An Interview with Dr Farish Noor   What have you been doing lately? I've been doing extensive fieldwork across Southeast Asia; I write about places like Pakistan, Bangladesh and India and I study the phenomenon of religious politics – not just Islamic politics but religious politics, in general, Christian and Hindu revivalism.   I find it fascinating to see what's happening in Southeast Asia at the moment with the rise of religious parties including Malaysia with the recently established Hindu party which is an unprecedented development in our national politics.   A year ago you wrote an obituary for Suharto. Will do be doing the same for Gus Dur? I suppose so. Gus Dur, of course, is one of the most enigmatic figures of contemporary Indonesian politics – a very strong voice in terms of normative religious life. In many ways, I think history will be very kind to the man because the things that he did permanently changed Indonesia post-Suharto, for good.   This is the man, who, in so many ways, embodies the spirit of a truly progressive religion. He was the president who made Chinese New Year an official holiday in Indonesia; he was instrumental in normalising the identity of the Indonesian Chinese as fully fledged Indonesian citizens; he genuinely believed in the spirit of cultural and religious pluralism; and he showed enormous respect for all religious beliefs, being a self-aware and self-confident Muslim. That sort calibre and certainty is lacking in so many Indonesian politicians today.   Gus Dur was committed to progressive Islam and democracy, it was during his administration when the presidential palace was renamed the People's Palace – Istana Rakyat. Gus Dur's very short time of rule was characterised by an open presidency where literally anyone could walk into his palace and talk to him. In many respects, he was a genuine democrat and I marvel at the fact that the man was so deeply committed to his religion and democracy at the same time. To him, the two were compatible, so I think he deserves all the recognition that is due to him.   You mentioned Christian revivalism. Do you see that happening in the Philippines? I think we're seeing the revival of political religion throughout the region. In Thailand, for instance, of late there have even been calls to create a Buddhist state. This is ironic considering Buddhism's very ambivalent relationship with politics and power. The whole point of Buddha's teaching was to create an objective distance to power with the knowledge that power corrupts and power is dangerous. So, the whole notion of Buddhist politics, and worse still, a Buddhist state where you have the accumulation and centralisation of power, to me, is a contradiction in terms.   In the Philippines, Christian revivalism began in the 60s, and to large extent, it was a very conservative form of Christianity – evangelical Christianity – but having said that, let's not forget there were many progressive liberation theologians at work. There were many Catholic priests who made it their duty to speak for the poor and oppressed, so political religion has a very ambiguous relationship with religion proper. I've seen the abuse of religion but I've also seen how religion can be a transformative thing, so I'm not prepared to dismiss political religion per se.   Having said that, I'm deeply cautious, because when you have religion with its vocabulary of absolutes coming in contact with power, you see the monopolisation of violence. If that goes off tangent, then any religion can be turned into a fascist ideology – that's why I think religious politicians have to be checked and monitored all the time, and these tendencies are always there. Very militant forms of Christianity and Islam – let's not forget that during the conflict in Ambon, where you had groups like Laskar Jihad, there was also the Laskar Kristus who went around killing

Muslims, and there you can clearly see if and when religion and political violence come together, it's actually quite devastating.   As an academic, do you find defining where Southeast Asia starts and ends problematic? It is certainly a contentious for a reason that is self-evident. This whole compartmentalisation of Asia, in general, from the entire colonial period and these borders are entirely artificial. Malaysia's borders today – there's nothing in the history of this landmass that necessitates the creation of Malaysia as we know it. When you look at the history of trans-border contact and interaction in Peninsular Malaysia, we've had more contact with Sumatra than what we call East Malaysia while East Malaysia had infinitely more contact with what is now known as Kalimantan.   There's no point denying the reality of the nation as presently constituted, but what I can do as a historian, is to constantly remind us of the contingencies of history and the danger that official histories tend to give a sense of determinism that is simply not there. And history is important because it reminds us of the fact that there were other possibilities in the past, and if there were other possibilities in the past, there are other possibilities in the future as well. - (my comment on this: OMG THE DUDE ROCKS  for saying this- almost messianic. teehee)   The 21st century is moving towards a more global, cosmopolitan ideology, do you really see the concept of the nation-state surviving? What we're seeing today in many ways has a historical precedence; we're seeing the slow, determined, worldwide economic integration primarily driven by the forces of capital. In that respect, there's nothing different with the age of colonial capitalism and the whole imperial endeavour driven by capital concerns i.e. profit, colonisation and conquest.   