LETTER | We are a few days away from stepping into the reality of Vision 2020, that grandiose vision of the burgeoning 90s that pretty much permeated the growing years of the Malaysian Gen X and Gen Y. But the euphoria of the 90s has since faded into the disillusionment of the millennium, with the current government conceding that the utopia of those bolder years would remain just that, a distant dream, an unachievable ideal.

Instead, the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 (SPV2030) was launched in October 2019, with much fanfare and pageantry, but somewhat lacked the exhilaration and excitement of Vision 2020. One of the flagrant omissions of the SPV2030 is the goal of creating a cohesive, united, national identity - a "Bangsa Malaysia".

Unlike its successor, Vision 2020 audaciously proclaimed: “The first of these is the challenges of establishing a united Malaysian nation with a sense of common and shared destiny. This must be a nation at peace with itself, territorially and ethnically integrated, living in harmony and full and fair partnership made up of one Bangsa Malaysia with political loyalty and dedication to the nation.”

Milan Kundera once wrote, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. While this makes sense in contemporary Malaysia, it would have been the exact opposite for our forefathers in pre-independence Malaya. Instead of the struggle of memory against forgetting, our forefathers’ struggle against colonial power was one of collective forgetting over memory. Ernest Renan, the French historian, once wrote, “Forgetting is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation”. Our forefathers needed to forget in order to create a nation. We now need to remember in order to build one.

What did our forefathers forget and what do we need to remember?

The Chinese of pre-independence Malaya strongly identified with their provincial dialect groups in China. When they arrived here at the shores of Malaya, they lived clustered together in their provincial dialect groups, drawing on their common ancestry and linguistic roots for social and economic purposes. Even within the same dialect group, the Tongkun Hakka was differentiated from the Kaying Hakka. The Tongkun was known for their abrasive and rough demeanour, often called with the derogatory name of "Khek", while the more appropriate "Hakka" was used for the Kaying, said to be more refined. There were also the protracted wars between the Huizhou and the Kaying in the 19th century during Kapitan Yap Ah Loy’s time.

The point is, we need to remember that it was not a homogenous ethnic identity for the Chinese back then. In the same way that it was not homogenous for the Malays. The Kedahans accepted people of Arab descent as Malay but not in Johor. The Kelantanese accepted people of Siamese descent as Malay but not in Negeri Sembilan.

Then, the British came and as they say, the rest IS history. The British classified the Malayan social world into categories that they could understand and administer – Chinese, Malays, Indians, and natives – diluting the richness and heterogeneity of pre-independence Malaya. Subsequently, our forefathers, nationalists, and independent fighters needed to put aside these heterogeneities, fossilising these colonial categories in their quest to mobilize support from their respective communities. The heterogeneity was subsumed under broadened ethnic categories, emphasizing commonalities to strengthen each group’s bargaining power in the negotiation and making of a new nation.

Today, Malaysia has come to a juncture where our forgetting and our memory meet. The categories inherited from our forgetting meeting the identities excavated from our memory.

Being Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan-Dusun or Iban. And being Malaysian. Both are identities but both are also categories. Identities evolve but categories remain. Identities are always in a state of flux, but categories are constant. Identities are the myth of common association and ultimately empty. Identities only make sense in the context of inclusion and exclusion. Identities shift because of the way we include and exclude "The Other" changes. But categories stay on even though identities are no longer experienced in the same way.

Most of us still use the same language colloquially, still frequent ethnic-based eateries, perhaps have a social network that is predominantly from the same ethnic group and still celebrate ethnic festivities with much fervour and ownership. But as second and third generation Malaysians, many of us also never consider China or India as our kampung. Neither have we questioned our constitutional monarchy, our official language, our official religion and our multiculturalism.

Yet, amidst all these appearances of similarities, we differ in some very subtle but significant ways from our forefathers. If we care to scratch deeper, unravelling these differences, unlocking this mystery and figuring out how we have actually changed, this will be the key to the future.

It is therefore paradoxical, in a mysterious way, to call for change when we have in fact already changed. Just like the wind, change is blatantly conspicuous yet obscurely subtle. You feel it and know that it is there. You see the objects that it moves without being able to observe the substance of the thing itself.

Can we see the wind? Are we able to articulate its substance?

Our political landscape is not divided between those who want to change and those who do not. It is divided between those who only see rustling leaves and swaying trees and those who want to observe the substance of wind. One sees the inherited consociational arrangement as sacred, adequate to deal with the symptoms of change. The other finds that a new bargain is way overdue but is struggling to find a new language to articulate the substance of change.

The contestation of power will persist between similarities and differences, categories and identities, symptoms and substance, constancy and flux, forgetting and memory.

Whither now, Malaysia? Address the symptoms of change or articulate the substance of change? Do we reconfigure the power structures to accommodate our everyday experiences or do we social engineer our everyday experiences to fit the current power structures?

Sixty-three years on, the reproductive life of our nation’s inherited consociational logic is betraying itself with signs of ageing and self-dismantling. New dimensions of commonalities and otherness have emerged for us to include and exclude. Fluid, fragmented identities are being reconfigured based on our everyday experiences, tenaciously knocking some dents on the inherited categories that define us. The re-excavation of deeply buried memories through critical retrospection is invading the epistemic space of 21st century Malaysians.

Whither now, Malaysia? Will we step out of Vision 2020 by not renewing our dream for a cohesive and united national identity? Will we step into the SPV2030 era by forgetting to meditate deeper on these questions and subsequently, the choices before us? Are we complacent with rustling leaves and swaying trees, or do we want to observe the substance of wind?

Well, if I have to choose [...] I would rather see the wind.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.