Malaysia has a lot of use for that school in Kuala Kangsar
[Berita MCOBA Vol. 2 No. 1 March 1991]
by
Rehman Rashid
You
and I, fellow Collegian, are part of the �Malay College Mafia� that�s
being whispered about these days. Indeed, the Malay College Old Boys�
Association has become the nearest thing to a masonic lodge this country�s
ever known outside the Chinese clans. MCOBA is a code with special
access into every corner of governance in Malaysia: the government,
the civil service, the private sector, academia, the palaces, everywhere.
Old Boys of the Malay College can be found among the country�s foremost
politicians, administrators and businessmen, bankers, doctors, lawyers
and engineers. It remains the school of royalty. Not because the sons
of the Sultans still study there � they do not, for valid enough reasons
� but because their fathers once did.
The
Malay College stands tall in the national conscience � even, perhaps
especially, among those who never went there. Abdul Kadir bin Jasin,
Group Editor of the New Straits Times, recently wrote about his feeling
of inferiority at not having attended one of the nations� top residential
schools: you�re not so eager to tell people where you went to school.
But even a char koay teow seller is elevated by being an alumnus of
the Malay College.
(Yes,
it remains possible to be an MC Old Boy and never know wealth or position.
We are not all as rich and powerful as the richest and most powerful
of us are. But the qualities remain the same. Diamonds in the dust
sparkle just as brightly as those on a crown. Or a Rolex.)
Why?
Simple: Because MC was a good school, enrolling the best of Malay
youth, having them live and compete with each other as equals, giving
them good teachers and splendid playing fields. But let�s see what
this means. Let�s attempt a definition:
The
Malay College is the most important school in Malaysia, because it�s
the most important school for the Malays.
Unconscionable
arrogance? Of course. It is a grotesque overstatement of the point:
the greatest strength of the Malay College is that it teaches pride.
And pride is the one thing the Malays have been striving throughout
history.
The
NEP is about nothing else. It is simply today�s stage of the process
that began with Onn Jaafar cycling through the hinterland in 1946:
the crusade to lift the Malays out of their humble, dispirited, apathetic
inertia and ensconce them on a plane of dignity in their own country
� a country that they had never been able to save from foreign conquerors.
The Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Japanese, the British
again... oh those damned British ! ...And now the Chinese, whom too
many Malays remain wary of regarding as fellow countrymen.
Today�s
Malay political ethic � and this feverish battle for dominance- stems
from there having nothing but humiliation in the past five hundred
years of Malay history. And what was Parameswara himself but a fleeing
refugee from Temasik.
The
Malays of Malaysia have no heroes to compare with the national deities
of Indonesia, for example. (Indeed, for the example that matters most.)
We have no Iskandar Thani, no Cut Nyak Dien or Singgamarajah. No Hatta
or Sukarno or Kartini. No martyrdom ever bloodied our soil, no valour
stood triumphant in war. Why else this endless fuss about Hang Tuah
and Jebat, a pair of melancholy poseurs with long libidos and short
tempers?
The
Malay concept of heroism is fatally flawed in this one regard: it
celebrates the defenders of the throne, exalting loyalty, and not
the focus of the loyalty: the throne itself.
History
reserves heroism for conquerors, regardless of whether they are brutal
or enlightened. But the various Malay States were never united under
one emperor king; on the contrary, they were fromed in the dissolution
of the biggest single Malay state in our past � Malacca � and spent
their subsequent sovereignties squabbling. What we long to remember
as the Golden Age of the Malays was in fact a drawn � out decline.
We
were never conquerors, only the conquered, and that galls many Malays
today. Hence this political obsession with the need to be vigilant
against losing everything to the Outlanders. Ensuring Malay pre-eminence
� cultural, linguistic and parliamentary � is the central theme of
Malay politics. It is really the fear of Malay eclipse; hence the
durability of Hang Tuah�s famous utterance about the Malays never
vanishing from the world.
