The ‘silent’ eulogy

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
My View - The Sun Daily
April 8, 2015

WHEN a great leader passed away, the whole world stood still mourning the loss. Long lines formed to the place of demise where some had been holding vigil in the hope of some sort of miracle. Messages of hope were left behind together with other symbolic paraphernalia as a sign of fondness and gratitude.

On the final day of departure, leaders – great and not-so-great, gathered to pay their last respects. At times “fugitive” leaders, risking arrest, made a show as well which goes to show how the peers revered the departed, as honourable deeds were recounted in the eulogies by close friends, colleagues and  loved ones.

People from all walks of life spilled onto the streets to bid their last farewell as the decorated hearse passed by on its way to the final resting place. Thereon, the absence lingers for some time marked by flags flown at half-mast, the wearing of special ribbons and the like as a collective show of sadness and sympathy.

However it did not end there, although overtly it seemed so. In almost all situations the “mourning” had  started long before the “official” ones. But with a subtle difference that often goes unnoticed as it  invariably involved the “little” people – orang-orang kecil. More specifically they were lamenting the  indiscriminate sufferings and agonies even while the “great” leader was alive. Yet their voices remain unheard, the lamentations ignored.

To illustrate I can relate this to my early years at Universiti Sains Malaysia when the area surrounding Bayan Lepas in Penang was a “backwater”. The scenery of serene padi fields was breath-taking, that is, before they were overwhelmed by a Silicon Valley look-alike of the so-called “first world”. What followed later was something that many wanted to forget, or at least not willing to freely talk, because it still evokes some guilty feelings about the little people – many of whom were adolescents then – predominantly females. In the thousands, they were uprooted from their homes at little known places, to “serve” as “imported factory workers” where padi fields once stood.

Few would even care to remember how most of them were crammed into a terrace house or makeshift hostels – at times sharing beds in tandem with the shift hours that staggered their sleeping and resting times. The health consequences of such practices have been known to be debilitating when natural body biorhythms are artificially interfered with. But that did not matter.

We have yet to dwell on the ubiquitous ethical-moral issues that these innocent youths were subjected to – the sexual harassment, the unwanted pregnancies and abortions, the unbridled freedom and new-found lifestyle that was supposed to mimic that of the first world.

In all, they bore an unusually heavy burden that took a devastating toll on their dignity and self-respect. This was vividly reflected from the way they were “unceremoniously” labelled as Minah Karan or Minah Kilang in contrast to the numerous honorifics and credits that others took as the founder of this and father of that as highlighted in the eulogies.

Intangible socio-cultural shaming of this nature was always downplayed as the price of progress paid in hefty economic terms all in the name of development, especially in the formative years of 1970s and 80s. Their eulogies remained muted by the amnesia of time. Nor anything could be quoted from their epithets as their burial places are largely unknown.

Yet their “monuments” stood silently everywhere in the structures of the industrial zones of Bayan Lepas. Largely invisible to most who were untouched by the plight and suffering of Minahs.

We have not begun to recount the lives of the padi farmers who had been incentivised to relocate with some form of compensation just enough to usher them away. We have not talked about the droves of fishermen who faced similar fates this time as Manhattan-like dwellings continue to rear their sterile facades along our beautiful beachfronts turning what used to be sacred places of livelihood for the poor into a profane playground for the rich and famous.

The pertinent lesson in all of this: As “great” leaders everywhere are laid to “rest in peace” and as the weeping eyes go dry, the voices of the little people will ring even louder and clearer to the world at large. Succintly, it underpins the message for “great” leaders of tomorrow that one can be truly “great” if only “justice” is justly dispensed especially for the downtrodden orang-orang kecil. And that there is no room for any silent eulogy.

With some four decades of experience in education locally and internationally, the writer believes that “another world is possible.”Comments: letters@thesundaily.com