Forgotten Wars (61 page)

We in Malaya have adopted and want to apply the dynamic conceptions of nationalism and democracy. Nationalism, if it is to be a unifying force, requires the elimination of communalism from political life. Democracy demands for its free operation an understanding of the conflicting claims of race and language and a willingness to compromise on major political issues after full and free discussion.
¹²²

When the Malay Nationalist Party met in Malacca, Dr Burhanuddin had called on him, and Tan Cheng Lock had promptly offered to raise $500,000 for Malay economic development. In the years to come he was to devote much of his energy into brokering an accord between the Malay political and administrative class and Chinese economic muscle.
¹²³

The British saw Tan Cheng Lock as a communist dupe. ‘A disgruntled “failed KCMG”’, the writer of one intelligence brief sneered, ‘who has time and money to squander on antics which keep him in the public eye.’
¹²⁴
A key role was played by the secretary of the AMCJA, Gerald de Cruz, the principal liaison with the Malayan Democratic Union, who took the lead in the organization, and the communist leadership. Certainly it was the MCP that provided much of the mass support: 300,000 from the Federations of Trade Unions alone. Yet the MCP leaders would later regret committing so far to a movement whose agenda they could not control.
¹²⁵
From most accounts of its meetings, the PUTERA–AMCJA was a multivalent body, which no one party succeeding in dominating. The vital need for Malay support gave PUTERA a strong hand. This was particularly apparent in the debates on the constitution. Eber had argued from the outset that the only credible way to oppose the federal plan was to propose an alternative. Its founding principles were hammered out at a series of sub-committee meetings, the most critical in July 1947 at
the office of the New Democratic Youth League in Foch Avenue, Kuala Lumpur, a building they shared with the Malayan Communist Party. The meeting, held in English, was attended by the leading figures of the movements involved and chaired by Ishak Haji Muhammad. Mustapha Hussain was witness to it. Ishak, he noted, chose careful words: ‘Everyone adopted a passive attitude, a patient disposition, a peaceful mind and a united stance.’ The central proposal by the Malayan Democratic Union was for a common ‘Malayan’ citizenship, but straightaway this ran into difficulty with the PUTERA representatives. The Malay people, they argued, would not accept the word ‘Malayan’; it was a term imposed on them that did not connote the Malays. The Cambridge-educated Malayan Democratic Union leader, Lim Kean Chye, was indignant: ‘We are not dogs to be led by the people. We lead the people.’ This provoked an angry retort from Mustapha Hussain: ‘Do not humiliate the people.’ The Malays, he went on, ‘slept in bus stations and train stations in order to attend this conference. Some did not even have breakfast. They drank coffee out of a pail. But you, sir (looking at John Eber), even though you were given a comfortable rattan chair, you still need a folded towel to serve as a cushion. Who among us truly needs independence, you or us?’
¹²⁶

Yet a way forward was found. The term ‘Malayan’ was translated as
Melayu
. To UMNO, this connoted race, but to the Malay left – in the writings of its ideologue Dr Burhanuddin, for example – it had quite a different meaning. In recent months Burhanuddin had placed less emphasis on a Greater Indonesia and more on the inclusion of non-Malays in a
kebangsaan Melayu
, a
Melayu
nation. This was open to non-Malays, if they were to embrace it wholeheartedly, to sever their links with other nations and demonstrate their love for Malaya by a ‘willingness to change their
bangsa
to
bangsa Melayu
.’ The
Melayu
, as PUTERA understood it, carried within it the intent ‘to live and die as a Malay’. But a further question arose. Islam was a vital component of Malay history and culture. In the vernacular, to
masuk Melayu
, ‘become Malay’, meant also to become a Muslim. Did this mean that to truly belong the non-Malays had to accept Islam? The PUTERA spokesmen seemed to deny that it did:
Melayu
was solely a legal and political category, and freedom of religion was
guaranteed in the constitution proposals. ‘The content of “
Melayu
” nationality’, Boestamam insisted when casting the deciding vote on the issue, ‘is just and not oppressive, wide and progressive.’
¹²⁷
The non-Malays, too, saw the need for an exclusive allegiance to Malaya, but saw nationality as grounded in the individual rights of the citizen; a legal category, which, in a multiracial context, had no implications for cultural conformity.
¹²⁸

