Lazy natives, greedy Chinese or unreliable Indians were social and political construct coined during the colonial period for the purpose of control. Syed Hussien Alatas argued in his book The Myth of the Lazy Natives (1977), "In its historical empirical manifestation the colonial ideology utilized the idea of the lazy native to justify compulsion and unjust practices in the mobilization of labour in the colonies. It portrayed a negative image of the natives and their society to justify and rationalize European conquest and domination of the area. It distorted elements of social and human reality to ensure a comfortable construction of the ideology."
Syed Hussien Alatas further argued that, "the image of the people subjugated by Western colonial powers, which dominated the colonial ideology, was drawn on the basis of cursory observations, sometimes with strong built-in prejudices, or misunderstandings and faulty methodologies. The general negative image was not the result of scholarship. Those who proclaimed the people of the area indolent, dull, treacherous, and childish, were generally not scholars. They were monks, civil servants, planters, sailors, soldiers, popular travel writers, and tourists. "
The negative image of the natives was not the result of scholarship. It was never meant to be purely because the original purpose of it was to dominate and colonise the various races in Southeast Asia. The colonised races had to be portrayed as someone who was not capable of governing so as to justify colonisation and their presence here in this region. The White Man's Burden and White Supremacy thus were prevalent during the spread of colonisation in Africa, Indian Continent and Asia. This view proposes that white people consequently have an obligation to rule over, and encourage the cultural development of people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds until they can take their place in the world by fully adopting Western ways.
Dr Farish Noor has summed up the concept rather more accurately in this way: "Alatas pressed home several important points that should never be forgotten by any scholar working on political history: First, that identity politics and the construction of racial categories and racial stereotypes are never accidental but are processes fundamentally wedded to the working of (racialized) power.
Second, that the colonial enterprise required a moral pretext that was granted by the construction of convenient ‘instrumental fictions’ (to borrow Edward Said’s phrase) that helped to justify such an enterprise.
Third, that the perpetuation and reproduction of such categories of identity and difference were running parallel to the workings of racialized colonial capitalism and that the two sustained each other, thereby helping to create the highly divisive and uneven ‘plural economies’ so common in many colonial settings.
And fourth (most importantly, I think), that the legacy of colonial capitalism, having embedded itself in the racialized politics of difference and sectarianism in many colonies, would be hard to eradicate even after the departure of the colonial power for the local native elites themselves would have, by then, come to learn that the very same tools of divide-and-rule could be used by them to perpetuate such power differentials in the future."
Dr Farish Noor's last point is particularly important for me to understand the demonisation of the natives is not only carried out by colonist alone but the term is so powerful that even after the colonist had left the country their legacy continued by the ones who inherited the country for easy domination and control.
In Malaysia the demonisation of the natives continued by the Malay ruling elites - UMNO because "there was also no ideological struggle. There was no intellectual break with British ideological thinking at the deeper layer of thought. The leadership of this party were recruited from the top hierarchy of the civil service trained by the British, and middle class Malay school teachers and civil servants." Thus the incapability of the ruling elites to break free from the shackles of the colonial master. Instead of embarking on the new path of development and deracialised the social and political setting after the independence, UMNO chose to blame on their own people to cover up their failure in developing the nation and at the same time strengthening their position as the master of the country by constantly invoking the threat of other races in the country.
As an evidence, Alatas refer extensively to the books titled "Revolusi Mental" that put out by UMNO in 1971 (please take note also it was the year after the 1969 election, where Perikatan lost badly) and Dr Mahathir's "The Malay Dilemma" bear a striking resembled that of the colonial ideology.
He critically debunks the racialized stereotypes that were found in those books, in these works, written so late in the post colonial era by a new generation of post colonial leaders, the colonial mindset that saw Malaysian society as being fundamentally divided along racial lines was still sadly prevalent. What is more he lamented the fact that even up to the 1970s the generation of Malay ethno-nationalist leaders in the country could not help but base their appeals for privilege and power based on colonial clichés and stereotypes of the Malays as a ‘backward’ and ‘lazy’ race that had to be protected.
And not only to be protected but they have to become the master of this land, thus the term Malay Supremacy. This time the portrayal of the negative image is put squarely on the Malay Masses by their own people the ruling UMNO elites to justify total domination over the Malay electoral.
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