Alternative texts to Interlok

COMMENT It is a strange notion that you can amend a novel, as the Education Ministry announced it would with ‘Interlok’, the controversial Malay novel that is a literary text for Form Five students.

According to the ministry, the novel, which has been the subject of intense controversy the past month over what critics have claimed are demeaning falsifications of historical and social details, will be studied by a panel with a view to amending terms and references said to be offensive to Indian Malaysians.

Presumably, the amendments won't affect the story. And presumably, too, the author, some time national laureate Abdullah Hussain (left), won't think that the amended ‘Interlok’ is no longer his novel.

You can rewrite a novel – change its ending, give additional shadings to characters – but amend historical and social details that give the story verisimilitude and context?

That is something that's hard to do without rendering the story different somewhat from what its author had intended.

Novelists are known to have a relationship with the works of their imagination more intrinsically indissoluble than parents have with their children. If their work is amended by others instead of rewritten by them, it is probable that they would suffer a certain violation of their sensibility deep enough to require renunciation of their work.

Boestamam’s recollections and memoirs

Perhaps the time has come to reconsider the question of what Malay literary texts are suitable for the contemplation of upper secondary Malaysian students.

Why not consider as suitable the writings of a writer like Ahmad Boestamam (1920-82) whose works enjoy the additional advantage of supplying social and historical insight to young Malaysians seeking to know something of our pre-Merdeka history?

The word ‘additional' is used here deliberately because on any page of the half dozen books this left-wing avatar of Malay nationalism produced you will find things beautifully written.

By contrast, the infelicity of the language in ‘Interlok’ reflects poor judgement on the part of the Education Ministry's literary selectors, besides of course their bad taste in commending the book as suitable for the edification of teenaged Malaysians.

Felicitous writing is not something that's in short supply in the recollections and memoirs penned by Boestamam.

Three of works – ‘Lambaian Dari Puncak’, ‘Tujuh Tahun Malam Memanjang’ and ‘Memoir Ahmad Boestamam’ – are essentially personal recollections of the period from just before the Second World War to the mid-1960s, a time marked by his participation in the struggle of leftist Malays for an independent country.

All three books are rife with historical, social and psychological details that help locate their protagonists in the carefully observed contexts of the periods described.

It is said that novels are tales of emotion recollected in tranquility. The abovementioned works of Boestamam, who began life as a journalist, are suffused with a feeling for what he had been through, including long periods of detention under draconian laws, that they have the feel of novels: they are narratives of struggle recollected without rancor.

Of course, an Umno dominated government would be averse to allowing for study by our youth works that are not consonant with their construction of Malayan history.

Even then the prolific Boestamam can furnish them with a way out of that situation. He has written a volume called ‘Datuk Onn Yang Saya Kenali’, his reminiscences on the founder of Umno.

The slender spare text renders this intriguing starter - and later lamenter - of Umno's dominance of Malaysian politics through the respectful gaze of a man whose literary instincts saved him from the reflexive partisanship that warps individual judgement.

Boestamam's interactive experiences with Onn Jaafar helped the former to portray the elder man (1898-1962) in his valour and in his frailty.

It is an obscure book but it is a must read for those who want to know the human side of Umno's progenitor.

Inter-racial understanding

As for themes of racial unity, the works of Boestamam are unparalleled in their recollection of episodes from his youth before the Second World War.

One of a day when through a window of his newspaper office in Ipoh, he chanced to observe a group of Malays, who must have come from an outlying kampong, peddling durian by the wayside.

Towards evening, the sales having been poor, a peddler came over to Boestamam's office to complain about their sorry takings.

This prompted Boestamam to saunter over to the office across the street of the Communist Party of Malaya where he spoke to a lady friend manning the place. She immediately organised a group of Chinese buyers to go over to the Malay stall.

At dusk, the initial complainant, now apparently gratified, came over to Boestaman's place again, this time to thank the journalist for his good offices, offering him a number of fruits gratis.

Boestamam accepted the gift and breathed a sigh of relief that his kindred had not come in vain from their village to the town to peddle their harvest.

The episode is striking in its retelling of the simple ways in which inter-racial understanding can be forged. No need for empty slogans; suffice the simple acts of help and understanding.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal profession for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.