Malaysia Matters Podcast

The striking thing about Malaysia, when you first walk about its streets and byways, is the multiethnic cast of the country. This is something of a trope amongst its observers, so let me elaborate a bit: it’s multi-ethnic and multi-faith, and it generally works, and its workings are a testament to the beneficial failure — yes, failure — of the country’s foundational principles.

There’s no point in recapitulating the whole drama of Malaysian history here, but a synopsis would have to take into account its settlement by Malays, the Islamization of the land by Arab and Sindhi traders, the first Chinese colonies in the 15th century, the Portuguese colonies in the 16th century, the Dutch shortly thereafter, the British in the 18th century, and the flood of Indians and yet more Chinese that the British brought in. Colonization in western Malaysia especially, whether by Malay, Muslim, or European, was never a mere act of administration that left the composition and character of the local population unchanged. Travelers know well that the rule of British colonization in particular was not to settle, but to govern. (That the handful of exceptions are almost all among the major powers of the world is a coincidence that deserves examination another day.)

The Malay lands, having been settled time and again — to the detriment solely of the lonely aboriginal bands who survive in the forested interior even now — were governed, to be sure, but also settled in a fashion. This settlement was not accomplished by Britons themselves, but by people willing to do the work that Britons wanted done. Indians to trade, Chinese to mine, and Malays to farm: all played their part in the grand tapestry that made the former Malaya the jewel of the United Kingdom’s east Asian empire.

Malaysia’s road to independence was, as roads to independence are, rocky and at points bloody. Mostly Chinese Communists ravaged the country for twelve years from 1948, and as the nation moved inexorably toward sovereignty, the question long suppressed by London’s rule had to be answered: who owned Malaysia? Right of first occupancy meant yielding it to the hill tribes — an absurdity and impossibility. Ethnic minority leaders insisted upon a Malaysia for Malaysians, with the state being for all who lived within it, of any origin. Ethnic Malay leaders, and especially the ethnic Malay leaders of the UMNO party — which rules to this day — insisted that Malaysia was for Malays. Singapore, dominated by Chinese, was expelled from the young Malaysia for this reason. Through the 1960s, periodic race riots wracked the young country, and as that decade ended, the bumiputra system of Malay ethnic preference was formulated, and in time became national policy.

Malaysia, in the face of its rich multi-ethnic, multi-faith history, defined itself as a state of one ethnicity, itself defined by one faith — Islam. Then it instituted a system of economic preferences to enforce that vision.

Here is where Malaysia should have failed. Here is where so many of the post-colonial states of the 20th century went terribly amiss. Malaysia was not the sole polity of its kind. We easily forget that in 1950, Alexandria, Egypt, was barely half Muslim, and barely half Arab. We dimly recall that Istanbul, Turkey, was, until 1923, a city of mostly Greeks, Armenians, and other Christians. We barely remember that Kampala, Uganda, used to be a thriving center of Indian culture in verdant east Africa. We do not trouble ourselves at the disappearance of the 500-year old Portuguese communities of Goa and Mozambique. Those nations, in the throes of independence, defined themselves as Malaysia did — not as existing for all their peoples, but as preferential regimes for the majority, however slim that majority was. The minorities were assimilated, or expelled, or slaughtered.

Here, too, is where Malaysia did not fail. Malaysia implemented all the policies and preconditions necessary for failure, and then resolutely failed to fail. Its minorities did not leave, were not expelled — and after the strife of the 1960s, were not attacked. The bumiputra preferences did not impoverish the Chinese or the Indians against whom they discriminated. There were no pogroms, no ethnic cleansing, and no internal jihads. If it is too much to say that Malaysia was wholly just and peaceful by the standards of Middle America, it is not to much to say that it was both these things by the standard of its fellow post-colonial regimes.

The striking thing about Malaysia, when you first walk about its streets and byways, is the multiethnic cast of the country. The second time you walk about, you notice the same thing. The third time too, and every time thereafter. Malaysia’s faces are the faces of empire — not solely British, but empires of trade, faith, and vassalage across the centuries. Unlike so many vestiges of empire in so many places, they are not cruel reminders of subjugation — but tentative, hopeful, vivid visages of hope. Malaysia’s success is rooted in its failure to be what it threatened to be. As I walk about Kuala Lumpur in the thick heat of day, and the slick darkness of night, it seems to me that nobody wants it any other way.