Cast From The Herd: Memories of Matriarchal Malaysia
M. Bakri Musa
Excerpt # 90: A Prefect De-Badged
To say that I was proud to be made a prefect at Malay College would be a severe understatement. That notwithstanding, I was not overwhelmed as I was very much aware of the awesome responsibilities that had been laid upon me, in particular the statement my teachers and Mr. Ryan were making in appointing me. Apart from rewarding me, they also made clear that the college was now headed in a different direction, towards valuing academic achievements. That was the heavy burden I felt, and uncomfortable to bear.
Of the new Sixth Formers who were former head prefects in their previous schools, only Wan Aziz was skipped. He took it in stride. He reminded us of the incident early in the year with Dr. Ahmad. You could not become a prefect without his blessing.
As for the awesome responsibilities of being a prefect, that point was made clear earlier in the year. There was a major crisis brewing in the Sixth Form dorm. To me it was over a frivolous issue, about increasing the visibility of Malay language and culture. This belated nationalism was inspired with the arrival in 1961 of the first Malay graduate teacher from the University of Malaya, Abdul Rahman Arshad. Before that all the graduate teachers (meaning those with degrees) were foreigners or non-Malay Malaysians. In truth however, Rahman Arshad was not the first Malay graduate teacher at the college. He was preceded a few months earlier by another Malay, a London University graduate, also like Rahman, from Melaka, but he lasted barely a few months before resigning. Being the first Malay graduate and senior teacher, there was some reflected glory amongst us with Arshad, more so with those in the Arts stream, less so among the science students. He ignited the students’ belated and hitherto latent nationalism.
My impression of Arshad however, was less favorable. In one talk when he with great flourish berated the college for hanging on to its British colonial symbols, I asked him whether there was not a thing or two that we could learn from a culture that had created an empire where the sun never set. He was unimpressed with my query and dismissed my ignorance. However, as one of the few Malay graduates who had opted to enter the education service instead of the usual administrative one, Arshad rose fast and far. As a teacher at Malay College however, he was very much unlike Mr. Brown. Brown used to wander around to the dorm he was supervising in the afternoon to chat with his students. Rahman Arshad however maintained his faculty status; he was aloof and kept his social distance after teaching hours. I had saw him at the Sixth Form dorm chatting with us.
Malay College was a late comer to nationalism. After all the colonials created it to be a tropical version of a proper British grammar school, complete with its own fancy crest and pretentious Latin motto, Fiat Sapienta Virtus.
The official translation is, “Let manliness come through wisdom!” My preference is: “Let there be wisdom [and] courage.” Only Plato’s third virtue, moderation, is skipped. Wisdom without the courage to express it is like a tree falling in the jungle. The impact may be earth shattering and bring forth a swath of bright light, but with nobody knowing, it would make no difference. Courage without wisdom on the other hand is that of a wild boar – destructive, or as the villagers put it, gila babi (lit. mad boar).
For a long time Malay College students prided themselves in being cultured Brown Sahibs. Now with independence a reality, they were keen to demonstrate their belated nationalist manhood. Affected British accent and silky cravat were out, replaced by the peasant Kelantan patikan dialect and formless baju Melayu. For the nation, Malay language would now reign supreme, with the government mandating it to be the exclusive working language. There were “National Language Days” and later, “Weeks,” and “Months,” with rallies, speeches, and essay contests to mark the occasion.
To many, those were joyous occasions, time to be excused from their boring classes. To me however, those were precious times fritted away. In the dorms nationalism was now a hot issue. As my views were contrary to those prevailing, I often and eagerly participated in those passionate debates. We could never come to any common ground and ended up belittling each other. They dismissed me as either ignorant of history (a convenient accusation as being a science student I no longer had to take the subject) or being brainwashed by the colonialists. Others were less generous, condemning me as a colonial-lover or an aspiring brown Mat Salleh, epithet for the English.
I too had my own pet put-downs. If they thought that Malay College was a colonial institution, or that learning English was a subtle means of colonizing native minds, then they should leave to attend the local Malay schools instead. That shut them up.
Back to the crisis, those students had given Ryan an ultimatum. Make Malay College more Malay or they would pack their bags and leave, thinking that a group of children of the elite abandoning the institution would force his hand. Ryan however, called their bluff; they “lost face,” a major embarrassment in our culture. For my part, I had minimal sympathy for those dorm rebels with a tiny cause.
The matter did not end there. Ryan would later make their ringleader a prefect in a special appointment to replace the departing Ahmad Said. Co-opting your opposition by appealing to its leader’s vanity, a tried and true trick the British had perfected to a fine art. It was no accident that those Malay sultans had fancy titles like “Sir.”
That appointment soon created tension between the leader and his hitherto followers that resulted in his abusing his prefectorial powers to get even with them. There were other factors; these things were never simple and often proved to be other than what they appeared to be, but the end result was that soon after, this new prefect was stripped of his badge. The ‘ceremony’ took place during the regular assembly, witnessed by the entire school. A tribute to the “de-badged” prefect, he maintained his dignity throughout the whole and very public humiliating ordeal.
That was the only occasion in the history of Malay College when a prefect had been stripped of his badge. As for that individual, he was the same tin-pot dictator who had “welcomed” me to Malay College at the train station earlier that January in his distinctive Kelantanese Malay-English dialect. He later graduated from an Australian university on a Colombo Plan scholarship and then Cambridge for his doctoral work, his earlier strident nationalism notwithstanding. It also reflected the integrity and impartiality of Ryan and the other teachers that the “de-badging” notwithstanding, this student’s academic future was unaffected. He could not have gotten the scholarship without Ryan’s blessing and recommendation.
Images of that “de-badging” weighed heavily on me, tempering my joy in getting the honor of being a prefect at Malay College.
Next: Excerpt #91: A New Breed of Malay College Students
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