The crucial, creative ambiguity was left unresolved; it was, in a sense, lost in translation. Yet the People’s Constitution, as drafted largely by John Eber, went further than the British ever did in envisaging an exclusive nationality for Malaya’s people. It dissolved the distinctions between nationality and citizenship – between indigenous and non-indigenous – that lay at the heart of British proposals. The people’s alternative enshrined
jus soli
, and offered citizenship to all those who had lived in Malaya for eight of the preceding ten years. In effect, this made the common experience of the Japanese occupation the defining transition. The final test of loyalty was ‘the country in which a man would prefer to lay his bones, and for which he is prepared to die to defend, is his home’. The People’s Constitution united Malaya and Singapore in a federation where the rulers were sovereign but constitutional monarchs governed by a legislature elected through universal suffrage and, in a further concession to the Malays, for the first nine years 55 per cent of the representatives were to be of Malay descent. The Malay language would be the national language, although other tongues might be used in the new national assembly. Malay religion and custom would remain in the hands of the Malays, and a Council of Races would monitor legislation for discrimination. But these provisions failed to impress the defenders of Malay primacy within the British administration. One observed that it left the Malays like ‘the unfortunate king, so well known in their history, whose “bottom was being stuck with thorns at the same time that his mouth was being fed with bananas”’.
¹²⁹

The People’s Constitution received only passing attention from the British. Gent told the Colonial Office that the AMCJA commanded no support and should be ignored. ‘An academic exercise’, was the conclusion in London; ‘a typical production of people unaccustomed to political power and responsibility, and either unaware of, or unwilling
to face, the real difficulties of personal and racial animosities, and of economic rivalries, which make Malayan politics so confused and the problem of settling a stable constitution so intractable’.
¹³⁰
This was an astonishing statement. To its creators, the constitution came directly out of the experience of managing difference. ‘It was quite clear from the outset’, Philip Hoalim argued later, ‘that our partners accepted the leadership of the Malayan Democratic Union. We, for our part, put unity first on our list of priorities and fashioned a constitution which would embody this unity in practice.’
¹³¹
But the British were not interested in alternatives. After the
volte-face
on the Malayan Union the previous year, they could not back down a second time, Gent least of all. MacDonald was less convinced, but the mounting confrontation with the unions in the course of 1947 and the vital need for Malay backing settled the matter. The final version of the federal constitution that was published in July was barely amended by the consultations. Faced with the intractable opposition of the British and UMNO, the united front leaders decided to take direct action.

PUTERA–AMCJA announced a
hartal
, or stoppage, for 20 October 1947, the date of the opening of the session of the British Parliament at which the future of Malaya would be discussed. The
hartal
was a new concept in Malaya, a staple of the civil disobedience of the Indian National Congress, which Tan Cheng Lock had admired during his sojourn there. It was unprecedented too in that, through Tan Cheng Lock’s mediation, the Chinese
towkays
joined the demonstrations, led by the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and the clan associations. They resented chiefly the watered-down citizenship provisions of the British proposals and the exclusion of Singapore. They had lobbied London and the consultative committee to no effect. The Chinese leaders who had sat on it, H. S. Lee and Leong Yew Koh, helped broker an understanding with the PUTERA–AMCJA. The main support came from Singapore, from Lee Kong Chian, the son-in-law of the overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah Kee, who commanded the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce. It was an unnatural alliance. Many businessmen refused to co-operate with communists. The Malayan Democratic Union was reluctant to work with bodies whose protest was ‘strictly negative’ against the colonial constitution,
and which did not support the nationality proposals of the people’s alternative. The combined leadership never met; it merely declared protests on the same day. But the participation of Chinese business made the
hartal
a monumental and well-financed undertaking: 400,000 copies of the manifesto and 300,000 posters were distributed, and 300 propaganda groups toured the country to prepare the ground.
¹³²
In the words of one local writer: ‘In coffee shop and government office, in rubber estate lines and bus depots, by Governors over the radio and by leader writers in the press, people talked of local issues such as self-government, citizenship and communalism in a manner that made the six-year gap between 1941 and 1947 seem sixty. People talked of Malaya as home. It bewildered many.’
¹³³

