From Malay to Malaysian LanguageThe Man Behind The task of talking non-Malays into accepting Malay as the Malaysian language. Not an easy job that was accomplished by the easygoing Tunku Abdul Rahman. Frankly, I am glad there is no exact equivalent in Malaysian language to the expression above. People were asking this question back in 1951 about a middle-age lawyer who took over the leadership of UMNO. Pretty soon they were looking at the most powerful man in the country: Tunku Abdul Rahman sold his expensive cars and properties to finance the campaigns of his political vision. He worked like mad, living and sleeping on trains and was often home only one day a month. In 1955, he reaped a landslide victory in the general election, subsequently elevated to the position of the Chief Minister of Malaya under British, then the first Prime Minister of independent Malaya in 1957 and Malaysia in 1963. His background was far from ordinary. He was a little boy who was carried to school on shoulders. Indeed he was a Tunku or the Malaysian language for 'prince', who lived a luxurious life with his 44 royal siblings . The Tunku was born as the seventh son of the Sultan of Kedah and his sixth wife, a Siamese. At the age of 15, the Kedah state government granted him scholarship to study law in Cambridge. Instead of lectures, the young Tunku attended mostly dances and incurred traffic violations. Consequently, he failed his bar exams. So the prince had to work-lah. He began his civil service intially holding minor posts then mostly as a district officer. Apparently his touch for the people began to manifest at this point.For instance, there was a mosque named Rahmaniah after him as a gesture of appreciation for his personal participation in the construction work as a manual labourer. Even the Japanese intruders found him to be useful and retained his service as a district officer during Japanese occupation of Malaya. The Tunku made good use of his favoured position to help hide escapees from Japanese death camps and to keep in contact with British guerilla units - secretly. By the way, the Tunku had come into contact with the Malayan independent movement on his return to England to complete his law degree after the war. There he began a politically active life and met many supporters, including his future deputy , Abdul Razak. He came back, joined UMNO, built a political following in his home Kedah. That is to say, he was already an influential, experienced and mature civil servant when he replaced Dato' Onn Jaafar as the President of UMNO. As for the people who had never heard of him ...I presume they didn't understand our Malaysian language because the Tunku wrote patriotic articles through a magazine called Watan published in Alor Star in 1946, of which he was also the editor.
Would you like to have 70 children in your house...or work place? The Tunku had that many in his Prime Minister's residence - children of his servants. Diplomats in a conference with the Tunku had often seen a child wandering into the sitting room and onto his lap. Does this open your eyes to the kind of man Tunku was? " I'm a lazy man," the Tunku told a journalist of TIME in an interview, as he described one youthful escapade. Of course, the journalist wrote it down-lah while a worried aide was watching but Tunku just chuckled: " It's too late now." Perhaps it was his charisma with people that moved the journalist to comment Tunku as " One of the most relaxed, cheerful and modestly friendly cover subject." As I am enlightened with our Tunku's outlook in life which included golf every morning, afternoon naps, not a mighty but happy Malaysia...I began to see why Sukarno was so upset that he initiated a confrontation against the formation of Malaysia. Apart from political reasons, it's because both men stood for opposite principles : Sukarno's revolutionary principles which I perceived as leading a hard life and Abdul Rahman's enjoyment of life. With different results respectively: an economically ruined giant Indonesia and a prospering little Malaysia.
Tunku may not be the first person to advocate the making of Malaysia but he certainly was the catalyst. This is how the Daily Star Web Edition* commented on his premiereship: "Tunku was able to persuade the ethnic Chinese to accept Bahasa Malaysia, the language of the majority Malays, as the national language of the new country. He made a crucial compromise as well, by giving up the traditional Jawi script, similar to Arabic, in which Bahasa was written in the past, and adopting Roman alphabets instead." - Khalid Shams, Leadership will not grow from trees. In conclusion, there may be many nationalists who dreamt of a federation of Malaysia. However, it was Tunku who made it into a reality together with the new Malaysian language as part of the package, under very challenging circumstances. Have you ever thought of the Tunku's role involving the Malaysian language as well? p.s. Translated literally, Bahasa Melayu is Malay language whereas Bahasa Malaysia, Malaysian language.
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