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by Kathy Rowland

There is a Beatles' song that goes, “will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64”. It’s some way from the complexity of another Beatles’ classic, Blackbird, but as I try to imagine the shape of Malaysian culture fifty years from now, the catchy refrain of When I’m 64 takes on a particular poignancy.

Will my country still want me in 2057?

Recent events make me question where exactly we’re headed. Malaysia today seems a far cry from the promise of multicultural nationhood that prompted Tunku Abdul Rahman to once declare that he was the happiest Prime Minister in the world.

Certainly, we’ve done better than most. It bears remembering that when Sri Lanka achieved independence from the British a year after us, it was the colonial offspring deemed most likely to succeed. The prognosis for Malaysia, the more unruly, less favoured child, was less optimistic.

Despite proving the skeptics wrong, it does seem that of late, what it means to be Malaysia - our cultural identity, if you like - has become increasingly uncertain.
From the behemoth issues of national language to the contents of school lunch boxes; from freedom of religion to the length of a woman’s skirt; from the books we cannot read to the tempo of our national anthem; from the paintings we remove from galleries to the pictures we black out in medical magazines, culture, over the past 50 years, has inched its way to the centre of national consciousness.

This is nothing new, and neither is it particular to young nations. In countries that outstrip us by a couple of centuries, ostensibly built upon cultures that go back to antiquity, the question of cultural identity remains as relevant, and heated as it is amongst the crop of nation states that emerged following World War II, or more recently, in the rash of new --stans rising out of the former Soviet Union. As with life, the longer you’ve been around, the more complicated things get.

When unpacked, these infractions are less about “what is” as much as they are assertions of “because I said so” - a family feud over who is running the show.

There is some comfort for those who take the view that political power is built upon cultural hegemony. The controversies over the past few years imply that what it is to be Malaysian still remains an open ended project; that no one group is so strong as to impose its vision of what is and is not Malaysian enough, upon all 27 million of us. Yet. What is my centenary wish for Malaysia then? I hope that we remain a nation that eludes definition.

Over the years, politeness, acquiescence and compliance - in deference to cultural sensitivities - have become the defining forces of our culture. As a people, we seem to have developed a culture of silence, or rather a culture of being silenced.

Guests whisper or remain silent, are circumspect. They are never at home, always dependent on their hosts’ largess. The rules on being a good guest dictate that one always abides by the rules of the hosts, and never impose an opinion, or offer a challenge. Guests have a temporal relationship with their locale. When a guest does not feel needed, or nourished, she leaves. Guests do not care enough to disagree.

We Malaysians increasingly behave as guests in our own country. Whatever our ethnicity - whether Javanese, Filipino, Malay, Singhalese; or our political designations - bumiputra or non-bumiputra; or our religion - state imposed or otherwise; we seem to respond with silence, or worse, speak our discontent behind closed doors, allowing each infraction to narrow our cultural landscape. Silent majority indeed.

In place of this enforced harmony, I wish for a culture of dissonance.

Which is not to say I wish for a nation that is in discord. Disagreement, resistance and dissent are not necessarily destructive forces. Families disagree. With voices raised. Members of a family often say hurtful, insensitive things to each other.

Each speaks with the confidence of belonging, of inextricably having a connection that cannot be broken. Each member has a stake, in each other and in the family unit, and cares enough to be heard.

Will the future Malaysia still want me? Only if I stop behaving like a guest.

A native of Petaling Jaya, Kathy Rowland is co-founder and director of Kakiseni.com, a Malaysian arts and culture website.

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