The
Malays� greatest weakness is their sense of weakness. The aggressiveness
now associated with Malay leadership stems from an ingrained inferiority
complex. ("You don�t know what it�s like," Dr. Mahathir
once told me in a recorded interview, "to be considered on par
with dogs and other animals.")
This
is not a common weakness, however, among those who went to Malay College.
The
Malay College was singularly effective in curing its students of their
sense of inferiority. Since its earliest years, the school has brought
together young Malay men from every state, rich and poor, aristocrats
and commoners, and educated them to the highest standards expected
of them. In the process, three important truths were revealed to every
boy who went to Kuala Kangsar on his first journey away from home
and family: First, intelligence had nothing to do with birth or breeding.
Second, there was indeed a unity of Malay states. Third, education
was synonymous with leadership; there could not be one without the
other, if either was to be done right.
In
teaching them to respect quality, ability and excellence (and having
it proven year after year in examination halls and on playing fields
alike), the Malay College raised its boys to see themselves as equal
of their country�s greatest conquerors.
The
English-ness of the Malay College � all that Eton-of-the-East business
� reached its height in the Forties and Fifties, when the Fives Court
was actually in use. Old Boys of that vintage must look back at their
youth with a mixture of fond nostalgia tinged with a little embarrassment
at those very pukka times. (In William Shaw�s biography of Tun Razak,
there is a 1948 photo of Tun and a few friends in London. In stylish
tweed suits they elegantly pose in St. James Park, each of them holding
a pipe in the style Sherlock Holmes made famous.)
But
the Anglicisation was never quite as complete as it may have seemed
to passers-by on Station Road or the Strand. For one thing, these
were intelligent and well-educated young men, living in the heart
of Empire during a time of great global change and intellectual energy.
Giants walked the earth: the Churchills, Roosevelts and MacArthurs
of the West giving ground to the Gandhis, Nehrus, Sukarnos, Chou En
Lais and Ho Chi Minhs of Asia, as the British Empire, blown to smithereens
by the Second World War, crumbled before the rising tide of history.
To
be young, bright and Malayan in London at such a time must have been
to feel part of a great rebirth: to be the fledgling leaders of a
new world of many nations where once there were only the empires of
a few.
And
there was something else, too, that served to continually remind these
young, elite and English-educated mean of their Malayness. "You
felt like a fool at their parties," says one who remembers, "standing
around with your orange juice while they were all drinking gin and
tonics and talking to themselves."
What
was irritating about this was not the inability to do everything the
British way, but the perception that the British would always look
down on those who did not. This irritation has persisted, because
the British are notoriously slow to relinquish their historical pride,
and we are notoriously slow to acquire ours. I believe this explains
Dr. Mahathir�s remarkable campaign to settle scores with the British
the moment he became Prime Minister. The Carrington snub, the Buy-British-Last
policy, and the final triumph of his first official visit to Britain
in 1987: the attention of Mrs. Thatcher and instant tickets to a West
End musical with a six-month-long waiting list.
Ironically,
those Malays of Mahathir�s generation who received a British education
are less impressed by Britain�s standards. Those educated at the Malay
College began meeting those standards at the ages of ten or twelve.
When
you know you are the equal of your conqueror, he is your conqueror
no longer. He may be big, you may be small, but you both know your
minds are equal. So you set aside the machinery of conquest, tell
your bodyguards to wait outside and keep the peace, and start using
your brains. You talk, negotiate, deal for what you both want. When
your negotiations are successful, you know you have moved beyond barbarism.
You are civilised men.
The
architects of Malayan Independence were conquerors too. But their
weapons, with which they regained a country that had been lost to
us for 450 years, were ideas. Not the Tamingsari, the kris of Hang
Tuah, that ubiquitous symbol of Malay power; which as recently as
October 1987 was still being proclaimed thirsty for Chinese blood.
