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MALAYSIA AND ITS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE |
The most distinctive features of modern Malaysia and Singapore are their multiracial populations. The majority of the population, known culturally and politically as Malay, has inhabited the area for at least 2,500 years. The other two main ethnic groups, the Chinese and the Indians, mostly arrived in the area in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although a small number of both immigrant communities can trace their roots back several centuries.
It is the Malays who inhabited the area when modern written history began, and it is the Malays who were influenced culturally by the geography of the area, as well as by the intermigration of people within archipelago Southeast Asia.
Climatically, Malaysia is part of what is often called Monsoon Asia. Monsoons are strong seasonal winds that blow from the northeast from October to March, and from the southwest during the remaining part of the year. These winds bring tremendous amounts of rainfall, especially the northeast monsoon. On the Indian subcontinent and mainland Southeast Asia, the monsoons cause significant seasonal changes on which agriculture is dependent. Malaysia, situated near the equator, has only two seasons – a rainy season and a rainier season. Even during the so-called dry season from May to September, there are at least seven days of rain each month.
While the western coast of the peninsula experiences significant rainfall, it is protected from the southwest monsoon by Sumatra and from the northeast monsoon by its main mountain range. However, freak storms sometimes occur on the Straits of Melaka during the southwest monsoons, while winds called Sumatras occasionally rattle the homes of people from Johor to Perlis. Since Malaysia, Singapore and the rest of archipelago Southeast Asia are close to the equator, there is little variation in the average temperature throughout the year. Even in the states of northeastern Malaysia, which are very much affected by the monsoons, the temperature change is not significant. To get a feel for the climate, one only has to watch the weather report on television in Singapore. People from countries with distinct seasonal changes often smile at the monotony. Nearly every day, the weather forecast is “occasional showers over parts of the island and temperatures ranging from 24 to 32° Celsius (75 to 92° Fahrenheit).”
The topography of the Malay Peninsula, including the areas suited to growing rice.
While Malaysia’s rain forests and mangrove swamps thrive in the constantly warm, wet weather, agricultural produce on the peninsula does not do as well because of its poor soil, which has a high content of clay and iron. Parameswara, founder of the Malay Empire in the peninsula, is said to have fought a battle in Singapore against the invading Javanese that was so brutal that the soil turned red from the spilled blood. Actually, the quality and reddish-brown color of the soil are the result of laterization, which comes about when temperatures average 24° Celsius (75°Fahrenheit) or more, causing the nutrients of the soil to sink to lower levels. The Latin word later means “brick” and describes the hardness of the clay. In modern Malaysia, the harnessing of water, modern farming methods and fertilizers have somewhat improved the soil. Historically, as a result of this poor soil, Malaya was never able to support a very large population. As late as the turn of the nineteenth century, it was estimated that only 250,000 people lived in the peninsula.
Not all of Malaysia has poor soil. Parts of Kedah and Perlis, the Pahang River basin, the Kelantan River delta and the Kinabatangan River in Sabah are quite fertile, but they cover a relatively small area of the country. Thus, when the British introduced modern plantation crops, such as rubber, they were not taking farmland away from the people.
The climate of the region had an impact on the attitudes and lifestyle of the people who lived there. It produced a slow-paced life that reflected the heat and periods of inactivity caused by monsoon rainfall. The phrase “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” bears much truth. Like other cultures, such as those in Latin America, with their afternoon siestas, and the Middle East, where life comes to a standstill during the hottest parts of the day, the traditional Malay lifestyle reflected an acceptance of the realities of nature. Among the Chinese immigrants and Europeans, this acceptance fed a stereotype that the Malays were lazy and easy-going. It is not that they did not work hard; rather, they just had a different view of when and how to work. Anyone who has experienced the backbreaking non-mechanized labor of padi (wet rice) farming knows that the stereotype is a myth, but it persists among some Singaporeans to this very day, perhaps to the point where they sometimes seriously underestimate the potential of their neighbors to the north.
