After a heavy breakfast and walk through Nu Sentral to Muzium Negara, we spent a good part of the morning exploring Malaysia's rich cultural heritage and how it tried to become a melting pot of sorts.
From pre-historic to medieval, we moved from gallery to gallery within Muzium Negara till we reached the galleries exploring modern Malaysia.
While ancient Indian kingdoms maintained trade links with the kingdoms of South East Asia. With time Hinduism and Buddhism spread to the region...
The latest wave of immigration came with the expansion of British colonial rule in the region. The British brought in labour from India to work on the plantations here...
The Indians stayed on in Malaysia and still retain cultural ties with India...
Like India, ancient China too had trade links with South East Asia. As with Indians, systematic migration from China was brought about during the colonial rule...
And the Straits Chinese or the Peranakan evolved a unique blend of Malay-infused Chinese culture in the region!
The Malays or the Bumiputera as the politicians prefer to call them here, literally call the shots...
While Muzium Negara says Malays form 51% of the country's population, Wiipedia tells me that in 2010, "the Malays and Bumiputeras were 60.3%, Chinese 22.9%, and the Indians 7.1% of the total population. The Chinese population has shrunk to half of its peak share from 1957 when it was 45% of Malaya, although in absolute numbers they have multiplied more than threefold."
I recall a conversation, way back in 2010, with an ethnic Chinese, a Malaysian national, in Hong Kong - he was then senior executive with the Genting Group. He lamented the marginalisation of the Chinese and Indians in Malaysian society following the Bumiputera doctrine. The minorities started migrating out, and the results were disastrous - they had lent a lot of dynamism to local trade and commerce which laid the foundation for the growth of the Asian Tigers in the early 1990s. That dynamism isn't there anymore...
Tribals from Sarawak...
Depiction of Chinese New Year celebrations with oranges on the table... they signify good luck!
Diwali celebrations...
A Diwali Rangoli being made...
Traditional Malay women...
The Bumiputeras of Sarawak...
Various cultures make modern Malaysia...
Hindu Peranakans - South Indian Chittys who intermarried with the Malays and the Chinese...
Orang Asli - the original Malays - here a Orang is shown wearing bark clothing!
There is a good number of Siamese or Thai community in Malaysia...
The Seranis are a unique stock of local and European blood - most Seranis can trace their bloodlines to the Portuguese conquistadors of the 1600s and local Malays...
And the elegant and self-respecting Sikhs... The Sikh community here descends from the police and army recruits brought by the British from Punjab...
The Straits Chinese - the babas and the nyonyas...
A display of the symbols of Malaysia...
Jalur Gemilang (Glorious Stripes), the Malaysian flag - the stripes on the flag denote the 13 states and the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur...
The blue canton denotes unity, the yellow colour denotes the royalty of the states, the crescent stands for Islam and the 14-pointed star represents the states again...
Bunga Raya or the 5-petaled hibiscus - the national flower...
Malaysia is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy...
The Royal Headdress - it has the same crescent and the 14-pointed star that is shown on the national flag...
The states of Malaysia and their flags...
Hoisting the national flag on independence day...
The spice trade lured Europeans to the region...
And the Portuguese were the pioneers...
A Portuguese ship...
They established a presence in Melaka, which then governed by the Portuguese administration of Goa...
The presence of the Portuguese was resisted by the locals and another European power, the Dutch...
A Famosa was a Portuguese fortress located in Malacca in the 1500s. The Porta de Santiago, a small gate house, is the only part of the fortress which still remains today and is among the oldest surviving European architectural remains in the region....
The region is littered with history, like this battle for dominance of the region between the Portuguese and the Dutch...
The presence of the Dutch was also resisted by locals as they dominated the tin trade...
The rise of Johor - besides Melaka, Johor was the other dominant sultanate of the peninsula...
A replica of an archway from the Kedah Fort...
The British started off with Singapore, Penang and Melaka and ended up dominating the entire peninsula...
An impression of Penang in 1890...
As we end our trip of the Muzium Negara and head downstairs, we pass by the very beautiful jaali windows...
The ground floor had exhibits on loan from the Summer Palace in Beijing to commemorate China's ties with Malaysia...
"Eternal Relationship, Stronger Affections"
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