The 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

BIOGRAPHY of Tunku Abdul Rahman

A Malay prince with scant political experience but able to identify with rich and poor of diverse ethnic origins and thus to gain their confidence, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN led Malaya to independence without bloodshed. While many in theory saw cooperation and unity as the only course, it remained for Malay, Chinese and Indian actually to be brought together in the common cause of nation-building. As chief architect of an effective alliance, the TUNKU took to every city, town and village his persuasively sincere message of racial accord in a new "Malayan" community.

TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN PUTRA was born at Alor Star, capital of the Malay State of Kedah, on February 8, 1903. The twenty-first son of Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah, who reigned for 61 years, the TUNKU is descended from one of the most extensive and perhaps the oldest royal family in Malaya, traceable in an unbroken line over more than 1,000 years through nine Hindu rulers and 16 Muslim sultans. The TUNKU’s mother, Makche Menjelara, was the daughter of Luang Nara Boriraks, a Shan chieftain later a District Officer posted near Bangkok whose ancestors emigrated from Pegu, Burma. The sixth of the Sultan's eight wives and his favorite until her death in 1941, Menjelara was well endowed with property in her own right—in Bangkok, left by her father, and in Kedah, given to her by her adopted father and her husband—which she shrewdly administered. ABDUL RAHMAN was the sixth of her 12 children.

The TUNKU’s father, Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah, from 1896 until his death in 1943 at the age of 79 was not well, seldom ventured outside of his palace except to visit his wives, and left affairs of state to a brother or son acting as Regent. In 1909, however, he caused an onerous Siamese claim of suzerainty over Kedah to be lifted by the signing of a treaty with Britain that brought direct British influence into the State. Like Perlis, Johore, Trengganu and Kelantan, Kedah remained aloof from political union with the Federated Malay States, retaining a large measure of self-determination in internal administration. Even before British intervention, Kedah had a reputation of being more advanced than any other State in the Peninsula largely due to the ability of its princes, who assumed active roles in governments.

ABDUL RAHMAN, nurtured in the autocratic atmosphere of an independent feudal court, was surrounded in his mother's three-storied palace, built in the style of a Chinese pagoda, by retainers who sank to their knees each time they approached a royal presence. Princes and princesses, in turn, paid similar obeisance to their parents and elders. At the age of five, his mother gave up trying to keep him inside the Istana, or palace, compound. Though physically frail as a child as a result of malaria and yaws, he delighted in escaping the royal confines to join in barefooted play with boys of his own age from the surrounding kampongs, or villages, learning from them about the animals, birds and life of the people of the region.

Like all of Kedah's royal sons, ABDUL RAHMAN was expected to enter government service; for him an administrative career was planned. His tutoring began at the age of four in Malay. At six, his mother entered him in both the Government English School in Alor Star and the Malay School where he learned the Arabic alphabet of 32 characters, English with its 26-character alphabet, and such other subjects as the Muslim lunar reckoning according to the Hejira calendar and Western Gregorian reckoning of months of 30 or 31 days. His mother at first insisted he should be carried the short distance to school on the shoulders of a retainer as befitted a prince. This "indignity," however, caused the lad such acute embarrassment that she soon relented and allowed him to walk.

In 1914, at the age of 11, ABDUL RAHMAN was sent to the Debsirindir School in Bangkok under the vigilant charge of his eldest brother, Tunku Yusof, who had been adopted by King Chulalongkorn and was then a captain in the Siamese army. For the first time away from home, the young prince found fascination in the journey and the teeming life of the Siamese capital with its busy canals and brilliantly decorated temples. While continuing his study of elementary English and learning Siamese, he became a Boy Scout and typically made friends not only with boys of high rank but also old women who hawked their betel nut and oranges squatting by the roadside.

In 1916, he joined some of his brothers as a pupil of the Penang Free School, a fine century-old institution supported by the East India Company and members of the Church of England. Here entering another world of a bustling British colony, he took with good nature the heckling of classmates over the heavily embroidered green velvet pillows and other comforts his mother sent and was regularly caned on the hand for his healthy mischievousness. From patrol leader in the school Boy Scout troop, he became a junior officer of the School Cadet Corps and learned to shoot, a sport he would enjoy in later life on weekend hunts for snipe and other birds.

When the Kedah Government, in 1919, inaugurated State scholarships to send promising boys to a British university, Menjelara succeeded in getting the first grant for ABDUL RAHMAN. Infected upon landing by the excitement with which the Britishers aboard awaited news of the Derby winner, he succumbed to the "turf bug" and since then has rarely missed important horse races when in Britain or Malaya. His first tutor was the Reverend Edgar A. Vigers in Little Stukeley. Depressed when he saw not even a shop in this pleasant little village some 60 miles north of London, the adaptable Malay prince soon grew fond of the rural surroundings and tenor of life. After one year, he moved to Cambridge to matriculate for entry into the University. Crammed by three tutors in English and Latin, geometry, arithmetic and algebra, he achieved a minimum pass and was admitted to St. Catharine's College. An elder half brother, Badlishah, destined for service in the Kedah Treasury, was in Wadham College at Oxford on a Siamese "Kings Scholarship." Another elder brother, Yaacob, came to Cambridge to study science and was later to have a distinguished career in agriculture.