We're seeing exactly the same mechanics in West Papua, and the only way you can describe what's going on in West Papua, is the perpetuation of neo-colonialism. Foreign companies are buying up huge tracts of Indonesia and creating what are, in effect, protectorates under their control for them to exploit at the expense of the Indonesian people, in this case the people of West Papua, and in that respect, it's almost as if the whole anti-colonial struggle never happened. We haven't really evolved significantly from that particular period of Southeast Asian history.   The nation-state today has its responsibilities – every government has to provide education, healthcare, communication and safety – but states are more and more unable to do that because of the enormous power wielded by international capital. This doesn't mean the nation-state is irrelevant, it just means the nation-state's capacity to act has been significantly reduced.   Indonesia is very much aware of the precariousness Southeast Asia is in now; I was in Indonesia where the topic of debate for 2010 is how ASEAN copes with China's entry into ASEAN. As of January 1, the Chinese market can now move into Southeast Asia without any hindrances or protectionism, and you're talking about the massive market and capital power of a hybrid state that is, on the one hand communist officially, but capitalist in the running of its economy, while countries like Indonesia are trying their best to retain some degree of economic independence.   At least in Indonesia, people are debating this; in Malaysia, nobody's even talking about it. The fact that China has become the number one trading partner of Malaysia and many other countries in Southeast Asia, means the geopolitical landscape we've known for the last 30 years is about to change significantly.   How do Malaysian companies cope with infinitely low wages in China? What is going to happen to Malaysian workers when we can't compete? These are things that have to be discussed, but nobody seems to be discussing it in Malaysia. We're just talking about missing jet engines, and which stars

are married to which Malaysian politicians, which I find it absolutely ridiculous when we're dealing with, not a threat, but certainly a very important challenge. This is something real and it might just crash the Malaysian economy; surely the politicians of this country ought to get their act together rather than bicker about stupid state assembly seats all the time.   So, do you see that as an extension of Fukiyama's End of History or an example of Huntington's Clash of Civilisations? (comment: do you want to add an addendum w/ brief ex of Fukiyama and H's theses or are readers of this article expected to be already familiar w this?) I think neither thesis is correct; both are just simply that – theses. A thesis is a proposition that is waiting to be either verified or denied, so one has to therefore wait for developments to occur that would mean the empirical evidence for or against these theses. My worry about how people read Huntington, in particular, has become a wish-fulfilling prophecy.   The whole issue of China is a complex one. On the one hand, it's an emerging Asian power that will be a major, if not the major power in the world, in a very short space of time. The world is not ready for this because, for the longest time, it was deemed as something beyond the horizon of possibilities. So, we literally don't know what to do.   Now Huntington's thesis addresses this anxiety with a note of alarm – I mean, Huntington being a conservative immediately sends certain signals. If it's something new and a potential challenge, we have to think of it as a threat – that barely conceals his own Eurocentric, or rather, American-centric, agenda and his wish to maintain America's geopolitical significance, which I think, speaks volumes about the man's private political agenda. I see no reason why people in Asia should accept this blindly; I certainly don't think of China as a major military threat. China's not about to conquer the world, but China is about to assert its presence and announce itself in no uncertain terms, and for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, China deserves to be listened to.   I'm less worried about China's hegemonic ambitions than what I find deeply problematic with China's human rights record and the role China can now play in the development of the rest of Asia as a major source of capital and loans. This is a country that trades with dictatorships and China doesn't give a damn about the human rights records of the countries it trades with because its own human rights is appalling. As a human rights activist, I'm worried about the fact that there are many oppressive regimes in the world today–in the Arab world, Africa and Asia, and for the longest time, their major source of financial support has been the West, but with conditions attached that tend to be linked to human rights and democracy. China is prepared to give even bigger loans and even more aid, but with no strings attached. It's in a position to aid and abet the perpetuation of really oppressive and violent regimes all over the planet, because all it wants is to make money, and it couldn't care less about how many people are tortured or put in jail.   To some extent, India is also guilty of doing the same through its dealing with Myanmar for oil and resources. Oh yes, I agree, and India is also playing a very similar role in South Asia where India presents itself as the only democracy surrounded by weak, fragile states–Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Burma, and as you correctly point out, India likewise entertains similar ambitions, but there's an enormous difference between the state of the Indian and the Chinese economies. The Chinese economy has one enormous advantage–it has the biggest market on the planet, and it has an overwhelming surplus of both workers and consumers, so it's a self-sustaining economy.   The third factor is, in order for both India and China to leap into First World, Industrialised status, they require key commodities like oil, gas, steel and cement – that's why the price of these commodities are going up, there's a mad rush for the remaining reserves of oil and gas. China's

