Revisiting 'The Myth of the Lazy Native'

Faezah Ismail

THE Myth of the Lazy Native is an excellent example of Professor Datuk Syed Hussein Alatas' refusal to submit to "infantile mimicking of Western theories and ideas", say academics.

Palestinian-born intellectual Edward Said describes The Myth of the Lazy Native as "startlingly original" in his own work Culture And Imperialism (1993), a 380-page paperback on the connections between the imperial endeavour and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it.

Professor Datuk Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, director of The Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (better known by its Malay acronym ATMA) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, hails The Myth of the Lazy Native - which attempts to probe the origins and functions of the notion of the "lazy native" who was considered indolent by nature or because of his environment from the 16th to the 20th century in Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia - as one of the earliest critical analyses of Orientalism by a scholar from the South.

The Myth of the Lazy Native was conceived in 1966 when Syed Hussein, then head of the Cultural Division, Department of Malay Studies, University of Malaya, posed the following question: why were the natives of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines judged as lazy by hundreds of authors from the ruling colonial regime in the course of some four centuries?

"There are probably thousands of published references on this theme. Neither the conduct of the natives, nor pressing political exigencies required the promulgation of such a judgement," he writes.

That scholarly investigation took seven years to culminate in a book; it was subsequently published in 1977.

"I did not like the way Southeast Asian history was treated by colonial writers," says Syed Hussein, now a principal research fellow at ATMA, on why he wrote his 267-page hardback.

He wanted to correct a one-sided colonial view of the Asian native

and his society.

In Culture And Imperialism Said, University Professor at Columbia University and an internationally renowned literary and cultural critic, classifies A Rule of Property for Bengal (1963) by Ranajit Guha and The Myth of the Lazy Native as post-colonial and specialist, addressing a smaller audience about more specific issues.

"Both these books, the former by a Bengali political economist, the latter by a Malaysian Muslim historian and social theorist, show their authors' assiduous archival research and scrupulously up-to-date documen-tation, argument and generalisation," says Said, who is also the author of Orientalism.

Syed Hussein's book, as "startlingly original" in its own way as Guha's, also details how European colonialism created an object, in this case the lazy native, who performed a crucial function in the calculations and advocacies of what the Malaysian calls colonial capitalism, he adds.

"Generally speaking, the colonial scholars' views of the native were denigrating and very much loaded with colonial interests," says Syed Hussein.

Writing in The Myth of the Lazy Native, he adds: "The entire concept of humanity was derived from the interest of colonial capitalism. Gambling, opium, inhuman labour conditions, one-sided legislation, acquisition of tenancy rights belonging to the people, forced labour, were all in one way or another woven into the fabric of colonial ideology and given an aura of respectability. Those outside it were derided.

"The ideological denigration of the native and of his history and society ranged from vulgar fantasy and untruth to refined scholarship."

Consider the following suggestion by a German scientist that the Filipinos made oars from bamboo poles in order to rest more frequently.

"If they happen to break, so much the better, for the fatiguing labour of rowing must necessarily be suspended till they are mended again."

Such opinions were held by other scholars and educated people, says Syed Hussein.

"Their persistence and repetition over at least two centuries in thousands of books and reports written by administrators, scholars, travellers and journalists, revealed their ideological roots," he adds.

"Since the independence of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (from their colonial masters), the negative image of the native is no longer conspicuous in foreign writings.

"There are writings critical of the economic or political situations in the countries but on the whole they do not contain direct denigration of the natives, their society and history."

Following the post-independence relationship between Southeast Asia and the West, the image of the native has also altered.

Syed Hussein observes that "the ideological elements have been transformed and have assumed a new garb. The image of the indolent, dull, backward and treacherous native has changed into that of a dependent one requiring assistance to climb the ladder of progress".

The "lazy native" concept is synonymous with domination, derived from the "false consciousness" of the colonialists, says Associate Professor Dr Ahmad Murad Merican, fellow and chairman of the Centre for Intellectual History and Malay Thought at the Institute of Knowledge Advancement, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Shah Alam.

"But what may be seen as the genesis of the development of an autonomous social science tradition in Asia is in Syed Hussein's attacks on Asian intellectuals who continue to reproduce in their own thinking the colonial ideology that created and sustained the "lazy native" image. Such thoughts merely reinforce the doctrine of subjugation without them realising it," he adds.

As Syed Hussein puts it in the introduction of The Myth of the Lazy Native: "I believe in the primarily negative influence of colonialism. I believe in the need to unmask the colonial ideology for its influence is still very strong."

"He is against captive-minded intellectuals who are uncritical, unquestioning, in other words, refusing to challenge the received body of scholarship," says Ahmad Murad.

Syed Hussein's interest in the phenomenon of the captive mentality dates back to the early 1950s when he was studying at the University of Amsterdam in Holland.

He defines a captive mind in the non-Western world as one that is imitative and non-creative and whose thinking is based on Western categories and modes of thought. (See story on Page One)

In 1956, as a postgraduate at the University of Amsterdam, Syed Hussein's article on Some Fundamental Problems of Colonialism - in which he argued about the folly of aping Western thinking - was published in a journal called The Eastern World based in London.

His two contributions in the International Social Science Journal on the captive mind in 1972 and 1974 were the only two offerings on the subject. Prior to that, there was no discussion of the issue in professional periodicals.

The conceptualisation of the captive mind led to several books, among others, The Myth of the Lazy Native, Intellectuals in Developing Societies, Modernization and Social Change in Southeast Asia (a collection of papers dealing with problems crucial to the developing nations of Southeast Asia) and the four works on corruption.

Ahmad Murad suggests that the works of Syed Hussein and others including that of Said be read again and examined in the light of the re-colonising impulse of globalisation.

"I propose that The Myth of the Lazy Native and Intellectuals in Developing Societies be reprinted (there are Malay translations of both) and be read together with The Malay Dilemma. Said's books should also be published locally. If we want to perpetuate the debate such books must be made available at affordable prices," he says.

"Since independence, Syed Hussein has remained one of Malaysia's intellectual giants from academia," says Professor Datuk Ibrahim Ahmad Bajunid, dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak.

"He writes easily about religion as he does about politics, sociology and critical thought; it is always with the underlying wit of a compassionate intellectual and a committed social activist," he adds.

*Reflections on the Theories of Religion (1963) * The Sociology of Corruption (1968) * Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer? (1972) * Modernization and Social Change in Southeast Asia (1972) * Intellectuals in Developing Societies (1977) * The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977) * The Problem of Corruption (1986) * Corruption: Its Nature, Causes and Functions (1990) * "Corruption" in Oxford Companion to World Politics OUP New York (1993) *

"Social Sciences" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World Vol 4 OUP New York (1995) * Corruption and the Destiny of Asia (1999)