Lured by the glamour of university life, the genial ABDUL RAHMAN did not take seriously to his books and rarely attended lectures. A cheerful extrovert, he amused himself and others, knew everyone in the small college and was very popular. Though still small and slender, he was a mainstay of the College second eleven. Upon entering Cambridge, he had immediately applied for residence in the College, usually given on rotation because facilities were insufficient for all students. Finally advised in his third year that rooms would continue to be unavailable to him because "the College was built for Englishmen," he was angry for days, wrote home and later told the story to the British Adviser in Kedah, who visited him when on leave in England. Intercession by the Colonial Office caused the College authorities to apologize and offer quarters, but ABDUL RAHMAN refused, wanting no preference as the son of a Malay Ruler. While too amiable to hold hard feelings, he traces from this incident the seed of thought that British colonialism should one day be ended in Malaya. He first read law and then history, and, in December 1925, with lowest possible marks for a pass became the first Kedah prince to earn a degree from a British university. More important to him than the studies required for his Bachelor of Arts degree was the "education" in getting on with people of many types.

After four months at home, Tunku Ibrahim, his eldest half-brother and a stern Regent, ordered him back to England to complete his studies in law. With generous allowances—an annual £400 scholarship and a £600 private income were augmented by his mother whenever he ran short—he unabashedly found horse and dog racing, sleek cars ranging from fast sports models to slower Austins and Standards, and dining and dancing with the young social set more attractive than the complexities of law. On many evenings, he welcomed Malay student friends to the flat he shared with his brother, Yaacob, and deftly cooked for them the spicy food they missed. The student Malay Society of Great Britain, formed at his inspiration, chose him as first honorary president and second president.

Another contemporary of those years and one of his coaches in law was Neil Lawson, who later became advisor to the Malay Rulers in their discussions with the British and the Alliance Party over the form of constitution for independent Malaya. He learned best when Lawson and other friends read aloud to him and today gets more from listening than reading.

In 1930, after passing three papers but failing miserably in the fourth in his law examination, he ruefully left for home aware that it was time he attempted to settle down. A difficult good-bye was said to an English girl, Violet Coulson, with whom marriage plans had been set aside until he knew his future in Kedah and could get permission of his parents to wed a woman not of their choice or race.

In April 1931, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN joined the Kedah Civil Service as a cadet in the Legal Advisor's Office in Alor Star and, within a few months, was appointed Assistant District Officer in Kulim. This community about 50 miles south of Alor Star he came to know well before his promotion, at the end of 1932, to District Officer of northeastern Padang Terap. Adjoining Siam and one of the two largest of Kedah's 10 districts, Padang Terap was mostly rugged, malarial jungle. From his headquarters at the end of the 20-mile road from Alor Star in the small town of Kuala Nerang, the new District Officer traveled on foot and on elephant back into the foothills of Malaya's main mountain range to visit every kampong under his administration, trying with little success to improve sanitary conditions. Anti-malarial measures he urgently recommended in the larger villages were only approved after his wife died of the disease.

In 1933, the TUNKU had married Meriam, daughter of a Chinese tin dealer he knew well in Alor Star, and his Siamese wife. Their daughter, Kathijah, born a year later, is today the wife of a Malay in Government and the mother of two children adored by their grandfather. A son, Tunku Nerang, born the following year and named after the town of his birth, is now a lieutenant in the Federation Armored Corps. Thirty-three days after bearing her second child, Meriam was fatally stricken with malaria.

A few months later, the TUNKU went on leave to Singapore where Violet Coulson had arrived from England. They were married according to Muslim rites but secretly, for Kedah law forbade royalty marrying outside the Malay race without permission of the Sultan, and the Regent disapproved of Kedah princes marrying Europeans. Hence the bride lived in Penang and the TUNKU in Kuala Nerang with the marriage not publicly acknowledged until an uncle became a less strict Regent. Permission then was given, but the marriage was not popular, particularly with some leading government officials. Transferred shortly thereafter to the Langkawi Islands some 90 miles northwest of Penang, the TUNKU was relieved to be in a more healthful if lonely place with his new wife.

After two years, a transfer to Kuala Muda District took the couple to headquarters in the growing township of Sungei Patani. While both welcomed return to urban life, exposure to a more typical Malay society heightened their differences of background. In 1937, Violet returned to England. They met again in London the following year and were divorced in 1946.

From the outset, the TUNKU as a civil servant balked at authority when rules seemed unreasonable but developed a notable rapport with the people. As District Officer, he collected land revenue, saw that the farmers ploughed and planted their rice paddies, designated harvest time after consultation with the Agriculture Department, sat as magistrate once a week and was chairman of the Sanitary Board, the equivalent of today's elected Town Council. His house in Sungei Patani was open at any time to townspeople and villagers with problems, he ate and drank with them in their homes or coffee shops and helped construct a new brick mosque himself. All these were remarkable experiences for provincial Malays unaccustomed to so approachable and solicitous a District Officer—not to mention son of a feudal family. Abhorring and often behind in his required paper work, he was also frequently at odds with his seniors for his publicly aired criticisms of the Government; clashes occurred with the Kedah Secretariat and both the Mentri Besar, or Prime Minister, and the British Adviser threatened him with severe disciplinary action. The conflict came to a head when he refused to obey an order to cancel the licenses of taxis in Sungei Patani and instruct the owners to form a company. Being not only a member of the royal house, but also the most popular District Officer in memory, he was not asked to resign but transferred on 24 hours notice to Kulim. To his delight, he was escorted by a convoy of taxis over the 40 miles to his new post. When he chose Kuala. Muda as his constituency in the Federal Elections in 1955, the District gave him a landslide victory.