move into Africa is alarming as is the rate it's buying up the last stocks of oil and gas, because it knows, without oil and gas, China and India can't be an America or a Europe. So, all this talk about the Kyoto Protocol and environmental treaties, frankly, is just hogwash.   We're witnessing realpolitik at its most brutal, and it's all driven by capital. Honestly, this isn't going to bring us any closer to the Age of Enlightenment or a more humane world. The drive for capital at present is going to lead to wars over resources, and the resources wars we're going to go through in the next 20 to 30 years will be over oil, gas and water–all the key commodities we need to survive.   But it's problematic–you can't tell the people of China and India they don't have a right to a personal standard of living. Yes, if every family in China had a fridge or a TV, the environmental cost will be catastrophic, but on the other hand what right do we have to say to the people of China they don't have a right to a TV or a fridge when everyone in the developed world does. Somehow, there has to be a solution to this issue and it has to be addressed by politicians, but that's not happening. It's just not happening.   What kind of solutions did you have in mind? I'm a historian; the only reference I have is Malthus and I'm absolutely terrified of the emergence of a very different notion of humanity, where all the values of the enlightenment project – the enlightenment in the broader sense, not in the Eurocentric sense – the notion of a humane, moral and just society are being discarded, because everyone wants his iPod, Game Boy, latest laptop or microwave. The human being is no longer defined by morality, ethics or even the notion of a 'soul' or 'essence'–a human being is being defined in terms of consumption–what you have and what you wear. If that's the future of humanity, it doesn't have a future.   I'm quite happy that I don't have kids, because I'm not about to leave my kids this horrible legacy. I wouldn't want to have a child grow up in world where they can't breathe. If I live to be 80 – that's 40 years from now – I don't know what the world is going to be like by 2050. The sort of Blade Runner universe that was a Malthusian anti-utopian vision of the future. I became socially mature in the 70s, where there were all these novels and movies like The Clockwork Orange and Soylent Green about a future humanity devouring itself and if look at the urban centres of Southeast Asia today, they're cesspits where people are literally dying of toxic pollution every day.   The air in Jakarta is so polluted, you're literally suffocating in an urban gas chamber, and yet people don't seem to realise this. They think of this as an ideal life and I'm amazed at the way it's perceived. The destruction of history around us, of monuments of the past, old buildings, everything, being destroyed in the name of a crass, vulgar, material-driven development. People find fulfilment in having the latest handphone, and as a rational social scientist, as a Cartesian, I see this as collective madness on a scale that is unprecedented.   So, you don't see environmental awareness gaining ground in Asia the same way it did in the West? I think it will, but as in the case of Europe, probably when it's too late. I mean the damage is already done. The greatest success of the green movement was in Germany where, in the late 70s to early 80s, visibility in Frankfurt was less than 200 metres–it was that polluted. The green movement literally, in the space of two decades, cleaned it up, but there's almost zero forest cover left, and these countries expect the Third World to maintain their forests so they can continue to breathe and consume.   It puts activists like me in a moral dilemma – if consumption is seen as a right, then people have a right to consume, unless of course, you're going to be like these militant green activists in Germany

that even advocate state-imposed birth control. But the world's population has passed the 6.5 billion mark and it's increasing on a hyperbolic curve. One common feature I've seen from Pakistan all the way to Indonesia is, in all these developing countries in Asia, people who were more socially aware tended to come from the middle and upper classes, so they tend to be urban, cosmopolitan, well-travelled individuals.   But I work on the phenomenon of popular religious politics – basically mob politics. These are people - fervent Christians, Hindus and Muslims - who think they have a God-given right to procreate. Poor but religiously conservative peasants think they're performing God's will by breeding beyond control; I've come across families that don't even have enough rice for a daily meal, continuing to have ten kids in places like the Philippines, Indonesia and India. In Europe, what you had was the creation of a genuine middle-class–enough people who were educated and aware. Look at the social landscape of Southeast Asia. This society you're referring to are tiny pockets, islands of urban, middle-class, cosmopolitan sensibilities floating and drowning in an ocean of poverty.   While you have your odd liberal, progressive, middle-class kid saying: 'Mummy, daddy, I want to be an environmental activist', that's fine because daddy is a banker. Out of the cities, there millions of young Malaysians, Indonesians, Thais and Filipinos who do not aspire to those things. They want to move to the cities and have enormous houses. The crass, vulgar architecture of the 80s sums up the boom years where an entire generation of people who had nothing, suddenly got rich overnight, and gone are all these polite, genteel sensibilities we talk about when we talk about Asian values and all that nonsense. These are basically poor people who have made money and wish to demonstrate it – they have the sensibilities of the poor.   