KNOW THE FACTS AND YOUR HISTORY BEFORE YOU ACT!

Ahmad Mustapha Hassan, The Ant Daily

It is very sad that some Malays, especially those who took part in the so called red shirt rally, know very little of their history and why this country evolved into being a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious country.

These Malays have yet to transcend their irrational, emotional, and illogical mindsets as well as their herd and siege mentalities.

Most were not even aware as to why they were there in the rabble-rousing rally.

Some came because they were given free transportation, food and money. Some considered this an opportunity to do some shopping in Kuala Lumpur.

But on the whole they had very little knowledge of the history of the country.

The peninsula before the arrival of the British was full of conflicts among the various chiefs in the country.

They did not have any sense of creating a state where boundaries and areas were clearly marked.

Each chieftain would consider those who accepted him as the ultimate source of power as being his subjects and belonging to his state.

The sources of revenue were mostly from piracy and tax on opium.

There was no desire or vision to extend this area of revenue to other sources.

Only Johor at that time showed some eagerness to develop the country by opening up land for pepper and gambier plantations.

The ruler of Johor at that time invited the Chinese from Singapore who were involved in cultivating these crops in Singapore to come over to Johor to plant them.

Land was given to them for that purpose and special rights to the land were also given to them.

Johor became the biggest exporter of pepper and gambier during that period of national history and this added to the wealth of the state.

Yet another source of wealth was tin.

The Malay miners were required to sell the tin to their chiefs at fixed prices and the chiefs then sold the tin to Chinese merchants.

But there arose the rivalry among the chiefs to the detriment of the industry.

In the 1820s Chinese immigrants were involved in the industry with some working for the Malay chiefs but due to the rivalry among the Malay chiefs, the Chinese became the dominant group involved in this industry.

The industry created wealth for Perak and Selangor.

It therefore showed much evidence that wealth in the country was created by the Chinese through sheer hard work.

The Malay chiefs were much too involved in trying to grab opportunities, thus creating animosity among themselves to their own detriment.

Greed made them lose the industry to others.

It was never the fault of the Chinese that the Malays became poor although the country was full of natural wealth.

It was the unstable situation among their own chiefs that caused them to lose out to the Chinese.

British colonialism managed to bring peace among all the chiefs by giving all of them fixed allowances.

The British too were instrumental in determining who the right claimants were to the various states in the peninsula and those helpful to the British were elevated to the status of Sultans with the blessing of Queen Victoria.

All of them had to pledge loyalty to the British monarch. That, in short, was what happened in the peninsula.

And with the creation of Malaysia in 1963, the whole political demography changed.

The “ketuanan Melayu” had become irrelevant and out of date as the country had become multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious.