Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, Barry Wain [best mystery novels of all time .txt] 📗

sultans, with the settlements of Penang and Malacca — which Britain administered directly, along with Singapore — turning the Malay Peninsula into a single colony. It stripped the sultans of their traditional powers and transferred jurisdiction to the King of England. Without consultation, the British withdrew their near-century-old recognition of the "special position" of the Malays, which was meant to protect their heritage and birthright.

The deep sense of betrayal felt by the Malays was matched only by their grave fear of the future. After all, it was British sponsorship of large-scale immigration to peninsular Malaya in the nineteenth century — Chinese to work in the tin mines, Indians to labour on the rubber estates — that had turned the Malays into a minority in their own land. More enterprising and sophisticated in business, the newcomers spread to the kampungs, where they became storekeepers and moneylenders. In time, they gained a monopoly in the industrial and commercial sectors and lived mostly in urban centres, while the Malays remained in coastal and rural settlements engaged in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing. Having created what may have been the world's most complex society — three communities divided by religion, language, culture, value systems, place of residence, occupation and income — the British had made no attempt to integrate the immigrants, originally regarding them as guest workers. Now that they and other foreigners had control of the economy, Britain was intending to grant them citizenship.

As part of the Malay nationalist outrage that swept the country, Mahathir led school friends in organizing protests, mainly producing and distributing posters at night. He joined activist groups and attended, as an observer, a national congress of Malay organizations that gave birth to UMNO.[26] In the face of the fierce UMNO-led resistance, the British abandoned the Malayan Union in 1948, replacing it with a federation that allowed the sultans to retain certain powers, though under one overall government.

Although Mahathir had not previously thought much beyond becoming a government clerk, he lifted his aspirations as he imbibed and contributed to the new-found Malay nationalism:

...my interest in politics was stirred up actually during the Japanese period. You know, I read a lot of history, and I felt that the Malays seem fated to live under the domination of other people...they used to be under the Thais...and they had to pay tribute to China. They had to submit to the British, the Portuguese...for 450 years...I read about the thirteen colonies and how they struggled for independence and how the United States emerged...this influenced me a lot.[27]

Back in school at the age of 20 to complete his final year, Mahathir edited the school magazine, penning a front-page editorial for the single issue produced in 1945. In it he welcomed victory in the war by the "Powers of Right and Justice".

Mahathir calculated that two professions, law and medicine, would give him the credibility in the Malay community he felt was necessary to pursue a career in politics, "particularly among people older than me".[28] His choice was law, the field chosen by the country's first three prime ministers, who studied in England. Having graduated in December 1946 with excellent results for the Cambridge School Certificate — he obtained the top grade for three subjects and the second-highest mark for his four other subjects — "I would have expected a state scholarship, of course," Mahathir said. "But after the British returned, the British military administration operated as if the whole country was under one government." In those unsettled conditions, his application went unheeded. Ultimately, the federal government offered him financial assistance — "not a true scholarship, but just support"[29] — to study at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore, precursor to the University of Malaya. Making a virtue of necessity, he would later position himself as the first home-grown leader, untainted by close association with the former colonial power.

Money was an issue for Mahathir. None of his brothers got the chance to attend university, though one made it into agricultural college. They all became state civil servants, occupying modest positions. Mahathir's father, who had quit teaching to remain in Kedah, after having been transferred inter-state for several years, joined the Audit Department of the state administration. But he was compulsorily retired as a senior auditor at 53, when Mahathir was still in primary school. His monthly salary of 230 dollars was replaced by a 90-dollar pension, which dwindled in purchasing power every year as it was not adjusted for inflation. "Well, it made us rather poor," Mahathir said. His father kept trying to earn money from other sources, at times working as a clerk in an Arabic school and as a petition writer.[30] Mahathir himself worked in the state government while awaiting his final exam results, and he earned income from contributions to the nationally-circulated, Singapore-based Straits Times. He began writing for the paper after taking a correspondence course in journalism, using the pseudonym, C.H.E. Det, a variation on his nickname. When college administrators learned from a routine assessment that Mahathir's father was sending him 10 dollars a month, they cut his allowance by 10 dollars.

Relocating in 1947 at 22 from the fringes of empire to the commercial centre of colonial Malaya, Mahathir encountered a completely different world in Singapore.[31] It opened his eyes to the possibilities of modernization and confirmed his worst fears about the Malays being dispossessed of their own country. The island settlement at the foot of the Malay Peninsula administered directly like Malacca and Penang previously, was British territory, having been acquired from the Sultan of Johore in the early nineteenth century, and anyone born there was a British subject. Mahathir recalled, "They were so very far ahead of us — huge urban community, very sophisticated and very rich people — whereas I came from Alor Star, where the Malays in particular were very poor.[32]

The dangers, though, were just as conspicuous. As Mahathir wrote, the "easy-going" Malays had been unable to compete with the "native diligence and business