The Internet is the modern-day Tower of Babel. In the ancient story in the book of Genesis, the people, who had "one language and a common speech," sought to build a tower to reach the heavens, joining forces to make a name for themselves. But God thwarted their plans by confusing their language, thereby putting a halt to the construction. Today, the Internet appears to be indispensable to contemporary protest movements the world over in pursuit of the utopian ideal of freedom. It would seem that the participatory nature of the medium—anyone with an Internet connection, a device, and the basic know-how can both access and produce content—affords the possibility of democratic engagement. Yet, its proliferation of content has also generated a great deal of babble and information bubbles as a means to cope.
On 22 October 2014, a Malaysian public holiday in observance of Deepavali, two items of note appeared on my Facebook feed. Both items were shared by non-Hindu Malaysian friends in the muhibbah spirit, a customary goodwill gesture to promote inter-cultural understanding among Malaysians. The posts were links to articles on an online web news portal, which respectively explained that the videos they featured had been living on the Internet relatively unnoticed for a while before going viral in the days leading up to the Hindu festival of lights.
The first item features a Youtube video clip of the love song, “Pujaanku,” (“My Adored One,”) from the 1968 film, Gerimis. sung by the actors, P. Ramlee and Chandra Shanmugam, who play two lovers. Alone in their respective homes, Kamal (played by P. Ramlee) is dreamily painting a portrait of his beloved, Leela (Chandra Shanmugam), while she gazes longingly at a photograph of him, while singing the song, the former in Malay and the latter in Tamil. The song’s lyrics accompany their rendition at the bottom of the screen, but their purpose is not to translate for the film’s presumably Malay-speaking audience. In this case, the Malay lyrics appear when P. Ramlee sings and transliterations of the Tamil for Chandra Shanmugam, as if to encourage the audience to sing a long in two different languages.
The second item is a video of an edited interview with Jamil bin Mohd. Yusof, a stall owner in Hulu Selangor. The video is a Deepavali ad by the production company Sonicrazor done in the feel-good, diversity-celebrating style of Petronas holiday television commercials conceived by the late Yasmin Ahmad. The video opens with Encik Jamil introducing himself in Malay before cutting to snippets in which he converses in Tamil. Although all that is said is translated in the English subtitles, the point does not lie so much in what he says than the fact that here is a Malay man, his racial identity further underscored by his wearing a kopiah and a sarong, speaking in fluent Tamil.
Language
The cultural anthropologist Benedict Anderson’s notion of the nation as an imagined community has come to be widely accepted as true. In emphasizing its imaginary aspect, Anderson is not being dismissive of nationalism. Instead, he is calling attention to the processes of shaping the collective imagination that render the nation a sociological reality. However, his specific point, that the nation is imagined through language, is controversial, albeit in generative ways. Here, Anderson’s point is to insist, by way of analogy, on the difference between how the nation delineates its boundaries from how ethnic groups do so. Whereas ethnic groups determine who belongs by first identifying who does not, the way in which the nation imagines its boundaries is akin to the way linguistic communities define themselves. A language community is constitutively open—anyone can learn the language and become a part of it, regardless of one’s ethnic identity. Yet, it is finite in that, realistically, no one can learn every language that exists, thereby delimiting its membership.
Arguably, Anderson had Indonesia in mind when he formulated this idea. Like all the countries in the surrounding region, Indonesia’s territorial boundaries were determined by colonial administrative and economic interests. The islands that make up the country encompass a vast array of languages and cultures that did not lend itself to a coherent unity and a national language was deemed necessary to fashion that unity. The leaders of the new country, who primarily consisted of the Javanese elite, could have designated the Javanese language as the national language. But, in choosing Malay, the lingua franca in the archipelago for centuries and the administrative language of the Dutch colonial government, the leadership opted for a means of communication that would transcend ethnic boundaries rather than reinforce the political hegemony of the Javanese, who also constituted the largest group in Indonesia.
One only has to look to neighboring Malaysia to find a foil to Anderson’s argument. In Malaysia, Malay is also the official national language, but it is also legally formalized as a racial trait of the Malays. The Federal Constitution of Malaysia distinguishes a Malay from non-Malays by the following characteristics: “a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, [and] conforms to Malay custom.” This definition is derived from a British colonial law, which was enacted to facilitate its race-based divide-and-rule policy. The definition was retained after independence because it was necessary to affirm the constitutionalized “special position” of the Malays.
Yet, the case of Malaysia does not entirely refute Anderson’s thesis either. Although race is central to defining national identity in Malaysia, it by no means excludes non-Malays from citizenship. Rather, race—or, more specifically, the process by which race is ascribed to bodies—determines one’s mode of belonging in the country. Race, in other words, is not just a cultural identity. At its fundamental level, race is a political identity, the basis on which power is leveraged in Malaysia.