By all accounts, Singapore and Malaya came to a complete standstill on 20 October. ‘Kuala Lumpur that day’, Ahmad Boestamam wrote, ‘was deserted, like a land defeated by the invincible
garuda
[the eagle of apocalyptic legend]. Only PUTERA–AMCJA were to be seen going round the town to verify that the hartal was really a complete success.’
¹³⁴
The scene was repeated throughout the country: the port of Singapore was throttled, and only the remoter villages and estates were less affected, although Malay support was strong in the fishing
kampongs
of the east coast. The organizers declared the
hartal
to be 90 per cent effective: ‘It was the first political strike in Malaya to be observed by all sections of the people.’
¹³⁵
The British refused to acknowledge the extent of the opposition it demonstrated. The Malayan Security Service reduced participation to statistics: 5 per cent joined for ‘political motives’; 30 per cent through ‘Chinese defensive nationalism’; 50 per cent were ‘sheep’, following in fear or ignorance; 5 per cent ‘disgruntled’ and a further 10 per cent ‘incidentals’. Yet it struggled to find evidence of intimidation anywhere.
¹³⁶

But then came the backlash. Tan Cheng Lock was now under direct attack from the British and from his own community. Many Chinese blamed him for conceding Malay majority rule in the People’s Constitution, and baulked at the implications of the
Melayu
nationality. The
Straits Times
whipped up the communist bogey. From this point, Tan Cheng Lock absented himself from most PUTERA–AMCJA meetings. It was said that the outbreak of labour trouble on his own rubber estates contributed to this.
¹³⁷
The alliance with Chinese
Chambers of Commerce was not to be repeated. By the end of 1947 the fastest growing political party in Malaya was the party of business, the Kuomintang. In the first days of peace it had lain low, but now it was looking to assert its position. When MacDonald convened his summit meeting on the MCP in June, those present acknowledged that, along with UMNO on the peninsula, the Kuomintang was the only effective counter-balance to the MCP. Only the Kuomintang’s own reputation for violence stood in the way of open co-operation with it. MacDonald still cherished hopes that ‘a centre or Centre-Left party’ might emerge with which the British could treat.
¹³⁸
‘Our ultimate and supreme aim’, he announced in a broadcast on the eve of the
hartal
, ‘is a government of the peoples of Malaya, for the peoples of Malaya and by the peoples of Malaya’.
¹³⁹
But the British had now reconciled themselves to alliance with ethnic-based parties in order to hold on to their diminished Asian empire.

The British repudiated the movement that most closely resembled the multiracial ‘Malayan’ nationalism they had originally sought to create. But the exuberant populism of the left was anathema to them. They could not see beyond the participation of the Malayan Communist Party and its proxies in PUTERA–AMCJA, and with this the People’s Constitution would be for ever tainted. It was also to be dismissed as a superficial, paper alliance.
¹⁴⁰
But this is not how it was seen by those involved at the time. It was seen as a great experiment, of learning by doing, in which the leaders of many different communities were debating, arguing, dividing and reconciling in the name of freedom and unity. It was a moment – in the face of the competing pull of communal politics – when a popular multiracial nationalism seemed a real possibility, and, in retrospect, an historic missed opportunity, perhaps.
¹⁴¹
The PUTERA–AMCJA did not collapse through division or disillusionment. Despite the withdrawal of the
towkays
, in late 1947 the morale of its leaders was high. Its fate was decided for it when it became caught in the crossfire of the looming confrontation between the British and the MCP. But this would not be solely a conflict between imperialism and its enemies. Across Asia a second conflict was looming, a war that would be fought to neutralize the central political legacy of the first. In the Japanese war, a new generation had formed popular movements that threatened to overturn prewar
hierarchies. In the intoxicating air of the post-war spring, Asia’s
pemuda
had seized the streets and villages, filled them with their propaganda and stood up against imperialism and feudalism. But now, in free Asia and colonial Asia, this fresh-won freedom – of youth, of women, of workers – had to contend with the re-establishment of more conservative, patriarchal forms of authority. Bosses, landlords and bureaucrats would attempt to claw back some of the ground they had lost; 1948 would be a year of confrontation.