THE SALAH FAHAMS OF OUR MISUNDERSTOOD HISTORY (BY:Howl Pillai 27 Sept 2013) Very soon we will hear our PM and his henchmen say without batting an eye that he and his party were salah faham, misunderstood, by the Rakyat, when he promised to roll back the draconian ISA in the campaign leading up to GE13. What! Another misunderstood? But really, why should anyone be surprised that the ISA is replaced with the PCA. There is a familiar pattern to all this. Contrary to the spin spewed out by our historians-for-hire, Malaysian history is replete with salah fahams. Five major misunderstoods, actually. There were innumerable minor ones, especially in a twenty two year period when the country was ruled by Apa Nama Itu, who not surprisingly cannot remember his name carried no “bin” as recorded in the IC first issued to him. Another salah faham but thats another …….??? Apa Nama Itu? Fastback to Kedah,1786. The beleaguered Sultan is looking for a way out. And he is no fool. The Siamese are itching to invade his country from the north and in the south the war-like Bugis of Selangor, are on the march, north, having defeated Perak. The Burmese are also an ever-present threat. The East India Company, a kind of PNB of the United Kingdom offers help and protection in exchange for an island. The Sultan, in desperate straits allows the Company the use of Penang Island in exchange for British protection, or so he thought. The threat to his state passes. And Penang prospers. It is a commercial hub of some repute now. Many merchants from Malacca have moved here. But the bulk of the population is dirt poor. There is a sizeable population of Chinese and Indians on the island doing all manner of menial tasks - from vegetable gardening to road making to the building trade. They had to develop a largely uninhabited island, mind you! Later still prisoners and opium from India is thrown in. And now they work till they drop dead. And no one asked them when they were sweating it out, “Apa Lagi Cina Mau?” or “Apa lagi Keling mau?”. There is even a Kampong Malabar now but there is no sign yet of Apa Nama Itu’s family among these early settlers. They came much later - a hundred years later after all the hard work had been done. Clearly they are talkers, not the doers. Then out of the blue, in about 1790, our first major misunderstood! Seeing the burgeoning wealth of the new colony, the Sultan now claims the Company misunderstood him. He never meant to cede Penang. He threatens to take the island back by force. But the wily Empire knows what the fuss is all about. The British officials know he has run out of funds, what with a palace upgrade and a household that is close to a harem. They offer him and annual payment of 6000 Spanish silver dollars. And at the same time the Company negotiates the purchase of a slice of territory on the mainland, the later Province Wellesley. More money to spend! The Sultan agrees to a “2 in 1” package deal at 10 000 Spanish dollars per annum. Like a miracle, the misunderstood disappears. We move on. Singapore,1819. Raffles, a fluent speaker of the Malay language has negotiated an agreement with Hussein, the by-passed and unhappy under-king of Riau and Temenggong Ibrahim, the titular head of a band of followers in Telok Blangah, Singapore Island. Both of them, impoverished and without any prospects for the future, agree to a quickie deal. Besides, the Dutch in Indonesia are uncompromising and rapacious. In exchange for recognition of Hussein as the Sultan of Johore and an annual payment these two gentlemen allow the East India Company, the lesser devil among the Orang Putih, to establish a trading post on the island. The agreement is signed though not sealed as neither of these gentlemen have a ‘chop mohor besar’, the royal seal, between them. But the annual payment in shining silver dollar coins is hard to resist. The days of scraping and scrounging are finally over! The free port of Singapore prospers beyond anyone’s imagination. Boom time! Location, law and the entrepreneurship of the new settlers from Malacca, Penang and the rest of South East Asia make Singapore buzz with energy. In a mere two years it becomes a leading port, attracting the commerce of the whole Nusantara. Sultan Hussein and the Temenggong now make their move. We were misunderstood, they say. Raffles must have been tempted to ask, “Apa lagi Melayu mau?” but he bites his tongue. Instead he puts his foot down, explaining to these two gentlemen that Singapore Port is not a British port on a Malay Island but a British port on British territory. He offers to increase their annual payments, though. But no cuts, commissions or gifts from ships arriving at the port. Those are the old ways of doing things, says Raffles. Sultan Hussein and the Temenggong cede the island for more money. The misunderstood disappears like the devil. Now for our third misunderstood. Perak,1870s. There are three claimants to the throne and all three control a section of the country’s major asset, the three hundred miles long Perak River, the north-south maintenance free water highway. Plenty of toll here. And there was also the curse of tin! Chinese