Sri Lankan born Lloyd Fernando - a pioneer of English writings and theatre in Malaysia

This week Cultural Scene is an continuation of last week's column on Malaysian-Singapore writings in English. In this week's column I want to introduce a pioneer of Malaysian English literature, late Lloyd Fernando: author, academic, and a champion of Malaysian literature and Drama in English. His life and work marks an important era in English literature and theatre in Malaysia.

Lloyd Fernando was born in Sri Lanka and his parents immigrated to Singapore when he was just 12 years of age. The Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1943 to 1945 dealt a severe blow to the Fernando's including the interruption to young Lloyd Fernando's formal schooling and, costing his father's life in one of the Japanese bombing raids. One of the turning points in Lloyd's life was the tragic death of his father which not only forced him to forgo his formal education but also had to become a trishaw rider and apprentice mechanic in order to support the family.

In the aftermath of the war, Lloyd continued his education and graduated from the University of Malay (then located in Singapore) with double honours in English and Philosophy in 1959. While studying at the University, Fernando was very active as an undergraduate in the company of fellow students and budding writers such as Edwin Thumboo, Ee Tiang Hong and Wong Phui Nam and with their support; he started a literary magazine called Write, in 1957. In 1967 he founded another literary journal, Tenggara. The literary journals such as The New Cauldron were important not only on studying formative years of Malaysian Literature in English but also as a platform for preparing the nation for independence.

After his graduation in 1960, Fernando joined the University of Malaya where he was awarded a scholarship to Leeds University, UK where he received his PhD. In 1967 Fernando was appointed as a professor at the English Department of the University of Malaya, where he served until his retirement from academia in 1978. Subsequent to his retirement, he went overseas again and returned to Malaysia with two law degrees and was employed by a law firm, and later he started his own law practice for living while engaged in his writings.

While at the University on many occasion, Fernando defended the English language and literature in English from its detractors with a commitment. However, he never expressed doubt about the importance of Bahasa Malaysia as the country's new national language.

At the l971 Cultural Congress that defined and classified Malaysian literature into "national" and "sectional", Lloyd spoke (in fluent Malay) about his personal hopes and aspirations for the future direction of Malaysia's culture and literature.

While teaching at the University, Lloyd became an author. His first novel, was Scorpion Orchid (1976), and later, he wrote Green is the Colour (1993), which is now a standard study texts for international scholars who focus on Asian and Southeast Asian culture and literature. In 1995, Scorpion Orchid was adapted for the stage and directed by Krishen Jit and Lok Meng Chue at the Singapore Festival of the Arts. Both books, mainly the Scorpion Orchid arguably modernist in style, are an experiment with language. It deals with how individuals coped with "national birth" in the 1950s, and the impact of the riots that took placed in Kuala Lumpur in 1969.

In addition to his own works Lloyd Fernando edited the first two anthologies of Malaysian playwriting in English, New Drama One and New Drama Two (1972), and wrote the introductory essays which laid the foundation to then-new writing in relation to contemporary Malaysian society and Commonwealth literature.

Language and literature

To appreciate Fernando's contribution to Malaysian literature, it is pertinent to contextualise his narrative against the backdrop of the Malaysian socio-political developments in post colonial Malaysia. As a post colonial writer, Fernando firmly believed in the unifying aspects of English language particularly in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society such as Malaysia.

In a paper entitled Nation and Religion in the Fiction of Lloyd Fernando by Andrew Ng, it states that ; " Fernando was actively involved in the promoting of local Anglophone literature despite socio political constrains, and, later, poor health. Through his essays (collected in Culture in conflict -1982) and two novels, Scorpion Orchid (1976) and Green in Colour (1993), he enunciated his firmly-held beliefs in racial and religious integration, deftly criticising communal and divisive politics which inevitably resulted in intolerance and destruction. Small as it may be, his literary output constitutes some of Malaysia's most searching and powerful literary consciousness. His two novels provide crucial insights into the state of belonging and nation-formation, as well as the understated realities of racial-religious segregation and politics of prejudices still rampant in the contemporary Malaysian ideological landscape"

However, Lloyd articulated his reservations about 'embracing English and its literary heritage wholesale' in an essay entitled 'Literary English in the South East Asian Tradition':

"What is quite certain is that if Malaysian (and possibly Asian) literature in English ever to go beyond a certain praiseworthy competence and become something to be reckoned with, to be read not only by interested readers in other countries but in Asian countries as well, writers must now examine whether the language will adapt to their bones as it has so far adapted to their thoughts".

Andrew states, "Fernando perceives that the way in which a postcolonial state develops will determine whether or not the English language will have a part to play in its national literature. Postcolonial writers, as Fernando highlights, must be prepared to vigorously engage with the language not merely as 'recipients' but as active participants of this linguistic heritage by ' brining their own dynamics to bear, testing what they ' received' against what is intrinsic in their own linguistic scheme'. Only through such a negotiation can 'a genuine opportunity to clarify the sources of problems involving in the dialogue between the East and the West" be successfully harnessed. "

Lloyd Fernando's enduring literary legacy is important not only as it marked a milestone in Malaysian contemporary literature but also as a corpus of work which testifies his continuous and rigorous search for the creation of an indigenous literary culture in the context of the World Englishes.