Malay leftists not exactly independence fighters

INTERVIEW Picking at what he contends are more inaccuracies in popular history, Professor Emeritus Khoo Khay Kim cast doubt on the premise that the Malay leftist movements actually comprised independence fighters.

In particular, he zeroed in on the Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Merdeka (PKMM) led for a time by Ahmad Boestaman, who was from Indonesia.

Khoo was speaking at a conference on the origin of the Malay race in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

While they were anti-British and worked to free the then Malaya from foreign rule, local autonomy may not have been exactly in their outlook.

"If you look at PKMM itself, its actual term is Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Merdeka. The term Partai itself shows that its origin is Indonesian."

Khoo (left) pointed out that even the word "marhaen", used to represent civil society by the leftist is actually a Marxist term for the proletariat worker's class.

The term which did not exist in the peninsula prior to the arrival of the Indonesian leftists, was coined in Indonesia and was part of the agenda of the leftist nationalist movement.

When Merdeka meant greater Indonesia

"This was the term that Ahmad Boestaman tried to popularise here," he related.

Khoo suggested that PKMM's vision was to bring independence for Malaya to join a ‘greater Indonesia' and not necessarily to empower locals for self-rule.

"This is not accepted by the local Malays for whom Melayu means those here in Tanah Melayu," he added.

As for the communists themselves, the historian slammed those who even tried to suggest that they were independence fighters.

"Kepala otak! (What are they thinking!)"he exclaimed.

He said that while like PKMM the communist did fight British rule, their aims were even further from local autonomy than the leftists' were.

"They wanted to create a world communist government, under the communist world order. All nations must be controlled by the communist party."

The communist movement then, he said, followed the model practiced in Europe, the Marxist model whose emphasis was on the working class, the proletariat or "marhaen" espoused by Ahmad Boestaman.

Such a government would have sidelined the peasant-landowning-farmer class, making up most of rural Malaya at that time.

"They say that communists fought for the independence of Malaya. That is wrong. They did not know what communism meant. Normal people do not know."

Khoo related how within the two weeks between Japanese withdrawal and the return of the British, there was total chaos in Malaya when the communist showed their true colours, running amok, killing people and trying to create a communist-controlled state.

Such a communist state, would not have empowered locals for self-rule, but would have created a state subservient to global communist rule and diminish the culture, religions and customs of the land.

Value of proper knowledge

Without proper knowledge, Khoo questioned how people could differentiate between what is true and what is not, as is with the truth about the communist struggle against the British.

"If I ask them when the Communist Party of Malaya was formed. Do you know? Don't know. All of them do not know."

For this he blamed the education system and its failure to educate the public on actual relevant history and focused instead on legendary tales.

"In the end, education syllabi are not prepared by proper qualified historians... In our system at present, the most powerful are those in the executive branch of the government.

"Even we in the university, our salaries and what not, are determined by the executive. We have no power, no power, they are the ones in charge.

"We can only convey our stand to the public but when we asked for something to be done, it is not necessarily accepted."

Asked point blank if he means that the executive decides what becomes history,"of course!", he affirmed.

Such base manipulations and abhorrence of real history has led to Malaysia ignoring truths about her own history which lie dormant in foreign archives in London, Bangkok, Portugal and Singapore and forgotten or ignored by our own institutions of higher learning..

He contends that this apathy is the by product of the thought that history does not matter and is not important.

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