The traditional Malay house is an example of the impact of geography on a way of life. It is built off the ground to avoid floods caused by heavy rain as well as the insects, snakes and animals that thrive in tropical climates. There are many windows, and the rooms open into one another to catch cooling breezes. A palm thatch roof absorbs the heat of the sun. Chinese immigrants did not copy this architectural style because they came from temperate climates. Chinese in the rural areas tended to live in houses built on the ground with cement floors and tin roofs. These living styles were similar to patterns in other parts of Southeast Asia. For example, in Laos there are two words for house, one for the traditional Southeast Asian house and another for the type built by immigrants from the north.
Further evidence of climatic influences can be found in the clothes people wear. The sarong (a skirt-like garment) is eminently practical for the circulation of air around the body and is worn by people throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In fact, the only place in Southeast Asia where a sarong of some type is not the national dress is Vietnam.
The geographic entity known as Southeast Asia is divided into two somewhat distinct areas: mainland Southeast Asia, which includes Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, and archipelago Southeast Asia, which includes peninsular Malaysia (although it is physically attached to the mainland), Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines. Being part of this geographic area and the physical dimensions of the Malay Peninsula helped mold the Malay race and culture.
By far one of the most important geographic considerations in shaping Malaysian history has been its location. For Singapore, it is the most important consideration. Situated between the two giants of Asian culture and civilization – India and China – and atop the greatest source of spices in the world – the archipelago – Malaysia and Singapore were ideally placed to take advantage of and be influenced by the major commercial trends of the last two millennia.
Each succeeding trading power that arose realized that the keys to controlling trade between the Pacific and Indian Oceans were the Melaka and Sunda Straits. Trade began through the area around the time of Christ, with India looking for markets for cotton textiles to trade for spices and Straits produce, such as hardwood, resin and rattan. As sailing technology improved, Malaya became a middleman for trade involving India, the archipelago and China. The Europeans followed, searching for spices and to control trade with China. With the rise of British naval power, Malaya provided ports of call and military bases.
In the days of sail power, Malaya’s importance to commerce was not just its convenient location at the center of trading routes. The western coast of the peninsula was significant because the Straits of Melaka between Sumatra and the peninsula offered protection from the monsoons. It was where the monsoons met. Traders coming from both directions could sail with the prevailing winds, find shelter, conduct trade and move on. Control of the straits meant control of the trade. The alternatives to the straits were all the way south, virtually to Australia, or around Sumatra to the much smaller Sunda Straits.
A further significance to Malaya’s location culturally that went beyond its position astride these key straits was its access to and its integral position in archipelago Southeast Asia. Historian G. Coedes compares this area to the Mediterranean. It is formed by the Straits of Melaka, the Java Sea, the Gulf of Siam and the South China Sea. Much like in its European counterpart, the economic, cultural and racial interactions that took place within the archipelago were key components in molding the society that emerged in the peninsula and in Borneo.
The historical interaction continues to this very day. With the growth of the Pacific Rim economies, Malaysia and Singapore play important roles in the trade between the Pacific Ocean and the countries east of them. Both Malaysia and Singapore derive great benefits from the economic and cultural interaction that takes place as a result of their integration in the archipelago. They are truly at the crossroads of the world.
While much of Malaysia is not suited for food production, the interior supports vast areas of primary rain forest, while mangrove forests are abundant on the western coast of the peninsula and river deltas in Borneo. Even today, after the clearing of large areas of jungle, Malaysia supports the greatest diversity of flora and fauna in the world. The rain forest provides hardwood, resin, rattan and beeswax; the mangrove trees contain tannin, and the soil has tin and gold – all of which formed the basis for trade for the Malays until the time of British colonization.
For much of Malaysia’s history, the jungle acted as a barrier to the growth of the population and hindered interaction among the inhabitants. The movement of the people, isolated from other Malays in the peninsula by the inhospitable rain forest, was along the rivers to the sea, where there was trade and arable land.
