What’s in a monument?

I think what's most interesting about the sculpture is that it stands out and looks very foreign - despite being the national monument. No other kind of sculpture exists in Malaysia, because it would be considered idolatrous to Islamic sensibilities for it's human features. This has periodically caused mild uproar, but an important part of this story is that it was commissioned by Tunku Abdul Rahman, our first Prime Minister after seeing the Marine Corps War Memorial in Virginia in the midst of the Cold War. The following is taken from a blog post, highlighting the differences between the inscriptions of the monument and cenotaph between languages.

Victory in two languages

The dedication at the base of Tugu Negara is bilingual. The Malay version is written in the native Jawi script, which was the default in Malaysia before colonisation.

Translations are rarely exact, since some meanings can’t make it across language worldviews. But in this case, the two versions are more or less faithful. The only shift in nuance is the focus on ‘heroic’ in English, whereas the Malay version merely mentions the warriors as fighting or struggling. I can’t really fault the translation though, since struggling in itself is worthy in our worldview, whether ‘heroic’ or not. And the Malay version demands more from the heroes. It requires that the struggle not merely be ‘in the cause of’, but to actually uphold peace and freedom.

The sentiment on the cenotaph dedication has a similar difference. The Malay version is about the memory of the service of the fallen. The primary emotion is gratitude and grief, not glory.

But I also noticed a different bilingual plaque. The versions were also generally faithful, but there was a single interesting deviation. In the English version, the figures of Tugu Negara represent the ‘triumph of the forces of democracy’ over the ‘forces of evil’. But the Malay version is nowhere so ideological. Instead, it merely says that the bronze figures represent the victory of our troops against our enemies.

And I can’t fault this translation either. Literally translating the ‘triumph of forces of democracy over forces of evil’ would sound utterly ridiculous and cringe, to the pragmatic and semi-feudal Malay worldview. No. For us, the victory of value is the one that defends our sovereignty, whatever ideology we may choose to hold over time, against those who seek to undermine that sovereignty – whatever ideology they may choose to hold at the time.

The differences in meaning showcases the dialectical process of decolonization and the material and historical bases of cultural difference. This nuance will not be captured by tourists or visitors passing by, but showcases the reality of the negotiations that occur between the colonial past and the post-colonial present in plain view - only if you are willing to understand.

There has been sufficient discourse in highlighting how Tunku Abdul Rahman was westernised, and for someone like Sukarno, Malaysia itself was a comprador creation meant to solidify British control in Southeast Asia. That is why Konfrontasi (Indonesia-Malaysia war) happened soon after the federation's declaration. I think the key part to this story is how no one could really imagine how reality would turn out. This reminds me of Chin Peng's (the last secretary general of the MCP) salient critique and failures of the Party in his interview in 2003, from not adapting Maoist guerrila warfare strategy to the Malayan context, the inadequate and immature analysis of religion and particularly Islam, and the failure to recognize the fractures and differences between the reactionary and comprador classes (ie. the British big bourgeoisie, vs the Chinese capitalists or Malay aristocrats/petty bourgeois or in other words foreign vs local Capital, for example). The National Monument echoes perhaps all aspects of this critique through it's inscriptions and history, despite the face-value anti-communist readings.