May 13, Revisited

While I was away, that hugely significant anniversary - the fourtieth of May 13th, 1969 - came around. I liked author Preeta Samarasan's response (which she posted on Facebook) so much that I repost it here, with her permission.

I meant to write this note yesterday, on the actual anniversary, but. But.

I'll repost the link to The Nut Graph's brief commemorative piece here, because it's the only mention of May 13th I've seen on Facebook so far.

I didn't live through May 13th 1969; my parents and one of my siblings did. It's not so distant that the country is close to running out of survivors who remember it, and yet I think the question of what it has come to signify to my generation (and younger generations) is the more interesting one. Because, let's face it, in the grand scheme of things -- and oh how Grand that Scheme can be -- May 13th was no Rwanda, no Sri Lanka, no Palestine. Even the most liberal estimates put the total dead at about 2000. Of course I'm not belittling any of those lives lost, or the terrors of those few weeks; when you lose someone you love it doesn't matter if they were one of 2000 or one of six million. But what I *am* trying to say is that for most of us, the true impact of May 13th lies in the ways its memory has been preserved (or not), and not in the actual event itself. Which are, as I see it:

1) As a threat: If we don't toe the line, accept certain inequalities, and shut up about Sensitive Issues, it could "happen" again (always the omission of agency, as though these unfortunate things just stir themselves up, like bad weather);

2) As an unpleasant episode that has been gracefully laid to rest: Thank goodness we've moved on, look what perfect racial harmony we live in now, all of us getting along so nicely; surely we don't have to dwell on that terrible aberration.

These are the official, sanctioned ways to remember May 13th, but resistance to them isn't as common or obvious as one might expect. In Edinburgh last year, I was interviewed by a journalist who demanded to know why I'd written a novel "set in the past as usual." Why this obsession with the past, she kept asking, why not draw inspiration from my present life? I started to explain myself to her: I said I chose to include that chapter about May 13th because so few people discuss it meaningfully; because there are only these prescribed ways to talk about it; because, as a nation, we've never really digested it.

But she cut me off with a proclamation that has left me thinking about her for months: "The thing is," she said, "I'm not interested in the past. Frankly, it's boring. I've moved on."

It could almost be our new national motto: *Malaysia. We've moved on.* We've insulated ourselves inside city-sized malls, to which we drive in SUVs that replicate the temperatures of a Scandinavian spring. So the economy is a little wobbly these days, but we can still afford the Japanese buffets stocked with airflown seafood; we can still queue up for novelty cupcakes and donuts. Yes, we bemoan the government's latest iniquities, the arrests, the covered-up crimes, the wrestling matches in parliament. There's enough to entertain us right here, right now. Why talk about the past? It takes a lot of effort, for unclear rewards, to connect May 13th 1969 with anything that's happening today. And yet I can't shake the conviction that so much of what our nation is began on that day (or in the weeks leading up to it, because the truth is that it didn't just "happen" spontaneously). It was our watershed, and until we acknowledge that, *I* can't move on, and am equal parts impressed and offended by anyone who claims to have done so.

The Author Who Was Brave Enough

I recently read Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour (which had been sitting on my shelves for some time) partly as my way of commemorating Lloyd's death and partly, because it seemed a particularly relevant book to read around the time of the election.

It is a very interesting novel of ideas, set in an almost dystopian Malaysia in the aftermath of the racial riots of May 13, 1969. The country is still scarred by violence, vigilante groups roam the countryside, religious extremists set up camp in the hinterland, there are still sporadic outbreaks of fighting in the city, and everyone, all the time, is conscious of being watched. It comes as some surprise to find that the story is actually a contemporary (and very clever) reworking of a an episode from the Misa Melayu, an 18th century classic written by Raja Chulan.

In this climate of unease, Fernando employs a multi-racial cast of characters. At the centre of the novel there's a core of four main characters, good (if idealistic) young people who cross the racial divide to become friends, and even fall in love.

There's Dahlan, a young lawyer and activist who invites trouble by making impassioned speech on the subject of religious intolerance on the steps of a Malacca church; his friend from university days, Yun Ming, a civil servant working for the Ministry of Unity who seeks justice by working from within the government.

