A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (15 page)

Well aware of this, the British made recognition conditional upon the Rulers accepting the new treaties hatched up in London during the war. These were the infamous MacMichael Treaties, which would merge the Malay States, together with the Crown Colonies of Penang and Malacca, into a single colony called the Malayan Union. From this point onwards, the Malay States, instead of being British protectorates, would become British crown colonies. The Malay Rulers would only oversee matters concerned with Malay 
adat
 (custom and tradition) and Islam, and the states over which the Rulers reigned (rather than ruled) would lose their historical identity and political reality. Under the new treaties, the position of the Rulers themselves would be greatly diminished. Yet—albeit under British duress—they were ready to
consent to this humiliation of all Malays, but especially themselves. The British apparently regarded their victory in the war as an opportunity and a right to consolidate their Empire. Churchill, after all, famously said he was not elected to preside over the dismantling of the Empire.
[2]
 

Perhaps most significantly, the Malayan Union would create not just a unitary Malayan state but a unitary or homogeneous citizenship within it, for Malays and non-Malays alike. Granting equal citizenship to the immigrant Chinese and Indians would imperil Malay rights to land and opportunities. Wealth disparities in Malaya would also widen, leaving the Malays the most deprived group in their own country.

The schoolmates I mixed with were interested in politics and the struggle against this latest British proposal. How could I not be distracted from my studies by these developments? In a series of discussions at my house a small group that I formed became convinced that the British had no right to impose the Malayan Union without consulting us. Although some members eventually dropped out to focus on their studies, most wanted to do something to protest. Among them were Aziz Ahmad, who later graduated as a mechanical engineer in the United Kingdom; Zulkifli Hashim, who later became the Secretary-General of UMNO, and Osman Abu Bakar, who we all called Man Kuda (or “horse”) because he had buck-teeth.

By early 1946 the British were already pushing for the Malayan Union to come into effect. Time, I believed, was of the essence. Something had to be done. The rest of the group accepted me as a leader, I suppose because I naturally took on a more prominent role and pushed us to take action. I had always scorned people who would rather talk about things when they were in a position to do something. I used to poke fun at my elder brother Mashahor, who always talked about wanting to rear goats or chickens but never did. Now I asked myself, “What about me?” Here was a cause that I felt passionate about. What was I doing about it?

Our parents’ generation had a strong sense of loyalty towards the Rulers, and though we never discussed this matter with older people generally, we could sense that they felt beholden to the royalty. Malays believed politics was not for the 
rakyat
, the subjects of the Rulers. It was the prerogative of the high-born in their palaces, not the ordinary folk in their villages. My generation was the first to break away from that acceptance of the ban on politics. We recognised the role of the Rulers, but we also felt very disillusioned by the treaties that they had entered into with the British.

Our little group read the newspapers avidly for any scrap of information about the Malayan Union, while news also reached Malaya through Malay students who were studying in the United Kingdom. One of them who opposed the proposal was a law student named Ismail Mohd Ali, who had been stranded in England by the war. I wrote to him supporting the Malay students’ opposition to the Malayan Union. I did not know him, but I had read about the Malays in London protesting and the newspaper article had mentioned him. He did not reply to my letter, but I would meet and get to know him years later, when he became my brother-in-law and eventually, the first Malaysian Governor of Bank Negara.

The student group I organised in the Sultan Abdul Hamid College later teamed up with the religious school students of the Ma’ahad Mahmood, the premier Government Arabic and religious school. We had heard that the teachers and students there were as concerned about the Malayan Union as we were. The headmaster Sheikh Abdul Halim from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo was particularly against the British. I wrote letters to other Malay groups, including one in Tangkak, Johor, which was very active in opposing the Malayan Union. I also wrote to the Press, mainly to the 
Straits Times,
 which had resumed publishing after the war. In one letter I criticised the use of English on certain occasions and argued that we should use Malay instead. It got a very harsh response from one reader, who accused me of trying to impose Malay on everyone.

The non-Malay students seemed indifferent to what was going on. The Chinese and Indians in general did not react either positively or negatively to the Malayan Union. Ultimately, it would be good for them because its intention was to give citizenship to them all, but some of them were not all that keen to become Malayan citizens. The Chinese had always put up Chinese national flags during China’s festivals and identified themselves either with the Kuomintang or the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, the Straits Chinese were so British that they regarded themselves as the King’s Chinese. At one stage they wanted Penang, where many of them had settled, to stay out of the Federation of Malaya and continue to be a British colony.

For their part the Indians focused mainly on events then unfolding in India. During the Japanese Occupation they had set up the Indian National Army for men and the Rani of Jhansi Regiment for women. They wanted to fight alongside the Japanese at the border between Burma and India. India’s struggle for independence became more determined immediately after the war was over. The Malayan Union was therefore not at the forefront of their political concerns.

As my respect and liking for the British withered, I grew more politically active. From the history of the American colonies that I had studied in school, I remembered the Boston Tea Party and the slogan “No taxation without representation”. I strongly believed that we Malays, the definitive people of the Malay Peninsula with whom the British had entered into treaties, should be consulted about plans for the Malay states. I did not yet have Independence in mind; in fact, when the Tunku first talked about it, I thought we were not yet ready. I thought the British were still qualified to rule us. I just wanted them to respect Malay status and rights.

If the Malayan Union materialised, it would mean the land of the Malays would become an international settlement under British colonial rule. Anyone could become a citizen. Since there was no provision for renouncing former nationalities, the Chinese, Indians and others could effectively have dual citizenship. We Malays could have only one: that of the Malayan Union. There were already rumblings at this time that a part of Palestine should be given to the Zionists for the State of Israel and I was concerned that Malays would suffer a similar fate as the Palestinians—marginalised, then squeezed and perhaps even expelled from their own land.

