AUG 31 — If I just sit down at home today and did nothing, am I really helping forward the cause of Malaysia Day on September 16?* After all, it is 50 years of Malaysia in two weeks' time, which is a major landmark for a young country. Or is it, or more damning, was it ever intended to be?
How many of us Malaysians born in the peninsula are switched on to the fact our country is turning half century in a fortnight?
It is an embarrassing reality that one half of the country builds its sense of identity from its vantage point, and largely ignores another half’s perspective of what is independence and the idea of Malaysia.
August 31, 1957 would have passed massively unnoticed on the streets of Kuching and Jesselton. Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore and Malaya agreed to form Malaysia in 1963, and therefore Malaysia is and always has been ageing from that year, this is not even a point of contention.
What is, however, is the systematic attempt by various administrations even from the days of Tunku Abdul Rahman to “represent” the events of 1963 as when Malaysia accepted Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore into the federation.
It is not possible for Malaysia to accept anything or anyone before September 16, 1963 because it did not exist. Malaya did not subsume the new entities and then turn to Malaysia, which is why asserting that version is malicious. Unfortunately, that’s what our history books pretty much suggest.
So it is a pickle
Many Malaysians are tired of the same debate, over and over. They’d prefer to get on with their lives, and beat the growing collective sluggishness filling their attentions since the elections; so that life is about the regular bits, like paying bills and feeling happy for some hours of each day.
It is an unnecessary distraction borne out of ignorance and powered by arrogance, still. And it stands in the way of sowing seeds of trust between east and west Malaysia.
The west is quick to spot the vote deficit Pakatan Rakyat has in the east, but is muted when it comes to this matter.
Because as childish as it may be it the whole matter might just be about the larger population in the peninsula not wanting to lose six years in our nation count. If Malaysia is only 50 in 2013, then Ghana, Nigeria and Congo would be older. More upsetting, do we know what to make of August 31, 1957?
Flags and screams
At home my dad would put up the national colours in August. The ads pepper the screens. They’d be training for the parade at my school grounds for weeks before the big day. And the show, the only TV show that matters filled with colours, military fatigues, parachutes and fly-by jets happens on August 31.
Pavlovian conditioning is far more alarming than people want to admit, and for the vast majority of Malaysians being raised in the peninsula think that our younger brothers in Borneo only have to adjust. Does it matter?
Of course it does, it matters enough for us wanting them to change, concede a little. Slipping past our notice, even mine, that it is not only about the 16-day discrepancy but the six years that separate the events. Fifty years for Malaysia brings the issue front and centre.
And while we are at it, when did we become the big brothers to Borneo? That Malaya received its keys from Britain six years earlier or that most people in Borneo are poorer?
If that is not the tyranny of the majority, then what is?
We are not the only ones
The nation-state has not been around for a long time, and even then there have always been difficulties.
Colonial rule petered out over decades post-World War Two and the end of the Cold War heralded another round of re-rationalisation of states.
Is the Czech Republic as old as Czechoslovakia, and will it matter how Slovakia looks at the conundrum?
Or the nearer separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia reset its freedom from Italy?
South Africa gained its nationhood after British rule, but since the end of apartheid has marked a more just and relevant country, was it truly manifest as a complete nation in 1994?
Symbols are as important as countries are, for the symbols define the nation as much as their exports and system of government. Fair to ask, how many of those countries would have split up or re-rationalised their place and formation if the symbols were reflective of all those within their borders from the start.
Malaysia’s inheritance
The dual national celebration of September 16 and August 31 should not continue. While Peninsular Malaysia may hold deeply personal the events of Merdeka 1957, it will remain a peninsula memory.
Choosing to form Malaysia implicitly required us to hold the new entity above the old. If Singapore was not kicked out, would we be celebrating 50 or 56 years of formation this year?
Correcting past indiscretions by politicians of yesteryear will be difficult, I have not found an easy way to explain this to my Indian-born but Malaysian of 35 years mom. She wonders why I am nonplussed about the whole affair. It’s a little complicated mom. It was neither your or my doing, but it is our problem today.
I’ll wait another 16 days. And I’ll adjust to being in a country 50 years old.
How many of my west Malaysian brothers and sisters will?
* Malaya, consisting of 11 states, gained independence from Britain on August 31, 1957. Malaysia was formed in 1963 with Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore and Malaya in it.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
