Nationalism and Particularism in Present-day Southeast Asia
From December 13-16 the Fourteenth KITLV International Workshop on South-East Asian Studies was held at the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Leiden. The meeting was organized jointly by KITLV and the IIAS. Additional grants had been provided by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.
By CEES VAN DIJK
The theme of the workshop, 'Nationalism and Particularism in present-day South-East Asia', opened the way for lively discussions about two inter-related subjects. One was the strength of nation-wide nationalism as opposed to ethnic or regional nationalism and the efforts made by the governments in South-East Asia to promote such feelings. Attention was paid to the role assigned to national ceremonies, the campaigns to promote a national ideology, the expression of anti-Western sentiments by the political and economic elite, songs intended to foster nationalism, and the redefinition of the past, at times the very distant past in this process. One of the papers, for instance, drew attention to the importance attached by the military in Burma to history and the regime's embrace of archaeological finds which could indicate that the origin of hominids, if not of human civilization, was located in Burma. Another paper compared the function and popularity of patriotic songs in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.The other major theme of discussion touched upon factors which divide, or are likely to divide, the population in the individual states in South-East Asia, creating domestic tension and sectarian violence. In view of the theme of the workshop attention focused on such topics as regionalism, ethnic tension, inter-religious relationships, and the position accorded the Chinese community and other minority groups. Recent communal violence in Indonesia provided some of the background to the discussions. Although it has already been increasingly manifest since the middle of the 1990s, rioting, inter-religious and inter-ethnic clashes, and separatist sentiments reached unprecedented height after the fall of Soeharto in May 1998. Since then fear that violence, provoked or not, and if the latter is the case for whatever reason, could well spread all over the country, plunging Indonesia into ever greater chaos. Besides Indonesia, other countries in South-East Asia also received their fair share of attention. Papers dealt with the position of Islamic minorities in South-East Asia, not only in the Philippines, but also in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar, and with the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia. In view of the theme of the workshop, a great deal of attention was paid to Malaysia and its 'mirror country' Singapore. Malaysia, whether seen as one entity together with Singapore or not, is the only country in South-East Asia where the relationship between ethnicity and political and economic spheres has been one of the main topics in the formal negotiations, before and after independence, between representatives of the Chinese and Malay communities to give substance to the Malaysian state. This awareness led to discussions of the campaigns to create a Malaysian identity or nationalism (as opposed to a Malay, Indian, or a Chinese one) and the interpretation of such an identity by leaders of these communities like Tan Cheng Lock, Lee Kuan Yew, and Mahathir bin Mohammad. Such issues were related to the more down-to-earth questions about the political and economic realities governing the relationships between the Chinese and Malay communities. In Malaysia one of the most conspicuous of these in Malaysia is the promotion of the growth of a Malay entrepreneurial class by enforcing economic the Chinese community to make concessions. A related discussion concerned Singapore where a Singapore identity is also being promoted among a mixed Chinese, Malay, and Indian population.
It is the intention that a selection of the papers discusssed during the workshop will be published in a workshop volume. *
Professor Cees van Dijk,
Leiden University.
E-mail: cvdijk@let.leidenuniv.nl