In 1938, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN, determined to take his Bar examination and then quit Government service, took leave for a long holiday in England. He had passed his Part 1 examinations when war in Europe became imminent and he was summoned home. Back as District Officer in Kulim, he again associated easily with people of all classes and nationalities. Described by admirers as "uncomplicated, humane and with a keen sense of humor," he made welcome in his little house crowds of both Malays and Chinese. Friendships also multiplied with Britishers in Butterworth and Penang and from rubber estates. Though his divorce had not been formalized, he exercised, in 1939, the Muslim prerogative of more than one wife to marry Sharifah Rodziah, the attractive daughter of a well-known family in Alor Star whose origins were in Arabia.

Defensive preparations began in Malaya after Britain's declaration of war on Nazi Germany, even though extension of the European conflict to Asia was not anticipated, and neither, at that point, was a Japanese attack. After his intuitive suggestion of evacuation centers was rejected, he went ahead to build, in hilly country two miles from Kulim, six dormitory blocks for about 5,000 people and stocked them with rice and tinned food. When the Japanese a year later suddenly marched into Kedah from Thailand—the name taken for Siam in 1932—Kulim was the only district prepared; there was no looting, panicking or other disorder as people from towns and villages sought refuge in the long-houses where they lived until the "peace treaty" was signed between the Sultan and the conquerors.

The Japanese advance into Kedah began on December 8, 1941, with a bombing attack on Royal Air Force planes and installations at Sungei Patani. Learning three days later that the British were preparing to evacuate and planned to take the Sultan to Penang and thence abroad, the TUNKU intercepted the convoy in which his father was traveling and diverted him to Kulim. Kept safely in a valley retreat during the takeover, the Sultan, on December 19th, signed an agreement with the Japanese and returned to Alor Star having been "recognized" as Ruler by the new Japanese overlords.

ABDUL RAHMAN’s intervention on behalf of Malays and Chinese arrested by the Japanese in Kulim soon caused displeasure. Upon his refusal to indenture Malays to clean land and plant cotton in areas far from their homes without pay, he was ordered to report to the Audit Department in Alor Star. His residence there had been requisitioned as a Japanese mess, but he rented a small house, and the State Auditor, following Japanese instructions, gave him a clerk's job with little to do. He soon found work, however, when Malay and Indian escapees from construction of the so-called "Death Railway" from Thailand into Burma returned through Alor Star destitute, malaria-ridden and afflicted with scabies and festering sores. Rallying a few friends, he formed a welfare group that collected money and bought food for the returnees that was cooked in the TUNKU’s home by his wife, Sharifah. Two associates in this enterprise were Senu bin Abdul Rahman and Mohamed Khir bin Johari, who later worked closely with him in achieving Malayan independence.

When Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu were handed back to Thailand by the Japanese in 1943, "rectifying the injustice of 1909," the TUNKU was appointed Superintendent of Education for Kedah upon the intercession of Thai friends of his Bangkok and Cambridge days. Remaining in this post when the British returned to Malaya and recovered the four states, one of his first orders was to discontinue the teaching of Japanese language—instruction was solely in Malay—and, "considering courtesy and good manners paramount assets in everyone's life," he introduced into the curriculum the unusual subject of "Manners."

The Malay nationalist movement, meanwhile, was steadily gaining momentum, nurtured by Japanese talk of independence for Malaya, the "independence" given to Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines under Japanese dictates, and the intense nationalism growing in neighboring Indonesia. Although he became a patron of the Saberkas (Unity) organization formed in Kedah and disguised as a cooperative store to camouflage its political purpose of independence for Malaya, the TUNKU counseled other leaders to go slow—a restraint that was not popular.

The welfare work grew as more and more returnees sought sanctuary in Alor Star, lacking means to go on to their homes. With no Government help and inadequate public donations, costs were met by proceeds from performances in the kampongs of a volunteer traveling troupe of musicians and comedians. The TUNKU also recruited secretly for the British guerrilla unit, Force 136, when its operations reached Kedah in 1944. At the time of the Japanese surrender, in August 1945, he helped prevent a Communist takeover of Kedah by asking the Japanese garrison commander to keep his soldiers in defensive positions until Malay and British troops arrived, placing trustworthy Saberkas youths in villages to avert racial clashes between Chinese and Malays, halting Chinese seizure of the police station in Alor Star and hiring cars to bring Force 136 men into the capital.

A new phase in development of Malay political consciousness and unity began in October 1945 with hasty British efforts to create a constitutional Malayan Union and introduce equal citizenship rights for all who claimed Malaya as their homeland. Rousing issues were the "MacMichael treaties" which the nine Malay Rulers were persuaded to sign whereby they ceded all sovereign powers and jurisdiction to the King of England, thus reducing themselves to figureheads and their States to colonies. The TUNKU was unable to attend the first "All-Malay Congress" called in protest in Kuala Lumpur on March 1, 1946. At that meeting the representatives of 41 Malay associations, including Saberkas, agreed upon amalgamation in a United Malays National Organization (UMNO) to fight the Union. Onn bin Ja'afar was elected president. Member of a distinguished Johore family and organizer in his State of the largest Malay political group until UMNO, Onn had suggested both the Congress and the amalgamation and was now the acknowledged leader of over two million Malays. Rejecting the treaties on grounds that they were "not executed in accordance with the ancient unwritten law, traditions and usages of the respective Malay States," the UMNO arranged a boycott of the installation of the Governor at the inauguration of the Malayan Union on April 1, 1946, non-participation by all Malays in the Union Advisory Board, and a week of mourning.

