reduced and recycled

I just checked with someone and looks like I’ll only be able to get a copy of the May 13 book next week, here in JB. Reading about the accounts and excerpts from the book made me think back again on something I intended to blog about some time back, but didn’t have the time to. You know how myths are created and perpetuated? I don’t really, but I’m slowly learning.

Back in the day in anthro101 class, they used to teach us about foundational myths and such, focusing on the concerted myth-making in newly-emerging nation states especially Singapore and Malaysia. You know, the foundational myth of Sang Nila Utama and the pink-bellied “Singa”, the eating of turkey in the States on Thanksgiving, etc. From myths, we then proceeded to signs and signifiers in the study of religions, thence to specific rituals themselves, and doing comparisons.

I’ve picked up reading the Golden Bough again, but what drove me back to the abridged version of the book was something that same Kelantanese colleague of mine told me. He’s a PAS man (as in, he votes PAS) and a wealth of information on myths and urban legends. One day, we were having lunch and the conversation turned to things like secret societies and, eventually, to bomohs and spirituality.

He had stories of Indonesian robbers and thieves under lock-up having “special protection” which manifested itself during interrogation, he told me stories of the various rituals and spells cast to render victims senseless during a break-in and such (the description of spells fits brilliantly with Frazer’s account of sympathetic magic in the Golden Bough, btw). It wasn’t long before we got to the question of the May 13th riots in 1969.

He was sympathetic: there were many deaths on both sides, and he thought the official numbers of dead were under-reported. He then asked me: do you know why the Chinese lost at the time? I said, no. I didn’t want to talk about guns and the rumours that abound about that fateful period. So what happened, I asked him.

He said: there is a story of a tok guru from Batu Pahat, Johor who, during the fighting, cast a spell on his parang and then threw it in the air. The parang flew all the way to Kuala Lumpur, where it began to slay the Chinese who were fighting the Malays. The parang was special as it had eyes on the flat of the blade. That parang slew so many Chinese, and the Chinese couldn’t do anything about it, so they gave up.

The story was incredible, as in, hardly believable. I asked him if he believed it, and in his usual way, he said that’s what people said. I pressed the point: did he believe it? He answered in the affirmative. I was puzzled by the story.

A while later, I recounted the tale to another Malay colleague. He laughed and said no lah, that’s not what happened. What actually happened, according to this colleague, was that the tok guru actually went up to Kuala Lumpur and fought the Chinese there. The Malays in the tok guru’s camp could see him, but the Chinese, apparently, couldn’t. Again, I asked this fellow whether he believed the story. He answered in the affirmative. “It’s a fact,” he said.

I suppose no one ever told them about these same Chinese being cut down by machine-gun fire. I don’t know if this myth of the flying parang is pervasive in the cultural space amongst latter-day Malays, Chinese and Indians; it’s just interesting how a lack of information on that dreadful day had caused aspects of the 13th of May to take on the lineaments of myth.

There are many interesting angles to the formation of this particular myth: how does the idea of the Malay struggle come into this, with the creation of mythical figures and mythical accounts? What about the tok guru as a cultural and religious hero? The supremacy of Malay culture over pendatang cultures finally decided by the ‘69 riots?

The last idea would make sense of UMNO MPs who keep reminding me of the consequences of the 1969 riots, which incidently just affirms the myth of the tolerant, magnanimous Malay who is willing to give in to the demands of strangers but not too far. Or maybe the evolution of the tok guru myth arises out of inherently reaffirms the values Malays hold dear; the said tok guru didn’t merely win by brute force but, presumably, by greater spiritual powers either conferred by his religion or conferred by his beliefs/traditions.

I wonder if this myth is firmly ensconced in the minds of latter-day Malays and Malaysians alike. Because I’m wondering how much of a difference the new book by Dr Kua will make. Maybe not much difference at all as far as myths surrounding the events during the riots, but perhaps a demystification of the grounds on which such riots occurred would go far toward removing all doubts about the presumably moral high-ground adopted by ultra-Malays. How will the same tok guru look if it is discovered that he was a pawn in a power struggle orchestrated by his own people?

How would it look if the pendatang victims were finally revealed to be innocent?