007 The first attempt at Merdeka

Early Malay nationalist movements in Malaya were rather moderate and limited their objectives. For instance, they pool funds to buy land for Malay reservation or to send Malays to universities in Britain to ensure Malay leadership of the civil service. Broadly, they still worked within the context of the British administration. In 1926, Eunos Abdullah set up the first Malay political party, the Kesatuan Melayu (Malay Union) in Singapore. Eunos was the first Malay member of the Straits Settlement Legislative Council and a magistrate, and the Malay settlement that he set up is now a neighbourhood of the Eunos area in Singapore. He also set up similar organisations in Penang and Perak.

After a failed communist uprising in Indonesia in 1926, the placid nature of Malay nationalism started to change when a young Indonesian leader by the name of the Tan Malaka (despite the name, he was neither Chinese nor had anything to do with Melaka) fled from Dutch authorities to Malaya. In his short stay in Malaya, he influenced a number of young Malay students to a more radical form of anti-colonialism, imbued with left-wing ideas common in inter-war revolutionary movements. Tan Malaka was from Sumatra which gave him affinity to Malay culture and thinking while his alleged Trotskyite leanings would have been attractive to many young Malays seeking a more effective form of opposing the establishment than their elders.

One hotbed of young Malay nationalism was the Sultan Idris Training College (‘SITC’), set up to train Malay teachers and precursor to the current UPSI, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Sultan Idris Education University). It was here that Majalah Guru (Teachers Magazine) was published in 1923, which allowed discussion on broader socio-economic & political issues and nurtured the nascent radical Malay nationalist movement. In 1938, Ibrahim Yaakob, an almunus of SITC formed the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (‘KMM’) (Young Malay Union) with the ultimate goal of achieving independence from Britain through non-compliance and street action. Mustapha Hussain was his founding vice-president while Burhanuddin Helmy and Ahmad Boestamam were among the early members. More about all three later as they continued the left-wing nationalist agenda in Umno, Pas and Parti Rakyat respectively.

KMM spread throughout Malaya and organised two Malay congresses in 1939 and 1940 to spread their nationalism and independence message. More significantly, the KMM was funded by the Japanese government who had hoped to use the KMM to undermine British rule in Malaya. As a result, Ibrahim Yaacob and 130 other KMM members were imprisoned by the British.

The Japanese invasion in December 1941 was welcomed by and actively supported by the KMM as a fifth column. Following their victory, the Japanese released the KMM members. In January 1942, KMM vice-president Mustapha Hussain requested for the independence promised by the Japanese for their cooperation. This was of course turned down by the Japanese but it remained the first attempt at independence by a Malayan-wide party.

This marriage of convenience between the left-wing KMM and the right-wing Japanese would not last long, and the Japanese were aware of KMM‘s links to the Communist Party of Malaya and the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. The Japanese disbanded the KMM and set up the Malayan branch of the Pembela Tanah Air (‘PETA’) (Defenders of the Homeland), an army that the Japanese built from Malay and Indonesian recruits, in its place, with Ibrahim Yaacob as its Lieutenant-Colonel.

His role in PETA deepened Ibrahim Yaacob’s exposure to the Indonesian anti-colonial struggle and also enabled him to forge relationships with Indonesian independence leaders like Sukarno and Hatta. From these interactions, arose the idea a pan-regional nation of Malay-speaking people encompassing British and Dutch colonies in South-East Asia, leading Ibrahim to form the Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Semenanjung ('KRIS') (Indonesia Peninsula People's Union) promoting a political union of independent Malaya and Indonesia. In the dying days of the war and aware of possible defeat, the Japanese attempted to bolster their position with the Indonesians by promising independence to Indonesia at a meeting in Saigon, Vietnam.

On the flight back to Jakarta, Sukarno and Hatta stopped over at Taiping airport and met up with Ibrahim Yaacob on 12 August 1945 under the auspices of Japanese authorities, where they agreed to declare independence as a republic of Indonesia Raya (Greater Indonesia) simultaneously in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur on 17 August. There was a disagreement over the name where Ibrahim Yaacob preferred to call the country Melayu Raya (Greater Malay) , reflecting Malay understanding of the country as the Malay states. This was rejected by the Indonesians for whom Malay refers to a race from Sumatra, with Indonesia being a collection of many races speaking a common language of Malay.

The Japanese surrendered on 15 August following the dropping of the atom bombs and in the ensuing chaos, there was confusion over the declaration. The Japanese did not want to be associated with the declaration of independence with uncertainty over the political situation, while Suharto was reluctant to proceed without Japanese direction. He was finally prodded into action by his colleagues to declare Indonesian independence on 17 August as scheduled but without any mention of Malaya as he considered the situation far too chaotic at that time and also very likely, union with Malaya was probably not high on his priorities.

Ibrahim Yaacob was disappointed at this twist of events and the lack of consultation with him over the unilateral declaration by the Indonesians. His hesitancy to make a similar declaration in Kuala Lumpur cost him the initiative and before the return of the British, he fled Jakarta on a Japanese seaplane to avoid British arrest for his collaboration with the Japanese. He lived in Jakarta where he died in 1979. His name still lives on in a school in Kuala Lumpur and a college in Selangor.

The former KMM leaders who stayed behind in Malaya continued their struggles and later formed the Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (‘PKMM’) (Malaya Malay National Party) & various other similar bodies. PKMM allied with other left-wing parties in the AMCJA-PUTERA in the fight for independence in Malaya & Singapore and were especially influential before the formation of Umno (more about that story later on). The idea of Melayu Raya was kept alive in the PKMM adoption of five principles similar to the Indonesian Pancasila. With the aura of British invincibility broken in the chaotic aftermath of the war, PKMM far outstripped KMM membership and impact on the independence struggle. But with the declaration of the Emergency in 1948, many of its leaders were arrested and the party splintered. Some members retired, some joined the communist, and some continued the struggle in Umno or PAS, with Mustapha Hussain, the KMM vice-president who requested for independence from the Japanese, coming within one vote of defeating Tunku for the chairmanship of Umno.

On his release, Ahmad Boestaman, the PKMM youth leader founded another left-wing party, Parti Rakyat. With the rise of Umno though, Parti Rakyat and other left-wing parties lost ground and entered the political wilderness after electoral defeats in the 1950s and 1960s, changing its name and nature a few times, before eventually merging with Keadilan to become the Parti Keadilan Rakyat of today.

More interestingly in 1956, Burhanuddin Helmy became the second president of Pas, Parti Islam Malaysia, and led the Islamic party into a left-wing pan-Islamic agenda, championing South-East Asian pan-regional Islamic nationalism, and consolidated its rivalry with Umno. PAS reverted to championing the narrower Malay-Muslim interest on his death in 1969, but he left the party with his left-wing stamp with its charitable works that survives until today.

The idea of Melayu Raya eventually withered and is today forgotten by most people. Ironically the idea of Indonesia Raya was revived by Sukarno to justify his opposition to the formation of Malaysia during the Confrontation. Today, both these ideas are just footnotes in the histories of the respective countries.

This is the story of the first attempt at independence in Malaysia. In truth, KMM was unlikely to garner much support among the Malay population to declare a republic, due to the innate conservatism of the Malays and their attachment to the royalty. Its nationalism was exclusively Malay and its only cross-communal left-wing partner was, unfortunately, the Communist Party of Malaya. Still, it is part of the story of our country that made us what we are today.

The next article is a interesting look at Flags of the Malayan independence movement.