His-story??

I think I owe something to my readers. I need to explain what I meant by history is written by the winners. History is a manifestation of ideas for an entity to be proud of, as memento that we can manipulate in the future to strengthen our beliefs, as a homage to our previous existence. Staying true to these ideologies, history is owned and inadvertently does not escape biasness.

We can't be impartial as long as we cling to this philosophy. We need to assume a stand so some things can be seen as positive while others can be classified as blemishes. That is why the British think that our independence fighters are traitors but they're glorified by us. That is why some people think that the Communists should be granted some appreciation in their contribution to gaining independence while another side are deadly against it. IMHO, this divide is due to our innate nature as humans; we take sides. Since this is our country, we'll forever believe that the fighters were heroes and the PKM was a hindrance to the independence. In other words, we own this piece of history and it is at our disposal to shape it and in turn, becomes something to be told to the future generations.

When Malacca fell into the hands of Portuguese, we mark it as the downfall in the history. The invasion period that lasted for 446 years is something not to be repeated, which I wholly agree. During the period, everything was painted in the colours of sorrow and despair. It appeared that nothing good had happened. It's close to preposterous to believe otherwise. But do we really know the truth? Do we get to view it from a different perspective? The choice is indeed in our hands but the history that has been propagated from time immemorial suggests otherwise. Well, the history started some 50 years ago. When we gained independence. This was the time when there seemed to be a need to have a history that lessons could be derieved from.

But what has it got anything to do with history is written by winners? It's well known that Malacca was a successful empire. We also learned that an empire expansion had occured by means of voluntary surrender, religion induced submission, and also wars. And as always, war came with dire consequences. Here's the twist, the war launched by the empire was not thoroughly dissected in our syllabus. In fact, justification was supplied instead. On the other hand, Japanese occupation was portrayed as one of the most miserable moments in our history. Ethnic cleansing done by the Portuguese was utterly inhumane. Unspeakable evil and unbearably brutish these events were in our books of history. Likewise, the Portuguese are beaming with proud to know that their ancestors were the first to conquer Malacca, arguably the most important port of the Old World.

Now we can clearly see that in writing history, the writers must belong to an establishment. Its ideologies are fundamental in building the history. Credits are given to those who are in favour of the ideologies. Those that don't fit the principles are branded as negative elements. The end product is a history of a nation. This is done in every country. Heroes and traitors are determined by the owner of the history. Because to earn something, one must fight for it. And the winner will own it...

In my opinion, that is history.