Really, what you're seeing today is the revenge of the kampung, and it manifests itself as the crude politics of Asia. At one point, almost ten percent of Indian parliamentarians were gangsters, people with criminal records. What sort of democracy is it where thugs, hoodlums, gangsters can aspire to political office? Look at our politicians in Malaysia–the language they use in parliament. If you're hoping economic development will lead to a more mature, humane society, well, I think that's false premise. It's very dangerous to assume we're heading in that direction. I personally do not think so. I have not seen evidence to suggest we are moving to a more enlightened society, if anything, quite the opposite.   There are the few odd heroes – the quiet ones – who continue trying to protect the environment–I'm very much into heritage protection–and I admire these people who really try their best to protect the few old buildings we have left in the Klang Valley, or Ipoh, Georgetown or Melaka. But, by and large, Melaka is a disaster. Except for three or four old streets, everything else is entirely modern and artificial. But look at how people have received it so well. That's what Malaysians want – Malaysians want shopping malls, their pyramids and their lagoons, and they want their fake, plastic trees and all that garbage. And that's the scary thing.   So, in that sense, Singapore is the ideal that Asia aspires to. Of course, I mean, this is what happens when you have a dislocated society that knows nothing of its past. How many Singaporeans even know why Singapore is called Singapore? I think it's safe to assume that quite a lot think it's called so because Raffles called it Singapore. I don't think Singaporeans realise that the name itself, 'Singhapura', points to Singapore's history going back to the 8th century as a Hindu-Buddhist state. Are Singaporeans appreciative of that fact? How many even realise this?   I think this is what we're seeing through Southeast Asia, a whole crisis of nation building. We don't know what the hell Malaysia is, going back to your question about the artificiality of borders, the

artificiality of all post-colonial states in Southeast Asia, and we're still grappling with this. But we have to begin–I'm going to sound pedantic as an academic–on strong premises. We have to sift through all this historical garbage and find a few firm points of certainty to build our national narrative. But these points of certainty are problematic for a lot of people.   One of the points of our past for us in the present, is that this part of the world was Hindu-Buddhist long before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Our ancestors were Hindus and Buddhists, but how many Malaysians can accept that? It's a fact, and if you can't accept facts, and you were to create an artificial nation out of nothing, then you fall into the trap of having to deal with completely fake national discourse. And if our national discourse is going to be based on fairytales, then you might as well based our discourse on Transformers, or Jurassic Park if you want–that's another fiction. Why not base it on Star Wars? And it's not unique to Malaysia, it's endemic throughout Asia–this fear of the past, of history, the fear of staring our ancestors in the face and coming to terms with certain things. Racist discourse all across Asia bases its nationalist discourse on a sense of blood and belonging. That's a complete denial of how plural and complex Asian societies were. We are all hybrids; I'm a product of four generations of interracial marriages–I'm Javanese-Indian-Dutch-Arab, and I refuse to play this fiction of ethnic or religious purity because I can't deny that, if my ancestors were that mixed, it would mean my ancestors were Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist, and these are my ancestors–that's my past.   But the most successful products of nationalism have been homogenous societies like Japan and South Korea. I would question the thesis that homogenous states are more successful because you can also point to other homogenous states that are not successful at all. Bhutan is a homogenous state. So are Nepal, Greece, Turkey and Egypt, and they are basically falling apart. Homogeneity, or the fiction of homogeneity, merely facilitates a simpler form of politics. But a simpler form of politics is also a dangerous form of politics precisely because of the dialectics you are talking about. Because once you have a sense of the 'us' as a one united homogenous nation, it's very easy to find scapegoats and enemies.   That's what happened in Indonesia during Suharto, where this complex society was rendered homogenous with the notion of 'pribumi' homogeneity as if an Acehenese and a Papuan were of the same ethnic stock, which is utter rubbish. And having created this fake sense of homogeneity, the outsider were the Chinese minority, this two percent who were constantly scapegoated for 30, 40 years.   From a cold-blooded, technocratic point of view, that sort of politics works, but there's also a human cost, a humane cost being paid by Indonesians today–the culture of violence, routinised racial, ethnic and religious harassment, has become normalised as a result of three decades of anti-Chinese racism.   Thankfully, at least Indonesians today are coming to terms with their complexity, and again to Gus Dur. This is why he was so important; he forced Indonesians to look at themselves and recognise their complexity. He was such a great advocate of pluralism and very much against the idea of a homogenous Indonesia. It was Gus Dur who said Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are part of Indonesia, and all these ethnic groups are all equally Indonesians, and that's the kind of national narrative we should aspire to in Malaysia. No Malaysian should feel he or she does not belong in this place, but sad to say, that doesn't seem to be the trend at the moment.   And if you were prime minister, what kind of changes would you make to move Malaysia in that direction?

