KUALA LUMPUR – The recent controversy over the renaming of historic St Paul’s Hill to Bukit Melaka has sparked debate, as it does all over the world when a city, building, site, or monument is renamed.
The controversy seems to point to one pertinent problem – the lack of public and stakeholder consultation, a move especially necessary in a society with many layers of social and historic fabric.
More importantly, Melaka has been inscribed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in its World Heritage Site list, together with George Town in Penang, as “Historic Cities of the Straits of Melaka”.
Heritage researcher and activist Khoo Salma Nasution examines this issue with the “right to the city” approach – the idea that a city is co-created by all who live in it, and certainly across the generations.
This can be extended to the idea of “the city as memory” whereby the right of all groups to the sociocultural or historical memory of the city should be upheld, she said.
Social memory and sense of place is particularly important to the older generation who can easily get disoriented with name changes,” said Khoo, who is vice-president of the Penang Heritage Trust.
“With the fast rate of change, everything familiar to them seems to be slipping away. Colonialism was a violent act. Should the response be just as violent?” she said, referring to calls for replacement of names given during colonial times.
Khoo said that there will always be social-historical contestation between different groups. Consensus can be reached through discussions informed by a nuanced understanding of history.
“Simplistic binary thinking should certainly be shunned. When it comes to social memory, ‘winner takes all’ means the obliteration of another’s memory,” she added.
“The first step forward is to embrace vernacular names which were used prior to or concurrent with colonial names,” she said. “Celebrate them, get people to use them, tell the story often.”
“People who live in a multicultural society with layers of history should cultivate an appetite for inclusivity.”
State administrators’ ‘fixation’, priorities questioned
Khoo’s idea of inclusivity ties in with the opinion of Martin Theseira, 65, who has lived in Melaka all his life. Like most Melakans, he has an affinity for the hill.
“This was a place where most of us used to spend our time as school children. It was a breezy and shady spot – before land reclamation in the area,” said Theseira, an activist for the Melakan-Portuguese community.
He added that for the Melaka-Portuguese community, the hill has also been a place where religious festivals and masses were held to commemorate special religious dates like the Feast of St Francis Xavier.
Asked what he, the Portuguese community and the community in the city feel about the name change, Theseira said the elders in the Portuguese community know the hill just as “Oiteiru” (“hill” in Kristang, the local Portuguese creole).
“For me and my friends of all races, the hill has always been known as St Paul’s Hill,” he added. “Over here if you tell a local that you are going to Bukit Melaka, they will assume that you are talking about ‘Taman Bukit Melaka’ which is in the Bukit Beruang area.”
From my conversations with local friends and acquaintances, many of them are questioning the priorities of the state administrators – the fixation with changing the name of the hill following pressure from some groups, when the focus should be on rejuvenating the tourism industry in the state which has suffered due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
This should have been a decision made with input and participation from experts, the various communities in the city and all stakeholders in the state, not one made by a few people based on input from groups with racial and religious interests, said Theseira.
He added that this would be the best way to scrutinise historical texts and the references to the hill, while taking into account the opinions of all the local communities.
“Whatever the outcome, we have to accept history as it is – be secure and not jittery with our colonial past,” he added.
Asked if the name “Bukit Melaka” would be better in terms of “branding”, Theseira said while it is relevant for places such as Melaka River or Straits of Melaka or even “Gula Melaka”, the hill is distinguished and differentiated because of the term “St Paul’s” owing to a Jesuit institution that used to occupy the hill next to the church.
The history of the name and its significance to the people living here should be the main consideration, he added.
Prof Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja, a history specialist at Universiti Malaya, said names of places or even roads in towns are mediums that relay the history of a space and the people who live there.
He cited changes of road names in his hometown of Raub, where names like Mason Road have been altered.
Raub was established because of gold mining activities in the area, and the name ‘Mason’ was the name of one of the mining managers of the Raub Australian Gold Mine which used to operate the mines in the area,” he explained.
Names like “Mason” will pique the interest of visitors and the younger generation in the town as it gives some context and interprets the history of the town – the gold mining activities, and why Raub was one of the earliest towns to be supplied with electricity, among other historical facts, he added.
‘Have proper process, not arrogant top-down approach’
Former deputy culture, arts and tourism minister Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik said there has to be a well-researched paper trail to prove the original name of this hill.
A committee should have been set up to look into the matter and the National Heritage Department should have been consulted because every name, including that for places, has heritage value.
“You can’t just change it as you like,” he said. “Go through the process and get the opinion of all stakeholders concerned. Look at long-term costs or financial benefits among others,” he said.
“Here (in Melaka), they seem to have taken the top-down approach which is a very arrogant move,” he added.
Asked if the move will affect the Unesco listing for Melaka, Bakhtiar said it might go against the Outstanding Universal Values of the Unesco World Heritage Site (WHS). There is a risk of being delisted from the world heritage list if they go against the rules.
And, if this happens, George Town in Penang would be affected too, as it is jointly listed with Melaka.
Conservationist and heritage architect Laurence Loh, who is also a director of urban policy outfit ThinkCity, when asked about the WHS guidelines, said there would likely be queries from Unesco’s World Heritage Centre (WHC).
If there is a complaint addressed to the World Heritage Centre regarding the change of the name of the site within the Melaka world heritage site area, that had been identified as a significant place in the nomination dossier, then the WHC will write officially to the state party for an explanation,” he said.
When contacted for feedback on the effort and process taken by the state towards making the name change, the Melaka chief minister’s office responded by saying that there is nothing more to comment on the issue following a statement by state Tourism, Heritage and Culture executive councillor Datuk Muhammad Jailani Khamis.
Jailani had responded to a question from Bandar Hilir state assemblyman Leng Chau Yen on the matter during state assembly proceedings in early March by saying that the name change was expected to come into effect this year.
Efforts were being made to identify several sources of history to support the name change proposal, he added.
It is understood that the paperwork for the name change has been submitted, but it has yet to be gazetted.
There was no response to questions from The Vibes on who was involved in this study of the texts and if there was (or is) any engagement with the diverse groups and communities in Melaka. – The Vibes, April 17, 2022
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