A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (16 page)

As I would later elaborate in my book 
The Malay Dilemma,
[5]
 I already feared that my fellow Malays were incapable of competing with the country’s other races. They lacked all the necessary skills and education and had already succumbed to a culture of dependence in colonial times. They avoided hard work and always looked for the easy way out. In a competitive situation against others who were more motivated and capable, that would now work against them. But it was not Malay peasants alone who deserved to be blamed, for the problems began at the top.
 

Their Rulers had so easily handed over their land to the British because they were promised easy money and easy lives. Why work when the British would pay you for not working? The political pension, or allowance, was really a bribe offered by the British to the Sultan, his family and his grandchildren for them to surrender the governance of their states. Not a single British soldier died so that the Malay states might be quickly and effectively colonised. They were taken over from within, and when the ruling families were won over their autonomy and that of Malay society as a whole were compromised. Before, Nature had been gentle to the Malays, assuring them of abundance without great effort; now it was British protection and their Rulers’ participation that disabled them by depriving most Malays of the incentive to pursue success energetically.

As a people the Malays had gone through the colonial period without having to face tough challenges. Weakened by their self-induced diffidence, they were now expected, with the setting up of the Malayan Union, to compete with people who had many advantages over them: people who were hardworking, educated and skilled, people who also already possessed more wealth than they had. If allowed to proceed, the results of the Malayan Union would be disastrous for the Malays.

At that time no organisation represented the Malays of the Peninsula as a whole. The Malays regarded themselves as subjects of the various Malay states and their respective Rulers. They had no paramount ruler then and they did not think of themselves as belonging to a single nation.

Not understanding the vast dimensions of the task, I started organising my fellow students to be active in an anti-Malayan Union campaign. Though many people, including our teachers, were aware of our political discussions and meetings, they did not expect us to actively oppose the creation of the Malayan Union. But they did not try to stop us either.

What could a small group of schoolboys do against the mighty British Military Administration? A few of us decided on an anti-Malayan Union poster campaign in Alor Star and nearby towns. We scraped together what little money we had and bought large sheets of paper from the printing shops. About 10 of us were involved in making the posters. That took several days, at my house and Aziz Ahmad’s. At first we tried drawing the outline of the letters in pencil and filling the space with Chinese ink, but it was slow going. Then Aziz tried carving bold capital letters from potatoes. We used makeshift stamp pads and Chinese ink to print the posters with our chosen slogans “Equal Citizenship Not Wanted” and “No Malayan Union”.

On the day that we were ready to put our posters up, we divided ourselves into groups and headed to different areas. Worried about getting caught and taken in by the police for questioning, we waited until it was dark before we set out. The blackout
[6]
 was still on as the electricity supply was poor.
 

I was glad to be finally doing something about the situation. It was our first time going against the establishment and it was thrilling. The night activities went well, and only two or three of the boys who were supposed to put posters up in Jitra lost their nerve. Some of us put up posters on the Public Works Department storehouse in front of my home. We did not realise at the time that there was a man sleeping on the cement pavement skirting the building. We must have woken him up because when the police came around the next day to ask questions, he said he had seen some people near where he slept. Thankfully, because of the blackout, he was not able to recognise any of us.

My father was one of the very few people who knew what we were doing, but he did not try to stop me. My mother was not involved—if she did know anything, she did not show it. When I asked her how to make glue for our posters, she showed me how to create a homemade version using tapioca flour and hot water. No questions were asked.

Our time-consuming political activities encroached on our studies but strangely, my father did not object. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He appeared supportive and for the first time in our relationship, we discussed politics man to man. I remember exactly when he broached the subject with me. He was sitting on the steps of our veranda one day and I was leaning against the railings. He asked me what I thought about the Malayan Union. I was hesitant at first, but grew more comfortable the more we talked. To my surprise, he was just as much against the Malayan Union as I was. He had followed every development through the 
Straits Echo
 and the 
Straits Times
. What I found even more surprising was that he wanted to discuss these serious topics with me, a mere boy. I realised at that moment our relationship had changed. I was no longer just a child in his eyes. Having my father’s recognition added to the confidence I felt in my first serious dip into politics.

My father depended entirely on his meagre pension to support us. During the Japanese Occupation he had to sell two pieces of land, one of them a fruit orchard. I was very upset about this as I thought that it was important to keep landed property. He sold it with a plan in mind, to gain the capital to invest in a trishaw. He then rented it out to the younger brother of a 
satay
 seller who lived in a wooden squatter hut behind our house. But this boy always came up with some excuse not to pay the rent and my father ended up not making a single cent from his enterprise. I really do not know how he made ends meet. We had enough to eat and I had five cents for pocket money when I went back to school. This was the money I used to buy the paper for our posters.

Though funded from these modest resources, our campaign was so convincing that the police thought the posters had been produced by a subversive organisation with a printing press. They tore the posters down the very next day and questioned all the printing presses in Alor Star. The printers honestly denied all involvement, but they were fortunately not asked whether they had sold white sheets of paper to anyone. My brother-in-law was working as a clerk in the police department, so we knew that the police were both mystified and worried by the posters.

Everyone in our group was startled by the reaction to our little campaign. The police believed that behind the big white sheets was a major movement to defy the British. They never suspected that mere schoolboys were behind it—nobody did, though it became a hot topic in the coffee shops. The people’s general knowledge about politics then was minimal, but they knew that the Malayan Union was not good for the Malays and they were relieved that someone was doing something to oppose it. We had wide popular support.