Let me be very clear, I am a schoolteacher and I don't want to be anything else, but I would hope this country would be brave enough to think out of the box, because really, Malaysia is facing challenges that are completely unprecedented. Globalisation, the emergence of China and India–what happens over the next ten years will determine whether Malaysia remains on the map in 2050.   I don't know what shape Malaysia will take. Will we end up being a subsidiary branch of some global franchise with just a token flag as the only thing left in our hands? The entire country could be bought by foreign capital by then – it's already happening in places like Africa where huge swaths of Sierra Leone and the Comoros are completely bought over by foreign capital with a puppet black African regime running it in the name of foreign businessmen you don't even see.   Faced with these very real issues, which ought to unite all our stupid politicians to get them talking seriously, we need to address the question of nation building and what it means to be Malaysian. That's what The Other Malaysia project is all about – about reminding us of our complexities and to tap into that complexity, because history tells us what not to do  and what we could do. The history of Southeast Asia shows that the most successful pre-modern, pre-colonial polities were the ones that were most open, pragmatic and dynamic.   Don't forget a polity like Melaka was an extremely dynamic polity because it understood the need for foreign capital and it opened itself up to trade. But at the same time, it maintained the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. What we're seeing in Southeast Asia now is the wholesale sale of nations rather than an engagement with international capital. And if you look at the way Southeast Asia was actually united through commercial, trade  and cultural links, there are so many possibilities.   The only thing that I, as a schoolteacher and a historian, would like is to see is a re-reading and appreciation of our national history. I certainly don't want to be prime minister or a politician, but if I were asked what we could do, I think a total overhaul of our education system is one of the first things that need to be done. That's the basis of nation building. We live in a country with five education systems, which is utterly ridiculous. You're not going to build one nation out of five education systems but again this notion of a one nation should not be directed towards homogenisation.   You can only have one Malaysia as long as we accept this "1Malaysia" is plural, complex Malaysia. If 1Malaysia moves in the direction of a homogenous Malaysia, if Malaysian culture were to be defined by one ethnic group, then that is a very dangerous path to follow. 1Malaysia cannot be an excuse for cultural, linguistic or religious hegemony over all the other minorities.   How do you feel about class based politics? In the US, you see power centralised in the urban coasts but there's a huge swath of working class of Middle Americans. What we've seen throughout Asia is the rise of populist politics. The situation you describe in the US, where you have the Bible Belt Midwest constantly battling Congress in Washington in the cases of India, Pakistan or Malaysia, that equivalent of the Bible Belt isn't battling Parliament–it is in Parliament.   When you're in a plane, only one person can be the pilot. As a passenger, on good faith you hope the pilot takes you to your destination and doesn't crash into a mountain. So, I have no problem with leadership and power structures. The only thing you need to be aware of is these power structures need to be interrogated and rendered as open as possible, to serve as checks against the accumulation of power.   Power is a necessity in governance; I'm a political scientist as well, so I'm not so naïve to think we should have open, free-for-all anarchy. But there is a responsibility for the ruling elite to retain

certain values and standards. That's why, thank God, the British parliament at least, is the one place where discussion on the death penalty will lead to a no-vote. If you were to open a referendum with the British public, an overwhelming majority of them will be quite happy to see people strung up. And therein lies the responsibility of the culturally educated elite. Not only do they have to lead the country, they have to set certain standards in terms of behaviour as well as cultural and discursive norms.   But in the parliaments of Southeast Asia where some of the most crass, vulgar, violent, rhetoric is coming from. If parliament cannot set the norm of civilised discourse in the country, how the hell do you expect the country to evolve to a higher standard? I expect politicians in this country to behave as ladies and gentlemen, but I honestly cannot find a single gentleman in Parliament at the moment. Watching the behaviour of our politicians on YouTube, you get the impression this is a zoo, with people screaming and shouting at each other, using terms and phrases that are really unbelievable behaviour. In the context of a country like England, it would be regarded as barbaric. You would never have British politicians talking about "women leaking once a month", not without censure at least, but this, unfortunately, has become the norm in the politics of Asia.   And this is what I mean by the revenge of the kampung–the idea that this subaltern voice has been suppressed for so long, but now has an avenue to express itself without any reservations. Just because I'm a subaltern historian, I don't endowing subalternism with any innate essential positivism. Just because these voices have been marginalised, it doesn't mean they're benign. Some of them are really nasty voices as well like the cow head demonstration; that's also an expression of subaltern anxiety and an equally genuine expression of people who feel unrepresented and unspoken for that politicians ought to take note of rather than justify or defend.   