In response to this unprecedented show of discontent, a mission, composed of a Conservative and a Labor M.P. and a former civil servant—all long residents in Malaya—was dispatched from Britain to hear Malay views. To the Labor member, David R. Rees-Williams, whom he had often met and become friends with in Penang and Kedah, the TUNKU privately expressed the bitter opposition of the Malays to the treaties. Determined Malay resistance to the Union prompted official discussions between the Governor-General of Malaya, Malcolm MacDonald, the Governor of the Malayan Union, Sir Edward Gent, the Rulers and UMNO on a solution to the crisis.

In January 1947, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN boarded ship in Penang once more determined to complete his law studies in England. He felt unwanted politically after disagreement with Saberkas extremists, who criticized both the Rulers and UMNO for negotiating with the British and him for encouraging UMNO to participate. To their insistence upon outright opposition to British rule he argued that the Malays were too weakened by the Japanese occupation to start violence against the victors, and they had no arms.

In London, the TUNKU rejoined the Inner Temple. He again took a keen interest in the welfare of Malay students and revived the moribund Malay Society of Great Britain. Among the Malay law students prevailed upon to read aloud to him, Abdul Razak bin Hussein became one of his closest friends. Through David Rees-Williams, he and Razak met Labor Party leaders who a few years later were to be useful politically. The TUNKU sat for his final law examination in December 1948 and admits to weeping with joy upon hearing he had passed. When called to the Bar from the Inner Temple, he, as senior student, was speechmaker. Setting custom aside, he dissolved the formality of the usually solemn occasion with his humorous remark: "Tonight I not only celebrate my being called to the Bar, but also my silver jubilee as a student at this Inn." After 25 years, at the age of 45, he was at last a barrister.

While the TUNKU was away, culmination of the negotiations that he had urged UMNO to join came on January 22, 1948, when the Rulers assembled in colorful regalia with the British Governor at King's House in Kuala Lumpur to sign State Agreements revoking the MacMichael treaties and restoring to them all their rights and privileges. The Rulers next joined in signing a Federation Agreement giving to the British Government jurisdiction only over external affairs, external and internal defense and appeals to the Privy Council. Among the jubilant Malays present was Onn bin Ja'afar, then Mentri Besar of Johore and elevated to Dato—the Malay knighthood—who had played a key role in the achievement. On February 1, 1948, the new Federation of Malaya came into being—a union of nine Malay States and two Colonies.

Thoughts of orderly movement toward democratic self-government were forcibly set aside a few months later when the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) unleashed upon the country a campaign of terror to wrest control from the "British imperialists" and establish a "People's Democratic Republic." On June 16, 1948, High Commissioner Sir Edward Gent declared a State of Emergency.

In the political equation a dominant factor was the widespread bitterness among Malayan Chinese. Equal citizenship, promised in the Malayan Union, had not been retained in the new constitution, and in the central legislature of 75 members the Malay majority had been restored. The Chinese also resented slurs upon their loyalty in the face of a Chinese-led insurgency most of them detested. Like the Malays in 1946, their recourse was to organize. Lacking membership in villages and small towns, the resulting Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) was not representative of all Chinese in the Federation, but broad support came from the intelligentsia and urbanites. At the inauguration of the MCA in February 1949, voices of moderation triumphed. In accepting his election as president, Tan Cheng-Lock called upon his fellow Chinese "to make up and unite not only among yourselves but also with the Malays and other communities to make this land one country and one nation."

TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN had heard of this proponent of Sino-Malay unity from a Malayan Chinese student in London. An active, independent and cultured man who lived in the historic old town of Malacca, Tan Cheng-Lock, as early as 1926, had prophetically declared in the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements: "Our ultimate political goal should be a united self-governing British Malaya with a Federal Government and Parliament for the whole of it, functioning at a convenient center—say, Kuala Lumpur—and with as much autonomy in purely local affairs as possible for each of its component parts. I think it is high time that we commence to take action towards forging the surest and strongest link of that united Malaya by fostering and creating a true Malayan spirit and consciousness among its people to the complete elimination of racial and communal feeling."

The TUNKU had long felt the best political solution for Malaya lay in merging the races, but he and other Malay students in London were divided on whether Malays and Chinese could live side by side as members of a united nation. "In the end," he and Razak concluded, "there was no alternative for Malaya. Either the various races should come together or the country would have to be subdivided, which would be quite unthinkable because it would be accompanied by bloodshed." Vivid in their minds was the August 1947 partition of India and its tragic aftermath for Hindus and Muslims.

On his return to Malaya in early 1949, the TUNKU’s ambitions for political change were concentrated on Kedah; further observation of democracy in Europe had fortified his conviction that the State's autocratic rule should be altered. Accepting chairmanship of the Kedah Division and appointment in the Legal Department of the Kedah Government, he did not hesitate to criticize Sultan Badlishah, the brother who succeeded upon his father's death, and other Rulers for their archaic methods of governing and opposition to the nationalistic thrust toward independence encouraged by UMNO. Welcoming the timely offer to serve as Deputy Public Prosecutor in Kuala Lumpur, he was kept busy but barred from participating in politics. After a year and half, he was appointed President of the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur. Considered a "good but never outstanding" judge, he was noted for his patience and sound judgments none of which were upset on appeal.

