This article "Of different Malays: The problem of boundaries" (the Post, Sept. 4) offers valuable insights from both Indonesian and Malaysian perspectives.
One insight is that Indonesians are educated to view culture as an inanimate artifact, possessed rather than nurtured. Indonesian culture, in this view, does not evolve through being lived by Indonesian people; rather it is a product to be certified or patented as "authentically Indonesian" by the government.
In this paradigm, which has persisted since the era of dictatorship, the government can use its authority to prioritize certain religions, ethnicities or cultural forms, while marginalizing or excluding atheist, Chinese or other cultural manifestations deemed to "contravene the people's ethical norms".
The outcome is multiple insecurities. First, minority groups see the respect or neglect of their local culture as symbolic of their status within the hierarchical Indonesian social system. Second, many modern Indonesians are alienated from the most creative streams of traditional culture, which sprang from a spiritual and social outlook now abandoned and even despised. This compounds the tendency to view culture as an inherited possession liable to be "stolen" from its "rightful owners".
A second insight is that the Malaysian concept of a Malay identity is a continuation of colonial-era racial policies, and is sustained today not by cultural or linguistic factors, but by the political imperative of the dominant ethnic group, which uses religious coercion and cultural manipulation as a tool to retain its grip on power.
The subsumption of Javanese, Bugis and other Indonesian cultures is essential to the absorption of Indonesian immigrants as "true Malays", ensuring the numerical dominance of the "Malay community".
At the same time, the fusion of cultures from across the archipelago into a united "Malay culture" sustains the "native sons" myth, whereby ethnic Chinese and Indians are perpetual immigrants undeserving of equal rights.
Again, the outcome is insecurity and resentment, on the part of both Malays, whose privileged position depends on potentially unsustainable deceit and racism, and of ethnic Chinese and Indians, who are born second-class citizens in their own country.
Sadly, Indonesians, who negate the Malaysian racial stereotype, are seen as both threatening and vulnerable, and thus are apt to become frequent victims of ill-treatment.
My suggestion to Indonesians is that in the cultural sphere they promote creativity rather than control and possessiveness. My suggestion to Malaysians is that in the political sphere they demand more freedom.
John Hargreaves
Jakarta
