Malaysia is a melange of cultures. While we noticed this in Singapore too, Malaysia – with its five major cultures – takes this to another level. A train journey in Kuala Lumpur is likely to be shared with Malay, Chinese, Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, and Eurasians – descendants of Europeans and one of the Asian ethnic groups. While a minority, the Eurasian population is still significant, and introduces yet more diversity into the cultural melting pot.
Irrespective of ethnic background, all Malaysians must declare a religion. And that means selecting from the handful of major religions – officially at least, no-one is atheist or agnostic here, nor will you find any declared advocates of Scientology or Jedi-ism! From these official declarations, 63% of Malaysians are considered Muslim, but except for the application of Sharia Law in certain civil matters (for example, if one member of a proposed marriage is Muslim, the other must convert to Muslim before the government will recognise the marriage), this has little implication on the non-Muslim minority.
The Chinese community is a melange in itself, having immigrated over many generations, but mostly during the colonial period of Malaysia, when Malaysia was governed by Europeans under the East Indian Trading company (and eventually became a protectorate under the Indian Raj). Depending upon what part of Malaysia you are looking at, you get different provenances of China that migrated to the area:
Kuala Lumpur was originally a town/city manufactured by the British to make it easier to mine tin. While on a river, it was far from any sea ports and essentially a frontier town in its early days. The Chinese migrated to work the tin mines and set up other businesses, mostly arriving from the South East of China. This means that Cantonese is the dominant language. Compare this to Singapore, where they only teach Mandarin in school, and so the ethnic Chinese speak almost exclusively Mandarin.
Other cities in Malaysia have a different mix of Chinese. For example, in Panang, Mandarin is far more common due to migration from the Eastern provinces of China.
The Chinese temples are interesting as the Chinese like to hedge their bets, especially when it comes to religion. We visited a temple combining Taoism, Buddhism and Confusionism, and this is not uncommon! Many of the offerings burnt at these temples are paper analogues of real world items, burnt in order to send them to the spirit world and their deceased ancestors, so they will live comfortably in the afterlife. Paper spirit money, iPads and iPhones are amongst the most popular choices for offerings!
The Indians predominately come from the South of India and therefore speak Tamil. Of course, they brought with them the customs and food from this region. They were brought as labourers by the British colonials to both work in the tin mines and in construction. This explains why most of the colonial buildings in Kuala Lumpur are in a more Indian style, including their windows and decorations, because it was just easier for the imported laborers to do what they were familiar with.
As already mentioned, some Indians in Malaysia are Hindu and some are Muslim. Historically, Kuala Lumpur has had just one “Little India”, with this district combining both cultures at close quarters. This did make things occasionally difficult (after all, Hindu and Muslim Indians tend to eat subtly different foods, buy different goods, and of course attend very different temples), so 10 years ago, the government ordered the construction of a second “Little India” in an historically Indian residential area called Brickfields. This would be designated as the Hindu Little India, leaving the other neighbourhood predominantly for Muslim Indians. Slowly but surely, families who own shops have migrated to the area designated to their cultural background. This was described to us as being a very natural and normal realignment – making lives easier – rather than being a messy and unwelcome exercise in social engineering.
We visited an Indian Hindu temple and learned some of the basic tenants of Hinduism from our guide Melissa. Even though she is a Catholic Chinese, she has a wealth of knowledge on the other major religions, and bombarded us with cultural observations! We had heard of the three main godly manifestations of the Hindu God (Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer) while in Bali. Melissa expanded on this by introducing us to the story of Shiva’s wife (Parvati) and two sons (Ganesha and Kartikeya). We also learned how Ganesha has ended up with an elephant head:
Parvati created Ganesha while Shiva was away. Upon his return, Shiva was questioned by his new son, being told that Parvati had requested his presence. Shiva, not to be questioned by someone, let alone a boy, lopped off Ganesha’s head. Of course Parvati wasn’t very pleased with her husband’s actions, so (somewhat sheepishly, we might assume!) Shiva sent his troops off to find an animal head to replace his son’s lost head. Of course, the first animal they came across was an elephant, at the rest was history…
Indian Muslims are called Mamak, but this is also a term applied to a food stall/restaurant that opens 24/7. A Mamak will often not have any visible menu or prices, but locals will know what they can order and how much it will cost. Almost an equivalent to the Great British pub, a visit to the local Mamak is a social occasion, and they are especially popular in the late evening and early morning when many Malaysians (of all ethnic groups) gather to watch the English Premier League on television.
Cultural diversity has some very interesting effects on the Malaysian society. There certainly is a Malaysian culture, but each ethnic group has their own interpretation of it. While I am sure migration has continued to be a fact of life here, all of our guides were either Malay or 3rd, 4th or 5th generation Malaysians. They all felt very Malaysian and were proud of its cultural diversity, but also had a great deal of understanding of their own ethnic culture.
One thing that seems to be the foundation of the shared culture is the love of food. Malaysians, no matter what ethnic group, love to eat. It is not uncommon for them to eat five times a day: breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and supper. What is really interesting is that many of the dishes are shared across ethnic groups, but with small variations depending upon the ethnicity of the chef: if you order a Chinese nasi goreng, it will be slightly different from an Indian or Malay one.
Perhaps unique to Malaysia is the existence of more than one royal family. During colonisation, there were nine kingdoms that agreed to form what became Malaysia. Independence required a “native” royal family to be declared, but which of the nine kingdoms’ would provide this? Well, why not rotate through the royal families from each of the nine kingdoms? So, every five years (or when the ruling monarch dies), a different King is chosen from one from the nine kingdoms, and they have their “term” in the national Palace in Kuala Lumpur.
In all of our travels, we have never met a group of people who are so ethnically and culturally diverse whilst retaining such a common, integrated society. Several of our guides told us that the majority of people (something like 60%+ of Malaysians) are firmly middle class. We sensed a disappointment in the current government (corruption is never far from the headlines), but this doesn’t appear to affect peoples’ day to day lives. There are clearly a lot of lessons the West could learn about social integration of diverse cultures from the people of Malaysia.