Malaya, as a political entity in 1950 and 1951, was held together chiefly by the unifying influence of British rule over its geographical area of 50,950 square miles and the desire for independence. Some of the nine States and two Colonies in the Federation had modern forms of government while others were only emerging from feudalism. Its plural-society population of 6.4 million included some 3.2 million Malays, 2.4 million Chinese, 700,000 Indians, Pakistanis and Ceylonese, 12,500 Eurasians, 17,000 Europeans, and about 70,000 other minorities, no two of which were either culturally or economically integrated. Roughly 44 per cent were Muslims, 43 per cent Buddhists, nine per cent Hindus and two per cent Christians. Other than English, serving as a lingua franca among the educated, each group within a larger community used not only its own native language but the particular dialect of its ancestral home. Two raw materials, tin and rubber, of which Malaya was the world's largest and second largest producer, respectively, comprised 80 per cent of the country's exports and about one-fifth of the national income. The Malays were mostly small farmers raising rice, rubber and coconuts and fishermen, with representation at the top of the social scale by their hereditary Rulers. Principal merchants and rice mill owners in cities, towns and villages, the Chinese controlled the wholesale and retail trades and were prominent in tin mining and rubber production. The Indians, Pakistanis and Ceylonese included some entrepreneurs, but most were Tamil laborers on the huge European- and Chinese-owned rubber estates. Looking ahead to independence when they could no longer depend upon a comparatively neutral British regime to protect their interests, each of the diverse entities had become increasingly defensive of their stake in the society.

To foster interracial unity and also demonstrate the gradual transfer from a colonial to a representative form of government, High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney had urged the Colonial Office to convert the Executive Council into more of a Cabinet wherein persons from each of the chief ethnic groups would take responsibility for certain departments. In March 1951, six "Ministers" were appointed, including Dato' Onn as Member for Home Affairs, Tunku Yaacob, ABDUL RAHMAN’s elder brother, for Agriculture and Forestry, one other Malay, a Chinese, a Sinhala Ceylonese and an English tin miner.

A crisis threatening fragile Malay unity in UMNO was precipitated by Dato' Onn's politically premature advocacy of admission of non-Malays as associate members, his call for a Malayan nationality to include non-Malays and his insistence that ways must be found to "end feudal rule and replace it by constitutional methods of government." To force a review of the citizenship question, Onn resigned. Miscalculating his nearly unanimous reelection by the UMNO annual Assembly in 1950 and passage of proposals giving non-Malays simpler means of becoming citizens as evidence of general agreement with his views, he pressed on to call for either equal membership rights for all races in UMNO or establishment of a new national non-communal organization to coexist with the communal bodies to achieve racial unification and national independence. Onn's confidence was bolstered by support from non-Malay leaders, especially MCA president Dato Tan Cheng-Lock, also elevated to Malay rank in Johore, who had repeatedly emphasized the necessity of Sino-Malay unity. Persistent Chinese claims of a "right" to Federal citizenship and condemnation of the Federal Agreement as reflecting "a spirit of distrust and discrimination against Chinese and other non-Malays," however, had aroused Malay suspicions and fears. When Onn again resigned to force acceptance of non-Malays in UMNO, majority opinion had hardened against him, and the important minority inclined to accept his position was prepared to quit UMNO.

Each of the members of the UMNO Executive Council refused to take over from Onn. Some, like Onn, expected the UMNO soon to disintegrate. Others were willing to join his new party. Abdul Razak, then Assistant State Secretary in Pahang and as head of the UMNO Youth section a member of the Council, felt he was too young. In the breach, Razak led to the TUNKU’s home the coterie of friends and admirers that persuaded him to accept nomination as president of UMNO. Humble about his suitability but eager to participate politically and anxious for the UMNO to be saved for the sake of Malay unity, the TUNKU agreed on condition that Razak and the others would not play politics, "jumping about like monkeys tied to a post"—the allusion was to the change of parties he knew many in UMNO were considering. Among the three candidates who eventually stood for election at the annual UMNO Assembly in August 1951, the TUNKU won handily by 57 votes to 11 and seven for his rivals. In his farewell, Onn appealed to the Malays to accept the partnership of loyal and patriotic non-Malays in working for independence.

On September 16, 1951, 21 days after he left the UMNO, Onn and his Malay and non-Malay following launched the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP), in 1954 renamed the Party Negara, pledged to uniting the people in a common loyalty to work toward independence. Though the IMP could claim the strongest political group in the Federal Legislative Council, including Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasian members, Onn ultimately did not receive the influential Malay support he had counted upon. When Chinese support also was not forthcoming in the magnitude he had expected after his championing of the non-Malays, he alienated his Chinese adherents by angry attacks on their community.

When the TUNKU assumed the presidency of the UMNO, he still had two years to serve in Government before qualifying for retirement on a pension. He owned houses and land in Alor Star and Penang but was not a rich man and knew the UMNO could afford neither to pay him a salary nor finance the traveling required to rebuild the shattered organization. His quandary of how to live and yet give the UMNO his undivided attention was solved by High Commissioner Gurney, who also felt the UMNO needed full-time leadership. Upon Gurney's recommendation, the Government arranged for the TUNKU to take leave prior to retirement, first for a period at full pay, then half pay and finally no pay, and to be given two years in advance of the normal procedure the pension he still receives of M$288, or about £35, a month. Gurney also appointed him, as leader of a major political party, to the Federal Legislative Council whose members received M$500 a month. Moving his residence south to Johore Bahru where Onn had established UMNO headquarters, he began a straitened life. With UMNO paying only the small rent of his house and unable himself to afford a servant or driver, Sharifah washed, cooked and kept their home and the TUNKU cleaned and drove his own car. In the next few years, he sold one of his houses after another and finally all of his properties to cover political expenses.

