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By Root 4533 0

– suspects would be detained without trial, or banished quietly and secretly. The charge related to a manifesto distributed by Boestamam in Malacca in December: the ‘Political Testament of API’. It was a hastily prepared, strikingly radical document: an attack on feudalism and capitalism, and a call to restructure society, by violent means if necessary. The trial focused on its rallying cry of Merdeka dengan darah. This was rendered by the prosecution as ‘Independence through blood’.91 But John Eber of the Malayan Democratic Union, who acted as counsel for the defence, challenged this. Could not ‘blood’, in this sense, merely mean ‘self-sacrifice’? The court pored over the text. When another key phrase – in Malay: jalan chepat radical dan serantak – was given as ‘rapid and radical revolution’, Eber called the Malay court translator as a witness. Under cross-examination he conceded that it could mean simply, ‘go immediately and suddenly’. A senior colonial scholar-administrator, W. Linehan, was summoned; he too conceded a ‘mistranslation’.92 These slightly farcical proceedings demonstrated the calculated way in which the colonial government was now pursuing its enemies. Boestamam was found guilty and fined $1,200 with an alternative of six months in jail. The fine was paid through donations from political allies on the left, but also from the donations of the poor. The decision to stay out of jail embarrassed Boestamam politically, but he had been jailed by the British before and would soon face imprisonment again: ‘I asked for a year’s grace to organise and prepare API to sound the tocsin, Defeat or Fame.’93

British policemen and district officers felt they were being taunted by these young Malays flaunting Japanese-style uniform in areas where the government’s own grip was insecure. They were also deeply worried at the undercurrents of violence in the kampongs. The police were aware of a growth in cultish religious practice; a peddling trade in talismans and charms, azimat, which were said to confer invulnerability on their wearers. Some of the rituals attached to them were heterodox within Islam, such as the insertion of gold needles beneath the skin for divine protection.94 One exponent of this was Syed Moh’d Idris bin Abdullah Hamzah, known as Sheikh Idris, who lived in a village near the royal town of Kuala Kangsar in Perak. He was believed to hail from Indonesia, and had worked selling fruit and vegetables together with charms of goatskin and other talismans. He entranced audiences with speeches in which he suggested obliquely that he was about to reveal his true identity. Many of his followers, hearing this, believed him to be none other than the legendary holy man Kyai Salleh of Batu Pahat, who had led a jihad against the communists in 1945. They took to wearing red skull caps embroidered with the credo, ‘There is no God but Allah, Mohammad is his Prophet’, and red sashes and shoulder straps. Eighty of them led a public procession on the Prophet’s birthday on 2 February 1947, headed by Sheikh Idris himself in a grey shirt, grey riding breeches and Japanese jackboots. Confronted by the police, Sheikh Idris sternly reminded them of the British policy of non-intervention in religious matters. The area had already been unsettled by large API demonstrations and matters soon came to a head when another medicine seller, known as Sheikh Osman, made a speech in a Malay village near Ipoh telling the Malays to prepare for a Chinese rising against them. On 31 May five of his followers were convicted at a court in Kuala Kangsar of carrying offensive weapons: krises and parang panjang. The trial took place at the time of Friday prayers, and as the convicted men were led from the court by police they were met by a crowd coming from worship at the nearby mosque. Sheikh Osman stood outside it and called: ‘Orang Islam keluar orang Melayu masuk dalam’ – ‘Muslims come out; Malays stay inside’. To the crowd, his meaning was clear: ‘Those who wish to travel the path of God, come outside; those of you who are merely Malays, stay inside