The writing of history has become the most contested discursive terrain in Malaysian society of late. Historical discourse has become the battleground for competing wills, backed by clearly identifiable political interests as well.

Those of the Islamist camp have attempted to re-write Malaysian history (and Malay history in particular) through the lens of political Islamism, giving everything an Islamist gloss even where/when it wasn't there. Hardly a surprise then that the pre-Islamic past of the Malays has received so little attention by the esteemed intellectuals and academics of the Islamist hue.

So great has this discursive shift been that the younger generation of Malay-Muslims in this country might think that before the coming of Islam, the Malays as a race and culture did not even exist. (Presumably there were aliens in their place at the time.)

But in their rush to write their revisionist accounts of the past, these Islamist scholars have also narrowed the scope of Malay culture and identity and reduced Malay history to a mere few hundred years. So great have been the changes that these days one is almost afraid to talk of the pre-Islamic past in the universities, for fear of being labeled as one of those nasty munafikin dressed up in academic clothing.

Another area of Malay history that has been completely overlooked is the role of the non-Malay communities in the development of Malaysian culture and politics, and even more importantly the role played by women (of all ethnic communities) in that development.

There have only been a few notable examples to the contrary: A handful of studies on the role of women in the dominant political parties like Umno have been written in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but nothing much has followed in the wake of these developments.

Worse still, a gender-sensitive approach to history has not been fore-grounded in the writing of the early history of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, which leaves women today with little to fall back on when searching for positive examples of emancipated and politically active women who played a key role in the development of their respective polities.

Doubly disadvantaged

Again and again, the same excuses are brought to bear: History and historical writing has always been predicated on a specific notion of the rational independent subject as the primary agent for historical progress. History, we are told repeatedly, is the result of the labours of the happy few: Men with power and the ability to use it.

That is why we continue to repeat the cliche that Columbus discovered the New World, that Peter the Great modernised the Russian state, that Tunku Abdul Rahman was the founder of independent Malaya/Malaysia. The efforts of the subaltern classes - the millions of nameless individuals whose identities are lost because they did not carry with them the keys to power, wealth and influence remain relegated to the margins.

Women are doubly disadvantaged in this respect. Robbed of their political rights and access to gaining it, they have been the silent motors of history whose efforts have made history itself possible but whose identities remain lost forever. The fact that history has been (in the past at least) more often than not written by men makes it even more difficult for women to have a say in this discourse of sameness that speaks only of itself and to itself all the time.

Whenever women have demanded their right to contribute to the writing of history, or at least to have their efforts recorded for posterity, they have been told time and again that they are part of a larger current which they need to identify themselves with.

Women have been told, since time immemorial, that they play a vital role in society but whenever they seek to find their own histories and identities in the discourse of history itself, the end result is always the same: The presence of women is inevitably sublimated under the broader category of human history itself, which, by some quirk of fate, happens to be the history of men written by men!

Influential women

It was therefore a welcome change to find a work that looks at the role played by Malay-Muslim women in the political developments of the Malay archipelago, entitled Wanita Utama Nusantara: Dalam Lintasan Sejarah (Prominent Women of Nusantara: A Historical Overview).

Published in Indonesia and supported by the Indonesian Women's Affairs ministry, the book which is edited by Ismail Sofyan, H. Hassan Basri and T. Ibrahim Alfian attempts to do what no other major textbook in Malaysia or Indonesia has done before: To highlight the role played by Malay-Muslim women in the political development of Indonesia (most notably in Aceh, North Sumatra) over the past three hundred years.

(It is also comforting to note that Indonesia has at least produced a number of male scholars who are sensitive to the need for this sort of subaltern research and have tried to address the gender imbalances so endemic in Southeast Asian scholarship today.)

The text itself may come across as a 'coffee table' book due to its large format and glossy presentation, but that should not deter the reader. In it, one comes across essays that look at a number of prominent and influential Malay women who have played an important role in defining the political destiny of their respective societies: Ratu Nur-Illah, Ratu Nahrasiyah, Laksamana Keumalahayati, Sultanah Tajul Alam Safiatuddin Syah, Sultanah Nurul Alam Inayat Syah, Cut Nyak Dhien, Chuk Nyak Muetia, Pocut Baren and Pocuk Meurah Intan.

The women whose lives and times are recorded in this text make up an impressive crew indeed. They range from powerful women rulers like Sultanah Tajul Alam Safiatuddin Syah and Sultanah Nurul Alam Inayat Syah, to guerilla warriors like Cut Nyak Dhien, Chuk Nyak Muetia, Pocut Baren and Pocuk Meurah Intan who resisted the full impact of the Dutch imperial army.

Even more spectacular was the life of Laksamana Keumalahayati, who was the admiral of the Aceh imperial navy and perhaps the only woman in the world who ever occupied such an important post in a nation's maritime forces.

Cultural particularisms

If we haven't heard of any of these names before, it is not exactly a fault of ours alone. Colonial historians were careful to obscure or deminish the role played by any native leader who stood up against the might of the colonial government, and female resisters were treated with even more unbridled contempt.

To compound the problem even further, post-colonial history was caught up in the tumult of post-colonial revisionism, and during the decades that immediately followed the declaration of independence in Malaya and Indonesia, history was held hostage by sectarian political groupings (nationalist, communist, Islamist) that had little time for gender awareness and cultural particularism.

The main complaint that the author has about Wanita Utama Nusantara: Dalam Lintasan Sejarah is that it, too, places undue focus on the lives and labours of the rich and famous. It is well and good that a gender-sensitive writing of history takes into account of the role played by prominent and powerful women of the past, but this should not be at the expense of the disempowered and disenfranchised.

As long as the notion of the free rational subject and agent of history is based on an understanding that power confers the right to identity while the powerless have none, we cannot claim to have a history that is comprehensive and all-encompassing.

Even taking into account the fact that such an all-enclusive history is a pie in the sky at best (and a nightmare of cultural particularisms at worst), we nonetheless need to take the step towards the writing of a subaltern history that embraces every section of Southeast Asian society- including the non-Malay/Bumiputera minorities and of Women in particular who make up, after all, the majority of the population of the world.

Another shortcoming of the text is that it fails to address the complex relationship between Malay culture, Malay women and Islam. It must be noted that all the women featured in the text were Malay-Muslims themselves, but they were also independent subjects who clearly had a will of their own.

Just how the discourse of Islam could be adapted to serve as a rationale for justifying the active and open participation of women in politics, government and even warfare is a complex question that deserves to be asked, for it proves that Islam was not an obstacle that stood in the way of women's emancipation in the past.

Crucial data

The text therefore provides us with crucial historical data and background information into the socio-cultural, political and religious framework of Malay-Muslim society in the past, long before Malaysian and Indonesian society came under the sway of the orthodox Ulama who have been trying to minimise the presence and influence of Malay-Muslim women in public on the whole.

For activists, academics and lay persons alike, the book offers a glimpse into an Other Malaysia (or an Other Nusantara if you wish) which is not too far removed from the present and which could - through political struggle - be reactivated if we have the will to fight for it.

But even after taking into accounts the shortcomings of the book, Wanita Utama Nusantara: Dalam Lintasan Sejarah remains a landmark achievement in every respect and deserves the recognition that it has earned. A step in the right direction, and one which we hope will be followed by many more.

Edited by Ismail Sofyan, H. Hassan Basri and T. Ibrahim Alfian.

Published by Jayakarta Agung Offset, Sponsored by Bank Exim Indonesia.

Jakarta, 1994. 157 pages. Hardback.