With his characteristic nonchalant and happy air, the TUNKU at first gained among outsiders the reputation of a playboy at politics—an impression encouraged by one of the few indulgences his slim pocketbook allowed; he habitually consulted the racing calendar before agreeing to important political or government engagements. His colleagues in the UMNO, however, quickly came to value the leadership of a politically shrewd prince without pretensions.

As UMNO president, the TUNKU turned immediately to the task of reuniting the factions into which the party had divided over the issues raised by his predecessor. He advised members sympathetic to the IMP to resign and, to blunt the IMP drive for membership, began the first of many tours to court and kampong throughout the country to appeal for support of the UMNO. Using tactics remembered from Britain, he instructed each member of the Executive Council to forget pride, find Malay audiences—after Friday prayers, for instance—and "talk politics." He also demanded from them hard work, declaring the UMNO would contest every town and village council election to build a strong and progressive party. His repeated assurances that "the Malays will decide who the 'Malayans' should be" captured Malay loyalties and halted defections. In his presidential speech and afterwards, he noted the contribution of other races and said non-Malays faithful to the country would be welcome in an independent Malaya.

In January 1952, the Alliance Party was born with neither the TUNKU nor the newly knighted Dato Sir Cheng-lock Tan, leaders of the two parent parties, privy to the momentous event. The occasion was the first elections to the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Council. The IMP confidently expected to win a comfortable majority of the 12 seats contested. Following announcement by the Kuala Lumpur branch of the UMNO that it would field only six candidates, the Selangor branch of the MCA issued a statement signed by its president, Col. Hau-shik Lee, inviting not only Chinese but also non-Chinese candidates who would pledge to support its proposed civic program. "We feel," the statement explained, "that, in running a municipality, local interests should be paramount; local affairs should be neither influenced by politics nor conducted on a communal basis." Lee, his co-author and their associates had agreed that racial unity in the country was essential and could begin politically on the municipal level. The startling MCA document suggested to the Malay concurrent chairman of a district committee and an election campaign subcommittee in the Kuala Lumpur branch of the UMNO the possibility of a local political alliance. Fully authorized to take any action within reason to win seats for the UMNO, but not sure the Malays were ready for partnership with the Chinese, he first talked frankly with the only MCA member he knew personally. The upshot of a subsequent meeting between him and his subcommittee and MCA members was a declaration announcing the intention of the two parties to present a joint slate of 12 candidates.

Reading of this development in the newspapers, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN admits to being uncertain of the position he should take. At the first Sino-Malay rally a few days later, he expressed the hope that "the unity" displayed in Kuala Lumpur might "prove the forerunner of cooperation on much more important issues." Dato Sir Cheng-lock Tan's dilemma was still more complex, as he was both president of the MCA and a founding member of the IMP which was opposing the UMNO in the elections. Tan's decision to say nothing was met with protests from nearly all his senior colleagues. At the UMNO Selangor headquarters, where many looked favorably upon the IMP, similar protests were levied. On polling day, February 16, the Alliance won nine of the 12 seats, the IMP only two, and one went to an independent Sinhalese in a strongly Indian ward. The upset victory turned a surprised TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN, Tan and country to thinking in a new direction—the possibility of achieving unity by bringing communal organizations together.

January 1952 was also marked by the arrival of a new High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer, whose primary task was to bring the Communist terrorists under control. To help the peoples of Malaya become a fully self-governing nation he was instructed to introduce a common form of citizenship, encourage the Malays to play a larger economic role and, law and order permitting, provide for elections among the rural communities up to the municipal level, leading "in due course" to elections to higher councils. In February, Templer merged the advisory War Council with the Federal Executive Council and to the one consolidated instrument of policy at the federal level added five new members, including the TUNKU in his capacity as head of the UMNO.

Weekly meetings of the Executive Council were for the TUNKU a new education in consideration of Malaya's problems from a national rather than communal focus. Respected by fellow members were his sharp insight, practicality and intuitive feel of how the ra'ayat, or ordinary people, would regard particular measures.

As the year progressed, local Alliance mergers won 26 of 34 seats contested in five town council elections, while, by February 1953, agreement between the TUNKU and Dato Sir Cheng-lock Tan had become so close as to lead to the setting up of liaison committees between the local branches of the UMNO and the MCA throughout the Federation. Aware not only of the necessity for communal cooperation, they agreed independence must be achieved by constitutional means if violent upheaval such as ravaged Indonesia was to be avoided. Not only had the TUNKU realized, as Onn did before him, that the British Government would grant independence only to a country whose races were united but also the Malays were receptive to the proposition of a united Malayan nation and to cooperation with the Chinese as a prerequisite to independence.

In August 1953, the TUNKU was offered a portfolio by High Commissioner Templer but demurred so he could work outside as a free agent. Exercising his consistent ability to choose the best-suited men for a sensitive job, he prevailed upon Dr. Ismail bin Dato Abdul Rahman, to accept for the UMNO the portfolio for Lands, Mines and Communications that, in 1954, became the Ministry of Natural Resources. Col. Hau-shik Lee was persuaded to become the Member for Railways and Ports, later renamed Transport. Both Ismail and Lee agreed as representatives of the UMNO and the MCA to accept for one year only and to resign if general elections were not held by 1954 or whenever the Alliance requested them to do so.

