ReVisioning Maharlika

(Conclusion)

Ferdinand Marcos would name some of his latest and biggest infrastructure and cultural projects Maharlika. To name a few, Maharlika highways, villages, communities, guest houses and, notably a broadcasting corporation, would emerge and will be broadcasted in different parts of the country.

Of course, who would forget FM’s WWII resistance group the “Ang Mga Maharlika” and the movie “Maharlika” starring Paul Burke, Dovie Beams and Farley Granger. The “Maharlika” movie depicted the so-called legendary exploits of Marcos during World War II. The movie poster previewed it as “a multi-million dollar saga of Filipino bravery against superior forces and insurmountable odds in the face of annihilation. They stood shoulder to shoulder with death and won.” And, yes, a lot of conspiracy stories would surface later on. The movie enjoyed a pretty good run though in some theaters after Edsa.

Marcos during his 17^th State of the Nation Address recalled that, at the Maharlika Hall, the 1972 Constitution was accepted and submitted for plebiscite. His administration would use the same hall as the site for his State Dinners and Presidential Citizen Assemblies.  He also took his last public oath of office and gave his farewell speech at the front west balcony of the Maharlika Hall.

Recently, a national daily reported that the tomb designed by Architect Normandy Canlas for Marcos was dubbed as “The Maharlika”.  Canlas described his design “as huge and colossal with an ethnic Filipino motif”.  In a word, Maharlika was Ferdinand Marcos leadership and governance myth and life story. And if future history would, as many pundits now assume, and as more and more younger generation of Ilocanos and Filipinos would like to imagine, be gentler to Marcos, Maharlika as a STEEP (social, technological, economic, environment and political) discourse and leadership narrative could reemerge in more ways than one.

Today, the Maharlika story might be the disowned future, at least perhaps in the past (you could put the blame to FM if you want to), but it could, and it has the potential and I consider it as an emerging issue, re-disrupt current ways of knowing the Filipino and her society. The push, however, was to ‘revision’ it beyond the Marcosian narrative.

Here I would like to caution my readers that the Maharlika discourse was not original to Marcos nor it is his social or linguistic invention. Maharlika is a pre-colonial innovation and social discourse that dates back to the 7^th century Majapahit Empire. Well, we could safely say that Marcos was moved and inspired by it and designed it in a way he envisioned it like the Rajanates of the past, the Maharlika concept is an invention the Old Malay world. It was a dominant narrative during the Sri Vijayan empires if some versions, stories and texts of Indonesian and Malaysian linguists and historians were to be believed in. 

But, according to Indian sociologists, linguists and philologists Prabhat Ranjain Sarkar, recognized as the Renaissance Man of India and recently was listed as one of the few contemporary Macrohistorians acknowledged by the World Academy of the Arts and Sciences (PR Sarkar now enjoys the company of Karl Marx, Ssu-Ma-Chien, John Adams, Ibn Khaldun, Pitirim Sorokin, Hegel according to Galtung) Maharlika was the pre-colonial name of the inhabitants of the natives of the Philippine islands. Our ancestors, according to Sarkar, proudly called themselves the Maharlikas meaning freemen and “small people who were great in spirit.” The Rajanates and Sultanates of South East Asia respected the people of the Maharlikas. 

In addition Sarkar, himself a Sanskrit scholar, revealed that Maharlika is a spiritual word, a mantra and a cultural memory. For him, Maharlika is a code, a symbol and a narrative that has the power to liberate colonized intellects and minds paralyzed by past traumas. It is, for Sarkar, the transcendence, the equipoise and dynamism of the local native.

For the game developer, the virtual artists and designers, however, the Maharlika is the Anak ng Bathala, the embodiment of the native islands greatness. 

But, of course, there were more questions than answers that came out at the Maharlika summit like “Is the Marcosian narrative of Maharlika the official future of the word?” Do we want these to represent Maharlika? Or, if were to revision it, how? If we were to question the current discourse and create alternative narratives for Maharlika, what strategies should we make for it to re-emerge in the 21^st century? Will the Filipinos finally call themselves the Maharlikas or could it occur in the next hundred years? Will we call these islands Maharlika? Will we rename these groups of islands the Islands of the Maharlikas? Or will the spirit of the Babaylan (like the Phoenix in the Western myth) re-appear? 

Romelene and I toyed with some images of what the future of Maharlika narrative might be like using Schwartz scenario archetypes in 2040.

You can check them out at engagedforesight.com.