When communal conflicts hit the Malaysian headlines like how it did during the recent temple controversy near downtown Kuala Lumpur, identities would experience a kind of centripetal force. In this case, the Malay identity gets solidify in the popular imagination as hardliners—politicians and ordinary people alike—rally up the crowd to join in the fight. This is true with the other communities too. When egging for a fight, it is easier to rally up a generalized identity: Malays versus Indians or Muslims versus Hindus. To appeal to emotions, simplify. The controversy has been dialed down, but the ill-feeling still lingers.
How do we fight off that centripetal pull all with the hope of undoing all those riled up emotions?
Within that context, one is tempted to take the idea of centripetal forces on identities and invert it. Instead of generalizing, maybe it is useful to de-generalize and make identity a complicated idea, which it is.
If that is so, then reading of Dina Zaman’s Malayland will prove useful. In it, the author lays out the various Malaynesses that exist in contemporary Malaysia and briefly show interest of these subgroups is not always aligned and in fact almost always diverges. The Malays are not a monolithic community, a fact that is sometimes easy to forget.
The book is not an encyclopedia of Malay subgroups and the author explores what she seems to consider the most influential ones only. She provides actual individuals behind the labels. In that way, the book feels less theoretical and more real.
One criticism that keeps popping at the back of my mind while reading Malayland is its length. There are multiple instances where the author approaches the interesting (such as events that shaped the subgroups) but almost every time that happens, the elaboration does not happen. The path ends abruptly. It is a tease and the readers are left to their own devices to satisfy their curiosity.
But there are different ways to read. Different books require different approach. To approach one in a way it is not meant to be read will left any reader dissatisfied. I think here is where the foreword by Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin Tuanku Muhkriz is useful in framing the right approach:
The subjects in Malayland show case an even broader set of identities than its predecessor of seventeen years before—Dina’s 2007 book I am Muslim. [Page IX. Malayland. Dina Zaman.]
The purpose of Malayland, if I as a reader could be so daring, is to show the existing diversity within the Malay community. It is neither an encyclopedia nor an academic work, which several critics of Malayland, I feel, implicitly rest their (and mine too) criticism upon. The book is window for those who do not already know of identity diversity and there are many who still do not know while living in a cocoon where their outside world is a caricature of prejudice. For them, Malayland is a hook to change a worldview.