There
were Malays among those men of Independence, as there were in the
highest echelons of the first national administration of Malaya. Many
of them were Old Boys of the Malay College.
But
because MC was founded to create an administrative elite, and because
that ethic predated the emergence of politics in this country, relatively
few Old Boys have become politicians. The persistent need for �grassroots�
support is partly to blame � College boys have long tended to leave
their kampungs behind once they�ve been through Prep School.
Also,
I feel, Old Boys are inherently uncomfortable with the premise that
political power is the only defence against the Chinese because they�re
shrewder, smarter, harder-working and generally better than the Malays
at everything else. College boys tend to consider themselves capable
of being as shrewd, smart and successful as anyone. They�ve been taught
to believe they can do anything as well as anyone and God knows better
than most.
Those
who regard the Malay College as a self-important bastion of neo-colonialism
despise us for this. They see the Malay College as having done nothing
but turn out generations of smug Anglophilic Melayus sneering at their
peasant ancestors, while the foreigners were freely looting their
lands. Malay College boys may have thought they were the leading edge
of their people, but in fact they were leaving their people entirely
behind.
It
is not an invalid view.
But
I prefer to regard those cocky brown men with their clubby English
accents, proudly wearing their little white wigs at the Inns of Court,
as having learned how to negotiate the return of a purloined booty.
The crowning moment of that skill was, and remains, Merdeka Day 1957.
But
fundamental to Independence was the success of the UMNO-MCA-MIC Alliance.
Independence could not have been won without the political linkage
of the Malays, Chinese and Indians of Malaya. Negotiating that linkage
could only have done by the top men if each community, those versed
in a common voice. Speaking on behalf of the Malays, ensuring their
primacy in the Alliance and laying down so strong a defence that Malay
political pre-eminence is today unchallenged, were many Old Boys of
the Malay College.
One
of them, Abdul Razak bin Hussein, will be remembered as Malaysia�s
first truly significant Prime Minister. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Bapa Malaysia,
was an appointed representative. He was so full of happy linkages.
A royal prince chosen by his people, fond of the Chinese and Indians
and accepted as the best possible interface between them all. Tunku
was legendary for being the most Anglophile Malay of his time � a
dilettante aristocrat with a fondness for sports cars, horses and
English university towns in autumn.
Tunku�s
premiership was as the Chief Malayan Witness to the end of Empire.
He was a sweet, gentle and hopeful way to say goodbye to the old order.
It was left to Tun Razak, Bapa Pembangunan, to design the blueprint
for the new.
And
how�s this for iron: The NEP, designed to elevate the Malays, was
responsible for the rapid decline of the Malay College, which had
done so much to make the NEP possible. In an astonishing display of
wrong-headedness, the qualities of the Malay College were deemed detrimental
to Malay pride.
I
was still at the College in the early Seventies, when the Education
Minister at the time, Musa Hitam, declared "elitism is out".
(The statement was made in Hargreaves Hall, during that year�s Speech
Day. Musa had prefaced it however, with the statement that he had
always wanted to attend Malay College, but had to settle for Johore�s
English College instead.)
"Elitism",
in the sense Musa intended, referred to the grooming of a few selected
Malays to stations above the mass of their people. This was apparently
unjust. The Malay College had to be no different from other schools.
Had
that signified an intention to raise all schools to Malay College
standards, it would have been laudable (if a bit far-fetched). But
the most important thing was uniformity, "equal opportunities,"
and if other schools could not be raised to the stature of MC, MC
would be lowered to the level of other schools.
(I
remember it becoming very rapidly ludicrous. Suddenly we found Pak
Shaari driving us in the school bus to lesser-known places for inter-school
games. Not just KE and RMC and Star and VI (and TKC, formerly the
Malay Girls� College, Seremban, ah, sweet the memory of it...) anymore.
SMJK Lenggong. I remembered it well. We won the football match 14-0.