miners by the thousands have been brought in by the Malay chiefs to work the ore-rich river valleys. Soon there are more miners than Malays in the state. These chiefs are working closely with rich Chinese merchants in Malacca, Penang and Singapore - the Straits Settlements of the British Empire. These merchants provide the capital and the know-how. The Malay chiefs collect a cut on the takings in lieu of a tax on the land leased out for mining. Everyone is happy. Again no one asked: “Apa lagi Cina mau?” Then a vicious and protracted clan war breaks out between the Chinese miners. The Ghee Hins and the Hai Sans are at each other’s throats. The rival claimants to the throne of Perak and the Malay chiefs are drawn in. They take sides. They are on the money trail. One of the claimants, Raja Abdullah writes a grovelling letter to the Governor of the Straits Settlements. He pleads for interference. He says Perak is a failed state. He says he is amenable to British advice and tutelage. The meeting to sort out the natives and the Chinese takes place in Pangkor in 1874. Twirling his mighty moustache Governor Clark makes the rival Chinese gangs pay a money bond and give a promise not to break the peace. Then he gives Abdullah a shot at being Sultan of Perak. Grateful, Sultan Abdullah agrees to the appointment of a British Resident whose advice he agrees to act upon in all matters except those touching on Malay customs and religion. Birch, the new Resident comes to Perak. He is the new broom who sweeps clean. He is dead set on enforcing the rule that tax collection is a function that must only be carried out by officials appointed by the Sultan. And he makes it clear that the taxes collected belong to the state and not the Sultan. The territorial chiefs, the ‘Little Napoleons’ of the day resent centralised control. They will be out of money soon. And besides that was the only way they knew to get rich quickly. Abdullah and the chiefs now say they were misunderstood at Pangkor. The Resident has no executive powers and his advice is non-binding, they say. There is rebellion in the air. On the first day of Raya, in 1875, Birch is attacked and killed at Pasir Salak. But he is not the first one to die in the rebellion. Birch’s Malay translator, Mohamad Arshad is knifed to death by the rebels on the doorstep of the lone Chinese shop in the village. History hushes up the unpalatable death of the loyal translator. And no one asks the Chinese shopkeeper: “Apa lagi Cina mau?” We move on to our fourth misunderstood. 1946, Malaya. The Japanese have been defeated. The British have returned, broken but unbowed. The country is in ruins. It would take much effort and energy to restore its fortunes. But then there were millions of Indians and Chinese, most of them non-citizens, working in everything that needed working - in trade, in farms, in mines, in plantations and in public works. The British come up with the Malayan Union Plan. The Union offers equal citizenship to all the peoples of this land, now on its knees. Of course such a Union would quickly restore the economic interests of the Empire. All the Sultans of the Malay states sign on the dotted line for they know their subjects working by themselves cannot complete the task of repair and reconstruction of the devastated land. But the Malay masses rise to resist the Union. Such a Union will forever change the native character of the land, they say. We must remain numero uno, say their politicians. The Sultans now renege on the deal by saying they signed on the dotted line because they misunderstood the terms of the Malayan Union Plan. “Salah faham”, they say in unison - our fourth misunderstood. The plan is scrapped. Chin Peng takes on the Empire while the Malays take on their much discredited rulers. Power passes from the feudal rulers to the politicians among them. But no one can stop an idea whose time has come. Merdeka comes twelve years later - freedom for the people of this land under a brand new all inclusive Constitution neatly written up by jurists and judges from the Commonwealth, the Empire included. No spilling of blood, no gunfire and not even the banging of tables - a nicely negotiated settlement on a platter. And the Constitution spells out in Clause 153 that the Malays will enjoy certain special privileges but these should not be at the expense of the legitimate rights of the other races. Following Merdeka, the more radical Malay politicians now claim Clause 153 has been misunderstood, our fifth in history. It is more than a privilege, they say. This clause gives Malays supremacy over all the other races, claim these politicians. “Apa lagi Cina dan India Mau?”, they shout till their hoarse. To enforce their views they raise a riot and the rest is history. The Constitution is amended some six hundred times in the years following May 1969 but these are all minor misunderstandings. And now the sixth misunderstood - the PCA in place of the ISA. And it begs the question: Can we build a nation on so much misunderstooding?
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 03:49:37 +0000
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