The jungle, however, did provide a sanctuary for the original inhabitants. The aboriginal people of Malaya and Borneo preserved their primitive slash-and-burn culture well into the twentieth century and still do in Borneo and a few isolated parts of the peninsula. Slash-and-burn cultivation is still used in parts of Southeast Asia. Farmers cut and burn down the forest cover on the hillsides. The ash fertilizes the soil for a year or two but then must lie fallow for ten to fifteen years. If tree roots are killed and new trees cannot grow, the area becomes covered with a coarse grass that cannot be re-cultivated except with sophisticated machinery.
The topography of the peninsula is characterized by a mountain range of 1,215–1,520 meters (4,000–5,000 feet), which runs down the length of the country for 483 km (300 miles) from the Thai border to a plain that makes up much of the state of Johor in the south. Numerous rivers flow out of this mountain range, the most important being the Pahang River (approximately 447 km/300 miles), the Perak River (402 km/250 miles) and the Kelantan River (241 km/150 miles).
These topographical features, coupled with the vast areas of rain forest in the interior, created a coastal people whose population centers were situated at the mouths of major rivers or along them. Historically, they had as much contact with people in other parts of the archipelago as they did with the people of the peninsula or in the case of Borneo, with the interior of the island. This had a dramatic effect on the evolution of the Malays and their culture. In the words of historian Charles Fisher, “the land divided and the sea united.”
Further evidence of population patterns can be found in the Malay language. The modern Malay word for “town” is bandar. The original meaning of the word is “port,” reflecting the fact that for much of Malaya’s history, the two words were one and the same.
Prior to the settlement of coastal peninsular Malaysia, the area was inhabited by people who had been living there some 30,000 to 40,000 years. The descendants of these people, the Negritos, Senois, and Jakun (Proto-Malay), still live in the interior of the country and represent a population of about one hundred and fifty thousand. On the island of Borneo, indigenous groups, such as the Iban (Sea Dayak), Kadazandusun, Bidayuh (Land Dayak), Sama-Bajau, Murut and Melanau, make up almost half of the population of over 4.5 million people. These groups predate the Malays by some two thousand years.
The Negritos, who today number in the thousands, have lived the longest in the country. Racially, they are Negroid and share a common heritage with groups as far away as the Papuans of New Guinea and the aborigines of Australia. The Senois and the Proto-Malays represent a later migration and share racial and linguistic similarities with the more modern coastal Malays. All three groups of Orang Asli (original people) were nomadic jungle dwellers, although some Senoi and Proto-Malays later adopted more modern social and agricultural systems. The Orang Asli’s impact on modern Malaysia has been limited due to their small numbers and inability to hold their ground in the face of modern Malays. Today, the government encourages the Orang Asli to move into settled communities so they can have access to modern education and social services. This encouragement, coupled with the clearing of the rain forest, probably represents the end of their way of life.
In the Borneo states, the ancestors of the indigenous people were part of a southward migration from southern China and Taiwan that began some five thousand years ago. This was part of the movement of people from without and within the archipelago who were collectively called Austronesians or Malayo-Polynesians. Descendants of these people make up a significant portion of Borneo’s population today. In Sabah, the Kadazandusun form the largest ethnic group, although the Murut, the Kelabit, and the Kedayan are important segments of the community. In Sarawak, the Ibans are the largest ethnic group, with the Bidayuhs and the Melanaus also represented in large numbers. For much of their history, virtually all these groups have been shifting cultivators and hunters who followed communal social systems.
The Malays – the largest ethnic group in Malaysia – are racially and culturally very much a product of the geographic location of the peninsula. They are the result of migration and intermingling with people from outside the region, as well as with groups within the archipelago. Over a period of at least 2,500 years, the Malays evolved as a product of the archipelago rather than as a product of the peninsula. The original Malays in Malaya were a mixture of the indigenous people of the area and Mongoloids, who had pushed south from Yunnan in China. These Malays are known racially as Malayo-Polynesians and can be seen as far west as Madagascar, off the coast of Africa, as far east as the South Pacific and as far north as Taiwan.
