Merdeka Day: Have we been celebrating a lie?

'If the British did not colonise Malaysia, then why did we need to seek independence? Independence from what? From being 'protected'?'

Hadi: Ridiculous to say nation never colonised

Compass: If the professors are right that the British did not colonise us but merely administered the states of Malaya, does that mean that the sultans in the Malay states had voluntarily handed the states over to the British?

And why did we have to ask God to save their king and queen and not our sultans? And why did we have to fight to regain the "administration" of our country? Are we expected to believe these eminent professors?

Tan Kim Keong: If we were not colonised, then what we have been celebrating on every Aug 31 since 1957 has been a big lie.

We might as well asked these 'experts' to petition the government to stop airing the clip in which we have our first PM shouting 'Merdeka' four times.

Suhailah Samsuddin: I agree with the professors and Umno that the country was never colonised. It was merely protected by the British.

PAS and Hadi must be out of their mind and are hallucinating about something that was not there. If indeed we were colonised, there would have been bloodshed had we sought independence from the British. Sudahlah.

Milosevic: People are saying the obvious - that there was an anti-British movement way before Umno. After all, Umno's battle cry during the Malayan Union episode was: "We want protection".

Why do readers here want to constrain the Council of Professors (COP) from doing the noble job of supporting Umno by arguing over facts and logic? Of course, real scholars will see Malaya as a colony.

See Wikipedia: "The ideological underpinnings, as well as the practical application of indirect rule in European colonialism is usually traced to the work of Frederick Lugard, the High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria from 1899 to 1906.

"In the lands of the Sokoto Caliphate... Lugard instituted a system whereby external, military, and tax control was operated by the British, while most every other aspect of life was left to local pre-colonial aristocracies who had sided with the British during their conquest.

"The theory behind this solution to a very practical problem of domination by a tiny group of foreigners of huge populations is laid out in Lugard's influential work, 'The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa'."

Zana: This is the British we are talking about - the most cultured, subtle and smartest colonial power.

They are not like the Portugese, Spaniards, Dutch, Japanese or even the Americans. They have legal and diplomatic niceties like advisors, protectorates, indirect rule, helpers, invitation, etc.

Even after 54 years of singing 'Negaraku' and the hoisting of our national colours, some of us still did not get it. What a shame.

Werewolves: If the British did not colonise Malaysia, then why did we need to seek independence? Independence from what? From being "protected"?

Whether you call it a true colony, protected states or protectorates, the bottom line is we were ruled by the British. The so-called sovereignty is a sham.

Tell the Truth: PAS chief Abdul Hadi Awang is correct in that Umno is trying to distract the people from the more tragic issues of a corrupt Election Commission (EC), which is collaborating with the National Registration Department (NRD) and Umno, to treacherously admit thousands of foreigners into the country as citizens just like they did in Sabah in order to stay in power.

In fact, Umno is more treacherous to the Malay race by bringing in Indonesians into the country and giving them false citizenships. The rural Malays must know this. The Indonesians will one day be flying the Indonesian flag in Malaysia and deprive all the Malays of their rights that are due to them.

Umno can rid of all the Chinese and Indians from this country but Umno has to explain how come the Malays will soon be treated as second-class citizens by the Indonesian Malays.

Onyourtoes: Precisely Hadi Awang, if only more enlightened Malays could come forward to "rescue" this country from an odyssey of return.

If we have a Council of Professors spitting nonsense, I think this country is done for. Are we Malaysians such a despicable race? Have we had no sense of right and wrong anymore?

How much more disclosures must we highlight before the Election Commission, the National Registration Department and Home Ministry are willing to admit that there were indeed a conspiracy to cheat the citizens of the country (particularly Sabah) through fraudulent election processes and illegal granting of citizenships and voting rights to people who are disqualified.

I, much as I would like to think and act Malaysian, believe it is only the Malays who can save the soul of this nation at this juncture of our history. For more than 50 years, Umno has one strategy - to keep the non-Malays divided and the Malays ignorant - and they have succeeded in doing so.

Now the number of non-Malays has become so small that even if they are united in their opposition to Umno, they still do not count much (do you think Umno has not done their maths?).

It is the Malays that have the absolute majority and it is the Malays that control almost every institution of power and influence in this country today.

SMC77: Just a simple question to BN: Why Tunku Abdul Rahman led the team of various ethnic group leaders to UK to negotiate with the British? Were they spending their time holidaying in London 60-plus years ago?

Anonymously: I am still reeling in shock. It looks like the very core of our local history is in dispute. Had it come from an LCE school dropout, it is understandable but coming from scholarly authorities... OMG! - Malaysiakini