We need to deal with these things in an intelligent manner. Like or not, all of our societies are facing tremendous pressures with the emergence of ethnic-religious politics, and these things should not be manipulated by politicians. Politicians have a responsibility to a) understand them, and b) find ways to deal with them in a humane, correct manner. Instead, all I see here is populism let run riot. All these politicians think they can play around with racist and religious politics; they don't realise they're letting genies out of the bottle that once out can't be put back in.   Lets talk about your hobbies. I've not watched television since I was 19, except when I'm on fieldwork, when I make a point to watch television non-stop to try and gauge the level of popular culture. I watch a lot of pop TV in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, but I not in Malaysia or Singapore. I find it terribly boring and predictable. I'm generally deeply suspicious of television, despite the fact that both my parents were working in TV and radio. Perhaps that's why.   I don't watch movies outside Europe, because outside Europe, you don't have any good movies, just a lot of American junk. I have not watched a commercial movie in the past decade because they're just special effects and I'm not a geek. I'm not into digitalised dragons, spaceships and stuff like that, so I read. At the moment, I'm reading Ayu Utami, an Indonesian writer, and I read both classic and contemporary literature.   Aside from that, my hobbies have been the same for the past 20 years – I collect antiques, maps, books and prints. I think I probably have the biggest collection of antique maps in Malaysia – more than 200 right now – of Malaysia and Southeast Asia, in particular. I started as a very poor student in England at the age of 19. My father disowned me, so I only had £40 a month to live on. Living on £1.50 meant I couldn't do much, I couldn't even watch a movie because I couldn't afford the five pounds to buy a movie ticket. It was only after two years that I had enough money to buy my first

jacket, so I survived two winters in Europe wearing just multiple layers of shirts and two pairs of jeans on top of each other.   Then I started developing an interest in antiques, when I worked in antique shops, and I would go to antique galleries and auctions, and I learnt through mentors, who were antique collectors. I remember buying my very first print – it was a print of Melaka from the Middleton System of Geography dated 1786 – that cost me £30, and I had to save three months for that. Thankfully, my financial situation vastly improved thanks to my inheritance, and for the first time, I was free to do all of this and actually look for stuff, so I started buying every single first edition book on Malaysia I could get my hands on. I've got about a thousand books on Malaysia, I've got a huge collection of Malaysiana I store in England – because of the weather – and I've got my map collection, a huge photo collection and postcard collection, almost 500 postcards by now, all old ones of Malaysia.   I also collect batik, and a lot of people don't realise my daily life is very routine. I have a very ordinary life, I just go to work for long hours, and I come back, maybe at 10pm or even midnight, and if I have some time before I sleep, I write a lot in my diary – for myself, not for anyone else. I just spend the evenings restoring antiques so it's not uncommon to find me alone in my flat stitching and repairing old batiks. I get enormous pleasures out of that.   So what do you make of the claim laid by Malaysia and Indonesia over the ownership of batik? I wrote about this, and was involved in debates in Malaysia and Indonesia, and this is a ridiculous non-issue that was blown up by irresponsible politicians who demonstrated shamelessly, their complete ignorance of history. It is a bogus claim that batik can be monopolised by any country. It would be like saying Americans invented the car, so no other country can make cars – that's such a stupid thing to suggest.   It also demonstrates the fact that we in Southeast Asia have collectively forgotten our interconnected histories, how batik was commonly being created, and the creation of batik was informed cross-culturally all the time, because consumers would dictate taste and patterns, and producers would respond to these dictates and as a result, what you have is a lively culture of batik not only as a fabric, more than something you just wear. It is unique because it speaks; it is a written text. The word 'batik' means 'to write' - you write batik. The evolution of batik took place across Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsular, all the way up to southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. It's very much something that emerged out of Southeast Asia as a whole, but politicians forget this – they don't know their own history in the first place – then it's very easy for them to offer this simplified politics I was talking about. Again, homogenising batik and saying batik is an Indonesian product is bunkum.   It is true that the best batik was produced in Java – that is without question. Most of my collection is Javanese, and I'm proud of my Javanese origins. But it would be entirely false to say that batik was uniquely produced by only Indonesians because batik has been produced from China all the way to Africa till today. It goes to show what happens when you erase your history.   This whole stupid tussle was created to divert the public's attention from other important issues in Indonesia – Indonesia is facing a number of crises including the Bank Century scandal that are threatening to topple the government of President Yudhoyono. At a time like this, unscrupulous politicians will jump into the fray and deliberately stir up issues to focus attention elsewhere – standard divide-and-rule politics – nothing interesting about it.   Back to antiques; where do you find the best antique shops specialising in Asian artefacts?

