A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (9 page)

Of the foreign traders, the most numerous were the Chinese. They were everywhere, from Manila in the Philippines to Aceh in North Sumatra. Like all other traders, they did not bring their women along, and as a result many married locals. When their numbers were small they assimilated, adopting the language, culture and religion of the locals. This locally integrated Chinese community was favoured by Chinese mainland traders when making commercial transactions in the region. Some of these mixed and locally assimilated Chinese became involved in the cultivation of cash crops. In the Philippines, Java and elsewhere, as their numbers increased, they tended to keep more of their Chinese character. They gradually became a separate component of society, distinct from the local people.

When the Europeans came to Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century CE they introduced a monopolistic trade culture. Under these arrangements the Chinese traders and settlers took on a greater role since it was they who collected various kinds of produce from the local people and supplied them to the European traders. Close and strong connections were also formed from the high level of intermarriage between Spanish traders and Chinese women. A Spanish/Chinese Mestizo community soon emerged and the Spanish and the Chinese naturally gravitated towards them. Gradually, as the Chinese and Mestizo communities in Southeast Asia began to take away the business of the locals, tensions grew between the two groups. In the Philippines and Java, clashes took place and many Chinese were killed. Conflict arose now and then, but the business potential of the Southeast Asian entrepôt ports and their hinterlands was so great that, as soon as things settled down again, the Chinese would come back.

Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia expanded. Very soon they were building ships for inter-island trade and trade with China. As a result, more Southeast Asian locals lost their role in trade as Chinese junks replaced the ships of the Malays. Chinese influence also grew when they were able to offer their services to the local Rulers. At their suggestion, the Rulers farmed out the task of tax collection to them to take advantage of their efficiency and the larger sums that they were able to collect. Next, they were licensed to operate the opium, nutmeg, pepper and other monopolies. As the Chinese expanded their businesses their participation in administrative activities also increased, and the locals retreated further. Meanwhile, the superior skills of the Chinese in various crafts put the local craftsmen out of business. When the Chinese in the Philippines were expelled, the Spanish colonialists, the Mestizos and the local elites found themselves without shoes and other basic goods. Now indispensable, the Chinese had to be brought back.

It was the same in the Dutch East Indies, Siam, Burma, Malaya and Indochina. Everywhere the Europeans established their colonies, the Chinese moved in as middlemen in business and provided good craftsmen who were able to meet the needs of the European and local communities. In time the number of Chinese had so increased that their assimilation was no longer possible. When they brought their women with them, intermarriage with the locals stopped. Chinatowns started to become a feature of almost every urban area in Southeast Asia. The Chinese community’s usefulness ensured its protection by the European colonial powers as well as by the local Rulers.

The Indians and the Arabs, however, behaved differently. Their communities were never big nor did they encroach into the trading activities of the locals. They tended to blend with the locals and to intermarry when they wished to settle. They would eventually forget their own languages completely and would identify fully with the locals, whether they were Malays, Sumatrans, Javanese or the numerous tribes found in the eastern islands of the Malay Archipelago. When the Arabs and the Indian Muslims introduced Islam, no animosity was provoked as there was no forcible conversion of the indigenous people. Much of the missionary work was carried out by local converts.

The Europeans also behaved differently, arriving not in trading ships but in armed merchantmen. Nor did they believe in free trade. One of the Rulers of Macassar—now Ujung Pandang in Indonesia—had to point out to the Dutch that “God made the land and the sea; the land be divided among men and the sea he gave in common. It has never been heard that anyone be forbidden to sail the seas.”
[2]
 European nations wanted monopolies and so began by setting up fortified trading stations. Eventually, as a final solution, they conquered their trading partners to ensure supply and exclusivity.
 

Among the Europeans, the Spanish, and to a lesser degree the Portuguese, believed it was their God-given task to Christianise the locals. In Spain, after the re-conquest by the Catholics, Muslims and Jews who had been forcibly converted had to prove the genuineness of their conversion by eating pork. The same occurred in Southeast Asia. In this way, the Christian converts in the Philippines were also separated from the Muslims. It is only lately that the Filipinos have learnt to respect the Muslim aversion to pork. But the schism between Christians and Muslims remains very deep and has become a cause for conflict and war among the Filipinos. Since it was the Chinese who converted to Christianity more readily, they would get on better with the Europeans in the colonies. Changed religious belief caused no division within the Chinese community, nor were the Chinese active in spreading their own religions. The locals, whether Muslim or Christian, were much more tolerant of the Chinese than they were of each other.

To varying degrees, this was also the situation in the states of the Malay Peninsula and the British colonies of Singapore, Malacca and Penang. With the exception of Singapore, the Malay Peninsula had the largest number of Chinese immigrants anywhere in Southeast Asia. Their inflow was encouraged by the British, and the ethno-demographic consequences of that fact persist until the present day.

When the British colonised Malaya, the demography of the Malay Peninsula changed rapidly. In the Straits Settlements, the Chinese community dominated and, by the first quarter of the twentieth century, Singapore had become a de facto Chinese state. Only about 15 per cent of the population was Malay. Had the Malays been in the majority, Singapore would have been included as part of Malaya and Malaysia.

Before the Chinese came it was the Malays who had been the region’s traders. The peoples of Southeast Asia, including Malays, had formerly collected spices and forest products for shipment to the entrepôt port of Sri Vijaya, where they were exchanged with products from China, India, Arabia and Europe. But eventually all this business also came under the total control of the Chinese traders, who in time started their own spice gardens which displaced the Malay farmers. When the Europeans came, therefore, the Chinese were well positioned to act as the middlemen. Over time, more Chinese immigrants came to Southeast Asia to provide all the services that the European traders and colonialists needed, and in the end, even the Malays began to depend on the Chinese for their supplies and services.

