What has happened to the grand nationalist project envisioned by the founding fathers of Malaysia? Having achieved the self-determination and the sovereignty of an independent nation, what kind of nation-ness have we created as a people?

These are timely and urgent questions, as we approach the half-century mark of our nationhood, on the eve of yet another general election

People of my generation, who have lived through the poverty and turbulence of the early years, can conclude with some satisfaction that life now is indeed far better than when we were under British colonial rule.

Despite questionable policies and many incompetent corrupt politicians, we have managed to stumble along without the kind of afflictions that have plagued other emerging nations in Asia, Africa and South America. For that, we have to thank God, and the essentially good people of Malaysia.

On the surface at least, it would appear that the original nationalist vision of creating a new nation-state with dominant Malay character has now become a daily though confusing experience for 23 million citizens.

For better or for worse, the philosophy behind the much criticised New Economic Policy has also changed the political, economic and social landscape of our brothers and sisters from the Malay community.

Myriad under-currents

But we live in times of great disquiet and thought-provoking turns of events. Take away the superficial symbols of nationalism, the flag-waving, the slogan shouting and the jingo mania on TV and other official media, you can sense that myriad under-currents jostling for some kind of dialectical solution in the uncertain years ahead.

All is not well, and the lan vital of history is on the march.

I do not subscribe to the Enlightenment doctrine that, aided by science and technology, history will always progress in a linear fashion towards some pre-determined grand destiny.

That myth has driven the process of global modernisation and reshaped the world no doubt, but it has also never ceased to contradict and disprove itself. The senseless massive warfare in the 20th century dealt a crippling blow to the optimism of Western humanist ideals.

In the West, and gradually elsewhere through the process of globalisation also, the crisis of modernity spreads like the Aids virus. Everywhere, we see Earth contaminated by consumptive consumerism, and human beings are increasingly alienated from their true potential by a standardised, mechanised, dependent, self-seeking, pleasure-driven, one-dimensional existence.

In short, the life-generating power of Eros inherent in the lan vital of civilisations is always accompanied by the self-destructive shadow of Thanatos. Human history may yet witness the extinction of the most successful species on our planet. Only the future can predict the future. Our vocation is to understand the present, and try to demystify the anatomy of change.

Let us not forget that the pseudo-religion of Nationalism was both instrumental to, and logically consequent upon, the great process of modernity in the West. We can cook up a mountain of reasons to explain why this relatively modern concept has worked as well as it did in the last two centuries or so, in Europe and in North America, in the evolution of vibrant liberal democracies with an enviable standard of living.

But to expect the archetype of nationalism to duplicate itself successfully everywhere in the world, like genes on a stand of chromosome, is to commit oneself to the erroneous belief that human affairs are governed by iron-clad sociological laws, like the way the material universe is governed by the immutable laws of nature.

Viable model

Our founding fathers had no choice but to borrow the categories of nationalism prior to Merdeka in legitimating their political struggle. It would seem the natural, and the only viable model with which to mobilise the people for self-rule in the post-war period, given the dearth of workable or desirable ideologies of that time.

It could also be due to the working of the psychology of self-liberation. In the initial phase, all that a long oppressed people can do is to aspire to the values of the oppressors. They want to be dominant in their turn. Inadvertently, they copy the ideology of dominance from their former colonial masters.

Therefore, the Malay nationalist character can only come to fruition by asserting its dominance against an ever hostile and ever alien Other. The formerly colonised must now aspire to be new colonisers in their new found territorial nation-state. The mischievous hand of Thanatos is at work.

But alas, the historical conditions that engendered and nurtured the growth of nationalism in Europe are now no longer operative. As a political ideology, nationalism is itself the cultural artefact of modernity, and its survival is contingent on certain politico-economic development of the times. With modernity in crisis now, and the world caught in a new quagmire awaiting a reshuffling of power equations, it is questionable whether nationalism can continue long into the future.

Now, nearly half a century later, the result of our experiment in nationalism is there for all to see and evaluate. Despite a sustained concentrated effort in making our official nationalism a reality, the Umno engineered version of a Malay dominated Malaysian State has succeeded in neither integrating nor assimilating the Other.

Umno brand of ethnic ideology

It is not as if Umno nationalists have not done enough with the apparatus of state to subdue the Other. On the contrary, their entire political will has been bent towards that very objective.

What the proponents of the nationalist project has failed to realise, is that their exclusivist claim to national identity has given legitimacy to the claim by the other ethnic groups to their sub nation-ness under the aegis of human rights or some such trans-national standards. They would employ the same grammar and logic nascent to the language of nationalism to justify their existence in juxtaposition to Umno brand of ethnic ideology.

In the truncated universe of their imagination, Malaysians rarely think like Malaysians. Their political representations are invariably tinged by their respective standpoint as Malay or non-Malay, Muslim or non-Muslim, Bumiputra or non-Bumiputra. This negating disjunctive "non-ness" that characterises the relation between the two binary terms will condemn to dismal failure all official attempts at fostering unity.

