MALAYSIA & MALAYS WOULD BE MUCH BETTER OFF UNDER THE LIKES OF TUN ISMAIL: A family ahead of their time

KUALA LUMPUR - Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s second deputy prime minister, was a force to reckon with in the political arena until his sudden death in 1973. To remember the 100th anniversary of his birth today, Malay Mail will excerpt parts of his unfinished memoirs, Drifting into Politics, daily.

CHAPTER 1

One of the earlier recollection of childhood days was a journey which my parents and I made to Singapore. There was no causeway then across the Straits of Johor. We had to get into a ferry which carried us across to the train at Woodlands. The train journey from Woodlands to the city of Singapore took about an hour. When we landed at Singapore city, my parents hired a horse and carriage. Our journey to our parent’s friend’s house was a musical one because the bell tied to the horses’ heads and bodies jingled as they trotted along.

My father’s friend was a Chinese gentleman. His house in Singapore city was a shophouse type of building but to me, as a child, it appeared as a big, spacious building. The ground floor was used as a garage and it was full of cars. He was definitely a wealthy Chinese at that time, but years later when I grew up, I met him again. He had lost everything on tin mining.

Ours was a unique family. My father was reserved and hardly talked to anyone of us, and when we wanted to ask him for something, either money or some presents, we had to write to him. My memory of my mother, who died when she was in her early 40s, is that of various women, warm-hearted and great. She hardly knew any English, but she always surprised me by holding conversations with a lady friend of the family, who only spoke English, for hours on end. Although there were already nine of us in the family — four boys and five girls — both my parents were very fond of taking in Chinese girls as adopted children. I can only remember nine of them. They were brought up no different from my sisters, enjoying the same amenities and being taught together how to cook and look after the house. They all married well and no one looking at them now could imagine they were children of Chinese parents.

My paternal grandmother was very fond of travelling and this was made possible because she had many married daughters whose husbands were posted in many faraway places in Johor and also because she enjoyed visiting her other relatives.

She had managed to persuade my parents to let her look after me and hence I was nearly always taken by her on these trips at the expense of my attendance at school. My earliest friends were therefore my relatives, and it was not until I was in school that I made friends with other boys. Until I joined secondary school, my friends were all Malays, because in those days, boys of different nationalities went to different schools in which their own language was the medium of instruction. In secondary government schools, the medium of instruction was English. It was in the secondary school in my own state that I began to mix with boys of all races. I was a voracious reader and was very fond of reading books on philosophy and other books, which were locally known as “Serious Books”, that is, books not based on fiction.

I began to admire English ways and even formed my own interpretation of what they should be. I think those early conceptions of what I thought English ways should be are responsible for some of the characteristics which, I always think, made me different from other Malays, although I always got on well with the latter. I think this was because in those days, the non-Malay girls — especially the Chinese girls — had more freedom than those of other races. I enjoy the company of the opposite sex and since it was not possible to find them among my own race, I began to get closer and closer to my non-Malay friends. I am convinced that this early mingling with the other races during the most impressionable stage of my life had a lot to do with my non-racial outlook.

Our family was unique among the Malay families, in the sense that my father was prepared to make financial sacrifices to give his children the best education. As a family, my brothers, sisters and I were not brilliant, but we made up for the lack of it by each of us possessing an insatiable ambition to get on in life. Except for two of my sisters, one of whom went to Australia to study Domestic Science on state scholarship, all the other were given tertiary education at my father’s expense and this was made possible largely because my father owned a medium-sized rubber estate. I was sent to Australia to complete my medical studies at Melbourne University. My late elder brother went to Cambridge to graduate with Honours in Law and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple.

My third brother studied Economics at Melbourne University. My fourth sister graduated in Domestic Science in Melbourne. The only children in the family who were not sent abroad were my first, second and third sisters. The first two did not go to English school because they grew up in a period when it was not the custom to send girls to any school, let alone an English school which in Johor Baru at that time was run by Catholic nuns. My third sister who was very bright and would have done well had she gone abroad for higher studies, lost her opportunity to do so because of the Japanese Occupation.

My father was therefore ahead of his time as far as the Malays were concerned. The Indians and Chinese had, of course, been sending their sons abroad as soon as they amassed enough wealth to do so. But then my father was a unique Malay in many ways. He was the only survivor of the two children of my grandfather by his first marriage. He was one of a handful of Malays who went to Raffles College in Singapore daily from Johor Baru to continue his secondary education. Although a bright student, he was bypassed by the Johor Government when it sent Malay students to England for higher education.

It may have been a great disappointment to him because he had set his heart to do Law. Instead, he worked in the British Adviser’s office in Johor Baru where his ability and brilliance often caught the attention of the British Adviser. His promotion in the service was rapid, but he never became the Mentri Besar of Johor mainly because he was always a “Lone Wolf” and refused to indulge in intrigues. Since Merdeka, our family has had the distinction of producing two ministers in the Cabinet and the First President of the Senate. I successively held several ministries as did my late brother Suleiman. My father was elected by the Johor State Legislative Assembly to the Senate and the Senate in turn elected him the first president.

As a family, we took great interest in the movement for Independence. In fact, during the days of the Malayan Union, when the Malays were agitating against the British, my father, my late brother, and my brotherin-law were suspended from government service because of their political activities. Although we were all interested in politics, as brothers we held independent views on politics and we could argue vehemently without affecting our personal relationship.

In Johor, there were two families who were well respected because of their service to the state and who were politically active. They were my own and Dato Onn’s (Jaafar) family. Dato Onn’s family was also unique in many ways. As a family which had produced successive menteris besar of Johor, it was naturally the premier family in Johor. The family and branches of the family have produced many eminent men and women, but the most famous of them was, of course, Dato Onn. Dato Onn was a unique man. He was always fearless both morally and physically and incredibly stubborn. He was the idol of the Johor people. Handsome, dashing, and fearless, he was the envy of all. It would take a biographer to do full justice to him and here, I would only like to describe him as I knew him. Like all others, I was a great admirer of him. He was a great man and the nation should be grateful to him for having mobilised Malay nationalism which was the spearhead to Malaya’s independence. His great fault was, of course, his ambivalence towards independence. - Malay Mail