One can only wonder what a foreign tourist may think of Malaysia today. Had such a tourist landed on our shores a month ago, he or she may have decided to enjoy a night out with some local friends at one of Kuala Lumpur's famous clubs only to have the evening cut short by Jawi's 'moral guardians' barging into the place and arresting the Malaysian Muslims who happened to be on the premises

The tourist, still reeling after this unsolicited shock to his senses, would probably have put it down to one drink too many, and hoped that a quiet night in bed might restore some semblance of normality. But the next morning he or she may have read about the rounding up of alleged 'illegal migrants' all over the country, carried out at the behest of the powers-that-be and employing the help of volunteer groups once again snooping into the private sphere of Malaysians. By then the tourist in question would probably have learned that in Malaysia the punishment for illegal migrants include not only fines and detention, but also whipping: A mode of punishment that can only be described as medieval, brutal and dehumanising. Whither the so-called 'Asian values' that were meant to help create a 'caring society'?

The most appalling aspect of the present media-orchestrated scare about illegal migrants in Malaysia is the unstated prejudice that at times accompanies the campaign. Never mind the fact that Malaysia actually needs these foreign workers; or the fact that in many cases their illegal entry was facilitated by corrupt Malaysian companies and businessmen themselves. Malaysians also forget that if there are any 'unwanted Indonesians' here in Malaysia, there is also a certain 'unwanted Malaysian' in Indonesia today: The fanatical bomber Azahari, whose role in the numerous bombing campaigns in Indonesia has done so much damage to the image and well-being of the Indonesian people. Have Malaysians considered apologising for this unwanted visitor lurking in Indonesia?

Despite the improvement in government-to-government relations between Malaysia and Indonesia, it would appear as if our societies are further apart than ever before. Prejudice, misapprehension and the tendency to resort to caricatural stereotypes have clouded our vision of a common shared humanity and collective destiny, for the peoples of Asean as a whole.

The Modern state and the Erasure of the Past

It is astounding, to say the least, that the citizens of present-day Malaysia and Indonesia seem to demonstrate no knowledge of history whatsoever. The official narrative of postcolonial Malaysia and Indonesia is a modern myth that presents the state as a fait accompli, regardless of the fact that Malaysia and Indonesia like all the other states of the Asean region are artificial modern constructs whose borders were set not by the peoples of Asean themselves but rather by our former colonial masters.

Today Malaysians and Indonesians view each other through the narrow perspective of the modern nation-state, whose boundaries (be they political, cultural or historic) seem eternally fixed. Yet this begs the obvious question that is invariably asked by the scholar: What about the centuries of cross-cultural contact, migration and fluid inter-penetration?

Lest we forget, the most important and renown Malay kingdom Malacca was founded by Paramesvara (later Sultan Megat Iskandar Shah), who was himself from Palembang, Sumatra.(1) In the postcolonial era the memory of Malacca has been used time and again by countless Malaysian politicians and ideologues as proof of the greatness of the people of Malaysia except we often forget that Malacca would never have existed had it not been for the labours of a prince from Sumatra! The same is true for many of the other great kingdoms and empires of Southeast Asia, from Angkor to Ayudhaya, Majapahit to Mataram, Aceh to Patani: they were all created by the collective efforts of Southeast Asians who migrated from one part of the region to another. This was the era before the arrival of the modern idea of the nation-state, one that was not configured by the dislocating and disruptive effects of colonial intervention.

Sadly today this sense of a common, abstract, collective identity has passed. It is a supreme irony that Malaysians today regard Indonesians as 'foreigners', and vice-versa; when the reality is that for hundreds of years the two nations (in reality a multiplicity of nations) have been in constant contact with each other. It is also ironic that the Malays of Malaysia regard their Indonesian counterparts as being as 'foreign' as any tourist from Europe or Japan, considering the obvious links of language, culture and religion they share together. (One could go further and make the claim that many, if not most, Malays in Malaysia today have some common blood-ties to Indonesia, as in the case of this writer as well.)

The 'Othering' of our Indonesian brethren as 'outsiders' and 'foreigners' would not have happened has it not been for the vicissitudes of politics. Prior to the creation of a separate Malaysia and Indonesia, scores of Malaysians were directly involved in the independence struggle of the Indonesian nation, which they regarded as an extension of their own habitus. The early Malay nationalists of Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Ibrahim Yaakob's (2) generation took active part in the formation of Soekarno's nationalist movement, and during the anti-colonial war against the Dutch a number of Malaysians crossed the Straits of Malacca to lend a hand in the fighting that took place in Sumatra and Java.

