11 - Prisons to Mind in Malaysia's Nation Building

Summary

Introduction

The thrust of the argument in this chapter builds on the idea that Malaysian nation building has been occurring in an atmosphere of conservatism and compromise. Undoubtedly, there were many parties involved that were correctly called radical, but these were successfully neutralized in the run-up to independence. This was best noted in how the Alliance Model easily overshadowed the option embodied in Onn Ja'afar's Independence of Malaya Party or the communist path.

However, the Alliance Model, built around the three parties — United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) — fossilized racial categories in a system of apparent inter-racial cooperation under Malay leadership. More importantly, the major controversial points of the Constitution were hammered out under its watch, leading to the myth of The Social Contract, where the Chinese and Indian parties purportedly accepted perpetual Malay dominance in exchange for citizenship in the new country.

Despite the relative lack of violence, Malaysian independence occurred in an atmosphere of severe crisis and strategic compromise. What need discussing are thus the origins of the discursive structure of Malaysian politics. Let's go back in time to the pre-Merdeka era, at least for a while, to determine the strong trends that have continued to form the country's self-image to this day.

Colonial Retreat vs Communist Ascendance

The British Malayan colonies changed colonial hands in 1942, along with most of East Asia. The Japanese Occupation saw the strong rise in relevance of the Malayan Communist Party, which received support from the British through Force 136, and which drew inspiration from the Chinese Communist Party in China. The Malayan Peoples’ Anti- Japanese Army (MPAJA) was formed in June or July 1942, and when demobilized after the War, it boasted 6,000 to 7,000 members (Cheah 1987, pp. 61–75).

In 1945, the Malayan colonies switched colonial hands again, back to the British. But things had changed. The population had been radicalized and parties other than the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) would soon make themselves felt, such as the pan-Indonesia Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) and UMNO.

The toppling and execution of traditional leaders in western Sumatra in April 1946 in the “Sumatra Social Revolution” could not but have put a scare into the British as well as the Malay aristocrats on the peninsula (Kahin 2003, pp. 178–83; Reid 1971, p. 22).