Those of us who have read our ancient hikayats will recognise phrases like " dicincang lumat tujuh ribu kali ", " dicincang bangkainya sehinga hanya sebiji beras ", " dibunuh sehinga mati tujuh keturunan ", etc.

Such hyperbole seem to characterise the way of thinking in the past, in particular among the ruling elite who seemed to feel that their rhetorical pyrotechnics needed to match the greatness of their station in society.

Now one can only wonder aloud about why an adversary would have to be chopped up 7,000 times until his corpse was shredded to minuscule morsels the size of a grain of rice, or why the poor unfortunate's family had to be wiped out to the point where they would never re-emerge again for at least seven generations.

Surely after delivering the first well-aimed and well-delivered blow the victim would be dead and gone. Even taking into account the sudden loss of nerves or sheer incompetence, one would imagine that two or three blows would suffice. Why then the sheer excess of unrestrained, brutal and explicit violence?

Once again, many of these puzzles make sense only in the context of our feudal past. While the modern age is characterised by speed and efficiency - the assassin's bullet, the electric chair, the cyanide pill being the hallmarks of modern-day killings - the feudal era was characterised by public and highly visual displays of power.

Power was not understood in abstract, conceptualised terms: One had to show that one possessed power, and indeed this became a duty in itself.

The feudal era was therefore a busy time for monarchs and rulers who constantly had to impress upon their subjects the fact that they had power and that they could use it. Hardly a surprise then that during these times public killings and tortures were the order of the day.

The spectacle of death, torture and killing became part of the running of the state itself, and the highly popular and explicit killing of the enemies of the state was meant to have the reassuring effect of telling the people that someone was still in charge.

This was true almost everywhere in the world: In medieval Europe rulers had their enemies hung, drawn and quartered. The Iranian Shahs had their opponents turned into human candlesticks and their heads stuffed with straw into macabre "footballs"; the Chinese emperors chose the delightful "death of the thousand slices" while the Malay rajas indulged in local traditional pastimes like immersing their enemies in boiling oil, impaling them on stakes and having them lick red-hot steel.

Trapped in feudal past

Some of us have been led into thinking that the feudal age is over and that we now live in the modern age thanks to the fact that we walk upright and we carry cellular mobile phones. It does not take long for us to realise, however, that despite the material development in Asia there has been precious little cultural and civilisational development in the region and that much of Asia remains trapped in the feudal culture of the past.

This combination of modern material development and antiquated cultural values has contributed to the creation of a neo-feudal culture which is all around us today.

Proof of the fact that we live in such a neo-feudal environment was all around us during the 1980s and 1990s, when Asians were rushing heedlessly down the road to riches. We helped to build our economies while also strengthening the feudal bonds of patronage in our respective countries.

Today Asians scream for reform but few of us care to remember the good old days when we helped to line the pockets of our own leaders like Suharto of Indonesia when we competed for contracts and investment opportunities.

This neo-feudal culture also remained with us up to the economic crisis of 1997 and it persisted in its aftermath. When the crisis struck and the public began to react to it, the nature of the reaction itself was shaped and directed by a form of politics and a political mentality that seemed to come right out of the ancient hikayats of the past.

That is why the uproar during the Umno general assemblies from 1997 seemed so familiar to those who have been watching all those Hang Tuah and Pahlawan movies of the 1950s. What actually took place when the deputy prime minister challenged the leadership of the Umno party was nothing short of a palace coup, complete with its cast of nefarious characters, sub-plots, twists and turns.

The flying letters, the allegations of sexual and financial misdeeds, the knives in the back, the media campaign both before and after the clash were all the props of a typical feudal encounter between two equally antagonistic camps that had geared themselves up for war.

While many outside observers were quick to identify the two parties as being on ideologically different grounds (Anwar's "reformasi" camp being dubbed the modernists while Mahathir's establishment dubbed the conservatives), the fact remains that in terms of personal style, tactics and rhetoric, both sides had much more in common with each other than they cared to admit.

The adoration of their leaders, leading to the creation of cults of leadership, was clearly seen in both parties. Despite the talk of social and political reform, it was also clear that the neo-feudal Umno mentality was also evident among the ranks of some of the reformasi leaders themselves. The war, in short, was a civil war between two Malay rajas with their respective political armies in tow.

The fall-out from the Umno crisis of 1997-98 was also normal by the standards of feudal politics. While foreign observers and media commentators stood by with their mouths wide open, wondering how such things could take place in "modern" Malaysia (note the inverted commas), students of traditional Malay politics would have been able to tell you that it was all according to the script and that it was all bound to end in tears.

Violent transitions of power

In the feudal past, there were never peaceful transitions of power from one regime to another. If and when a take-over attempt was made, it was bound to lead to violence and death. The challenger knew that he was going against the protocol of the feudal state and that, like the amok, if he failed in his bid there would be no second chance.

There was no prisoner of war during the feudal era: If you lost, you ended up dead along with your family, kith and kin, your village, your mukim and all your followers. The "7,000 blows" that would crush you into "grains of rice" and wipe out your family for seven generations would be delivered by the victorious side.

This was precisely what happened in the wake of Anwar Ibrahim's failed putsch against the government, and the outcome has been expected all along. The attempt to keep the man out of politics for good, to destroy the fledgling political party that was created when he first fell, to wipe out his support base and to erase him from the annals of official history is very much in keeping with the neo-feudal mindset which tolerates no grey areas between friends and enemies.

Feudalism's economy of excessive violence has not been eradicated by the arrival of modernity, it has only been made more efficient and thorough. So while in the past the rajas and sultans had to spend time and resources to track down the conspirators who were working against them, the modern-day rulers of Asia just have to go through the websites to identify the parties that are either for or against them.

While in the past the use of public violence was necessary to keep the masses in line and to remind them who was the Raja, the rulers of today simply have to threaten to investigate your private accounts, to deny you contracts or to withdraw your business licences to keep the masses quiet and co-operative.

Occasionally, however, the powers that be cannot help but revert to type and play by the old rules of the past. The temptation to go back to the time of the feudal kings must be strong indeed. So when opposition politicians are arrested and detained they are not just kept under confinement, they are also beaten up and kicked around as well, to the point of nearly killing them in some cases.

We may be shocked, disgusted and horrified when revelations of such atrocities come to our attention, but rest assured that all is well. For we are still living in a feudal political and cultural system where the values of the past, repugnant though some of them may be to some of us, have been well preserved against the ravages of globalisation and monoculturalism.