2 - Becoming Secular

Summary

Raja's education was distinguished not so much by what he learnt in school, but what he learnt, in spite of it. At the age of eight, his parents sent him to the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus in Seremban. His mother believed that nuns were gentler teachers than Brothers who believed that “sparing the rod spoiled a male child”.

Six months later, however, the Mother Superior wrote to his parents to ask that Raja be transferred to St Paul's Institution, a missionary boys’ school run by the La Salle Christian Brothers. That was how the scrappy-looking boy with the unruly hair ended up at St Paul's in Paul Street on 6 June 1923. Raja was to spend about 10 years of his most formative years at this leading mission school.

In the school, amidst its Gothic arcades, Raja the schoolboy revelled in the newfound freedom to explore new beliefs and practices, different from the natal religious tradition of his family's. The ideas which first absorbed him came from the Biblical texts which he studied as part of his religious knowledge subject in his secondary years. “I was fascinated by the Bible,” he said. Its teachings were novel to him. They had structure, lyrical beauty, and most of all, Enlightenment values which appealed to his budding moral sensitivities — all men are equal; all men, whatever their station, can be saved.

He spent many joyful hours reading the King James version of the Bible and committing the stories to memory. Among his favourite ones were those that concerned Moses, who led the Israelites for 40 years in the desert to reach the Promised Land, and little David who beat the giant Goliath with a sling and a pebble. He read and reread them so many times that, years later, he could recite whole passages and entire stories from memory.

The young Raja proceeded to excel in religious knowledge. It turned out to be his highest-scoring subject in both the Junior Cambridge and Senior Cambridge exams. He also discovered he had a flair for the English language. His teachers encouraged him by giving him public commendations for his essays.