Quora Answer: Did the Malays Really Inherit Malaysia 5,000 Years Ago?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Did the Malays really inherit Malaysia for over 5,000 years, as claimed by Zainal Kling, the former dean of Art & Social Science of University of Malaya?”

Zainal Kling is the sort of pseudo-intellectual that would get patronage by political parties in Malaysia, since he is nothing more than a demagogue and racist, who espouses an alternative view of history that suits the narrative pushed by Malay exceptionalists in UMNO, PAS, and related groups.  He would never be taken seriously outside the bubble of fake academia that is Malay-exceptionalist scholarship.

His claim that Malays inherited Malaysia for over 5,000 years is obviously nonsense.  Firstly, we have to understand that 5,000 years ago, the only extent civilisation, meaning large-scale farming and the beginnings of cities were in the Fertile Crescent, the Harappa civilisation, and in China.  What was there to inherit in Malaysia?  What we had were people that may have become the Orang Asli tribes, and migrated to form the proto-tribes that we now find in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The Malays, an ethnonym given to a diverse group of tribes and peoples of the Malay archipelago, was applied by European colonial powers.  The people here belonged to many different ethnic groups and kingdoms, with distinct cultures, and languages.  This applied to the people of the Malay Peninsula, to Sumatra, and parts of Borneo.  5,000 years ago, there were no “Malays”.  In fact, the earliest evidence of the proto-Malays do not even date to a thousand years ago.

Malaysia was formed out of the joining of British Malaya, Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak, as distinct entities.  It was meant to be an equal partnership.  Singapore left on the 09^th August 1965.  The diatribe by Zainal was in relation to this mythical social compact that the non-Malays were given citizenship in return that they acknowledge the supreme position of the Malays and support it.  This is nonsense.  There is no such documentation, and claims to a verbal agreement between Malay and non-Malay leaders are recent.  This was never cited during the struggle for independence.

We should note that the term “ Kling” originally referred to Indians from South India, perhaps from the region of Kalinga.  Zainal Kling himself is probably of Indian origin.