News of the posters spread throughout Malaya and there were other attempts to put up anti-Malayan Union posters. Sir Harold MacMichael was charged by the Crown with securing the agreement of each of the Rulers of Malaya to the Malayan Union. When he came to Alor Star to get the consent of the Sultan of Kedah to the Malayan Union proposal, we put up more posters in front of the British Adviser’s Residence, where he was staying. He was very annoyed. The British were not used to opposition in Malaya.

Legally, in the eyes of many people including the Malays, the Malayan Union was a done deal once the MacMichael treaties were signed. The Malay civil servants and most of the prominent Malays were ready to accept the full colony status of their 
Tanah Melayu
. But on the ground, feelings were strongly against the surrender of the Malay States to the British. Even the Malays of the colonies of Penang, Malacca and Singapore were set against it.

Malay resentment became more apparent and 
rapat raksaksa
, or giant gatherings, were held everywhere to protest against the Malayan Union. Street marches were also held. In Alor Star, the march might have turned ugly as many of the padi farmers brought their 
parang,
 or machetes. I knew some of the leaders who took part in the marches, but while I went to watch them parade in protest, I did not join them.

The Malay papers reported these protest demonstrations, as did the 
Straits Times
 and the 
Straits Echo
. Posters condemning equal citizenship and the Malayan Union were seen everywhere.

This was an important period for me. As with so many other Malays, the attempt to impose the Malayan Union focused my growing dissatisfaction with the British and forced my own political consciousness into the open. But I was still just a schoolboy. I needed credibility so that people would listen to my opinions. I believed that a sure way to gain this was to get a university education. I was not too particular about what field I would enter—I studied hard to qualify and when I passed, I decided to apply for a scholarship to study law. Instead, I got a scholarship to study medicine.

ENDNOTES

[
1
] The narrow landbridge that connects the peninsula to mainland Asia.
 

[
2
] “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its
Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘This was the finest hour.’”
—
Sir Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940.
 

[
3
] A
kathi
was appointed for each district to administer Muslim affairs, try cases within his jurisdiction, and supervise the operation of mosques in his district.
 

[
4
] Experts on Malay customs and protocol.
 

[
5
] See Chapter 18: The Malay Dilemma.
 

[
6
] During the war all windows were switched with black cloth, or lights were switched off, to prevent bombers from locating towns.
 

By refusing point blank to accept the Malayan Union proposed by the British, the apolitical, easygoing Malays broke with tradition and banded together for the first time in history to fight for their rights. Previously, they had always been loyal to their respective Sultans, never questioning their actions or rebelling against them. But this was different. The British proposal amounted to dispossessing them of their 
Tanah Melayu
, their Malay land. If this happened, the Malay states would become 
de jure
[1]
 as well as de facto colonies of the British like Singapore.
 

Knowing how badly the Malays of Singapore had fared under British colonial rule, the local Malays were not about to remain passive. Instead, they reacted with great vigour, which surprised both their Rulers and the British. The Malayan Union proposal can be said to have changed the culture and character of the Malays completely.

Through the ages the Malay states of the Peninsula had remained separate, as no powerful warlord or prince emerged to forcibly fuse these states or principalities into one nation. Perlis only became a state after a Kedah Sultan decided to give away a part of his fiefdom. Kubang Pasu, a district in Kedah and my former constituency, very nearly became a state after another Sultan of Kedah presented it to a relative of the ruling family. Fortunately, this was aborted. To survive, these small Malay states sought protection from powerful neighbours and agreed to become their vassals as long as they were allowed to administer their internal affairs. When their overlord or suzerain weakened, they would append themselves to other powerful nations. They could even be vassals of more than one country.

The main symbol of their vassalage was the yearly tributes they gave their overlords, the most important gifts being gold and silver flowers. Delegations would be sent with these tributes and, once in a while, the Ruler himself would accompany the offerings. When he did this, he would receive gifts in return from the rulers of the countries he submitted to. Frequently, these would include concubines, sometimes even a wife. The powerful Asian countries did not regard the Malay states as their colonies and so appointed no governors or proconsuls. But Siamese soldiers would sometimes raid the northern Malay states, killing the inhabitants, destroying their crops and burning their wooden houses. After they withdrew, however, they would leave no occupying forces. The status quo would be restored and the Malay states would continue to be self-ruled vassals of Siam.

Fearing these raids however, the Malay states tried to find new protectors. The Rulers thought they had found them when the Europeans arrived with their well-trained fighting force and superior weapons. In 1786, Kedah offered to cede the island of Penang to the British in return for their help against Siamese raids. The Rulers thought that they could become vassals of the European powers and still retain their autonomy. Unfortunately, the Europeans had very different ideas. In their scheme of things, international relations did not merely mean yearly tributes of gold and silver. The British readily accepted Penang but ended up not protecting Kedah against the Siamese. The Sultan of Kedah tried to regain Penang but failed. Instead, the British acquired a strip of the mainland opposite Penang to strengthen the defences of the island.

The Malays never expected that their status would change so drastically under European protection. The British used what seemed like mere poetic language in their agreements—that they would honour their word for as long as there were “the sun, moon and the stars”. All agreements between the Malay states and the British contained this phrase. If all these agreements to become British protectorates were indeed permanent, then independence for the Malay states or Malaya would be impossible. With hindsight, it may seem naïve, but it is unlikely that the Malay Rulers, used to a lyrical oral tradition, considered the literal meaning. To them, it was just a figure of speech; unfortunately, to the other parties, it was legally binding.