A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (22 page)

Our room was furnished with creaky iron folding beds and I was so conscious of the noise that I did not move at all that night. I woke up the next morning in the exact same position as when I went to sleep. The three of us shared a room for several nights until another room was allocated to me. This time, thankfully, I was sharing with another freshie.

I still got tubbed a few times though. The seniors ragged me and the 3As I had earned in the Senior Cambridge exam were mercilessly ridiculed. With those grades, they said, I really did not deserve to be there. I was told to pack my bags and go home. Our seniors also made us do ear squats. Far worse were push-ups, because my arms were never strong. Even the girls got ragged and were made to suck pacifiers. The seniors appeared to be having great fun with all this but there were a few bullies among them who went too far. When I became a senior I too enjoyed ragging, but I did not ever cross the line and become sadistic.

I took most of the ragging on the chin but some of the remarks were offensive. All the Malay boys were called 
tanam padi
 (literally, “plant rice” since the seniors did not know the Malay for “padi planter”) or 
pancing ikan
 (“catch fish”, though what they meant was “fisherman”). These were crude references to the lowly position Malays held in the Malayan social order back then. They were hurtful names, but they only made me even more determined to do well.

When the term began, I was interviewed once more by a Mr Austin Hill, the college bursar. He wanted to know whether my family would be sending me any money. When I told him I would be getting $10 a month from my father, my monthly government allowance of $25 was immediately reduced to $15. But I did not complain—I learnt to be frugal. I went out only once a week and did not buy extra items like new clothes. If I had any money left over after buying what I needed, I would treat myself to a film at the imposing, 12-storeyed Cathay Cinema, the tallest building in Singapore at the time. Otherwise, I would go to Marine Parade by the sea where I could get a plate of 
tauhu bakar
 (grilled tofu) at a reasonable price. The Singapore Traction Company operated a good and affordable bus service. Things were priced in multiples of ten cents or less in those days, and $25 turned out to be quite adequate.

In between swotting, I also earned a side income from writing for the 
Straits Times
 and 
Sunday Times
. With one or two articles a month, I could supplement my income by as much as $50. The most I ever earned for one piece was $40. Most of my articles were about the problems of the Malays, and had titles like “Malay padi planters need help”, “Plight of the fisher folk” and “New thoughts on nationality”. I urged for Malay to be made the national language, pointing out that it was not just the language of a few Malays in Malaya, but also the language of 120 million Indonesians.

Allington Kennard, then the editor of the 
Straits Times
, eventually offered me a job as a full-time journalist. At that time in the late 1940s, the 
Straits Times
 had very few Malay journalists on its staff but I politely declined. Getting a degree and thereby developing my political career was much too important to me. Perhaps it was a happy coincidence but my articles appeared quite regularly in the 
Sunday Times
 after that meeting. I used the 
nom de plume
 of “C.H.E. Det”. “Det” was my family nickname and I masked my identity by separating the letters C, H and E of the Malay “Che”, an abbreviation of ‘Inche’ which loosely meant “Mr”. This byline also veiled the gender of the writer. Some years after I became Prime Minister my “C.H.E. Det” articles were compiled in a book published by Berita Publishing, at one time one of the biggest publishing houses in the country. Datuk A. Kadir Jasin, who was head of Berita Publishing and chief editor of the New Straits Times group at that time, wrote the foreword. I had not bothered to keep the articles, so Kadir had to find them himself in the newspaper archives.

At college, I found myself among mostly Chinese and Indian students as Malays made up only 10 per cent of the 70-odd students. The non-Malay students were brilliant, each having entered with a minimum of 6As. I believe that, with my 3As, I gained entry partly due to the fact that the Government of the Malayan Union wanted some Malay students to take up medicine. Once, in Physics class, I tried to help a Chinese student by explaining how to carry out a particular experiment. He ignored what I said and turned to another student, probably because he did not trust my grasp of the subject. That semester was my first, and I topped the class in Physics. The snooty student failed the first-year examinations and had to leave.

I made friends with many of the seniors as well as those in my class, irrespective of race or religion. I was not very involved in student politics and did not contest any posts in the Students’ Union as I could not afford to spend time away from my studies. I was, however, appointed editor of the Medical College magazine, 
The Medico
, when I was in my third year. The publication was supported by advertisements from pharmaceutical companies. An editor’s life, I was to learn, had unimaginable pitfalls. I was horrified when, in one issue, “propanol cream” came out as “propaganda cream”. The company concerned was naturally very annoyed, and I was asked to produce new copies with the correct word. Fortunately, I was not charged extra for the copies.

The Class of ’47 was an unusually close-knit group. We had all been through a war and the Japanese Occupation and we were unusually mature for our age. We had suffered ragging together. We had also been thrown together on the journeys by military truck between the Medical College and Raffles College, where the Chemistry lessons were taught. The military truck was the only form of transport we had then, and we would all get in the back and hang on, standing up throughout the 20-minute journey. The Medical College was only about four kilometres away from Raffles and there were not that many vehicles on the road in those days.

My first roommate had served in the British Royal Air Force and had been a prisoner of war in Japan. We often had dinner together in Harrower Hall, debating the issues of the day with one another. After a year in the Tan Tock Seng hostel I moved to the Federal Hostel, which was closer to campus. My accommodation was a temporary annex, a shed that had been converted into 12 single rooms, known as The Stables.

For a few years as a student, I managed to refrain from getting involved in campus politics. I wanted to focus on my books, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the political events in Malaya. Unable to be directly involved in mainland politics, I joined the Muslim Society of the Medical and Raffles Colleges. The majority of the Muslim students were Malays and the society afforded us an opportunity to discuss politics and the fate of the Malays. Forming a Malay society would have been regarded with suspicion, and I was very conscious that the financial aid I was receiving could be withdrawn if I displeased the authorities.