In the first millennium, especially in the seventh and eighth centuries, the population grew and was influenced by a significant migration from Sumatra. At the same time, groups moved overland from what is now Thailand, and others sailed from the eastern archipelago. All these groups of people were Malayo-Polynesians and brought with them settled agricultural pursuits, such as wet rice farming, and their village cultures. There was also significant movement from outside the area in the form of Indian traders and missionaries, many of whom intermarried and settled, especially along the western coast of Malaya.
The second millennium saw further migration to Malaya in the form of Muslim Indians, Arabs and Persians, who also intermingled on a limited scale with the population along the coast. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, there was continued migration from across the Melaka Straits. The Minangkabaus from central Sumatra settled in the areas now known as Negri Sembilan and Melaka, and some later moved across the peninsula to Pahang. Large numbers of Bugis also migrated to Malaya from the eastern archipelago as a result of Dutch interference in their traditional trading patterns. The Bugis took up residence in Johor, Selangor and Pahang. Two other groups from the Malay cultural area also left their imprint on Malaya in this era, albeit on a much more limited scale. Acehnese control of Perak during this time brought some settlers and cultural influence, and there is evidence of migration from Champa in what is today southern Vietnam, since Chams lived in Terengganu as weavers and in Pahang as miners.
This inter-archipelago migration continued into the twentieth century. Malaya was under-populated, and there were large areas of undeveloped land to settle. British rule offered relative peace, security and economic well-being. This was especially seen in the significant numbers of Javanese who immigrated to the peninsula. Even today, immigrants still cross the straits from Sumatra to take advantage of opportunities created by Malaysia’s relative prosperity, and a similar movement continues from Muslim Sulu in the Philippines to the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo. Nowhere is this inter-archipelago movement of people more evident than in Singapore’s Malay community, which has ten identifiable groups from the archipelago, a proverbial melting pot of the Malayo-Polynesian people.
The topography of Borneo.
All these groups from the Malay Mediterranean made their contributions to Malay culture and language, creating regional characteristics in the relatively small area of land that is the peninsula. The people of Kelantan, for example, have significant differences in traditional law and language from those of the Minangkabau of Negri Sembilan.
For much of recorded history, the lives of the indigenous people in the Straits of Melaka were dominated by the sea, rivers and trade. This way of life was challenged by the Europeans as they sought to gain a greater share of the trade emanating from the area. As the Europeans increased their control, the Straits Malays moved from trade to agriculture. This process was accelerated in the nineteenth century when the Dutch and British divided the archipelago into spheres of influence, and Britain controlled the sea lanes and the major ports of Penang and Singapore. This would be the culmination of the movement of the Malay world toward agriculture and to a rural setting. A culture evolved that was deeply rooted in the kampung (village). Even today when half of the Malay community resides in urban areas, the values and culture from their roots in the kampung still help define what it means to be a Malay.
The major form of agriculture brought to Malaya by immigrants from Sumatra and the mainland was wet rice cultivation. While many rural Malays today fish, cultivate coconuts and grow rubber, the way of life that evolved from wet rice agriculture provides insight into their communal values. As mentioned earlier, large areas of Malaya were not suited for productive agriculture, but in those areas that were fertile, wet rice grew well because of the large amount of rainfall and the availability of river water.
Wet rice farming does not lend itself to mechanization, not even for harvesting, which is done stalk by stalk. Seedlings are first grown in nursery areas then transplanted by hand, shoot by shoot, into the soil. The fields must be continually flooded throughout the five-month cultivation period. Traditionally, even the final process of separating the grain from the chaff was also done largely by hand. The process is incredibly labor intensive, and in Malaya, entire villages worked the fields, and the cooperation of neighbors was vital to the production of the crop.
Prior to the twentieth century, before a modern infrastructure of roads and railroads was built, geographic realities also contributed to kampung culture. Communities were isolated and independent and were primarily involved in subsistence agriculture. Mutual assistance was necessary for survival, and communal life was based on a cooperative legal system called adat (traditional law). Adat incorporated two key principles: compensation, which was preferable to punishment, and mutual responsibility.