At that time the Malays were by far the poorest people in the Peninsula. There were only a handful of university graduates among them and the literacy rate was very low. Most were padi farmers, fishermen or labourers. There was hardly a Malay shop in any of the towns and most rural areas were served by Chinese or Indian sundry goods shops. There were quite a few Malays in the civil service in the Unfederated Malay States and some in the Federated Malay States, but there were practically none in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore. Indians and Ceylon Tamils dominated the clerical services and the Malayan Railways.

I knew about the structure of British rule in Malaya because it was taught in school. But I also saw for myself what had happened to the Malays. Those in Penang looked down on those in Kedah because we were a rural people. We were wide-eyed when we went to towns like Penang and saw buildings that were four storeys high. But Penang Malays were actually of a lower economic status than the Kedah Malays. In Kedah, the government officers were all Malays. In Penang there was only one Malay doctor. When I visited my relatives in Penang I saw that my uncles lived in what would be considered slums back home. Some of them worked with the Government, but only in low-paying jobs.

In the Federated Malay States the Malay Rulers were able to get some Malays into the Malayan Civil Service and the Malayan Administrative Service. Some of the traditional district chiefs were able to lease their tin-bearing land to the British or the Chinese. But while they were relatively well-off, most other Malays lived in poverty, if not as rice farmers and fisherman then as wage earners—clerks and drivers of the Europeans and the Chinese 
towkays
. A few had some rubber smallholdings.

There was much less British control in the Unfederated Malay States. Malay was the administrative language and almost all the civil servants were Malays. Becoming a government servant with a regular salary and pension was every Malay’s greatest ambition. Getting involved in business was, by and large, regarded with disdain.

The Unfederated Malay States were less well-endowed with tin than the FMS and except for Johor, these states were poor. More numerous than in the FMS, the Malays of the Unfederated States were generally also poor. Overall, the Rulers themselves were badly off and, probably as a result, were quite ready to lease or cede parts of their state for income.

By recognising another claimant to the Johor throne, the British gained for themselves a piece of strategic and valuable real estate, Singapore. In those days only the British had survey teams and they also claimed the islands in the Johor Straits, or Selat Tebrau. Quite a number of islands belonging to the Malay states were lost to the neighbouring countries because Malay Rulers did not know the full extent of their states and borders. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries this problem returned to haunt Malaysia in the dispute over Pulau Batu Puteh, or Pedra Branca, which the International Court of Justice awarded to Singapore in May 2008.

Singapore was so valuable to the British that they excluded it from their proposed Malayan Union. As Singapore developed, the Malays there became a small minority, and were even poorer than the Malays of the Peninsula. The number of Malays with tertiary education in Singapore at Independence could be counted on the fingers of one hand. When I was at medical college there were a few Malay 
kampung
 in Singapore. One was Kampung Gelam where the dispossessed former Sultan of Johor had his so-called 
istana
, or palace. The Singapore Government has since repossessed the 
istana
 and all the Malay 
kampung
 have now disappeared.

Whether in the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States or the Unfederated Malay States, the Malays were the poorest and most backward community. They also lagged behind in education. Except in Kedah and Johor, the number of Malay children attending Government English schools was not high. Their abject situation was not entirely due to neglect by the British or the Malay Rulers. The Malays themselves had made little attempt to adapt to the changing situations in their country. Because they refused to work in the modern economy, the British brought in Indian indentured labourers and Chinese coolies. As the modern economic sector grew, there were more Chinese and Indian small businessmen and those capable of becoming clerks and low-grade technicians. After them came the doctors and better-trained technicians. Malays came to regard these types of work as the preserve of Indian and Chinese immigrants.

Their Rulers were in no position to help them because their own powers had been reduced. As before, the Rulers would not rule but only reign—now not over their states but over the 
kathi
[3]
 and 
adat
 officials
[4]
 who would serve them personally under 
istana
 and 
balai
 (royal audience hall) supervision. The Rulers would be no more than decorative symbols of the customs and traditions of the Malays and heads of Islam among their subjects.
 

In the Municipal Councils of the colonies of Singapore, Penang and Malacca there was only one Malay Councillor each. That, the Malays believed, would be as much representation as they would get in the State and Federal Legislative Councils after the Malayan Union was formed. As for the Malay language, it would become the language only of the Malay community. The official language would be English and thus a major symbol of the Malay origin and character of the Peninsula would be removed. Most Malays were sure that in the Malayan Union, the more dynamic and better-equipped Chinese would dominate the country. They would not only control the business sector but soon the political arena as well. Government service, they envisioned, would be largely filled from the ranks of those who were qualified and competent, namely Chinese and Indians. Malays would be left to take up low-ranking posts.

Perhaps this was too pessimistic or suspicious a view. Many Malays did not want to admit this possibility. But even if the future were to be brighter, the Malays would still be in a vastly inferior position vis-à-vis the non-Malays who would now get full and equal citizenship rights and privileges under the Malayan Union.

We did not have the full text of the Malayan Union proposal and we had to get most of our information from newspapers. Yet what I read left me deeply troubled. I had grown quite proud of being Malay and believed I had inherited a land and culture that I could call my own. Even today, there are many peoples in the world who have no land of their own. But the Malays had always had their 
Tanah Melayu
, just as England is the land of the English and Scotland, the land of the Scots. I did not relish the idea of becoming dispossessed in my ancestral land, a land that was mine to begin with, or seeing my own people’s land becoming everybody else’s. I dreaded the possibility of my fellow Malays becoming the servants of others because equal citizenship would mean just that—behind formal equality was a substantively unequal and inferior citizenship for all Malays.