Trailing Jalan Baharu in Hikayat Panglima Nikosa | A Bridge to the Classics

About the Programme/Event:

Written in 1879 in Sarawak against the backdrop of colonialism, Hikayat Panglima Nikosa by Ahmad Syawal Abd. Hamid is a fictional narration of a warrior hero named Panglima Nikosa. This titular hero made his career by fighting against warring groups and restoring peace in the region. He eventually settled and built a community of Jalan Baharu (The New Path), where lands were cleared for agricultural production, schools were built, and the well-being of the inhabitants enhanced.

These might sound like part and parcel of governance and civilisation-building, but this text charted the contemporaneous transformation of Sarawak’s political culture. It espoused the need to embrace rational and practical living, where economic, literary and political stability, led by good leadership, created a sustainable society. Describing a pragmatic existence rooted in the material world as opposed to a supernatural one, how did this unique Hikayat affirm the supremacy of human agency in building a new polity, and what does it teach us about the creation of a sustainable society?

About the Speaker(s):

Dr Azhar Ibrahim is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also Vice Chairman of the Malay Heritage Foundation.  He teaches Malay-Indonesian literature and ideologies of development at the Department. His research interest includes sociology of literature, social theology, Islamic thought, critical literacy, and the Malay-Indonesian intellectual development. Amongst his published works are:  Emancipated Education (2020), Historical Imagination and Cultural Responses to Colonialism and Nationalism: A Critical Malay(sian) Perspective (2017), Contemporary Islamic Discourse in the Malay-Indonesia World (2014) and Narrating Presence: Awakening from Cultural Amnesia. (2014).