Last updated on 15 February 2012 - 10:02pm
BY April 1972, Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak visited Kampung Tanjung Tokong, a Malay settlement in Penang said to have existed as a fishing community since before the British colonialists landed on the island in 1786.
Razak's visit was featured on the front page of the now defunct Straits Echo, which reported him telling the 7,000-odd villagers that he understood they were not owners of the land. The report, however, added that the government planned to make them settle there permanently.
Some 40 years later, villagers and heritage activists have found a glimmer of hope that the historic settlement – which has since been earmarked for demolition for a development project - can be preserved after all.
The Penang legislative assembly was told in November last year that the state government had decided to formally recognise Kampung Tanjung Tokong as a heritage village.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng told the assembly that the village would have its status "restored" by being reclassified as a heritage kampung.
This is an intriguing turn of events; not least because the agency that now owns the land and plans to develop a high-density project there is UDA Holdings Bhd - formerly the Urban Development Authority - under the Prime Minister's Department.
While Lim has described the classification as a "first step" to preserve the village, or at least ensure some identity is maintained, UDA is known to have wanted the residents to leave.
The issue about conserving the settlement has become a passionate one, because it is regarded as among the oldest living legacies of the Malays.
According to anthropologist Datuk Wazir Jahan Karim, family histories here go back over 300 years, with some having drawn up their complex genealogies from the time English sea captain Francis Light landed on the island.
"This is unique to Penang's urban history when you consider that Tanjung Tokong is even older than George Town," she has written, highlighting also the peaceful co-existence the villagers had with the Chinese community as an important feature.
There is also an ancient cemetery nestled on a small hill near the village that has kept the remains of some of the earliest inhabitants of the island, predating the arrival of the British.
Interestingly, Wazir had also provided an explanation of how the original Malay inhabitants were left without land ownership.
For while early migrants like the Chinese, Europeans and Indians understood the processes of colonisation better and rapidly submitted claims on land and titles, the Malays thought that the lands they had inhabited for hundreds of years were theirs, hence very few applied for land titles. Most of the original Malays could also not afford to pay for such titles.
The state government is now understood to be in discussion with UDA to have the place conserved. "We hope UDA can respect the state government's wishes just as we also have to respect UDA as the landowner," Lim had said.
The state had in May 2010 received a detailed plan from villagers and NGO representatives for controlled development and conservation of key parts of the historic village.
What makes the site additionally significant is its location along the road to the popular Batu Ferringhi-Tanjung Bungah area which is now a tourism belt. Proponents have pointed out that this makes it an ideal place to showcase living Malay heritage to visitors.
In fact, Tanjung Tokong and Tanjung Bungah used to contain nucleated Malay fishing villages, dotted all along the coastline up to Teluk Bahang. Many of these are now gone.
Dramatically enough, the seashore the village faced – and on which its fisher-folk community depended for two centuries - is also no longer there. It was reclaimed a decade ago, leaving the village land-locked, blocked from the sea by a modern luxury township.
It now remains to be seen, with the latest turn of events to officially mark the village as a heritage site, if this rare remnant of Malay history can be prevented from also being wiped out into oblivion.
Himanshu is theSun's Penang bureau head. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
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