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There were many viewpoints that can be seen in this failure. I will try to see it from his own accounts which cannot be faulted factually, except that the facts may not necessarily be the truth. Whilst the English educated tried to formulate a new English language which Wang Gangwu referred to as Engmalchin, the Chinese educated, in spite of Communism in China, rather than because of, was more determined than ever to support Chinese Taiwan as they felt the British was trying to encourage the Malays. At the same time as Ahmad Kassim in the Singapore University who was advocating the support of Malay said, this 'bastard Malayan,' this monstrous child - the Malayan nation, was conceived in sin and since we cannot get rid of it we should give him goodly anti-father education and  baptise him as the son of our generation sworn to life before the god of Merdeka. Was this not indirectly the fault of the British who was against the Chinese and thought that they could support English which the Chinese wanted? Did he not say on page 298 that 'the search for the Malayan was explicitly political’? And did he not admit on page 299 that 'the English language was a symbol for the humiliation of the Malay nation, although Malay politicians were  criticised for continuing to speak English themselves'.? Was it not the desire to reject English and to establish Malay as the national language that grew that was encouraged indirectly by the British in trying to politicise  the culture at this time? Had they analysed the  meaning of culture they might have come to the conclusion that culture must be instinctive and spontaneous and cannot be imposed or dragooned into the people. Had they done so they might have concluded that in our modern days that the culture would be as it  is today, that it would be  multiracial and spontaneous and that Malay would be a common language whilst English would be the most desirable for internationalism, science, technology and she should not have tried so hard as to threaten the country into a split. Surely that could have been the fault of the colonial master who, too readily, assumed they could infuse into a multiracial country, a monolingual state. But Harper came to no conclusion since he could blame no one, I suppose. Malay was opposed as such a language because it would have been difficult to find enough intellectuals required to develop an intellectual literature for an intellectual culture of sufficient level to compete with English. India, for example, still uses English which is in demand even by Chinese who need to reach out into the world. The fault could have been in Britain attempting for many years to impose a foreign culture because she feared Chinese Communism and it led to the failure of their policy on culture and further divided the people. Had she let things be, multi-racialism might have come about with less sickness, as it was, her phobia of Communism developed a fever rather than  fervour in her colonial mind. But there was not a word on this possible colonial fault.

 

We see this idea of the threat and the assumption that the fault was with the Chinese in such as the insurrection that led to the Emergency. In my view, there were incidents that could have led to the declaration of the Emergency but not quite. That they were stupid is another matter. It is another thing to say that they justified the Emergency and was responsible, therefore, for all it caused. We all know now that the MCP (and the Anti Japanese National Front) was infiltrated by Lai Teck who betrayed his comrades to the Japanese and, after the war, to the British and that he was finally exposed by another member of the party in 1947 after he had done his dirty work and run off with the funds of the MCP and that he was pursued and then terminated by Chin Peng. The Emergency was declared in 1948. In my opinion, Chin Peng was in no position to start a war at that time. It was probably forced upon him. So the statement that Chin Peng decreed that the MCP should seize power the "Yenan way" and that they were deprived of early successes in establishing liberated areas such as  Gua Musang, in which fight they lost to the security forces cannot be taken in totality. In the first place, they were not ready. Secondly, unlike the situation in  Yenan, they had a foreign army to fight in Malaya and they did not have half the people to support them because the Malays were not in sympathy with them. If the decree was truly issued and issued in that simple way, Chin Peng must either have been too arrogant or too stupid as he was not ready for war and that the country had been divided into the "good" and the "bad" areas, principally the Malays and the Chinese. Further, that he was broke and could easily be decimated with or without the Emergency. So why did Harper put that statement into his thesis without further analysis? 

In his chapter of the "Advent of  the  Bumiputera" (Chapter 6) he seems to suggest that "The core notion that arose out of these debates, that of the Malay bumiputra, or son of the soil, and of his entitlement to special rights and privileges in economic life, became the ideological cornerstone of the modern Malaysian state"; and that these debates took place in the middle 1940s. Actually the idea simply grew from the early Twenties and came from resentment of encroachment just as the Dayaks of Borneo resented the introduction of the Maduran people into their land.

The British knew this and did little to stop  this resentment of the encroachment. The whys and wherefores need not concern us but we can presume that this was because they wanted those  labourers from India and China to work in the fields and estates and the mines and the industries. But they began actively to support the Malays against the Chinese at the time of the fall of the Malayan Union and the advent of the Federation that also gave rise to the Emergency in 1948, presumably to keep the "two-faced" Chinese, called "bastards" by General Templer, and thus the Communists checked, after their failure in Indonesia against Soekarno.  It became the "bumiputra" when Tunku wanted to limit the special rights and privileges to the Malays who were the bumiputras because a bumiputra was a son of the soil who was one who practised  Malay customs, spoke Malay habitually and who was a Muslim. It became a political term during the struggle for supremacy over Malaya, the result of a natural and simple outcome where the colonial power failed  to impose a multiracial political structure. Return the land back to the Malays from whom the land was taken and then we will decide who is a Malayan. This was what was said by the Tunku in 1949 when he and Tan Cheng Lok were then beginning to form the Alliance, and Cheng Lock could only sulk. This took place under the tremendous power of the Emergency. Only the British could have done something but she only wanted some group that had the majority support of the country and the Alliance was the only one. One did wonder if the British could have done anything to stop it. Or it was already on the cards even before the Emergency. We know, for example, that Tan Cheng Lock was a Chinese activist in the 1930s since the time of Sir Cecil Clementi (1931-33) when he attempted to reduce the value of the Chinese education which led to Lim Cheng  Ean resigning from the Legislative Council and we wonder why he was silenced during the Emergency. Surely the Emergency deserves to be looked into. The situation otherwise has not changed. As one reads through the book we do come across such mellifluous apologias. Harper never once examined if the British was at fault in introducing the draconian Emergency under the governorship of a supreme General with power outside the control of its citizens who had been loyal to it during the war years wielding a power even greater than that of General Macarthur's when he ruled over conquered Japan. Harper never examined to see if the British were at fault in introducing English as a means to keep the Chinese culture in Malaya under control just before and during the Emergency. He never questioned if the results would have been different if the British had let things be. He seemed to assume that what the British did was right for the country and this complacency and claim to infallibility is not the scrutiny of the foundation truths of Malayan history we can expect from him. But we do know that Malaya was made a bulwark against the threat of Chinese Communism  and that the entire situation today is the result of this fear and Malaysia is what it is today because of this fear. Mr. Harper's history is painstakingly documented but flawed for this complacency and presumption that Britain is never wrong. I know that  it is difficult for a historian to be free and fair. It is even a greater pity that in  judgment of him will be the citizens of this country who feel they may have been wronged. Looking at the names of the people he claims to have met, I can only feel that it is a pity that he should have spoken to those who appear to hold one and the same political vision. It is a pity that he did not meet the many who were involved in the history and who are still alive who might have served him better with another and a different view. History is a strange thing and this is the first time history has been influenced by an Emergency and covered by a licensed press just as if  a war had been fought and no one is to blame.

The most important of all the  questions is, if the Emergency created any myths and did it not divide the people or keep them divided? Did the Emergency helped to foster new cultures, whether from above or below? Did it even foster hostility against the British and things English, emotional or otherwise? Can it be that such a drastic measure which saw the nation through to independence be such a negative influence as to have had no influence at all? Is history nuts? #