Malay women in a rice field.
Adat law recognized one of the dilemmas that face more modern legal and judicial systems. When a criminal is punished, all the victim gains is revenge. If you are robbed or a member of your family is harmed, punishing the perpetrator does not compensate for the loss or injury. If a man kills another, is it better to put him to death or to force him to atone to the victim’s family? Under adat law, the latter alternative was preferred. Justice in the kampung was traditionally compensation for the victim. The need for labor and the need to maintain harmony in a society that depended on cooperation made it imperative to have this outlook on crime and punishment.
The law also reflected the belief that the group was responsible for the behavior of the individual – mutual responsibility. If a family member misbehaved, the family was expected to compensate the victim. If problems occurred outside the village, the village was collectively responsible for the actions of its individual members. Once again, this reflected the view that life was a cooperative endeavor. Villagers represented the village to the point that, in some adat systems, banishment from the community was considered the worst form of punishment possible. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as rural communities began to produce for markets in the towns and cities, this group-directed behavior was seen as a barrier to free enterprise and capitalism among the Malays. Those who worked hard and improved their economic positions were expected to share their good fortune. This served as a disincentive to individual economic advancement.
These rural societies also had behavioral expectations that went beyond the legal system. Most kampungs were relatively small, consisting of ten to twenty families. The ability to get along with neighbors was important to status in the community. The economic survival of the group was dependent on cooperation. Good manners were essential, and they became an important part of the Malay value system. Behavior or language that was confrontational or abusive was considered bad form in the kampung. The feeling was that they had to live and work together and thus could not afford vendettas or ill will, at least in public.
If you wish to insult someone in English or Chinese, you accuse them of unnatural sexual acts or compare them to parts of the body that are seen as unclean. The Malay language traditionally had little such vocabulary, although literal translations from English have crept into the language in the cities. The worst insult to most Malays is to be kurang ajar (lacking in manners). The phrase literally means “little teaching.” Its use as an idiom reflects the cooperation and courtesy of kampung life. While all education systems impart acceptable modes of behavior, to traditional Malays, manners are of utmost importance.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, in his book, The Malay Dilemma, claims that kampung culture created a society that valued form over substance and scorned assertiveness. As a result, when the group-oriented Malays were confronted with entrepreneurial cultures, such as the competitive immigrant Chinese, they were not able to achieve success in a modern capitalist economy. Ironically, these very values endeared the Malays to British civil servants.
A typical kampung.
Before closing this look at village society and culture, some further insight may come from a distinctly Malay form of madness known as amok. The term is one of the few Malay words that has found its way into the English language.
Suppressing aggression, frustration and anger was and still is important in Malay public behavior. Emotions must be controlled lest they impair relationships in the community and cause social disharmony. Periodically, this pressure becomes too great for an individual to bear, but to break away from the constraints of village society, the individual must choose insanity. Loss of honor, misfortune or tragedy sets him off, and he goes into a killing frenzy, attacking people around him indiscriminately. Amok occurs infrequently, but it does happen often enough for it to have become part of Malay folklore. To this day, articles with headlines such as “Amok kills six” occasionally appear in the newspapers.
There is a related occurrence among females known as latah. Women fall into uncontrollable bouts of seemingly crazy behavior. Sometimes this takes the form of obscene language or endless giggling. Latah is most common among older women. This, according to some observers, is often a result of menopause, widowhood or spinster status, which makes the women feel that they do not have clearly defined roles in society. The insecurity leads to what would normally be considered antisocial behavior, but in this case, they are merely viewed as insane. In recent times, the press has carried stories of female Malay workers running away from their factory jobs screaming and yelling. While this may not be latah in the traditional sense, it could reflect a reaction by rural women to an urban life that they do not understand.
Traditional Malay culture offered no emotional outlet for the people. With no acceptable behavior available to the individual in society to express extreme emotion, letting off steam through amok or latah was the only option.