Therefore, the National Service programme to be implemented at great costs is doomed to miserable failure, like countless similar projects before it. Unity and loyalty cannot be imposed from an external authority; it can only spring forth from the heart, spontaneously, gladly and willingly. Oppressive disciplining of our youths in the hope of whipping them into a united people will only breed in their hearts a silence of brooding resentment. Human beings are not robots.

This much sought-after national unity is elusive, impossible even, because it is pretty meaningless. It is the wishful yearning of a power elite longing for blind obedience to a national ideology which has lost its sheen. The hidden agenda of Ketuanan has closed off all channels of discourse on what unity means and what it is for. Without the emotional investment from the citizenry through active participation in the public sphere, in a collective effort to define national identity, the unity imposed from above will always remain as an alien external irrelevant Other.

An action begets a reaction, and in our case, the table of alienation will be turned against the grand narrative of nationalism every time.

Victim of own success

The most subversive deconstruction of the nationalist dream however, has come from within the Malay community in the recent past. Again, Umno has become a victim of its own success. The NEP has brought dramatic transformation to the social development of many Malays, but in the process, Umno has also either created or released social forces that have increasingly challenged the exclusive authority of Umno to define Malay nation-ness.

The process of modernisation for the Malay community must have been a traumatic experience for many Malays of agrarian origin. Very often, it means the uprooting and dislocation of young Malays from the comforting context of their rural agrarian traditions, plunging them suddenly into the dog-eat-dog world of commerce and industry in the sprawling impersonal urban centres across the nation.

Fuelled by the imperative of the NEP, such massive social mobilisation over a short span of a few decades must have disrupted and eroded the Malay adat as a means of social control, and as a mode of communal self-definition. Rapid industrialisation in the cities and the rural-urban drift must have meant a rupture in the original Malay soul, inflicting upon the sensitive hearts of many Malay youths the hurt of schizophrenic uncertainties in respect of their self-identity as Malays.

As the legacy of NEP drags out its historical course, the rampant corruption and abuse of power in Kuala Lumpur and the various state capitols have come to pollute every level of national life, betraying for many educated Malays the great lie of the nationalist vision.

All Malays are Muslims, and Islam, like many other great religions on earth, is an all-consuming faith with an overwhelming moral overtone. Seen in this light, the emerging phenomenon of PAS success in the rural Malay heartlands can be seen as a pervasive political response of the Malay community to the moral and political corruption exemplified by the Umno brand of hypocritical nationalism.

Meanwhile, the relative success of the NEP has also witnessed the growth of a burgeoning Malay urban middle class. Only God knows how many young Malays have gone overseas for further studies, only to be exposed to new possibilities and fresh perspectives, to reflect upon their personal journeys as individuals in ways undreamed of by their traditionalist forbears.

These and other locally educated Malay youths have been awakened to heightened expectations of what life can be, and not be satisfied merely with what life is. Apart from the small handful who engages themselves in civil society groups, the great majority of them would perhaps leave their heightened consciousness dormant, pursuing their personal course of self-actualisation and upward social mobility instead.

Anwar Ibrahim affair

However, the Anwar Ibrahim affair in 1998 exploded with such unprecedented savagery that the shock must have disturbed them to the core of their being. When hundreds of thousands of these hand-phone generations of new Malays took to the streets in mass protests against Umno injustices, the myth of Umno playing the god-like role of the Grand-Patron-cum-Big-Brother for all Malays was debunked, perhaps once and for all!

Subsequent political upheavals shook the foundation of all state institutions, which Umno has taken decades to build the name of Malay ethnic nationalism. The legislature, the court, the civil service, the university, the enforcement arms of the government, which have all been dominated by Malay presence, have all been torn asunder. I suspect even the palace and the military have not been unscathed.

This latest round of political realignment would be undreamed of in 1982, when Umno was basking in the warmth of Malay unity, calling for the creation in Malaysia of One Culture, One Religion and One Language.

In 1982, I had just been elected to the Dewan Rakyat for the first time. Sitting across the aisle was Anwar Ibrahim, making his rookie debut as a very nervous Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Culture and Youth. Sitting next to me for the five-year term, was the lone and much harassed PAS MP, the now venerated Nik Aziz Nik Mat. Then, I could not in my wildest dream envisage the change that was to come in the next two decades.

What then will happen in the next two decades?

To predict the future would be presumptuous of me. All we can say about change is that change will come, one way or another. The internal contradictions within the axioms and the premises of the original nationalist project have exploded to the extent that the grand narrative of Umno must now make way for the small narratives from various sources to claim their legitimate place under the Malaysian sun. The immortal lines ring true through the ages

  • Things fall apart
  • The Centre cannot hold.

The visionary leader yet to emerge must now ponder upon the question: How to agitate for the congruence of all the plural narratives in a redefinition of justice tempered with fraternity?