Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 03:13:00
I had to a pick up a well-known academician from his hotel in downtown Bukit Bintang and get him to Central Market.
It’s not a long walk from the hotel but the pavement isn’t good enough.
It’s bad for walking and even worse for having a conversation.
Besides, I was just not going to take the risk of Prof Benedict Anderson stumbling over, falling into, or bumping his toe against the great Malaysian pavement.
More importantly, I didn’t want to waste our precious time.
If we had walked we would have been occupied wholly with negotiating the city’s walkways.
These have become more like obstacle courses over the years.
In another city it would be time spent talking and thinking.
We would have been able to stroll.
When I was at university a couple of decades ago, Prof. Anderson’s name was already well known in circles interested in Southeast Asian studies, and more generally, in the study of nationalism.
He coined a phrase that caught the imagination of so many: that nations are “imagined communities”.
His book of that title is rated one of the most cited for the last century.
It is subtitled Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalisms.
As a student I would walk miles through the library, taking small steps past bookshelves, pulling out books, reading synopsis and the biographical notes.
Wondering about the person behind the author’s name.
I never expected to one day encounter Prof. Anderson in the flesh. I remember, as an undergraduate, reading an essay of Ben Anderson’s about Thailand and in particular, his insight into the change of the kingdom’s name from Siam to Thailand.
This, he argued, has had profound consequence for how this nation-State is governed.
The marginality of Lao and Malay speaking minorities is a case in point.
Last year, I read his recently published history tracing the flows of anarchist thought over three continents:
Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. I came to the end of the book with regret.
I didn’t want this wondrous, almost magical, tour of people, places and ideas to end. In the Sixties, he and other scholars questioned the official version of history that legitimised General Suharto’s coup and the mass killings that came in its wake.
Hundreds of thousands were murdered or imprisoned.
Prof Anderson’s quest for truth was rewarded with a decade long ban.
After which he strolled into the study of the Philippines and Thailand.
He admires Amir Muhammad's documentaries. In fact he would quote from scenes of The Last Communist.
And although I had not only seen the documentary several times, but had reviewed it, I could not keep up with his enthusiasm for it. There was a sparkle in his eyes, spiced with a cheeky grin, when he spoke about Malaysians and our ever-evolving region.
While it is easier to stroll in Central Market than it is on the streets, eventually we settled down to talk. In typical Malaysian style; why walk when you can sit.
Ben might strike the man on the street as an ordinary tourist, an orang putih. In fact he so objected to being called this while in Indonesia that he coined a new term.
“I said, look at my colour.It’s pink, blotchy with bits of yellow and brown. It’s more of the colour of an albino kerbau, bule,” he told a local audience recently.
Amazingly, the word entered popular usage.
At this lecture, he revealed something of the deep ties he has to this part of the globe. It was prompted by a well meaning academic who welcomed him as an “outsider”.
Not only was he born in China but his father was born in Penang.
And the house that his grandfather built still stands on Penang Hill.
Perhaps it is this knowledge of his own complex origins that enables him to have such insight and to tell such great stories.
A man to stroll with for sure.
● Sharaad Kuttan is a journalist, human rights activist and tourist. Recently he spent a year in the Philippines and Thailand on Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship programme. He walks a lot.
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