The new political film, “Anwar: The Untold Story”, is obviously about the leader, with the people firmly in the background. It is about time that the story of the Reformasi movement as well as the many other people’s movements in our history also be given the spotlight, and we look beyond the great men at the helm. Without significant effort to collect and retell these stories, we risk losing them to neglect and apathy.
Growing up during the early Reformasi period, politics was inescapable. Even in primary school, sights and sounds of the weekend demonstrations were regaled by friends along with undoubtedly exaggerated stories of people being beaten up by the FRU on the streets of KL.
It was a period of political awakening and outrage for many. Perhaps it was a culmination of the bottled anger and dissatisfaction that resulted from the severe economic and financial crash that affected all of Malaysia, but through the events of September 1998, the public found a focal point in Anwar and the way he was treated by the government of the day, and the rest is history. The movement was also lucky to have Fadzil Noor, the then PAS President, as an able shepherd building up the movement across the Peninsular. It was also the beginning of our fixation with politics on the internet, through the hastened adoption of the web to find trusted news and information across foreign websites, discussion groups, and of course this site itself.
The Quiet Malaysians
The absence of all of that bothered me a lot after watching the Anwar film. It was strange watching the film and the portrayals of events that focused exclusively on Anwar (and to a certain extent Wan Azizah), while regular people, the Marhaen if you will, relegated to the background as passive followers. I had not gone in expecting a movie like Spike Lee’s Malcom X but it still felt incomplete.
To be fair, the film is a biopic about a political leader. It makes sense that there is no need to highlight these plebeian currents, but where else does one find these histories? The early days of our Reformasi was a watershed moment for the country, and for so many people in Malaysia, but to the 20-year-old interested in recent political history, where can she start to learn about that?
In comparison, the Indonesian Reformasi was already the backdrop of the smash hit teenage rom-com “Ada Apa Dengan Cinta” in 2002 (speaking of awakenings) while Viva Westi, the new film’s director herself directed a film that addressed the human costs of the events of 1998. Meanwhile in Malaysia, beyond the work of a few authors, cartoonists, and poets like Shahnon Ahmad, Dinsman, Zunar, and Hishamuddin Rais, there are very few popular works that address the events of the period, and even fewer still in public circulation today.
Remembering has a fee
As valiant as some individuals try to ‘rakam sejarah’, these efforts need institutional support and recognition for them not to be lost to the sands of time.
There are costs involved in collecting, publishing, and preserving history. This is a lot to place on the shoulders of individuals, however committed they may be. It need not always be impressive like the Borneo Cultures Museum, which I look forward to visiting in the near future. It can also be small but well-maintained initiatives that serve to communicate the experiences and lessons learnt to future generations. The Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum comes to mind as an example, but one struggles to find examples that speak about past political movements, whether the Reformasi or earlier popular struggles.
Perhaps this is unsurprising, as victorious movements too are not well communicated beyond a few scholarly books, propagandistic films, and the curious practice of museum dioramas and showcasing personal effects of Great Leaders.
We can start by capturing our oral histories well. This column has previously mentioned the Danny Tan’s Bersih book “We are Marching Now”, but other works documenting important aspects of Malaysian history such as Fahmi Reza’s “10 Tahun Sebelum Merdeka”, Amir Muhammad’s “Apa Khabar Orang Kampung”, and Mark Teh’s “A Notional History” deserve our attention as well. Initiatives like Pusat Sejarah Rakyat that compile valuable documents and records from our recent past and makes them accessible online must be appreciated, and their work supported.
‘Melawan lupa’ needs to be a consistent effort before there is nothing left for us to protect. Which would be a shame for two big reasons:
One, we slowly lose more and more knowledge about the context of our national development, and how we found ourselves to where we are today.
Two, we forget what was possible and what was achieved by those who went before us, despite all of their material deficiencies.
If that happens, we become a society lost in the present, ignorant about the past, and unclear about the future.