The most fully realised character of the novel is Siti Sara, and much of the story is told from her viewpoint. A sociologist and academic, she's newly returned from studies in America where she found life much more straightforward, and trapped in a loveless marriage to Omar, a young man much influenced by the Iranian revolution who seeks purification by joining religious commune. The hungry passion between Yun Ming and Siti - almost bordering on violence at times and breaking both social and religious taboos - is very well depicted. (Dahlan falls in love with Gita, Sara's friend and colleague, and by the end of the novel has made an honest woman of her.)

Like the others, Sara is struggling to make sense of events :

Nobody could get may sixty-nine right, she thought. It was hopeless to pretend you could be objective about it. speaking even to someone close to you, you were careful for fear the person might unwittingly quote you to others. if a third person was present, it was worse, you spoke for the other person's benefit. If he was Mlay you spoke one way, Chinese another, Indian another. even if he wasn't listening. in the end the spun tissue, like an unsightly scab, became your vision of what happened; the wound beneath continued to run pus.

Although the novel is narrated from a third person viewpoint, it is curious that just one chapter is narrated by Sara's father, one of the minor characters, an elderly village iman and a man of great compassion and insight. This shift in narration works so well that I'm surprised Fernando did not make wider use of it.

The novel has villain, of course, the unsavoury Pangalima, a senior officer in the Department of Unity and a man of uncertain racial lineage (he looks Malay, has adopted Malay culture, so of course, that's enough to make him kosher!). He has coveted Sara for years, and is determined to win her sexual favours at any cost.

The novel is not without significant weaknesses. It isn't exactly a rollicking read, and seems rather stilted - not least because there are just too many talking heads with much of the action taking place "offstage", including the rape at the end, which is really the climax of the whole novel.

If we're interested in Yun Ming, Dahlan and Omar it is because of the contradictory ideas they espouse, but in each case their arguments could have been explored in greater depth and the characters themselves have been more fully fleshed.

The plot of Green is the Colour never really holds together as well as it might but seems to be perpetually rushing off in new directions (as actually do the characters!) without fully exploring what is set up already. (I was particuarly disappointed that we don't get to spend more time with Omar in the commune.)

But the strengths of the novel more than makes up for these lapses.

There's been a lot of talk on this blog about local authors not being brave enough to write about the great mustn't-be-talked-abouts of race, religion and politics in Malaysian society. Here's one author who was brave enough to do just that. (And look, hey, the sky didn't cave in!)

Here's an author too who was able to think himself into the skin of people of different races - how many since have been able, or prepared, to make that imaginative leap?

Here too is an author who is able to convincingly evoke the landscape of Malaysia both urban and rural in carefully chosen details.

Above all, though, one feels that here is an author who says what needed to be said. Heck, what still needs to be said!

Here, he's using Dahlan as his mouthpiece, but the sentiments are clearly the author's own :

All of us must make amends. Each and every one of us has to make an individual effort. Words are not enough. We must show by individual actions that we will not tolerate bigotry and race hatred.

Reading this novel now, very many years after I should have, I feel even sadder that just as Lloyd was talking about writing a third novel, illness cut him down. We can only imagine how much further he might have gone.

Well worth reading on the novel is Wong Soak Koon's essay which forms the introduction to the Silverfish edition of the book, and also Peter Wicks paper entitled A Dream Shattered : Lloyd Fernando's Literary Vision of Malaysia which is downloadable as a PDF.

One question about the book which still puzzles me - what does the title refer to?

"Picked up" vs "Seized" ... What a Difference a Verb Makes

The controversial May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969, by Dr Kua Kia Soong has not been banned says the Ministry of Internal Security, and won't be. According to yesterday's Star:

The Internal Security Ministry allows it to be in the market, as its contents do not jeopardise national security.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who heads the ministry, said it had studied the contents of the book and decided that it should not be subjected to a restriction order under Section 7 (1) of the Printing and Publishing Act 1984.

