![]() ![]() (Left) Eddin with his mom of Sri Lankan descent and dad who is Baba Chinese. There was an aspiration to create a nation with a cultural sensibility, so you had lots of music and drama everywhere.” – Eddin Both my parents are artistic and scholarly. It was also a very interesting time to grow up in – Malaysia of the 1970s – and I realise now that culture is an expression of nationhood. But on the side, Dollah would put on illegal shows in nearby villages with Eddin’s help. To understand why he helped Dollah, we gotta go back to the time Eddin first fell in love with the arts… *Flashback to 1970… So we’re not doing this for the sake of tradition…we do this for our own sake!Īnyway, to know more about Pusaka’s work, watch this:Īfter the ban, many performers either left town or went underground, though PAS allowed wayang shows to go on for tourists, where Pak Dollah (with the ‘living’ dolls) worked. What’s important is that we Malaysians build relationships with these traditions coz they inform us of who we are. Traditions that are hundreds of years old don’t need us “any one of us minions” to preserve them, he says. Since it was founded in 2002, Pusaka has been researching and documenting performing arts, as well as organising shows and talks around the country.īut one thing… don’t say that Pusaka is “preserving” traditional arts because Eddin feels it’s such an arrogant term. ![]() They work with seasoned performers to make sure everything is authentic and that the arts get passed on to the next generation – to the young and the urban. Pusaka is an NGO that brought Malaysian traditional arts back to life even while it’s banned. So Eddin started Pusaka to make sure the old arts NEVER DIES “I have always loathed bullying of any kind, and I certainly was appalled at the bullying of this kind,” said Eddin. Specifically, it oppressed the performers – it was their bread and butter. Whether it was just for show or not (pun intended □ ), PAS’s ban was nevertheless oppressive from Eddin’s point of view. It was done in a somewhat gestural manner…more noise than substance.” – Eddin ![]() For me, however, I didn’t bother with the ban itself. ![]() In my, and Pusaka’s case, they were never imposed. “He understood that society operates at different levels, so while these traditions were banned, the bans were rarely imposed. Having said that, Eddin acknowledges the political acumen of former Chief Minister, the late Datuk Nik Aziz: That resulted in the banning of wayang kulit and other performing arts. To push this political agenda, PAS needed to make things “permissible and non-permissible”. According to Eddin, who studied Islamic thought and philosophy in uni, PAS started out with mainly secular goals (alleviating poverty for the Malays and so on). By the 1980s, they began advocating Islamic law and an Islamic state. ![]()
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