Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [129]
This was an unprecedented public attack on the authority of a ruler who, for the Malays, whatever his personal failings, was God’s vice-regent on earth. It was treason, or derhaka. But the elites responded that the rulers, by signing the treaties, had betrayed a God-given trust as defender of their subjects. As Majlis put it, it was ‘the raja who has committed derhaka against the people’. The ruler held his position by virtue of his role as protector of the Malay people. If the ruler failed in his duties, it was legitimate for subjects to rebel, to protect the community. The Malay community – the nation – took precedence over the ruler.62 A central point of reference for Malay political thought was the fifteenth-century golden age of Melaka. The Malayan Union crisis called to mind the prophecy of its great warrior, Hang Tuah: Tidakkan Melayu hilang di-dunia! – ‘The Malays shall not disappear from the World!’ Hang Tuah was the champion of the Sultan of Melaka and his people; the leader of a legendary band of fighters. His virtues were the steadfastness and loyalty of the Malay people. In the tale of Hang Tuah, he is slandered to the sultan and forced to go into hiding. His friend Hang Jebat comes to court to avenge him, and in an act of rebellion against an unjust ruler drives the sultan from his palace. But it falls to Hang Tuah, who is then recalled, to fight and kill Hang Jebat, because – as Hang Tuah tells his dying friend – loyalty to the ruler, however unjust, and duty must come before all else. Hang Tuah is the hero of the tale, but the story was also used to illustrate a ruler’s convenant with his people: Hang Tuah represented an absolute loyalty to a ruler and Hang Jebat the right to rebel when he transgressed. The meaning could be more ambiguous: Hang Tuah’s loyalty could been seen as feudal, even slavish; Hang Jebat’s rebellion as wild and self-seeking. In the years to come, Malay radicals began to adopt the cause, and invoke the name of Hang Jebat as the ‘herald of a new age… a leap forward from the absolutist to the democratic plane’.63 The MNP and API dropped their earlier support for the Union, and voiced virulent opposition to the rulers: the time had come for the nation – the bangsa–to stand forth against feudalism and imperialism.
Not everyone was prepared to go so far. Onn bin Jaafar now began to appeal to a national audience with his call for a ‘Movement of Peninsular Malays’, that transcended State loyalties. The movement began in his district of Batu Pahat where, by touring the kampongs and addressing large rallies of Malays, Onn built on his personal prestige as a defender of the Malays in the weeks of communal violence during the interregnum. The Majlis of Kuala Lumpur began to canvass his name as the potential leader of a general conference of the Malays. Onn remained throughout these events a fiery and complex figure. In his youth, his politics seemed to be in the mould of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey: secular, modernizing and with a hint of republicanism. Now his message was of Malay unity, but his attack sheered away from the rulers and focused more on the British. And it was not a demand for independence, but solely an attack on the Malayan Union, in which Britain had broken faith with the Malays. Malaya, he argued, was ‘not yet ready’ for independence. He made this argument from deep patriotism and for the defence of Malay primacy. The Malays needed continued