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The Committee also reopened the debate on the meaning of citizenship and nationality that had proved so incendiary in 1947. In August 1949 the following questions were posed: ‘Is the ultimate aim a United Malayan Nation?’ ‘What is meant by the “special position” of the Malays?’ ‘Should there be equality of status, privilege and opportunity between federal citizens (in due course to Malayan nationals)?’ As Tan Cheng Lock argued, ‘I do not say that the special position should not be upheld, but in what direction? Is there going to be inequality as between the citizens themselves or are they to be on an equal footing?’ Onn responded that it was not so much the equality of citizenship that was at stake, but the principle that ‘the Malay’s allegiance to this country came before anybody else’. A Chinese might have a physical home in Malaya and also a spiritual home elsewhere, but for the Malays the two were inseparable. Malay leaders questioned whether a Chinese, in principle, could place his spiritual loyalty in Malaya, and even if this were conceded, how could it be done without jeopardizing the position of the Malays? But Onn now went further than he had ever gone before in conceding a nationality for non-Malays: ‘The Malay feeling has changed, and they do accept the principle provided that [the non-Malays] are prepared to give undivided loyalty.’141 In subsequent meetings the basis of common nationality was hammered out. A proposal began to emerge, based on a technical provision of the Nationality Bill of the State of Johore, whereby a subject of the ruler automatically became a federal citizen. Could this, it was suggested, be extended more widely to Chinese? One obstacle was the rulers themselves. As the legal adviser to UMNO, Roland Braddell, put it: ‘The other rulers would not have it at any price… They were Muhammadan rulers and they wanted Muhammadans. He did not know if the rulers ever heard of the idea of nationality.’142

In mid August thousands of Malays descended on the royal town of Kuala Kangsar for the installation of the 33rd Sultan of Perak. Significantly, a representative of the Chinese squatters was invited for the first time to attend the ceremony. The Perak line was traced back to the last Sultan of Melaka, deposed by the Portuguese in 1511. The state regalia included the kris of the Malay hero Hang Tuah and a sword said to have belonged to Alexander the Great. It was a striking display of the daulat, or the aura of a sultan.143 But Onn was increasingly impatient with the rulers. The next month, at a speech to the UMNO general assembly at Arau in Perlis, Onn floated proposals for a Malayan nationality without consulting them, and reminded them that he had saved their thrones in 1946. This angered them deeply, especially the Sultan of Kedah, whose state was a rival centre of Malay politics. The rulers retaliated by opposing a tentative proposal from the British to appoint a Malay deputy high commissioner, who would most likely be Onn himself; they refused to accept a commoner elevated to a status above them. Onn resigned shortly afterwards as chief minister of Johore. In the face of this obstruction, Onn’s latent radicalism resurfaced. He told UMNO’s youth wing at a rally at Butterworth on 26 August that ‘the days of feudal rule are over. We are in the age of democratic and constitutional rule.’144 But Onn was finding it difficult to reconcile his reputation as the sole spokesman of the Malays with his conviction that the political struggle must now be broadened to include others. He was losing patience with UMNO, and saw it as too narrow for his ambitions. He was moving ahead of Malay opinion.

At a meeting in Penang over 29–31 December, from which Onn was absent, other senior Malay leaders rounded on the citizenship proposals. ‘Our Malay friends’, Tan Cheng Lock complained to a colleague, ‘seem to think that the Chinese are born criminals or inherently wicked, that whatever we do in this country is inherently wrong.’ But the situation was saved