ugly: tin mines, rubber plantations, the misery these activities brought to the immigrants, the wars and crime. Farish argued that even the introduction of health ordinances was done toward this end.

European racism somehow got into the picture, with the colonial masters inevitably associated all things dirty with the locals and that gave the impetus for the mission of civilizing humankind, or probably in Farish Noor’s parlance, making everything clean. Here is where the wholesome definition of cleanliness gets into the larger picture.

This all encompassing understanding of cleanliness gives one mandate to govern. I am better than you, and therefore I am the master. From mere racism, it was later translated into statism. The state was all knowing.

Fast-forward to post-colonial Malaysia, the racist connotation (racism among Malaysians notwithstanding) was gone but the statism prevailed.

This time around however, the common people subscribing to Islamic values saw the government was dirty, whatever those values were. It was a kind of nationalism that despised colonial legacy. In the 1970s, the university students saw the political elites and institutions as champagne drinking men living a Western lifestyle. These elites were not the god-fearing leaders that fit the idealized leaders these students dreamed for. The students were revolting against what they thought was impure political structure.

Farish believes this was the first seed that prodded civil society to assume the concept of cleanliness as theirs and turned it from state-centric to organic definition. From the state being clean and the ruled being dirty, the relationship was subverted and reversed. What was dirty was clean, and what was clean was dirty.

He then introduced the Bersih movement into the storyline.

It is the civil society in Malaysia which now sees the government as dirty, and that civil society is stepping up to the pedestal, and beginning talking down to the government, as the government did previously. The civil society wants to clean up the corrupt government. Thus explains the evolution of the concept ”cleanliness” up to contemporary time.

Again, the evolution of cleanlinessis too convenient for me. Again, like I wrote earlier, I find the looser hypothesis more attractive, a hypothesis that traces the evolution of the relationship between the governed and the governing rather than that of a concept, which has to be loosen up beyond its typical meaning before it could fit Farish’s narrative.

Categories
History & heritage

[1270] Of Victorian moralist in Perak’s Augean Stable

Published in Berita Harian last week was a long letter urging film director Jins Shamsuddin to get cracking on the filming of an explosive event in Malaysian history, the assassination of James Birch, the first British Resident of Perak at Pasir Salak on Nov 2 1875, the second day of Hari Raya.

Three years have passed since the initial announcement on the film and among those offering co-operation and funding is the Perak Government. Finas (The National Film Corporation) had offered assistance and at one stage it was announced that a British film company would be involved in the project, but since then nothing more has been heard about it.

A charitable explanation for the delay might be the historical research required. In these days of books by biographers, hagiographers and traducers no royal personage, president or prime minister – past or present – is safe. Warts and all is what people want to read.

We begin with Sir Richard Winstedt, the Malay language scholar, who praised Birch and derided Sultan Abdullah. Of the former he wrote: “…an English gentleman with all the virtues and defects of his class…a man in a hurry to carry light to Perak…for even long experience had failed to bring home to his unimaginative mind that hurry is futile in the training of child-like chieftains, especially when they are sensitive, proud and spoilt”.

And of Abdullah, the Perak Sultan, Winstedt wrote: “….a young Malay raja with the charming manners of his class and the vices proper to the spoilt darling of a royal harem, sensitive as a woman to slights and shades of manner, fastidious as a woman over dress, an extravagant libertine, vain, timid and adept at intrigue”.

As Professor Khoo Kay Kim, the historian wrote in his monograph J.W.W. Birch: A Victorian moralist in Perak’s augean stable? Winstedt saw Birch as the epitome of virtue and Abdullah, the personification of vice. In short, everything is black or white and there are no shades of grey.

It had been submitted, Khoo added, that Birch failed as a Resident only because he lacked diplomacy and that he was ignorant of Malay adat (custom) and language. “But was he completely ignorant of the Malay language?”

Quoted then was Charles Fox, Chief Clerk of the Eastern Department in the Colonial Office in London: “There can be no doubt of his (Birch’s) ability and that his knowledge of Malay Language and some experience in dealing with these Native Chiefs is in his favour (Feb 2, 1874)….It will be very difficult to replace the loss of one who knew well the people and language” (Nov 10, 1875, after Birch’s death).

