KARL HACK Decolonization and violence in Southeast Asia Crises of identity and authority

How far did Southeast Asia’s experience of colonialism and decolonization contribute to severe postcolonial problems, notably: high levels of violence and endemic crises of authority? There can be no denying that colonialism left plural societies in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, and that countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines attempted to bolt together very different regions and groups of people. These divisions were to breed violence as far apart as Myanmar and New Guinea, and Aceh and Mindanao. Much of Southeast Asia also experienced an intense period of Japanese era and occupation in the years just before independence. The Japanese conquest of 1941 to 1945 propagandized and mobilized people, promoted quasi- militaristic values, and left in its wake large groups, some with military train- ing or even weapons. In many cases the use of force, or threat of force, also expedited decolonization, further legitimizing the use of violence in resolving disputes over national authority and identity. It is easy to establish that there were traumas and violent experiences in colonialism and in decolonization. But demonstrating how these fed through to the postcolonial period is difficult in the extreme. Was the legacy a region- wide one of visceral divisions that demanded, and still demand, either fissure or authoritarian government? Are the successor states, as governments as varied as Singapore and Myanmar claim, young, fragile creations where authority remains fragile even after five decades or more? This chapter reflects on a number of approaches to explaining the persistence of crises and their links to the colonial and decolonizing eras. These include historical and political science modes of analysis. Rather than arguing for one approach or the other, it will suggest we take some of the most potent tools of historical and political science approaches and combine them by conceptualizing the problem as one of identity management. A major part of the challenge of decolonization was precisely that colonial societies had many layers of identity – peasant, class, ethnic, religious, regional – that were not in the first place ‘national’, and often resisted sub- jection to the leadership of postcolonial as well as colonial elites. Some regional states never really overcame the legacies of fractured iden- 138 Beyond empire and nation tities, of colonization, and of Japanese occupation, continuing to rely on high levels of coercion to enforce state authority, as in New Order Indonesia and in Burma/Myanmar. But the chapter is not unremittingly negative. Looking at Malaysia and Singapore as a case study will show how two states have managed to dampen violence and achieve a degree of cohesion despite the legacies of colonialism, Japanese occupation, and decolonization. It argues that to fully understand identity management we also need to accept – as Malaysia and Singapore do implicitly in their policy, though not explicitly in their propaganda – that most Southeast Asian states originated not so much as nation-states, but rather as nations-states. In each case an overarching supranationalism has been in a constantly shifting relationship with more localized or particularistic identities.

In search of Southeast Asian patterns; peasant wars

The first problem to confront anyone attempting to analyse Southeast Asia as an area is what can so diverse a group of territories have in common? The most obvious answer when it comes to crises of authority is that almost all territories have experienced significant peasant wars and peasant con- flicts. This is a common-sense starting point since, with the exception of Singapore, all Southeast Asian countries have consisted mainly of peasants. It is therefore scarcely surprising that peasant revolts and village wars have been geographically wide-ranging across time and space: these have consti- tuted a huge if not the major challenge to central authority for much of the twentieth century. There has been everyday resistance to tax and landlord demands in most of the countries. In particular, the 1920s and 1930s were characterized by a move towards modern styles of peasant organization. This included communist organization in Indochina, peasant unions in the Philippines, and Burmese peasant mobilization in 10,000-plus village-level, nationalist-linked wun-tha-nu or village associations. The form varied, but the move away from the merely localized, or local religious leader-led reac- tive and millenarian revolts, and towards modern organization was clear. There was a continuous thread, with prewar peasant-based organizations becoming radicalized, armed, and extended during anti-Japanese wartime organization. This pattern led to severe insurgency in Indochina (1945-1954), the Philippines (1948-1954 and post-1960s), Malaya (1948-1960) and Burma (from 1948 onwards) (Tandrup 1995). Postwar developments in Indochina, Malaya, and the Philippines also have similarities rooted in these rural-based conflicts. In each case a leftist movement – the Indochina Communist Party and Malayan Communist Party, and the peasant unions and later the armed Hukbalahap in the Philippines –