The missing pages of our past

Chinese military veterans, missionary schools and businesses built by many hands reveal a richer Malaysian history than the one many of us grew up learning about

I HAVE said on many occasions, and also in my writings, that one of the most important aspects of uniting the country is to revisit our history of Malaysia.

I am not saying that the present history that is taught in our schools and universities is wrong, just that it is not “useful” in bringing us together.

Some may wonder and ask incredulously, “History is history lah, it’s all facts and what happened, so what has it got to do with making us feel good about one another?”

Well, my fellow citizens, that is a question from someone trained purely as a worker bee in our industry-based curricula of education.

History is more than just facts. It is actually a philosophy.

Here are the “facts” about history scholarship that I have learnt from my readings on the subject:

Is history about the past? Yes. Can we agree on things that happened in the past? No, not necessarily. Can we know why things happened in the past? Very rarely, mostly we cannot. Do we know the entire story of why things happen? Ha, ha, ha, that is a load of nonsense. So the only certain thing we know about history is that it has happened ... or has it? Hmm.

OK, we can agree that a terrible thing like the May 13 race riot incident in 1969 happened. We can see the cemeteries and the photographs of burnt vehicles and dead bodies taken at a time when photo manipulation was not as simple as it is today.

Now, who started it? Why did it start? These two important questions will have 20 different answers or perspectives if we ask 20 different scholars of various ethnicities. So history is hardly fact.

Take the story of Hang Tuah. Did he exist? Is he a historical figure or a legend? There is no grave, and no other corroborating accounts in other literary works apart from Hikayat Hang Tuah and Sejarah Melayu, or any records. But that still does not prove that he did not exist.

So you see, history is a jumble of jigsaw pieces that have a hundred different images that we can each interpret differently and even differ over how they join.

Well, then, if we can make our own picture, why don’t we create one that encourages unity?

I’m not going into how facts can be interpreted here; I’m looking into the selection of facts and how these facts are not selected for our history books. I offer three examples of our unselected history that could have painted a more beautiful picture of us as a less divided nation.

One day last year, I got an unexpected lunch invitation from something called the Macva group. I looked it up, and it said Malaysian Armed Forces Chinese Veteran Association.

What?! Chinese in our military? That was never a picture in my mind growing up. I knew a few children of Chinese police inspectors and a Sikh boy whose father was a Sergeant Major while living with my constable father in the police barracks; that’s all. Certainly I had never heard of Chinese people in the military in any large numbers.

So I told my wife that I was having lunch with probably 20 Chinese soldiers. When I got to the hotel, I was shocked to meet more than 300 Chinese armed forces veterans with their spouses, all over 80 years old. My God, that many? More shocks followed when some of the ladies turned out to be not just armed forces wives but also in the armed forces themselves! Aiyaa. Where was this history in my education?

Why have I had to listen to politicians dishing out that “ungrateful pendatang” narrative nonsense all this time? We could have created a different society if we all grew up knowing that all the races had bled for this nation. (And I bet those politicians who try to divide us have never faced danger from a gun or had to live in the jungle for months on end to capture terrorists.)

Then there are our school buildings. I went to St Mark’s Primary in Butterworth, Penang, and my wife went to Convent Bukit Nanas in Kuala Lumpur. Both were missionary schools built by the Christians.

Many missionary schools were handed over to the new government of Malaysia after independence.

There is St George’s Institution in Taiping, Perak, which my cousin attended, and King Edward Primary also in Taiping, where my father learnt how to swear in Queen’s English when he was angry at me! Then I went to SMJK Hua Lian in Taiping, a Chinese vernacular school.

But much of this history of our education at the primary and secondary levels was sidelined when thousands of national school blocks eclipsed the colonial-style missionary school buildings and the vernacular-type Chinese schools. This made us forget that we all should be grateful to all the races and be thankful for their contributions to education.

A third example is our economy. I was appointed to translate a book from English to Bahasa Malaysia by the owner of a large Malaysian company that sells electrical appliances throughout Asia.

The book was about the company’s history, which began with a two-storey shoplot in Sekinchan, Selangor, and expanded into many branches and outlets all across Asia over 65 years.

The people who began the company hailed from mainland China and struggled through the Japanese Occupation of World War II, the communist insurgency, and several economic depressions to build a company that serves millions and supports people of all races with employment.

The Chinese-owned company had help from all races and faiths as workers, partners, managers, talents, and consumers to build it up to what it is today, a major contributor to our economy.

Reading the book brought a glow to me as a Malaysian, for human capital development is priceless, worth even more than the millions of ringgit in income and taxes.

Where is the history of our economy that tells of all of us complementing each other? Wouldn’t that be more useful for unity rather than narratives that encourage racially driven boycotts and using unfounded religious accusations to kill businesses?

Our nation would be a different one if we had told a more inclusive story of our history.

There are many more areas, like the arts, heritage, architecture, music and movies, that we could enliven and redefine our history with, that tell of many people joining in harmony to successfully build a nation.

So I say, let us take another look at our history and find stories to suit a united future as a people.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.