I lived for more than two decades in Europe, and initially I started collecting antiques in Europe. I lived in England for eleven years, Holland for a year, France for a year, Germany for seven years, and it's interesting that even in the landscape of antique collecting, it reproduces the landscape of colonialism. In Holland, I got a lot of Indonesian stuff, in Britain, I got a lot of Malaysian, Burmese and Indian stuff because these are all the former colonies. So, these are the riches of the colonies that have been – well, not stolen – but bought brought back to the mother country and resold after the owners had died. So, I started collecting there and really, the best authentic stuff is found there. But, there's still a lot of stuff coming out of Indonesia, and I buy this stuff partly because I want to reconnect, in my own sentimental way, with Java, which I consider my real home, and partly because of my interest as a historian.   I'm not trained as a historian, by the way; I'm trained as a philosopher. My background is philosophy and critical theory, and when I was collecting this stuff, I found I was basically piecing together bits of a puzzle. I think that's where my anguish comes from as well, because when I collect all these maps, photos and artefacts from Malaysia, I realise how much has been lost. I can show you my photos and postcards of Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Georgetown and these were actually beautiful towns before – towns you feel you'd actually want to live in, but when you look at them today, it's an absolute disaster.   I don't want to say we should deny ourselves progress, but I just wish this capital-driven material progress would be tempered with and guided by at least some ethical and aesthetic sensibilities. By all means build, but can't you build houses that look worth living in, rather than these pigeonholes that we put people in? When we look at the crass development we had in the 80s and 90s and the construction of these massive urban centres all around us, these developers don't realise what they're doing is they're taking human beings, who are very complex subjectivities and putting them in cages, and imagine the sort of sensibilities of these people who live and evolve there. We know now the impact of cheaper urban housing in squatter flats in Europe – it's not a coincidence that that's where the highest instances of crime, drug abuse and vandalism because the urban environment is not conducive to any sense of sociability. You've created spaces where people live in boxes like in Singapore and this is why Singaporeans are among the coldest people in Southeast Asia.   It's almost impossible to empathise with Singaporeans, but that's where the urban architecture has created a new sort of human subjectivity. You put people in boxes and you expect them to behave like normal people? Of course not. There's no sense of community anymore apart from some artificial kopitiam they create at the bottom of a flat, but it's like putting people in mines or making people live in factories. When I collected antiques and look at these things, I think, well that was another way of living, that people can actually live like that, that people can have a sense of space and rootedness.   I'm not idealising the past, I'm just saying this was a different sensibility and we've lost that. What history tells us is, if people could live like that before, then we can live like that again today. What I would like to see is developers in Malaysia build urban habitations that are more humane. When was the last time you saw something like playgrounds? A playground is so important because a playground is where kids of different backgrounds meet, and where they learn to socialise. But you replace a playground with a mall – a mall is where you go to consume, you don't go there to socialise. The very notion of taking your kids out for a walk in the park doesn't exist anymore. If you don't have that, then your relationship with society, your environment, your social circle around you suffers.   We now live in ethnic-religious ghettos, and if that's going to be the template for urbanisation, then forget about 1Malaysia and nation building; it's gone. You've already foreclosed the possibility of any sense of meaningful communication and contact – we have no space for genuine human

communication and as a philosopher, genuine communication is what concerns me the most and I apply that to history because as we read history, we have to communicate without past, our ancestors in a genuine way. We have to understand our complex past, our Hindu-Buddhist past, our eclectic past, our ethnically diverse past, but we're not doing that. We look at the past and we see this person we don't recognise and we marginalise this person to the museum. Once you've museum-ised your history, history dies, and with the death of history, you have no future either.   I'd like to talk about your books. I understand Qur'an and Cricket is a travelogue of sorts? Qur’an and Cricket is an odd book; it’s actually a collection of all my travels published originally for Off The Edge. It was very personal, in the sense that it was notes and stories that I wrote for myself in my diary, and I was very cautious about publishing them because they were very, very personal. Now that I look back, I mean, I’m an academic and academics will never be rich, I’ll never have a Jaguar – I don’t mind that. Like I said, I don’t have any other ambitions and I’m very, very happy to be a schoolteacher. The nature of my research and teaching allows me to travel and I happen to work on political religion. As a result of 9/11, anyone who a) travels, b) works on political religion, and c) works in countries like Pakistan, immediately became famous and I found myself dragged into this, only by accident. It was not the life that I wanted, I simply wanted to travel and do my research. But because of the conditions of the time, working on political religion in a place like Pakistan for instance, could be very difficult. Do you have any particular memories?  