Malaysia needs a new
historical narrative that can unite its people of diverse races, Tun
Musa Hitam said at the launch of the 60th National History Summit,
as was widely reported in the media. I don't think anyone would
dispute that. Certainly, history cannot be only about winners and
losers. “There is a historical combat in many countries," Tun Musa
Hitam further said. I won't say 'many', I'd say every. Every country
has historical disputes but, perhaps, none like Malaysia.Historians regard their job as a science and it should be. However, if only they were not human, nobody paid them, didn't take sides during wars and disputes, have no loyalty, no emotion, no belief system, and are totally and utterly objective. It has been argued that the myth of the battle of Agincourt, the centrepiece of Henry V by William Shakespeare, boosted the British national confidence, pride and ego to such an extent that it made them the most powerful colonial force in the history of the world, one that even the Roman's couldn't dream of. George Washington's apple tree incident is now disputed. More recently, in India, the Sethu Samudram project was put off because of a Hindu myth; Hanuman and his monkey horde won the court battle against the country's leading geologists and scientists.
In a battle between myth and history, the latter will always lose.
But Malaysia has another problem, one of credibility. People have no confidence in historians because they are assumed to be under the payroll of unseen forces, and therefore blatantly lie. So, no matter what version of history is written, it will be suspect. The main agenda of the 60th National History Summit should have been: How do we clean up the public image of Malaysian historians? Much of it is only perception, and patently untrue. But so what, if people think you are lying?
Everyone in the country wants history to be rewritten. But which version? Theirs. History only becomes accepted and acceptable when we are no longer afraid of the truth. Sure, everyone will call their version the truth, when it is merely a version of a lie. I will give you an example.
I get several customers in the shop who come looking for 'good' history books. One lady asked about one such recommendation, "Does it have Parameswara in it?" I said, "Yes," but I didn't add, "but that's not why it's good." She didn't look like someone who was clever, or non-poitical, enough to understand. For her, a good Malaysian history book must have Parameswara in it because she learnt that in school, or else the government was doing a fiddle.
Would it have made a difference if I had told her that Parameswara may not even been a name but a title, one of the four he had (according to some sources) in the fashion of Hindu rulers of the period? It was often difficult to say where titles ended and names began. Parameswara means the great lord from the words "param" meaning the highest and 'ishwara' meaning supreme being. (Yes, that's the reason many Hindus were sniggering when Proton decided to name a model of their car that.)
That entire problem was probably caused by Tome Pires, the apothecarist from Lisbon. In The Suma Oriental, he named the prince from Palembang, "Paramjcura which means the bravest man in the Palembang Javanese tongue." Why Javanese tongue? In all probability, it was of Indian/Hindu origin. (You can imagine a ruler assuming the role of the Great Lord, can't you?) Tome Pires went further to say that his wife was Paramjcure. Parameswari is the female equivalent, the great goddess, and our own Permaisuri probably comes from there. Winstead appears to have taken off from that, but stretched it a little more by suggesting that he was called Parameswara because he was a commoner who married a princess. Where did he get that? The Andayas' sources appear to have been the same too.
None of the versions of The Malay Annals I have read mention Parameswara. In Sedjarat Melayou translated by Devic and Starkweather, he is King Is Kender Chah. In Leyden's (often called Raffles') version, he is Raja Secander Shah. CC Brown calls him Sultan Iskandar Shah. Iskandar (after Alexander the Great) was the name of choice among many Malay kings. (Interestingly, Skanda is also another name for the South Indian god, Murugan, to put a cat among the pigeons.)
Tome Pires and Richard Winstead, and a host of others, were colonials, not professional historians. They were amateurs, albeit gifted and passionate. (Winstead was a civil servant). But their agenda was clearly colonial, and they made no attempts to hide where their loyalty lay. Their prejudice and lack of knowledge often showed glaringly in their writings. Still, let's not thrash their work summarily, lest we throw out the baby with the bath water. Let's not take their word as gospel either.
We still don't know the truth of many historical events and people, and we may never. A good historian must also be a linguist. However, in Malaysia it's not historical accuracy that is at stake, but credibility. Once a reputation (real or imaginary) for lying and manipulation has been established (and believed), it is difficult to turn it around. Historical errors might be due to plain incompetence, but try telling that to the people who are convinced that you are merely a stooge because you're constantly quoted in the 'wrong' newspapers.
So let the first agenda of the 61st National History Summit be: Rebuilding the credibility and dignity of the Malaysian Historian.
