MIGRANTS IN MALAYSIA

Press, 21 October 1978, Page 11

MIGRANTS IN MALAYSIA

Cultural Change and Identity: Mandailing Immigrants in West Malaysia. By Donald Tugby. University of Queensland Press. 169 pp. $14.95. (Reviewed by Richard Thompson)

There is a great deal of cultural diversity in Malaysia among the Malay people themselves, the author asserts; “the Malays” are not culturally homegeneous as is so often assumed.

The Mandating people, the subject of this study, emigrated from Sumatra to West Malaysia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first migrants crossed the Straits of Malacca as adventures, merchants and soldiers, seeking a fortune or a better religious education. Some settled in Malaysia, formed their own communities and practised their own customs. Through intermarriage and contact with local

people, the newcomers lost in varying degree the culture they had brought with them from Sumatra, but they continued to think of themselves as Mandailingers. Dr Tugby describes the cultural loss which resulted from the efforts of the Mandailings in West Malaysia to adapt themselves to different local conditions and the changes in attitudes brought about by the nation-building efforts of the Malaysian Government.

The Mandailingers in West Malaysia, Dr Tugby concludes, have retained the economic orientation and pragmatism of the Mandailingers in the Sumatran homeland. They retain their double identity because it is politically and economically advantageous to do so. They are Malays because this is where they can do best at present; they are Mandailingers in case circumstances should change and an escape route be needed.