Running away from responsibilities in Montreal recently, looking for language action while on the run, took me to two linguistically very different, equally exciting soundscapes of vibrant speech just a few weeks ago. On the way to spending the month of December 2019 in familiar and familial territory in West Bengal, India, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Malaysia through the kind offices of a Canadian friend who works in Kuala Lumpur, the capital. I was there to see the person rather than the place—the friend had issued a standing invitation to drop by when she got the job a couple of years ago, but positioning Malaysia as a convenient way to get to somewhere else took a while.

So the place, when I got there, was a revelation. Others who write in this space, not to mention many readers who visit this space, know far more than I ever will about this complicated and fascinating part of the world. I hope they will forgive the naïve remarks of a complete outsider. I think everybody will agree that, given the history of its peoples and languages, Malaysia qualifies as a poster country for showing the complex relationships between identity, language and diversity—and how “belonging” can nonetheless be seen to emerge in a unitary fashion for citizens of this relatively new nation; Malaysia as a unified polity dates only from 1963. Speaking of posters, here is one:

— check out that upper right-hand corner. Yes, there was a White Rajah dynasty in Sarawak. That’s on the island of Borneo. In Malaysia. Their name was Brooke…

…it’s always a good thing to be confronted by the extent of one’s own ignorance. Humility is a virtue. While in Kuala Lumpur and the much smaller towns of Miri and Kuching (the latter two in Sarawak), my astonished eyes and iPhone took in many things calculated to delight the passer-by, whether provided by the abundance of nature in those parts—

—or created by human hands.

My friend, an enthusiastic sightseer, made sure we covered as much ground as possible, quite a lot of it tropical rain forest, sometimes with, sometimes without orangutans—but they are another story, which one longs for them to tell themselves, somehow:

(and we did think we saw a crocodile once, fortunately at a respectful distance!)

After only ten days I travelled on. Vivid, colourful though slightly blurred first impressions of Malaysia, a place I only visited once, are now overlaid with family-full memories of Kolkata, the place I was born (about which, more to follow). But one fact stands out for me, because I had not known it before: All ethnic Malays are required by law to be Muslim. This was explained to me on my second day in Kuala Lumpur. I had of course noticed the predominance of veiled women, reflecting the increasing Islamization of the region—ethnic Malays are the majority population in Peninsular Malaysia.

What did that mean, I asked? Well…A lengthy discussion followed, around the whys and wherefores, the historical background before and after independence, the famous race riots of the 1960s. The total population is upwards of 33 million; ethnic Malays make up a little over 50% of that total. Over 130 distinct languages are spoken in Malaysia. Substantial minorities of people whose ancestors originally came from China or India, seeking work or business opportunities, have been in this part of the world for centuries; Indigenous peoples are upwards of 10% of the population, come from a dizzying number of origins, and have of course been around for far longer. I learned about the large populations of foreign workers, many of them in Malaysia illegally, assigned, it seemed, almost in caste-like fashion by nationality to certain categories of jobs. The Bangladeshis stood out for me; one heard their distinctive variety of Bengali everywhere—it’s the language my father grew up with. Judging by this shop window, they send home substantial sums in remittances:

In Peninsular Malaysia, where most Malaysians live (there are two other Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, Sarawak and Sabah, which are relatively sparsely populated), Malays are the majority ethnic group. One therefore sees many stores like this one, snapped from a taxi window.

I thought, when I first got off the plane, that ethnic relations looked remarkably harmonious. On the streets and in the shopping malls of Kuala Lumpur, ethnic Malays, the women in hijab (called there tudung) rub shoulders with Indian Malaysians dressed very much like their distant cousins in Chennai or Sri Lanka and with Chinese Malaysians, to whose trendy young women (I was in some quite posh malls) rules of Islamic modesty clearly did not apply. Yes, well…there can be problems, said the friends we were having dinner with. Having learnt the word tudung, I learned the word dehijabbing, and came away from Malaysia with a compact and remarkable book, Unveiling Choice, by a Muslim woman activist, Maryam Lee (she is ethnically Malay). Lee writes about the difficult decision she made as a young adult, in the face of considerable opprobrium, to take off the tudung she had worn since childhood:

Her words, her work and her website are worth your attention. I have only the sketchiest of notions of what is going on with women, feminism and the fight against patriarchal norms in the intricately layered society to which she belongs, but Lee’s book resonated with me—particularly given what’s been going on here in Quebec around the recently passed “Act respecting the laicity of the state,” or Bill 21. Here, in certain circumstances, Muslim women are not allowed to wear the hijab; there, in most circumstances, they are not allowed not to. The choice to veil, the choice to unveil—why is it seemingly so difficult to allow women to choose? Either choice can be an integral part of a person’s identity.

As someone who is certainly an outsider in Malaysia (and often uncertain of my insider status in Quebec, despite having lived here most of my life), I can do no better than to pass the talking stick to Maryam Lee, who will, I hope, not mind that I quote her at such length:

“…the point that I want to bring home is that dehijabbing is a form of awakening just as much as hijabbing is for those Muslim women who put on the hijab to observe Islam in their own way….both forms of resistance are resisting the same patriarchal outlook regarding the female body. I look forward to the day Muslim women, be they in the East or West, are no longer superficially divided by opinion on the hijab, and work together on dismantling institutionalised patriarchy for women and children everywhere.….How could a person who was only taught that orchids are white make a meaningful choice between white orchids and orchids of other colours? How could a person who was never taught that orchids of other colours even exist, make a choice for other-coloured orchids at all?”

…and yes, there were orchids in Malaysia. Lots of them. All the colours of the rainbow.

Reference

Lee, Maryam. (2019). Unveiling Choice. Gerakbudaya Enterprise, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.