Until there is greater clarity on what happened, it is unwise to cast aspersions on the authorities in Kedah, especially those custodians of our national heritage. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt.
What we cannot excuse however is how the Bujang Valley historic site has been managed.
Unfortunately, Malaysians have woken up to the poor condition of care for this historic site after the “demolition” of the historic Sg Batu Candi (No 11).
If
it is true that a private developer had been given permission to “clear
the land” for development, the Sungai Petani Municipal Council (MPSP)
must explain how it came to giving such consent especially as the Sg
Batu Candi is quite well-known. Finger-pointing aside, the MPSP needs to come clean about what happened and more importantly, how can it happen.
Right thinking Malaysians must be wondering how a developer and a local council can be so derelict in the performance of their duties. But a more important question is: why are we talking about the Bujang Valley only now?
I suspect there many Malaysians who are not aware of the special significance of the Bujang Valley. Put simply, they do not know or care about this our common heritage.
About a month ago, I visited the Bujang Valley museum with some colleagues. It took us some time to locate the museum as the signage was not very helpful on the highway.
The museum, which resembles a 1980s archaeological gallery, has seen better days. A group of school children from Putrajaya came, led by their teachers. One of them, upon examining the artefacts on display, said to his friend: “This must be Shiite religious instruments.”
No one corrected him and they left without having had any kind of meaningful guidance.
Recalling my primary and secondary education History syllabus, I was very sure that our text books had extensive descriptions about Malaysia’s pre-Islamic history. After all, our oldest Malay royal family is the Kedah royal household. It can trace its lineage back to its Hindu-Buddhist past in the 10th century.
The Malaysian education system cannot be so bad that it is not providing knowledge about the Hindu-Buddhist periods, an era that gave us words like ‘kerajaan’, ‘cinta’, ‘putera’, ‘bumi’, ‘menteri’ and other markers of our national language. Perhaps History text-books in schools have yet to catch up to the latest discoveries.
The
Bujang Valley historical site, which covers a vast area, has sites
dating back to the 1st century BC. Latest discoveries at the Sg Batu
archaeological site, verified by the Department of National Heritage and
international scholars, has been proven to be the oldest iron-age human
settlement in all of Southeast Asia. When iron ingots were being produced and exported to southern India from the ports of the Bujang Valley, there were no other trading ports in the region as sophisticated or a community so well organised. It would be another 600 years before Borobudur was built and 800 years before Angkor Wat was conceived.
As the Global Centre for Archaeology at Universiti Sains Malaysia does not have enough funds, we were told during our site visit that excavation works have been scaled back. By September this year, a picture of this well-organised iron production centre had been documented and a small gallery set up at the site.
There is even evidence of jetties, foundries, an administrative centre and temples. It is particularly interesting that the Sg Batu site is not an expatriate colony but more likely a combination of both settlement and a local civilisation.
Challenges of management
In many ways, the reason why the Bujang Valley historical site is so badly managed is bound up with Malaysia’s inability to understand who we are.
Having evolved at the crossroads between East and West, with India and China as major influences, it is inevitable that Southeast Asian societies are very open to different cultural and religious influences. If it is difficult to pinpoint a set of cultural markers that make us Malaysian, it is because we share our identity markers with so many different ethnicities and civilisations.
Archaeological
discoveries at Bujang Valley are a clear showcase that the people there
may not have started out as Hindu-Buddhists although it is clear that
in later times - especially in the 5th to the 8th century AD - both
Hinduism and Buddhism were dominant. Seen in this continuum, it is not surprising that present-day Kedah should be a bastion of Islam as it was the first Malay kingdom to embrace Islam.
Lest we forget, the Bujang Valley site covers an area of more than 100sq-km. It covers coastal and riverine areas right up to the Jerai Peak. It also stretches all the way to Ceruk Tok Kun in Seberang Perai (in Penang) and comes under the Sungai Petani municipality.
Obviously, urban planning and development, often superimposed over this area before historical discovery, allowed for plantations and housing development.
If Malaysia is having to meet the challenge of accommodating places of worship that spring up along crossroads and other significant areas, this is because some of these religious sites are scattered over a vast area that may have once been poorly inhabited.
The same is the case for the Bujang Valley site, with candis found in paddy fields and in rubber and oil palm estates.
In fact, one of the reasons why the Sg Batu site was so easily discovered was because the top soil that protected the site had been stripped away for rubber and oil palm planting. It did not take archaeologists too long to reach their target as the top soil was not more than a couple of feet deep.
For readers who have not been to the Bujang Valley or have not ventured outside the parameters of the Bujang Valley museum, it is a worthwhile trip to go experience the site personally.
Once there, the challenges associated with its management and care become very obvious. The local communities no longer identify themselves with these historic sites especially those having been buried for more than a millennia.
More importantly, the tourism infrastructure around these sites is poorly developed and as such, there is very little incentive for the local community to ‘look after’ the sites. The best that we can hope for is for these communities to leave the sites alone.
The best thing for the Bujang Valley now is to have a complete audit of where these historic sites are and design a heritage management plan around them. This should be embedded into the State Local Plan that regulates development at the local level. It is also important to provide more resources to the Department of National Heritage as it can help build local capacity to care for these sites.
Finally,
as all land matters come under the jurisdiction of the Kedah
government, there needs to be greater vision to see the great potential
for the Bujang Valley, which is just a skip and a hop away from the
George Town Unesco World Heritage Site, as well as the Lenggong Valley
Unesco site.Going forward, this is the perfect opportunity for the government to take the lead in protecting and developing the Bujang Valley. Archaeological studies have shown indisputably that the site is a result of local and foreign interactions.
It is a clear reminder that, for more than 2,000 years, the people of the Malay peninsula have remained open and supportive of sojourners, migrants and settlers.
Here is clear evidence that the ethnocentric cries of some groups in the country today is a clear blip in our longer history of Malaysian identity-making built upon openness, friendship and mutual respect.
NEIL KHOR completed his PhD at Cambridge University and now writes occasionally on matters that he thinks require better historical treatment. He is quietly optimistic about Malaysia's future.
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