THIS writers old favoured dictionary, Chambers, defines symbol as
an emblem: that which by custom or convention represents something else
… a creed, compendium of doctrine, or a typical religious rite …an object
or act representing an unconscious or repressed conflict (psychol.)

An emblem, a sign, an icon believers in two of the major religions in the world will testify that the crescent and the cross are not just badges of belief, but represent all that is fundamental and doctrinal in their obeisance to a higher order, a focus for all that is sacred. Anyone with a faint interest in Malaysian politics will know that a cabinet minister has had to proffer apologies for his wielding of a keris, all his explanations of a traditional symbol of Malay strength used to rally the spirit of UMNO supporters not sitting well with other communities in the country because the symbol evoked memories of blood-soaked history. This episode makes it clear that a symbol cannot be dismissed as just a harmless gesture or signage without much substance or significance. Is there a country that will allow anyone to treat its flag as a rag? When angry passions gather in the streets of the world, isn’t the torching of the flag of the offending nation a symbol of how reprehensible that country ’s policies or actions are? Symbols can be ubiquitous and ignored much of the time, just a small hook at the corner of the eye, a brief flagging of attention, but when singled out or given significance, they can be explosive, charged with differing interpretations, the visible tip of a huge iceberg of doctrinal complexities. This country’s political maturing (after 50 years of independence, it’s about time innit?), besides prompting clueless mental geriatrics to murmur solemnly about the alternative media and its enhanced role in the political arena, has prompted not only a more intense heckling over traditional symbols, but also inspired new symbols and I must say the authorities are slow, as usual, in adapting and responding to the new. Case in point: Last week, a friend texted me and asked my opinion as to whether the men in blue would show up in force at Dataran Merdeka where a candlelight vigil for a jailed blogger and related issues was planned. My joke reply was to note that the men in blue would probably say that lit candles constituted a fire hazard and would have to be extinguished with water-cannons. And that soon, for any child over the age of five having a birthday, parents will have to apply for a permit two weeks in advance for having more than five candles on the cake, showing up at the nearest balai with the necessary substantiation of birth-certificate, Mykad and a sworn statement certified by a Commissioner of Oaths. I made light of the matter, but I wasn’t really laughing. Hey folks, the Dataran Merdeka is not just a gathering point for tour-buses so that tourists can take pix of fake-Moorish heritage buildings. It is a, if not the, geographical symbol of our freedom, and yet there was no freedom of access to it that night. Sure, trot out the standard statement about the laws against illegal assembly, but how many hearts and minds are lost or confirmed in their disaffection when they see a government with its might and weight fearful of a few breeze-threatened flames and sending out the muscle to growl and snarl? Maybe it’s my background as student/lecturer in English Literature that makes me give so much weight to symbols. I remember a Canadian supervisor of my Masters thesis chiding me for not realising that the trees and bushes in Sylvia Plath’s poems were all totemic phallic symbols and that the swans had rape in mind. I have learned. Now I am wary of symbols skulking everywhere, ready to trip you up when you carelessly ignore their potential impact. Like those pea-brains who thought it was a good idea over the weekend to get the Deputy Prime Minister to lend his weight to a detonator. Thor Kah Hoong is ready to be hired as a consultant on symbols and their submerged threats.

Source: Malay Mail – May 13, 2008