1 - Negotiating the Margin of Difficult Pasts: Heritagization of Sungai Buloh Leprosy Settlement

This paper seeks to examine the evolving movements and discourses of heritage making surrounding Sungai Buloh Leprosy Settlement (SBLS), which was built Selangor in 1930 for the treatment and segregation of people affected with leprosy in British Malaya.

Since 2006, the place has drawn the attention of urban based architects, academics and activists, who resisted demolition and redevelopment plans that might destroy the colonial architectures. After more than a decade of resistance, an on-site story gallery was built and launched in SBLS in 2018. Later, the SBLS administrators also agreed to work with the activists to jointly make SBLS a national as well as a world heritage, signaling a new stage of the movement.

Taking a constructivist perspective, this paper views heritage as ever evolving in a process of unmaking and remaking. Drawing upon materials from the media, publication produced by activists, and interviews with various actors related to the movement, this paper investigates how various actors forge their relations with the colonial pasts, negotiate the margin of the leprosarium’s difficult pasts, (re)interpret and represent its (hi)story, and justify the importance of preserving a place associated with dark past and colonial violence, while attempting to make the SBLS into a heritage. This paper also situates the SBLS heritage movement in its present day context, while making sense of what is included and excluded in the ongoing heritagization of SBLS.