The video of the Malay guy speaking in Tamil de-couples language from race/ethnicity. That racial/ethnic and linguistic identities are not always coterminous is hardly a novel idea to Malaysians. After all, the national education policy has produced an increased number of non-Malays who are fluent in Malay and English-speaking Malaysians abroad get disgruntled when praised, “Wow, you speak such good English!” However, because Chinese and Indian languages are relegated as vernacular tongues in Malaysia, among other reasons, the bind between race/ethnicity and language remains firm in the Malaysian racial imaginary despite everyday encounters that suggest otherwise. Hence the video’s surprise factor despite the fact that its revelation is hardly surprising.
Custom
Recently, a Chinese-Malaysian friend shared on Facebook that she made rendang tok, a traditional Perak Malay dish, from scratch. This friend also frequently posts about sambal belacan, a quintessential Malay condiment. A non-Malay conforming to Malay custom. Fancy that.
Religion, the final frontier
On the Sunday before Deepavali Wednesday, an event called “I Want to Touch a Dog,” in which people gathered to interact with the furry four-legged creatures volunteered by their owners. Opened to the public, the event was intended to help people who are afraid of dogs to overcome their fear and to fight animal cruelty. In an interview, the event organizer, Syed Azmi, explained that he too had a fear of dogs, yet was upset when he witnessed people abusing them. Indeed, the issue of dog abuse has received media attention due to a number of gruesome cases. The event was especially targeted at Muslims seeing as, according to Islam, dogs are considered to be unclean animals. Yet, as Syed Azmi correctly notes, “Cruelty towards animals like dogs is not a Muslim issue. It is a Malaysian issue.”
The English-language media reported that the event was a rousing success, not only citing the positive responses of a number of Muslims but also of an Ustaz, who was invited to explain the Islamic teachings on the issue. “This is the first time I’ve given a religious talk to many non-Muslims,” he said. However, the event was not without controversy. Leading up to the event, a number of users with Muslim names expressed their disapproval on the Facebook event page. After the event, Islamic leaders—including the influential PAS politician and ulama Nik Aziz—deemed it necessary to issue public statements criticizing the event. The quoted Ustaz at the event subsequently announced that his views were misrepresented by the press and that he disapproved of the unnecessary touching of dogs. The organizer also reported receiving death threats. Importantly, many public figures have responded to the backlash, condemning the hateful responses and urging respectful debate on the issue instead.
What exactly is the controversy about and why has it struck such a nerve? More importantly, what is at stake? Is this a battle between “liberal” and “fundamentalist” Muslims? An argument between different schools of thought on Islamic teachings? About who gets to control what is and isn’t Islamic? The “great dog debate,” as Rusaslina Idrus calls it, is certainly not new; responding to the last time this controversy hit the media headlines in 2013 when a Hari Raya video of a Malay dog trainer with her dogs went viral, she points to a similar public debate within the Kelantan royal family and Islamic leaders that took place in the 1930s.
Yet, to frame the issue as primarily a religious one is to ignore the social reality in which the controversy has emerged. The organizer’s remarks were sensitive to this fact. Animal cruelty, to repeat Syed Azmi’s words, “is not a Muslim issue. It is a Malaysian issue.” Why did he not say, more accurately, that it is an international issue? Why is framing this as a national issue important? The organizer also said, “I live in (Taman Tun Dr. Ismail) a Malay neighborhood. I have no Chinese neighbors so there are no pet dogs around.” Is this controversy really about dogs? Or, is it a question of on what terms should Malays engage with non-Malays?
What does it mean when the issue of inter-racial relations that transcends religious boundaries is no longer being discussed as such, but conducted, as a debate within one religious community?
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However, the film is not about how the embattled lovers fight the obstacles and how love ultimately wins. Their marriage takes place 20 minutes into the film and it ends happily ever after. Instead, Gerimis is about what it takes to make an inter-racial/religious relationship work, melodrama-style. Kamal and Leela’s blissful marriage comes under threat when Tinah, a high-slit tight kebaya-wearing woman played by Ruminah Sidek seduces Kamal, who takes her as his second wife. Thanks to the intervention of his family members, including an impassioned speech by Tijah (Khatijah Hashim) who reminds him that Leela became a Muslim just to be with him, Kamal comes to his senses. He divorces Tinah, begs Leela to take him back, and she does. Inter-racial harmonious relations, the film suggests, require compromise. For Kamal and Leela to be together, she has to convert into Islam while he has to disavow his male Muslim right to marry more than one wife.
What does it mean that this Malay male-centered narrative of inter-racial harmony is made possible through the subjection of women into the constricting roles of good wife/mother and evil seductress?
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The Internet is the modern-day Tower of Babel. Babble. Bubble. Tempat orang membebel. This statement is neither a lament nor is it against the dismissal of this babble as senseless. What might it mean to take it seriously? Accepting that the Internet has become an influential domain in shaping what counts as a national political concern, what might it mean to consider the Tower of Babel as the grounds on and means through which the national political community is imagined? How does one make sense of this babble?