Another characteristic of traditional Malay rural society was the high status accorded to women. For example, Minangkabau society was matriarchal in most respects. Land ownership was passed from wife to daughter. As opposed to most societies, it was imperative for families to have daughters in order to ensure inheritance. When a couple married, the husband joined his wife’s family and kampung. Women in Minangkabau villages could vote for tribal chiefs, and if their husbands divorced them, they received custody of the children.
The majority of adat systems throughout the peninsula was patriarchal, but even in these systems, high status was accorded to women. In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of the archipelago immigrants to Malaya were Bugis, whose women had equal rights to property, participated in public affairs and government and on occasion, were elected leaders of their communities. In Aceh, women traditionally enjoyed property rights equal to men, and four consecutive rulers were women in the seventeenth century. This ended in 1699 in part because an edict from Mecca condemned rule by women as contrary to Islamic principles, but women continued to have a large degree of control over family finances, run businesses and even take employment outside the home.
The conversion of the peninsular Malays to Islam took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and added another dimension to the nature of kampung life and Malay values. There are a number of reasons why the villages of Malaya embraced this foreign religion and forsook many of their animistic beliefs.
One reason was the Muslim belief in the community and equality of believers. Given the nature of kampung life and its sense of group-directed behavior, Islam was seen as a faith that bound the village even closer together and offered clearly delineated codes of behavior. It also emphasized the already existing desire for consensus and harmony.
As time went on, Islam not only provided greater unity for the village but also helped to create a sense of racial identity for all Malays, regardless of their origins or where they settled. This identity became even more important as foreigners, such as the Europeans, attempted to dominate the political lives of the Malays, and immigrant groups from outside the archipelago, such as the Chinese and Indians, came to settle and work on the peninsula and in Borneo. In a period of a couple of centuries, the archipelago, from Aceh and Perlis to Sulu and the Celebes, had adopted this foreign religion, which in itself reflected the cultural interaction that took place in the archipelago.
Another attraction was Islam’s belief in predestination. For rural people, whose lives were controlled by the cycles and whims of nature and were already fatalistic, the idea of one God directing the daily fate of each member of society had great appeal. This was an aspect of the uncomplicated nature of Islam that was not evident in other religions and beliefs to which they had been exposed. The numerous gods in Hinduism, together with the stratified society it offered and its endless cycle of rebirth, did not appeal. Neither did the metaphysical aspects of Buddhism. Islam was a religion that was relatively easy to understand because it fit their society.
It would seem that Islam would be in direct conflict with many traditional Malay beliefs, but the Malays found ways to accommodate the two. The Islam that came to Malaya had already passed through India and Indonesia and thus was somewhat more accommodating and adaptable to the local culture than the Islam of the Middle East. Islam weakened adat law but did not replace it. Islamic beliefs in punishment – for example, an eye for an eye and dismemberment for theft – were toned down to conform to village ways. Islamic beliefs in polygamy, divorce on demand for males and the separateness of women in religion, such as segregation of the sexes in mosques, tended to give women a secondary role. In the archipelago, women were too important in society to accept these subservient roles. Therefore, for the most part, women continued to retain property rights and take part in public affairs, albeit in diminished roles. After the coming of Islam, Malay women still had a much higher status than women in China or India.
Islam also placed new constraints on the behavior of the average Malay. New Islamic considerations, such as dietary laws, rules regarding dress and the relationship between the sexes, and prohibitions against gambling and usury, added to the expectations of what was considered proper or correct public behavior.
Contradictions, however, still remain. Prior to the coming of Islam, the Malays had a strong belief in the spirit world. Misfortune was caused by evil spirits or ghosts, and most communities had a medicine man (a bomoh or shaman), who provided amulets and conducted ceremonies to protect villagers from disaster. These animistic beliefs persist to this very day. Malaysians continue to employ bomohs to guarantee good weather for weddings and golf tournaments and sometimes to exorcise evil spirits. As recently as 2004, government officials asked several bomohs to help them locate a missing helicopter in the jungle. These are enduring reminders that after Indianization, Islamization, colonialization, industrialization and globalization, kampung culture still survives.