It was carnage. Even our goalkeeper scored. I have nothing against
Lenggong � I was practically born there � but this was not a nice
thing to do to them. How we strutted, and how they must have hated
us!)
And
then Headmasters began coming and going every couple of years, and
the turnover of teachers trebled. Times changed very rapidly. Today
the College no longer has a Sixth Form, (for reasons brilliantly perceived
in a prescient essay by Ramli Mohammad in the College Magazine, Vol.
VII No.3, 1973.)
Standards
declined precipitously. Because they were doing so across the board
in Malaysian education, which was struggling to accommodate the new
expectations of the NEP, the College retained its reputation as one
of the best schools in the country. But that was relative to other
schools, and not to the standards the College had traditionally set
itself.
Now,
after nearly twenty years and the active involvement of MCOBA, the
decline has been arrested. We now hear the Sultan of Kedah call for
the formal recognition of the College as a leading institution. An
adulatory story on the College appears in the �Tatler�, of all places.
And the �Malay College Mafia� is now perceived as increasingly influential
at all levels of Maalysia�s government and economy.
�Elitism�,
it would appear, is back with a vengeance.
But
then it had never gone away. What was once decried as �elitism� the
elevation of some above others � is now recognised as the process
by which leaders emerge. As long as a nation needs leaders there will
be a need for schools in which good minds are encouraged to reach
for glory, recognising no limits to their potential other than those
imposed by decency, discipline and compassion for the less favoured.
The
Malay College has traditionally turned out men with a sense of responsibility
to things greater than themselves, which is perhaps another reason
for MCOBA�s rosters being notably short on politicians. But not on
managers (a category in which I include all good businessmen, administrators
and successful people in general). Successful management requires
copious measures of the qualities MC has been known to cultivate:
a vision of the Big Picture, and understanding of hierarchies and
networks, a keen sense of identity and much self-confidence.
Good
management is impossible without such qualities, but the worst management
emerges when those in authority know they are not there because of
their professional competence. This is why there are pejorative overtones
to the word �elitism� � it can also mean elevation for reasons other
than ability and merit.
Such
positions are political, and those occupying them know that their
tenures have little to do with how they do their jobs. This is a fearful
state to be in, and doing their jobs becomes secondary to serving
the connections that are keeping them there.
I
see this as part of the reason for the mediocrity that has come to
afflict so many Malay ventures in both the public and private sectors.
Success can only be measured in merit. That is as true in management
as it is in the classroom, exam hall or on the running track � or
Benches of Parliament.
The
NEP may be a step towards leveling the playing field for a true meritocracy
to emerge in Malaysia, at which time the Malays can be said to have
�arrived�. But while anxious gazes are fixed on the future, many seem
to have forgotten that the Malay College has been a meritocracy since
its inception.
Thanks
in part to schools like MC, the Malays are not entirely alien to success
honestly earned and well deserved. Out of that comes pride, and out
of that pride comes the confidence the Malays need if they are to
negotiate constructively with their fellow countrymen � especially
those their politicians claim to distrust and fear. Much of that fear
is cynically inflated for the sake of �Malay unity�, but it is nonetheless
rooted in that damnable inferiority complex.
That
fear, while doing obviously nothing for Malay unity, has earned us
the scorn of the non-Malays.
But
when the Chinese in particular realise that the Malays have begun
losing their fear of being economically stripped, and are instead
ready and able to deal intelligently with their partners as equals,
there will be a burgeoning of opportunities to do so.
This
allows me to end this discourse on an optimistic note, for I believe
the process is well underway. We can be certain that in boardrooms
and corner office suites across the region, exemplary Malay executives,
intellectuals and professionals are doing the talking on behalf of
their people, thinking well, speaking intelligently and looking good;
making the Malays look good and winning the confidence and respect
of their partners.
We
can also be sure that some of them are known to wear a certain striped
tie on Wednesdays, deriving from that one item of apparel all the
evidence they need of their capacity for success.
It
would be nice to hope there are some politicians in them.