There were some scary experiences, like bombs going off around the corner, I’ve seen shootouts and I've narrowly escaped – purely by accident, mind you, not as a result of bravado on my part – some rather nasty encounters and mishaps. I cannot sum up the things I’ve seen. The reason why I can’t watch movies is because my eyes just cannot believe what I see on-screen. When I watch something like Lord of the Rings on the plane, for me, it’s just a video game. I’ve seen real things, I've seen the Khyber Pass, been up the mountain ranges of Afghanistan; I’ve been to Punjab; I’ve travelled across Rajasthan; I’ve been to these places and they are real. I was in Kashmir after the earthquake, I spotted the relief operation, and I’ve seen entire villages and towns flattened, I’ve been in violent demonstrations in Indonesia, so there are just too many memories. I cannot single out any particular thing but as a whole, at the end of every year, I take a month off just to be by myself and I do my mental arithmetic, my personal moral accounting. I have to say, I’m thankful. I can’t say I’ve had a happy life, but I’ve had a damned good life. I think I completely engineered my career because nobody was doing this at that time and I engineered my way into creating a job that didn’t exist, and I’m glad I did it because really, I think it’s a cliché to say that travel makes you wealthy but it is true.   I can say that I’ve been there, seen it and done it all. I saw the Taliban close-up, I’ve been witness to these moments of history, and I was there when it happened. I recorded it when it happened and I’ve seen it with these eyes, and for that reason, I can’t pick any particular moment or moments, because there are a lot but it does mean that I hope to God that I don’t lose my memory one day, because there is a very rich repertoire up there, of images, memories and anecdotes and I can remember all of these travels, by the way.   I can recount to you everything that happened whenever I go for these travels because they take you out of the realm of the ordinary whereas I can’t tell you what I did in the office last week because that’s mundane. So, my life is basically an exchange between daily, weekly and monthly routines of just production – monotonous and robotic, frankly – and these moments, weeks and months when I go out travelling and I retain all of that when I am in the office. There, I’m in my production mode; I’m just a bee in a hive; I just produce and write non-stop.   So, what are some of the most beautiful places in the world you've seen?

I was stunned when I was in Anuradhapura, in Sri Lanka, the spiritual centre of Buddhism in the world, and I was in awe of this great Maha Stupa. It’s amazing because everyone knows the Pyramids – and I wasn’t impressed by the Pyramids, by the way - but the Maha Stupa was just as big as any Pyramid.  It’s an enormous dome plastered white just rising above these coconut trees around a man-made lake. Anuradhapura was the capital of an empire, the longest capital in the history of the human race, and I was just stunned to look at this marvel of architecture in all its simplicity like the Pyramids. It’s simply a dome with a pinnacle at the top and yet its simplicity epitomises early Buddhism and its simple, profound philosophy of world renunciation. On the one hand, simple; on the other, majestic, impossible to photograph because it’s so simple in its form that no matter how you photograph it, its sense of scale is lost. So when you look at it in photographs, you have no idea how big it is, you have to see it.   The great temple of the Cholas in Thanjavur – this enormous tower that goes up more than 200 metres. It stands out in the landscape like this human hand reaching out to touch God, it’s simply astounding, again something which cannot be photographed. You have you see it and you just fall to your knees. The mountain passes of North Pakistan and Afghanistan – this is the great Khyber Pass. This is where everyone – from Alexander to Babur to the British and the Russians – everyone went through this. This is the site of the Great Game that, for two thousand years, every nation has contested and just the majesty of the mountains. And Indonesia, of course – Java, which is in my lifeblood and where everything from the weather to the people strikes a chord of familiarity with me, where I feel most at home, most myself and there's so many of these things that come to my mind again and again. It's really great to be here [in Asia].   That is why of course, I'm not the least bit interested in places like Australia or America, because there's absolutely no history. I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to live in Melbourne or San Francisco. I remember going to San Francisco and they said, 'Look at our old building. It's a hundred years old.' I said, 'I'm sorry but I come from a part of the world where the buildings are four thousand years old and this is, for me, made this morning – I just cannot connect. Whereas what Donald Rumsfeld calls 'Old Europe', that I can connect with and I'm also very much moved by the architecture of Latin Europe – Spain, Italy, Southern France – and I love the old Roman churches that are very simple, and I'm thankful I spent most of my adult life moving.   I calculated that in the space of 22 years, I lived in 32 places,  that is for more than three months, and that basically means I've been a nomad for most of my adult life, and it's a good way to be. I mean you only live once, frankly, as simple as that, and I intend to see as much as I can and experience as much as I can. You realise, the more you travel, the more humanity is genuinely universal. I was always struck in Kashmir, after the earthquake, looking at how people put their lives back together and to see the bonds of human kindness and parental love everywhere on the planet, the love of parent and child is the same, and I think there's something very redeeming about that – the common human longing for love, communication and compassion.   As pessimistic as I am of the future, and I really think we're going to head into the Dark Ages very soon, I hope that this human spirit does not break down. I hope we don't sell our souls to the forces of capital just for another Big Mac supersized meal. As long as that is there, that's the only thing that keeps us human. All these buildings, roads and highways, they don't make Malaysia; Malaysia exists in Malaysians. And if no one thinks as a Malaysian, you might as well close the book and say goodbye – this country's gone.