Our laurels paved with sin?

Credit: orangjohor.com

Lest we forget that the building of civilisation is paved with a bloody trail of heartaches, violence, injustices and loaded with double crossings, mutiny and vices.

No matter how much we try to whitewash and sugarcoat our history, the fact remains. The victors and losers are equally culpable to take the blame for the mayhem that put us all in a quandary in the first place.

No one party can put their fingers to accuse the other of drawing first blood.

Winners always sanitise their ascent to power through mutual consent as though the conquered willingly embraced their intruders with open arms. People do many things to escape torture and fear of death to themselves or loved ones.

Towns did not flourish the God-sanctioned ways. Without fail, thuggery, vices condemned by religions, sex, intoxicants and threats helped. Skyscrapers did not sprout through teachings of the book but via earnings of the unholy kind.

Once conquest is complete, the victors are at liberty to pen their history as and how they want the future descendants to see. They can start mixing the solution for the eyewash.

These, one must remember, whenever one reads the developments of townships of Penang, Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur. Sure, Sutan Puasa must have had the foresight to see the confluence of Sg Klang and Sg Gombak as a potential site to prosper his tin mine business. But it was also Yap Ah Loy and his boys, with the money extorted from sojourners who crossed the Gombak river at the vicinity of Masjid Jamek, who rolled in cash to spur various businesses to take KL to its current metropolitan status.

Ipoh became the capital of the silver state with its tin business through the blessings of the secret societies, Ghee Hin and Hai San. The royalty did not oversee Ipoh's scaling greater heights from the sidelines but by taking sides cunningly. The British did not genuinely act as the peacemaker with the purest of intention but with a carrot, a stick and lots of backhand manoeuvres.

Thus are the cases too how religious influences must have spread. Rare are instances when the masses suddenly saw the wisdom of a particular religion and converted en masse. There must have surely been lots of goodies passed around, if not fear of the unknown.