A VOYAGE TO FREEDOM

Abstract

This article traces how Harun Aminurrashid's postcolonial novel Panglima Awang ( Commander Awang, 1957) gives imaginative support to the struggle of the Malays for independence by rewriting and thus undercutting one of the greatest tales of exploration justifying European colonialism, that of the circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) between 1519 and 1521. Instead of Magellan, Harun's novel makes his trusted Malay slave Enrique its hero, giving him the Malay name Panglima Awang and describing him as of the calibre of a Hang Tuah. It rewrites the original tale on the pattern of a number of literary genres such as the Panji romance. The novel thus turns into an allegory of the Malay historical experience of colonialism in both its purely exploitative (Portuguese, Dutch) and its ethical manifestation (British), which warns the Malays against losing their identity by associating with humane colonialism. It also evokes the colonial boy's adventure tale. By parodying its quest through the heart of darkness it contradicts the colonialist enabling myths of the superiority and burden of the white man and the laziness of the natives. As a roman à clef the novel may be seen as a tribute to Harun's former British headmaster, T.O. Dussek, at Sultan Idris Teachers Training College. The article closes by considering to what extent the novel escapes the tendency, perceived by western critics of Malay literature, towards a stereotyped, ethnocentric, myth-based depiction of the ethnic Other.