That was the status quo ante upon the arrival of the European powers. The Malays were not just the indigenous people of the region but also the demographically preponderant part of the population. They still set the shape and form of the social and political order in which trading activities were carried out. But all that was to change. Under European domination of the region, the Malays lost their central position within the new framework of sociopolitical and commercial life.

The Malays might have prevented their land from being inundated by foreigners had they shown some inclination to take up the new jobs required to service the rubber and tin industries established by colonialists. But, now concentrated in the countryside and not the port cities or commercial and administrative centres, they preferred to remain padi planters and fishermen. As a result, the British brought in Indians and encouraged the Chinese to seize the many opportunities created by the new industries. In response, the Malays retreated further and further from all the urban activities in which they had once been involved. As the indigenous people became ever less involved in business, the commercial skills that they possessed deteriorated. Had they persisted, they would not have been as marginalised as they were after the Europeans gained total control over their land.

By the time the Pacific War began, the various Southeast Asian natives (or ethnic Malays) had been sidelined and had become the poorest people in their own countries. In most parts of Southeast Asia that had been colonised by the Europeans, the social and economic order was roughly the same: the Europeans were at the top, followed by the Eurasians, the Chinese, and others, with the indigenous people trailing at the bottom. In the Malay Peninsula, the most extreme examples of economic and social stratification were found in the British colonies of Singapore, Penang and Malacca. The Malays did not relish the prospect of becoming a poverty-stricken minority in the Peninsula as they had become in Singapore.

An awareness of history and the knowledge of what had happened in Singapore caused the Malays to be anxious about their position in a world where others exerted economic—and ultimately political control—over them. Some argued they were too pessimistic about their future in a British-ruled Malayan Union, but anyone who looks at Singapore today must see that they were not being overly cautious. Although the Malays make up 15 per cent of the population of Singapore, they are hardly visible and form the poorest segment of the population, working mainly in blue-collar jobs there.

By contrast, Malaysia is far more open. The Chinese do hold senior posts in both the Federal and state governments. Despite affirmative action in favour of the Malays, it is the Chinese community that takes the lead in business. They make up 90 per cent of Malaysia’s millionaires, and more than a handful are billionaires. Even though the Malays are supposedly privileged, the Chinese in Malaysia are nowhere near as deprived as the Malays of Singapore.

It was not simply a Malay demand but an imperative of national social cohesion and survival that a serious plan of government action had to be devised and implemented to remedy the disadvantaged position of the nation’s Malay population. This was necessary to undo the close identification of race or ethnicity with economic function and status, a legacy of the racially organised division of labour created by British colonial rule. It was important to do so in the overall context of the reduction and ultimate elimination of poverty in Malaysian society as a whole. Hence the New Economic Policy or NEP, an affirmative action programme to redress the disadvantaged position of the Malays and secure their socioeconomic future.

The case for positive discrimination is reasonable. It is now universally accepted that in taxation, the rich must be taxed at a higher rate than the poor. Yet if the revenue of a country is spent only on people who pay high taxes, lower income groups in villages and slums would become forgotten people. There would be no sanitation, fewer schools—if any—and no medical facilities for them. Because of their high financial contribution to the administration, the rich would enjoy safe, clean environments, whereas the poor would be consigned to disorder and squalor. To prevent the rich from exploiting the poor, trade unions and labour laws have been established. Without discriminatory laws and taxes on wealth to protect workers, the wealth generated by industry and business would accrue only to the rich capitalists and entrepreneurs. Malaysia would not be the stable and prosperous country that it is today but for this discriminatory policy.

Malays must take the next phase of history and their future into their own hands. They must master the knowledge, wisdom and understanding that can enable them to do so effectively. They must acquire important skills that will empower them. But these alone will not be enough. The Malays must revisit their past and learn from history’s tough lessons in order to secure their place in the world.

ENDNOTES

[
1
] The winds upon which those engaged in the growing international trade relied.
 

[
2
]
Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume One, Part Two, From c. 1500 to 1800
, edited by Nicholas Tarling, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
 

In 1933 I was among the lucky few in Kedah to gain admission into the Government English School. Unfortunately, thousands of others did not get that opportunity. Had they all been armed with a good education, they might have improved their own lives and society’s well-being.

Unlike most Malay boys, I was not admitted into the English medium school through the Special Malay Class. Before World War II Malay students who finished Standard Four in the Malay schools were placed in Special Malay Classes in the English schools for two years, where they studied the English language and other subjects in English. Instead, when I was eight, my father took me out of the Malay School in Seberang Perak, where I was in Standard Two, and had me admitted into Primary One in the Government English School. Having been a teacher himself in an English school, he believed his children would get a better education there. All my siblings followed the same route, except one of my brothers who went to an Arabic school first before going to the Government English School.

My classmates in school were mostly non-Malays. I made friends with several of them, including Munusamy, Ooi Eng Ban, his brother Ooi Eng Hooi, and Tan Kiat Seng. Kiat Seng’s father was a rice dealer and was quite well off. Eng Ban’s family rented out rickshaws. I had a friendly rivalry with him because it was always either he or I who would come first in class. Most of my classmates could speak only colloquial Malay and this forced me to speak English with them. It was not easy but I managed fairly well, and I mastered the language faster than the boys in the Special Malay classes. Since I had started reading in English much earlier, I had a bigger vocabulary than most of the other boys. By the time I reached Standard Seven I realised I could express myself in English as well as I could in Malay. I came in first in our Standard Four class and four of us—including Eng Ban—got a double promotion to Standard Six. All the teachers and students—Malays, Indians and Chinese—mixed well. I do not think we noticed ethnic differences at the time. We took it for granted that this was the way things were.