The four guns seen in the 1980s
THE Brooke Raj is not all about piracy, headhunting, and political intrigue. There are accounts of love and romance and harmonious living found in the pages of history books about Sarawak too.
The amorous pirate
Any regular reader of my columns might have read the story of Si Tondo. He was a former pirate chief who had turned into an active supporter of James Brooke during the Seniawan War (1836-1841).
Apparently, Si Tondo had eloped with a niece of Pengiran Makota, the governor of Sarawak. Sad to say, their love affair was short-lived when ST was killed for the offence of elopement – not the right and proper thing to do in the eyes of the Brunei nobles at Sarawak (Kuching) at the time.
I gleaned another unhappy love story from the book ‘A History of Sarawak Under Its Two White Rajahs’, reprinted and published by OUP Singapore 1989. It has intrigued me for years – how a Kayan chief had fallen in love with a Malay woman so much so that he was planning to abduct her against her will if she would not submit to him willingly? Truly, he was lord of all he surveyed!
Background
Apparently, the Kayans from the Sultanate of Bulungan on the Kayan River at Palas (now part of the Republic of Indonesia’s Province of Kalimantan Utara) had descended upon the Rajang before the arrival of the Brookes around the mid-18th century. There had been Malays, Ibans, and other natives living along the Rajang, but the Kayans were the dominant group. One of their chiefs was Akam Nipa.
From Rajang to Lupar
According to Baring-Gould and Bampfylde, the Malay chief Indra Lila had been forced to flee from the Rajang. He moved, lock stock and barrel with all his family, to Lingga. The authors do not tell us why Indra Lila had to migrate, and why he chose to settle in the lower Batang Lupar. But we can put two and two together: among the migrants were two sisters, Dang Isa and Dang Ajar. They were fleeing from the powerful Kayans.
When Indra Lila died, his brother Lila Pelawan, became the leader of the Lingga Malays. The nominal leader, actually, because the real power lay in the hands of the two sisters.
B&B write, “Dang Ajar was the most troublesome. It was she with whom the Kayan chief, Akam Nipa, had fallen in love, and a pity it was that his threat to abduct her was frustrated by the flight of the Malays from Ngmah.”
A pity for the good folk of Lingga it certainly was! B&B write, “The two sisters claimed all the land as their inheritance, and all the dwellers thereon as their slaves.”
The sisters made friends with the Tuan Muda, Charles Johnson, who later became the second Rajah of Sarawak as Charles Brooke (1868-1917). According to B&B, “Though professing a strong regard for the Tuan Muda, whom they honoured by styling him their son, they feared and hated him, for they saw that he would soon deprive them of all power to do evil …; secretly they were plotting to poison him.”
The time frame is not very clear, but we may assume that the two Dayangs were well advanced in years by the time Charles became Rajah.
Brooke’s race relations policy
I often ask myself why was it necessary for Rajah Charles to ensure harmony amongst the Malays and the Dayaks when there were no racial problems between the two communities? It could be that he was concerned with the claims by the two sisters over land belonging to them and that the people were treated by the migrants as their slaves when they ought to be the Rajah’s subjects from bondage. In order to forestall overlapping claims over land and related problems, that the Rajah, being farsighted, must ensure that the natives of Lingga had the prior rights to land against possible claims by the descendants of the two sisters.
I think that one of the first things that the new Rajah did was to visit Lingga to see who was really in charge. He had ordered that the cannon at the kubu there be half-buried with nozzle-down in the earth, signifying that there would be peace always between the Malays and the Dayaks and, of course, the Brookes. The Brooke’s policy on race relations and land rights.
The cannons with the nozzle buried were removed to the new District Office. When I went to Lingga early this month, I was hoping to see those guns; I hope they are still there, somewhere in Lingga. I saw two cannons at the new District Office, but on a visit in the 1980s there were four. Wonder where the other two are … especially the one specially cast from scraps of metals available in town.
Historical perspective
Historians must remember that before the migrants from Ngmah came to Lingga, the “Dayak population of the Lingga river was then about 5,000, all Balaus …” (page 158 of B&B’s book). Besides, “there was a considerable number of Malays, and later increased, for Lingga became to them a place of refuge”.
How come the two sisters claimed to ‘inherit’ all the land in Lingga when they were migrants from the Rajang and when there were already Dayaks and local Malays in occupation of their land and who had been tilling the fertile padi land for years? And to this day?
Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].