It was, however, the 'Konfrontasi' (confrontation) between Indonesia and Malaysia in the early 1960s that led to the fatal rupture that effectively sealed the fate of both countries. Hundreds of Malaysian Muslim students who were studying in the traditional madrasahs and pesantren of Indonesia were recalled by the Malaysian government and then redirected to more conservative institutions in the Arab states. (An ironic twist indeed, for it also foreclosed for the Malaysians the possibility of developing of a more tolerant, pluralist and dynamic Islamist intellectualism as we find in Indonesia today.) As Malaysians and Indonesians were taught to think of each other as different and alien, the sense of common identity and the sharing of a common past became impossible. Centuries of cross-cultural borrowing and migration had been summarily brought to an untimely end by the most unnatural of political developments.

Remembering our shared history: Need for a People's History of Asean

That is why we, the people of Asean, desperately need a collective subaltern history of Asean written from the perspective of the people, rather than the governments, of the region. Without exception, the official history of each and every country in the region reads like a monologue of the same: Malaysia's history is told mainly from a narrow perspective of the Malaysian state, which erases or marginalizes the historical inter-connectedness of Malaysia with the rest of the region. While doing so this official history also renders to the margins other local histories, be it the historical contribution of women, non-Malays and non-Muslims to the development of Malaysian identity. The situation in Malaysia is no different from the production of official history in the rest of Asean.

Should this condition continue unchallenged, we might as well forget the dream of creating a Asean for and by the people of Asean themselves. The solipsistic logic of the modern nation-state does not sit comfortably with non-governable elements and phenomena such as the transcultural transfer of ideas, values and peoples: Yet it is precisely this fluid dynamics of interaction and exchange that holds the key to the development of dynamic civilisations and cultures.

The collective effort to remember our shared past and future is also the means by which we re-member, that is put back together, the broken and disfigured body of the Asean region. The patchwork of cultures, languages and multiple identities that makes up the reality of a complex Asean cannot and will never be captured in its totality by an official discourse that privileges the state above all else as the agent of history. Historically the great cultural centres of Southeast Asia were the result of collective effort and the negotiation between cultures. Recognition of this historical legacy would require the effort of overcoming the 'otherness' of our neighbours. This is the truth that we, the nations of Asean, need to remind ourselves time and again: We are NOT 'strangers' to each other!

ENDNOTES:

(1) Paramesvara is credited with the founding of the port-city and commercial empire of Melaka (Malacca) in 1403. Portuguese sources claim that he was a ruler of Pelembang who was forced into exile shortly after the death of the Majapahit ruler Rajasanagara (Hayam Wuruk) in 1389. Following the death of Hayam Wuruk, a number of revolts broke out in Majapahit's outer territories and vassal states, and Paramesvara was one of the Palembang rulers who rebelled against it. A punitive expedition was sent by Majapahit to put down the rebellion, and Paramesvara was forced to flee into exile. He first landed on Tumasek (Temasik), and then was forced to relocate in Muar (Johor). Finally he ended up in a Sumatran settlement on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula that he later called Melaka. Paramesvara established the kingdom of Melaka in 1403, and quickly sought help from China to defend his kingdom from Majapahit and Ayutthaya. In order to bolster his regional strength and influence he later married a princess of the north Sumatran kingdom of Pasai, whose dynasty laid claim on all of Palembang's territorial possessions on the Malay Peninsula. Finally in keeping with the political currents of the time, Paramesvara converted to Islam at the age of 72 and took on the title of Sultan Megat Iskandar Shah.

(2) Ibrahim Yaakob was born in 1911 at Kampung Kertau, Temerloh, Pahang. He was one of the first Malay activist-intellectuals who took up the cause of Pan-Malay nationalism that regarded British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) as part of the same geo-political, cultural and historical unit. He later became one of the founding members of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM), which was the nucleus of the Malayan Nationalist Party (MNP). Frustrated by the failure of the Malay aristocracy and traditional elite, he later moved to Indonesia to support the Indonesian nationalist movement under Soekarno. He served as Indonesia's diplomat to Phnom Penh and Manila and was a strong supporter of the movement for the re-unification of Malaya and Indonesia. He died on 8 March 1979 at the age of 68 and was buried at the Heroes Memorial (Makam Pahlawan Kalibata) in Jakarta