Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles' Discourse on the Malay World: A Revisionist Perspective‪.‬

By any standard, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles was a remarkable figure. Remembered as one of the most dedicated colonial administrator in the history of Southeast Asia, his fame has been memorialized through the world's largest flower, the Rafflesia. Academic chairs and professorships have been attributed to his name and, in Singapore, "Raffles" is associated with all things prestigious, extravagant, and grand such as the Raffles Hotel, Raffles Country Club, Raffles Institution, Raffles City. Celebrated in our textbooks as the "Founder of Modern Singapore", Raffles is a symbol of Singapore's secular past, which was guided by the Enlightenment tenets of reason, capitalism, benevolent rule, and free trade. His influence is so pervasive that entire collections of writings have been devoted to him. In fact, he has recently been the subject of a comprehensive bibliography (Solomon 1997). Nevertheless, except for brief yet critical writings on Raffles, none has made any extensive analysis of Raffles' discourse on the religions of what he perceived as the Malays, (1) which he developed throughout his 18 years of service in Southeast Asia. (2) This article attempts to fill this gap by examining in detail Raffles' discursive strategies that sought to justify the study and preservation of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Malay World. The first section examines various currents of thought and preceding scholarship that Raffles inherited prior to his exposition of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Malay World. This is followed by Raffles' elusive definition of the two faiths. Next is a discussion of his discursive strategies which was manifested in different forms. Furthermore, I demonstrate the ways in which Raffles' discourse is revealing of the influence of dominant methodologies and ideologies during his milieu which shaped his representations of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Malay World. Most importantly, in the narratives that follow, I attempt to argue that Raffles' ideas of religions amongst Malays were filled with biases and prejudiced conceptions. Through this, I hope to further demystify the "virtuous" expositions of Raffles within the preceding and contemporary historiography as an extension of the critical undertaking pursued by Syed Hussein Alatas more than three decades ago (Alatas 1971).