In September 1953, at the UMNO annual assembly in Alor Star, the TUNKU was reelected as president, and he and the five UMNO members of the Legislative Council also pledged to resign if Alliance demands for elections by 1954 were not met. Simultaneously, the Alliance was supported in its election demands by the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) and the Pan-Malayan Labor Party.

A dramatic year in the political history of Malaya, 1954 represented for the TUNKU his political coming of age—no more would he be dismissed by opponents as a playboy at politics. In March, the Federal Government announced the membership of the last fully nominated Legislative Council with the widest representation in its six-year history. The Party Negara, formerly the IMP, had the majority—34 of 75 official and unofficial members, not counting the support of the Mentri Mentri Besar. The Alliance had 14 members with a possible augmentation of seven Labor Party votes.

An emergency assembly of the UMNO on April 18 at Malacca approved positive steps to press for a larger elected majority. The MCA passed a similar resolution, and in the next few weeks UMNO and MCA organized mass rallies to demand an elected majority. On April 21 the Colonial Office disclosed an agreement between the High Commissioner and the Rulers to an elected majority of six members in the Legislative Council of 52 elected and 46 nominated members with the High Commissioner filling the reserve of seven seats and promising elections in a little over 12 months. The same day, the TUNKU and T. H. Tan, the executive secretary of the MCA, left from Singapore for London, Dato Sir Cheng-lock Tan was to follow by ship, and Dato Abdul Razak, Deputy President of the UMNO then in the U.S., was to meet the delegation in London. Though the Colonial Secretary initially had rejected the delegation's request for an interview to discuss elections in the Federation, he finally agreed to meet them informally after May 10. Dato Tan decided not to make the journey.

While waiting, the delegation wooed Labor, Conservative and Liberal Party members to their cause. Because the Colonial Secretary could not commit a breach of faith with the Rulers, Labor members suggested proposing that the High Commissioner must act on the advice of the party in power in filling the seven seats. The delegation was advised not to press for a fully elective Legislative Council but to accept a three-fifths elected majority. They were also advised to choose a bicameral legislature, with an upper house of "elder statesmen" representing special interests and the Rulers to hold no greater power than to delay and advise the Lower House of only elected members. Agreeing to minor points, the Colonial Secretary disagreed on the three-fifths elected majority. Not accepting this position, the Alliance asked for an independent commission to study the matter or threatened to withdraw from government. To the Colonial Secretary's repeated "no" the UMNO and MCA, on June 13, held emergency meetings to decide on a "common action." They ordered all members of their parties in the legislatures, councils or government committees to resign. An estimated 1,000 Malays and Chinese, of whom Ismail and Lee were the first, obeyed, though the Alliance order was not followed by all Chinese, some of whom contended they represented labor. The mass resignations finally produced an Agreement providing for two nominated seats to be filled by the Secretary of Defense and Member for Economic Affairs and the remaining five to be filled in consultation with the majority of the elected party.

From August 1954, the Alliance concentrated on preparing for national elections. The TUNKU and Tan—the chief architects of a unique political organization in Southeast Asia, an effective democratic, interracial party—toured together to set up a 30-man National Council to be the supreme executive authority. The TUNKU was proclaimed leader of this Council. The two leaders also organized hundreds of volunteers to help register voters.

The Alliance supremacy was reaffirmed in elections to two state legislatures contested in 1954. In Johore, a complete victory was won with all Alliance candidates returned to 16 seats and in Trengganu a clean sweep was made of 12 seats.

Shortly before the Federal Elections in July 1955, the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), the only Indian political party and like the MCA not representative of the 600,000 Indians in that it lacked village roots, joined forces with the UMNO and the MCA in an Alliance Party National Council with the TUNKU as Chairman. On extensive tours he tirelessly concentrated on assisting the campaigns of non-Malay candidates, ordering all UMNO leaders to do likewise. Traveling light and speaking extemporaneously, he enjoyed meeting the people and won support with his insistence upon a fair campaign; he tolerated no personal abuse or allegations that would permanently alienate advocates of communality.

The greatest difficulty arose from ultranationalistic UMNO sections over distribution of seats; they wanted 90 per cent of the candidates based on their numerical strength in the electorate. Of some 1,280,865 voters, 84.2 per cent were Malays, 11.2 per cent Chinese and most of the remaining 4.6 per cent were Indians, but some 300,000 eligibles, mainly Chinese, had failed to register. The Alliance put up candidates in all 52 constituencies of whom 35 were Malays, 15 Chinese and two Indians, with Chinese and Indian candidates in the strongest UMNO districts and UMNO candidates in the Chinese districts. TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN, to bring the Malaya extremists around, finally issued a threat to resign if the UMNO demand persisted: "A prerequisite to independence is willingness to sacrifice. We do not need to sacrifice our lives . . . Ours is a constitutional struggle and it only needs the sacrifice of racial selfishness."

