‘COMMON ENGLISH CUSTOMS’: THE CAPTIVE CHARACTER OFABDULLAH MUNSHI IN HIS TRAVELOGUE, KISAH PELAYARAN ABDULLAH

Abstract

This paper was aimed at identifying the captive attitude of Abdullah Munshi in his writings and to analyse its relationship to his conferment of the title ‘The Father of Modern Malay Literature’ by the West. It was Abdullah Munshi’s courage in challenging the existing literary conventions and in introducing a Western style of writing to Malay audiences that earned him this title. This recognition made him the most credible Malay literary figure from the perspective of the Western colonialists, especially with the writing of his first travelogue, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah. His reputation continued to rise until several scholars began to dispute his credibility by arguing that he did not deserve to be recognised as such. He was labelled as an individual who was captivated by everything concerning his Western benefactors, as mirrored in his magnum opus. With this phenomenon in mind, the text analysis method was applied, based on Syed Hussein Alatas’ concept of a captive character, to the first Malay travelogue, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah. The findings of this study revealed that Abdullah Munshi was a person whose character conformed to five basic criteria underlining this concept namely, a person who copies the activities of Westerners and regards them as beneficial; a person who is unable to raise new questions in life; a person who regards Western knowledge to be the best; a person who accepts the suggestions of Westerners without objection; and a person who thinks so highly of the West that he fails to realize that he himself has become a captive. This means that Abdullah Munshi was a person who was a captive of the West, as he himself revealed in his travelogue. To summarize, it can be proven that the recognition accorded to Abdullah Munshi as ‘The Father of Modern Malay Literature’, which led to the separation of Malay literature into two periods, was the best agenda by the West to ensure the relevance of their presence in the colonies, particularly in the Malay World.