A DIY History Lesson ...

ADDENDUM: Mahathir is to speak on "The Role on the Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and Constitutional Monarchy in the Governing of Malaysia" at the Perdana "Leadership" Foundation in Putrajaya, at 9.30am tomorrow!!!! Are they for real or what??!!!
Oh, Gawd Almighty!!! After the rape of the "institutions of state", subverting the Federal Constitution and destroying the principle of "separation of powers" in Malaysia (which he possibly masterminded), I cannot imagine him speaking on their roles!! I cannot wait to hear the hogwash he's due to spew ...... it's like asking Hitler to speak on democracy!!

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On one important point I definitely agree with Khoo:
sovereignty was never transferred from the Malay Rulers to the British Crown. I have here a copy of the treaty between Tuanku Muhammad and Queen Victoria’s government and indeed there is no such clause.
Even the MacMichael Treaties, which the Labour government needed to create the Malayan Union, do not mention the word, and include a clause acknowledging the validity of subsisting agreements. Apart from Penang, Malacca, Sabah (as North Borneo) and Sarawak, we were never formal colonies of the British Crown.
- Tunku Abidin Muhriz, The Sun

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I

There's been lots of talk about history of late- after Mahathir's call to take it seriously. Prof Khoo Kay Kim's take on how history was written by our guys is one interesting piece to note. de minimis gives a good rundown here.
Then there was this "debate" between Khoo & Colin Abraham in the interpretation of history (which includes all the old "Brit" MSM version which Prof Khoo claims to have read).

However, with the subtle twists and turns of the propaganda machinery at the disposal of the Umno/BN regime, I wouldn't bet on the Ministry of Education under Muhyiddin (who apparently callled recently called some people "ungrateful") to do anything worthwhile.

Yes sir - we're talking about rewriting the history of Malaya/Malaysia here.
Pure History - despite the fact that there can never be "One History" just as there cannot be "One Malaysia" (at least under the BN/Umno regime).
A history where there were no "pendatangs" who were accepted by an industrious and racially pure Malay race led by Umno Baru. An "ideal" that apparently existed even before Abdullah Munsyi, Hang Too Ah, Parameswara and Sang Nila Utama.
In this history, you probably will not see the role played by the Indians/ Pallavas/ Cholas, Hindus; Kadaram (Kedah), Sri Vijaya (Palembang), Malaiyur (the Malayu of the 7th century, i.e. Jambi Kingdom), Mayuradingan (the Je-lo-ting of the Chinese on the Malay Peninsula), Ilangosagam (Langkasuka), Champas, Chinese, Buddhists, and the Thais, the Portugese, Dutch and Bugis. No - you will not see that. Lembah Bujang and Kota Gelanggi might just be your imagination and a clever Jewish plot to discredit the purity of the Umno-malay race.

Yes- We will learn a history of a Nusantara descended purely from Alexander the Great, where everything was world class, and the sophisticated people were living glamorously cosmopolitan lives with space-age science and technology at their disposal, imported straight from the deserts of Arabia.

II

Anyways - we get many proponents of the idea that “Tanah Melayu” was never really colonised – that it was simply a trading post for the British East India Company, and the Sultans were the Rulers who never lost their power during the days of the “White Tuans”.
But hold on a minute – didn't the British East India company dissolve in 1874? If East India Company was dead by 1874, who then ruled Malaya (even if they didn't have it in balck & white)? Can someone tell me that the Sultans were "almighty" and controlled the territories at their disposal?
Of course - you can indulge in technicalities or semantics, and try to redefine the word "colony" - but that doesn't change the fact that the Brits held power (just like what Umno is doing in Perak) and RULED their subjects, who may have been glorified as "Rulers" officially.

Umno was created by the Brits as collaborators, while they snuffed out the Leftist nationalists (of all races) through their Emergency Ordinance- post WW II - so that they can pass the govt to some "cronies".
This was in line with the agreement between Churchill and FDR for a capitalist new world order of nation-states. After all, the real "war for independence" was fought on the beaches of Normandy, and the allies in the "west" shed their blood for it. It was their blood, and they were gonna make sure that it was bloody worth every drop- in terms of power and wealth.

III

Meanwhile in Malaya, we only had boy scouts who were happy eating ikan masin, belacan & tempoyak, who needed the white man to teach them how to fight. The exceptions are of course the leftists and those who took up arms against the Brits after the WW II. Who knows anything about the KMM, PBM, PRM, PSM, Putera, etc etc etc anyways.
The youngsters of today would probably have never heard of the roles of people like Rashid Mydin, Ibrahim Yaacob, Rahim Kajai, Burhanudin Helmi, Othman Kalam, Abdul Karim Rashid, Hassan Manan and Isa Mohd. Mahmud in shaping Malaysia into what it is today. The CPM were all apparently just crooks who took up arms against the Japs for the fun of it. No Indians were heroes in their fight against the Japs or communists. You can just take a wild guess, as to how many of them were detained by the collaborators with the crown, under the Emergency Ordinance.

