The excommunication of Ramli Ibrahim

The excommunication of Ramli Ibrahim

by Thor Kah Hoong

COMMENT | In the 80s, when I was editor of Times Two, the second section of the New Straits Times, I received a feature submitted for consideration. It was from a Malaysian, freshly returned from Australia after finishing with Mechanical Engineering and steeping his feet in dance – ballet, the Bharatanatyam, Odissi – Ramli Ibrahim.

I published that first piece and several others from Ramli, until he got too busy developing his Sutra dance company. Shame, the fella can write. The fella can draw too – did a couple of beautiful ink drawings of his cat to accompany a piece.

In the subsequent three decades or so, hundreds, if not thousands, of students, have gone through the rigorous training of Sutra, a few of whom have gone on to start their own schools.

He has received prestigious awards in India and lauded for keeping the flame of classical dance alive with new energy and staging. He received a Fulbright Distinguished Artist Award. He is a Datuk.

For all his achievements, Ramli has never had it easy in all these years. Besides the usual headache of getting funds to finance operations and shows, he has had to deal with vilification and condemnation and the ban on the screening of a television show because he was not dancing the Tarian Lilin or jogetting. In choosing Indian dance, he reeked of apostasy.

Ramli would not be human if he did not feel anything after Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) cancelled an online talk with him. The UTM Islamic Centre had deemed the subject of cross-culture dance unsuitable for university students.

But I am confident this nonsense will not weigh heavy or long on Ramli. Sudah biasa (It’s usual.) He has dealt with worse rejection and survived. UTM’s loss, not his.

The development and longevity of Sutra is testimony to Ramli’s unshakeable commitment to his calling. Shows may get good reviews, but the emotional highs are transient. For the artist what matters is what comes next… to add on to the arch of his questing growth.

I would give a shout out, too, to Faridah Merican and Joe Hasham and their never-ending struggle to keep performance space in Kuala Lumpur and Penang alive, and Jo Kukathas, the one woman-dynamo of the Instant Café Theatre, and Sabera Shaik at Masakini. Their continuing commitment to the arts classifies them as admirably stubborn masochists.

I know a bit about being a stubborn masochist. I was a leading spark (including with a couple of the names above) in a few theatre companies, but after three decades of it, I was burnt out. Still stressful, but less so, just confine myself to act in plays and films.

As someone who has taught in three public universities, I, and my friends, have a catalogue of horrors in our experience of petty politicking, blinkered minds and awesome mental vacuums (as in vast emptiness, not voracious ingesting of knowledge).

I won’t bore you with my stories. Every reader who is or has been a teacher, a lecturer, or a minion of the MOE (their favourite acronym for the Education Ministry; makes me think of Moe, one of the Three Stooges) will have their own horror stories to tell of failings in the system.

I will just note the failure of language to convey reality, a meaning, in UTM’s official response to the “excommunication” of Ramli.

UTM said the decision was based on its guideline on arts and culture, where any programme must be referred to and receive the approval of the UTM Islamic Centre.

Mind-boggling – the Islamic Centre/censor.

“The UTM’s Islamic Centre’s advice represented the university’s stand, emphasising programme contents (sic) that does not offend any parties and balances various aspects of diversity, wellbeing and spirituality."

What a gem – “balances various aspects of diversity, wellbeing and spirituality.” So much for diversity. As for “wellbeing and spirituality”, your guess is as good as mine as to what it means.

UTM went through the motions of politely apologising to Ramli for any difficulties caused, but then compounded its idiocy by expressing the hope that the national cultural icon would continue to support its future programmes. Say what? It’s so stupid, it’s hilarious.

All Ramli wanted to do was talk about how dance transcended race. What an incendiary subject.


THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist

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kt notes: The title of this post, namely, 'The Excommunication of Ramli Ibrahim, is to me, both brilliantly selected by author Thor Kah Hoong, and at the same time also very sad. Before I explain my opinion on it, let me explain what is meant by 'excommunication', with an extract from Wikipedia:

Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to end or at least regulate the communion of a member of a congregation with other members of the religious institution who are in normal communion with each other. The purpose of the institutional act is to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular, those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments.

The term is often historically used to refer specifically to excommunications from the Catholic Church, but it is also used more generally to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. For instance, many Protestant denominations, such as the Lutheran Churches, have similar practices of excusing congregants from church communities, while Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the Churches of Christ, use the term "disfellowship" to refer to their form of excommunication. The Amish have also been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church, a practice known as shunning.

The word excommunication means putting a specific individual or group out of communion. In some denominations, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group. Excommunication may involve banishment, shunning, and shaming, depending on the group, the offense that caused excommunication, or the rules or norms of the religious community. The grave act is often revoked in response to manifest repentance.

It's akin to Ramli Ibrahim being 'buang dari kumpulan Melayu' by those angrily opposed to his teachings and/or dancing of the Bharatanatyam and Odissi, both Indian classical dances (the former from Tamilnadu and the latter from Odisha), each with a pedigree of more than 2,000 years.

Another word for 'excommunication' would be 'ostracization', where the 'ostracization' could be social, religious, cultural, etc.

This is the sad tragic part of Ramli's virtual 'excommunication' by a narrow-minded religious group because the maestro chose to excel in Indian classical dances rather than Arabic what(?) ... (belly-dancing? Tanoura? Al Ayyala?).

The brilliance of author Thor Kah Hoong in selecting this sad word (sad for Maestro Ramli Ibrahim) to title his above post cannot be overstated for its appropriateness because Ramli Ibrahim has suffered the 'ostracization' for decades ever since he took up dancing the Bharatanatyam and Odissi, after his engineering degree from Australia, but with such dedication that won him Padma Shri from the Republic of India for his distinguished contribution to the arts for more than 30 years. 

However, when former PM Najib was on a visit to India, at the time Ramli Ibrahim was awarded the Padma Shri, the former PM congratulated Ramli on the distinguished award, saying it was well-deserved.

"This is a very high honour for him and I am proud that he has received India's highest civilian award.''