“The police have also never confiscated or issued warnings on the book,” he said, in a written reply to Chow Kon Yeow (DAP – Tanjong) and M. Kulasegaran (DAP – Ipoh Barat).
The book, May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969, by academician Dr Kua Kia Soong was snapped up fast after it was launched on that date last month.

Several groups called for the book to be banned, prompting the ministry to pick up 10 copies to “study” it.

In his book, Dr Kua, who spent three months researching the documents at London’s Public Records Office, said the May 13 riots was a coup attempt against the then prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, and not a racial outburst.

The book is available, as several of you have dropped by to tell me, in bookshops across the city.

But the fear of it being banned was what fuelled the dramatic run on sales when the book first came out.

Intimidasi?

Elizabeth Wong muses about the seizing of Dr. Kua's book about May 13 and wonders why it was actually necessary for KDN officers to actually walk into a bookshop and seize 10 copies without paying when they could simply have asked the publisher for a review copy or when they could just have trotted along to the launch and picked one up for themselves.

It does look like heavy-handed tactics were employed for the sake of making a point very publicly ... which can't have been pleasant for the management of the book chain, or the staff.

Elizabeth reports today that:

MPH said they don’t want to sell it, as KDN has advised them not to, even though the book isn’t banned. ... Kinokuniya said, because the book is controversial, they will practice self-censorship and not sell it.

... There is very little that we can do, if bookshops do not live up to their social responsibility as frontliners in the war against ignorance and pem-bodoh-fication (a word first introduced to me by Jason Tan, editor of Off The Edge) of the minds.

Bookshops are businesses first and foremost, Elizabeth. Where got social conscience?

But word is that Popular, Times and Silverfish are still intending to sell the book.

May 13 Book Seized

Thanks Amir for keeping me updated.

According to Malaysiakini copies of the book May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969 by Dr. Kua Kia Soong were confiscated by a team of ministry officers visited the MPH bookstore in Midvalley Megamall this afternoon and the officers advised the popular bookstore not to sell the book as it "may be banned".

This also follows the call by three senators for the book to be banned.

What's so controversial?

According to Malaysiakini:

The ‘official version’ of it has always been the violence was triggered off by the Chinese-dominated opposition supporters’ provocation in celebrating their electoral victory which saw the ruling Alliance Party suffered a major setback.

Dr. Kua who spent three-months researching recently declassified documents at the Public Records Office in London including official correspondence and intelligence reports by British officers, apparently argues that the riots were not random acts of communal violence but a coup d’etat attempt by a faction within Umno, and that the coup attempt against then premier Tunku Abdul Rahman was also backed by the police and army with the intention of forging a new Malay agenda.

The official records and history books it seems put blame on the opposition parties “infiltrated by communist insurgents” and this does rather turn the whole thing on its head.

Update

Just read on Elizabeth Wong's blog that the book is not banned - just that the first printing is sold out and now you will need to wait for the second. (Get your orders in!)

She describes exactly what happened at MPH yesterday ... and threatens legal action.

Hmmm ... I think the KDN has actually done Suaram a big favour by boosting the "must have" value of the book.

Further Update

The Sun reports Deputy Internal Security Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow as saying that the copies of the book were taken:

... for checking purposes

Meanwhile bookshops are free to sell copies.

May 13 on May 13

The real circumstances surrounding the worst racial riot in the history of Malaysia have so far not been made available to the Malaysian public. The official version is fraught with contradictions and inadequacies to which few pay credence ...

writes Dr. Kua Kia Soong in his new book May 13 - Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969.

I missed the launch yesterday but I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

The book is said to be:

... the first credible account of the May 13, 1969 racial riots in Malaysia based on documents recently declassified at the Public Records Office in London.

May 13 is the great untalked-about in Malaysia, but its ghost still lingers everywhere - the great spectre being "Could this ever here happen again?".

Jeff Ooi was among the bloggers who went to the event and there is plenty of comment about it on the Malaysiakini site for those of you who subscribe.

Abu nearly got himself killed during the riots. He was a volunteer distributing rice in Kampong Baru, but some Malay chaps thought he looked Chinese ...