Inevitably, the small number of Malays admitted into the Medical and Raffles Colleges in the universities attracted our attention. We decided something had to be done to increase the Malay student body. In the group with me was Aminuddin Baki, a student from Perak who was studying Arts. He was a great nationalist and was very passionate about education. He later joined the Government service in Malaysia and quickly rose to become the Director of Education. Unfortunately, his intensity and dedication to his job affected his health and brought him an early death in 1964, at the age of about 40. It was a great loss to the Malays.

Aminuddin suggested that the Muslim Society conduct a survey of Malay students in the senior classes in schools with a view to helping them achieve good results for university entry. I was given a stack of forms to conduct the survey in Kedah during my first semester holidays. Back home, I went about meeting Malay students in the senior classes in the English schools. But the Police Special Branch thought I was up to something subversive and called me in for questioning. Despite my explanations, I was told to stop the survey. Not wanting to get into any trouble that might affect my studies, I did as I was told.

In Malaya, the political terrain was changing rapidly. The Malayan Union had been replaced by the Federation of Malaya on 1 February 1948. Dato’ Onn Jaafar was the first Malay who was confident enough to publicly envision and articulate the case for a free Malaya. But it was the Tunku who eventually led us to Independence. In 1951, after he took over the presidency of UMNO, a group of Malay students from the colleges in Singapore decided to see him.  Although he was already talking about self-government, Malays in general doubted their ability to take charge.

This fear stemmed from various factors. Most Malays were extremely poor and very few had tertiary education or professional qualifications. They were also totally uninvolved in the economic activities of the country. There was widespread apprehension that the Chinese, despite their smaller numbers, would dominate an independent Malaya. The situation in Singapore, where most Malays lived in slums and worked as drivers and manual labourers, was an eye-opener for Malay students at the two colleges.

Without a sufficient number of Malays qualified to take over from the British, we students felt that Independence would not enhance the position of the Malays. We might well end up exchanging British rule for Chinese and Indian rule. In 1947 one British officer, H.T. Bourdillon, stated that “to give Malays full self-government within the next five years would probably mean the rule of the Malays by the Chinese.” We did not know the official British view then, but our assumption was apparently shared by some British observers.

It was with trepidation that we journeyed to Johor Baru to see the Tunku at the dilapidated shop house that served as the UMNO headquarters then. There were six of us, and Aminuddin Baki naturally assumed leadership. I had met the Tunku in Kedah when I was in the Pemuda Melayu Kedah
[1]
 and he was the Superintendent of Education, but I did not know him well. Of all my siblings, he knew my brother Mahadi best. They had been very naughty together as boys and would harass rickshaw pullers by throwing stones at them or stealing their rickshaws. From a young age, the Tunku loved playing practical jokes. He would tell people that someone they knew had died. They would rush to the house for the funeral or to comfort the grieving, only to discover the person alive and well, drinking tea.
 

At the time I did not think that the Tunku was of Dato’ Onn’s calibre. I could not imagine his leadership of UMNO bringing about significant changes, and I certainly could not see him leading Malaya to Independence. I was so wrong.

At that meeting, we argued with the Tunku about Malay readiness for Independence. He was not very patient and was not inclined to explain his views in depth. Needless to say, the meeting did not last long. Although the UMNO-MCA Alliance had not yet been formed at the time,
[2]
 he was convinced that he could get the Chinese to support him and to cooperate. I remember him hinting that we Malays had the guns to do the job, possibly in reference to the overwhelming number of Malays in the police force at that time. We did not force the issue. 
Adat
 dictated that we had to show him respect.
 

But we were not convinced by his political strategy. I know that I was not. I did not relish the idea of using violence to maintain Malay rule in independent Malaya. Besides, I doubted the British would allow a situation in which the Malays used force against the non-Malays.

By 1948, the communists had already launched their armed struggle and the British were less than successful in the anti-guerrilla war. How, I wondered, could a Malay government do better? This was just one of my doubts about Independence.

We returned to Singapore far from happy. Though I badly wanted to, there was nothing I could do to influence the developments in Malaya. I was just a medical student and a nobody in UMNO and I had not updated my membership in the party. The only option left was to concentrate on passing my examinations and getting through all of them in the shortest time possible.

I worked very hard, reading my textbooks over and over again. Soon I found that by doing this, I could literally see the pages of text and illustrations in my mind. In examinations I could reproduce the information accurately. When I was leading the Government many years later I remembered this technique and urged all Malaysians to read their materials several times, to be able to retain the information and use it with ease. It is the same with manipulative skills, oratory, or any kind of work, including administration and management. It is always difficult in the beginning but with repetition, everything can be mastered. Experience, and most certainly repeated experience, is the best teacher.

When I first entered college, six years seemed like a long time to my young mind. Very quickly though, the course came to an end. The last two years were devoted to the subjects to be taken for the final qualifying examinations: medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology. When the examinations came round, I was well prepared. I knew I did well in medicine and surgery because my professors did not ask too many questions during the viva voce.

I got through all my examinations in the Medical College except for obstetrics and gynaecology in my final year. It was very disappointing, especially as I had no intention of being an obstetrician or gynaecologist—all I wanted to do was pass my examination. Professor Benjamin Shears, who later became the second President of Singapore, was the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology.
[3]
 He had gone to the United States and returned an exponent of American obstetric and gynaecological procedures. We were therefore taught the American way of doing things, but this apparently differed from the methods favoured by the British school.