Hang Tuah Re-visited Time and Time Again.

Every time someone mentions anything to do with the struggle of the Malay people: the “perjuangan”, someone will inevitably mention the name Hang Tuah.  Recently, there was a voice saying that some Malay NGOs will be leading a 200,000 strong demonstration soon to show the resolve of the Malay people, because they claim to represent the Malay people, and inevitably, Hang Tuah was mentioned a few times.  To be honest, I had never really given Hang Tuah much thought.  I read his Hikayat and there are several movies made about him and his companions.  Recently, I heard a talk by Dr Mohd Asri (MAZA) who deconstructed this legendary character quite succinctly.

Hang Tuah is said to be a true Malay warrior whose loyalty to the King, who had him put to death based on false accusations, led him  to fight and kill his brother, a brother in arms really, who fought the king for wronging Hang Tuah.  Therefore, here we find that loyalty supersedes all other consideration to Hang Tuah reputedly because he believes that without loyalty to the Malay kings, the Malay society would break down. I wonder if this really did happen, did Hang Tuah think that far or was he only behaving in the only way he knew how.  Jebat on the other hand, saw things differently: he saw that the King could not lead fairly.   

Leaving that aside, consider for a moment the deeds of Hang Tuah.

1.      He and his brothers (five boys who considered themselves brothers) gained the Bendahara’s attention when they saved him from some people going berserk.  They killed the men all of whom were Malays.

2.      The five boys then gained the Sultan’s attention when they rescued Melaka from some pirates.  Pirates in this region were of course also Malays. All of whom were killed by the five boys.

3.      Then Hang Tuah fought and killed Tamingsari a famed Javanese warrior.  The Javanese is of course a subgroup of the Malays.

4.      In Majapahit, also the five young men fought and killed numerous Javanese warriors who were upset over Tamingsari’s defeat and death.  These were all Javanese – Malays.

5.      In the East coast, Hang Tuah, used his knowledge (Ilmu) which basically means he used magic to woo Tun Teja away to Melaka to wed the Melakan king.  In the process, he killed another Malay warrior.

6.      When Hang Jebat fought the Melakan guards, he too killed a lot of them who were all Malays.

7.      Numerous other Malays were killed along the way in the hikayat of Hang Tuah.

Hang Tuah did not fight for the Malays, claimed Dr MAZA and he was right.  Hang Tuah fought for a Malay king and in the process killed Malays and even spirited away the daughter of a Malay king. Then there was the case of the Puteri Gunung Ledang, which led to the repression of the Malay people by the king all because he wanted to marry a mythical being. Personally, the Puteri Gunung Ledang is to me a literary device.

Therefore, what we have is a Malay warrior who was blindly loyal to a king or Sultan.  A warrior who killed his fellow Malays.  Of course, we could say that he killed those people because they deserved to be killed: they were pirates and such, but they were still Malays.

Bringing up this man’s name every time you claim to be fighting for the Malay cause, I think, may not be such a good idea. Unless of course you are presenting him as a Malay warrior without taking a real close look at what exactly he did in his role as a that Malay warrior.  Indeed, if he really existed at all, he was a Malay warrior but not one who fought the Malays in general. He fought for one Malay leader who turned out to be questionable to say the least.