Noted was that Cox knew Birch for many years since the latter had been in the colonial service for 27 years, having previously served in Ceylon.

There was the oft-repeated story that Birch tried to abolish slavery. Quoted then was Sir Peter Benson Maxwell, an English barrister:”…the despatches allude to Mr Birch’s feelings of humanity as prompting him to protect runaway slaves. When the cases are examined, the slaves are found to be girls, and girls only”.

Mentioned in the accompanying notes was a letter sent by Datuk Mustapha Albakri dated Jan 31, 1952, Keeper of the Rulers’ Seal, about a Malay manuscript which described Birch as an “over-sexed man”.

Also in the manuscript was the claim that the “outrageous behaviour of the Indian guards towards the women in the locality multiplied the resentment of the Malay chiefs towards Birch and his men a hundredfold”.

Mention has been made by others that some slaves were given by Birch to his policemen to become their mistresses.

Also noted was the finding of a board of inquiry that Birch had borrowed money from three Chinese – Tan Seng Poh, Cheang Hong Lim and Tan Chin Hoon. “Some months after Birch had borrowed money from him, Chin Hoon’s steamer was seized by Tunku Kudin, Viceroy of Selangor. Birch wrote personally to Kudin to release the steamer but it appears that he failed to influence Kudin”.

As has also been mentioned in the introduction to Birch’s journals he was heavily indebted to several Chinese merchants, one of whom had the Singapore opium farm.

Despite the inquiry Birch was sent to Perak in October 1874 to assume provisionally the duties of Resident. Questioned later was his management of revenue collection in the State. There was then the conclusion: “Even the colonial office had sufficient misgivings about Birch to prompt it to refuse to confirm him in the post of Resident without more searching investigations into his financial circumstances. Until his death, therefore, Birch was but acting provisionally in the office”.

How did Birch get on with the Perak Sultan? Written in his diary dated Feb 3, 1875, is the following: “The Sultan wished to go down to Batarabit, and I accompanied him as far. I had a very long talk with him about the taxes, and gave him two proclamations which I want him to issue: one about the future duty on mines and the other about the customs duties”.

And on Feb 4, Thursday: “The Sultan ordered a fat sheep to be killed and invited me for breakfast with Dris. Again we had a long talk about the taxes etc, and he personally is quite ready to fall into my views”.

On another occasion Abdullah made a plea for some money but was turned down and instead given a humiliating lecture in front of his followers by Birch.

No less illuminating is his diary dated Nov 9, Monday, 1874: “Prince of Wales birthday. Did not forget it even here. Gave the man a duck curry and the clerks beer, and hoisted my flag at 8am. It was curious to see how many came to look at it, and then all sat down and expressed a general opinion as to the good to be derived to the country by its being hoisted, and their future comparative safety”.

As recorded Birch was killed while bathing on a raft after he had ordered his interpreter Mat Arshad to post three proclamations on a goldsmith’s shop. The action was challenged by Dato’ Sagor accompanied by some 50 armed men.

In the months that followed all considered implicated in the assassination were hunted by the colonial authorities with the assistance of troops from India and Hong Kong. Tried and hanged were Dato’ Maharaja Lela, Dato’ Sagor and four others.

Exiled to the Seychelles were Sultan Abdullah, the Menteri, Dato Laksamana and Dato Shahbandar. Several others were banished to Johor.

No mean task, therefore, would be the filming of the incident which indeed hastened the colonisation of Peninsular Malaysia. Tell it like it was, Jins has already been advised by the Perak istana. He would need to get advice from such as Khoo, history professor Zainal Abidin and others to get the story right.

What is to be presented is history, not propaganda. Among questions raised would be the practice of slavery in old Perak and how the ordinary rakyat in the kampung fared in those not so halcyon days.

A nation’s history has its ups and downs, zig-zags, bloody conflicts and moments of triumphs. As someone remarked, boring is the country in need of heroes. [Personally Speaking: Tell the Birch story like it was. Mazlan Nordin. NST. February 6 1998]