They will claim that the Malay Leftists were dissatisfied with the presence of foreigners who apparently "displaced" the Malays from the world of trade. They will claim that the leftists sought to deport all "pendatangs" in hatred.
They will however neglect to tell you that the collaborators were the ones who suppressed the Malays and left them with an education restricted to basket weaving and Quran reading - while they enriched themselves. They will conveniently forget that the leftists were up in arms against the apparently "independent aristocracy" who ruled the Malay world with absolute sovereignty. And the Brits couldn't care a damn what these guys did to their own kind, as long as their business wasn't affected.

Umno's "Malaya/Malaysia" never really "fought for independence" as such - they elite/ aristocrats who collaborated with the Brits, & "peacefully" negotiated terms with the colonial powers. This was the "perjuangan they thump their chest every so often about, to the awe of the very "educated" urbanites and the kampung pakcik/makcik. These elite were British educated guys who were "civil servants" of the no less than the British crown. As Farish Noor put it - MCKK produced a number of compliant Malay clerks and peons (of royal birth, no less) to man the middle and lower echelons of the colonial bureaucracy.

It is my belief that the "Malayan Union" was just a smokescreen to fool the commoner, created by the "Brit educated heroes" for Umno - which was nothing compared to the leftist patriots they conspired to finish off with the Brits . It was just a technicality which didn't make a difference, and it was only one of the proposals towards the establishment of an "independent state". There was no need to officially declare Malaya a crown colony when they were set for Independence which was guaranteed by the US of A anyways.
It appears to me, like they shuffled some papers, passed some resolutions, changed many names, called the same thing different names (maybe some slogans for Umno thrown in for good measure too) - and yet never changed a thing. For some icing on the cake, there were of course some “undesirable elements and communists” who were thrown into the slammer due to a “threat to national security”.
And Bingo! - Out of nowhere, we suddenly got Law school flunkies and aristocrats become freshly minted instant Umno heroes!!

Nobody needs to know how elections were carried out in Umno in the early days. Nor do they need to know how Tunku & Razak won their leadership in Umno of old, or the margins by which they won it. That was the "perjuangan" - as Umno defines it, which they shout out.
Yeah man - that's history for you!
You know what they say about lipstick on a errr Pig .... never mind lets just stick to the Shakespearean "a rose by any other name .... "

IV

You guys remember the Ho Chi Minh story by an Umno aligned blogger - about how all agreements signed "under duress" needs to be discarded? We're lucky this blogger didn't suggest that we start a revolution to start our calendar with year-1 like Khmer Rouge and use Pol Pot as our guiding light for inspiration & enlightenment.
Now you get Mahathir talking about history .... and then, Prof Khoo joins in the fray.

Maybe I'm just paranoid about the "pretenders", but do you see a pattern?
Maybe - just maybe, they wish for a new Federal Constitution, after having chewed spat out the current. They will spin history so bad to make it look like they were forced to accept "pendatangs" in this country at gunpoint, and that these pendatangs didn't enrich them one but through backbreaking labour, blood, sweat and tears - while others whiled their time away in the good life as "masters".
All of a sudden, they realized that these pendatang became richer than them despite all the handicaps, through their enterprise and hard labour.

So now the agenda would be to "take back the country" and redeem their racist pride - demi "Perjuangan Agama, Bangsa dan Negara". Demi whatever! For that we need economic rape & plunder for the elite ala Idi Amin's Uganda or Mugabe's Zimbabwe, while their own kind will be taught basket weaving, and how to sell ketupat/lemang on the roadside as it the days of the "White Tuan". Okay - lets not forget the longest line of "satays".
This is the "perjuangan" which some people talk about. Only then can some people call themselves "patriots". History does repeat itself doesn't it?
For that to happen in full, after the "Rape of Perak", we need another 513 and an emergency- probably that's why there are plans for the Askar Wataniah in each parliamentary constituency.
Could this probably be the "1Malaysia" plan?

Come what may, you'll soon see the BTN version of history in the school textbooks ..... and in the MSM - something like the "Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah", with the Tun Razak's-makan-angin-trips propaganda of old days.

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A Malaysian Nursery Rhyme
.
There was a crooked man, and he'd walk a crooked mile
To sell a crooked bridge with his usual crooked style
He got his crooked cats to evict a crooked mouse
Now they all regard the nation as their little crooked house.
- LChuah (Renoir), comment on MalaysiaToday
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