The policy the TUNKU championed paid rich dividends—the Alliance won 51 of the 52 elected seats in the Legislative Council and control of town councils and municipalities in all 11 states. The new seriousness with which he took his duties after these elections that elevated him to Chief Minister and Minister for Home Affairs earned confidence on all sides. Knowing well that the "glue" in the Alliance had been the desire for independence, he appointed six Malays to his cabinet, three Chinese and one Indian. As Chief Minister, he abjured alike political platitudes and emotional or torrid appeals; his views on national issues were refreshingly forthright and his rule for policies he would support was that they must be moderate and workable. Possessing to a marked degree both a sense of sportsmanship and the ability to suffer fools, he was a generous, helpful friend and renowned for his magnanimity toward opponents and detractors. Underneath his tactful, friendly charm, however, was an indomitable, astute politician with a sure hand on the nation's pulse.

Though holding grudges over shabby treatment was not his style, two slights quickened the TUNKU’s determination to move quickly from a measure of self-government to independence for Malaya. As Chief Minister, he was not assigned a car by the British Government, which should have come with his office—he bought his own Austin 40 model and later an A-70—nor a decent house. Offered a two-room bungalow of the type available to clerks, he refused, and when the big old house next assigned to him leaked, he "swore to end British rule."

In May 1955, the Alliance issued a comprehensive election manifesto, entitled The Road to Independence, calling for independence in four years. Forty pages in length, it was "a painstaking attempt to come to grips with the Federation's problems—administration, social services, labor, economic and financial policy, local government, political reform and town and county planning—built up over a year's earnest attempt to reconcile many of the interests of Malaya's two largest communities."

The first priority in the Alliance election platform was to end the Emergency quickly. One of the TUNKU’s colleagues had visited the Philippines in 1952, and, based on Ramon Magsaysay's policy of dealing with the Hukbalahaps, the TUNKU proposed to ask the insurgents to surrender, promising a general amnesty and a personal meeting, if he wanted it, with Chin Peng, the militant and fanatical Hakka Chinese who, in 1947, had succeeded an Annamite, Lai Tak, as Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party. Should insurgents not be prepared to be loyal to the Government, they would be detained, though requests to be sent to China would be considered. If this failed, all resources would be mobilized and all possible foreign aid sought to increase the vigor and intensity of the fight against the terrorists.

Subsequently, the Royal Air Force saturated jungle lairs of the terrorists with 40 million leaflets giving the Governments' terms. Reaction to the amnesty, declared on September 9, 1955, to be withdrawn in five months, or on February 8, 1956, came in a few weeks with a request for a meeting and a cease fire. On December 28 and 29, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN, David Marshall, then Chief Minister of Singapore, and MCA President Dato Sir Cheng-Lock Tan met with Chin Peng and two other Communist leaders at the English School in Kroh Baling, Kedah, to discuss cessation of guerrilla warfare. Chin Peng challenged the Chief Minister, promising to stop the war immediately if he obtained control of national defense and internal security. Negotiations collapsed when the TUNKU would not deviate from his only condition—unconditional surrender. In his view, Communists would not coexist with any other government. He had watched their aggression in China, Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia, and he saw no reason to think his government would be treated differently. After the meeting, Chin Peng returned presumably to his jungle headquarters in southern Siam, and, two days later, the TUNKU led a "Merdeka Mission" to London to negotiate upon invitation with the British Government for self-government and independence for Malaya.

Boarding the Italian ship "Asia" at Penang were four representatives each of the Rulers and the Alliance. By the time the ship reached Karachi after daily morning talks led by the TUNKU, the delegation was "of one mind" and could fly on to London where the eight Malayan representatives sat in the conference as a united group.

With the Alliance Party as evidence that the two dominant races were beginning to live together in political harmony, the TUNKU’s next task had been to convince the Malay Rulers that independence was inevitable but would not deprive them of their sovereign privileges as constitutional monarchs with rights to full autonomy and to raise revenues from taxation. The TUNKU had given these assurances at a meeting in September 1955 and asked for four representatives so maximum agreement could be reached before meeting with the British in London. His sincerity of purpose, fortified by his membership in one of their own houses, led the nine hereditary Rulers to revoke the treaties they had signed with Britain and agree upon August 31, 1957 as a target date for independence. This was accepted by the British, thus depriving the insurgents of their best talking point.

The Merdeka Agreement was signed on February 8, 1956, the TUNKU’s 53rd birthday. At this solemn ceremony, he could not resist saying with good humor to the British Secretary for Colonies that he was righting the "wrong" of his ancestor—the great-great-great grandfather, Sultan Abdullah II, who ushered in the beginning of British influence by offering the East India Company, in 1786, the uninhabited island of Penang as a trading station in consideration of assistance against his enemies, the Bugis of Selangor. On the same day in Malaya, the amnesty ended in failure with only 72 surrenders of terrorists in five months.

The January 1956 Mission obtained for Malaya the fullest measure of home rule in the transition period—control of defense and security, finance, commerce and industry and the "Malayanization" of the public services (civil service) with the High Commissioner acting in accordance with the advice of the Executive Council except in matters of external affairs and external defense. The British agreed to contribute toward meeting the cost of the Emergency, and TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN announced willingness to sign a treaty for mutual defense after independence. It was also agreed that an independent constitutional commission should be set up to recommend a new constitution for the country and that independence should be achieved by August 1957.

Return of the successful Mission was celebrated with a mammoth rally of 100,000 in Malacca. The TUNKU’s first act was to broadcast a message to Chin Peng calling upon him to honor his pledge at Kroh Baling to surrender, but Chin Peng did not respond. The TUNKU assumed the office of Minister for Internal Defense and Security in addition to the offices of Chief Minister and Minister for Home Affairs. His most urgent political problem was the creation of a formula for common nationality. A solution would require restraining Malay adherents from ultranationalistic agitation for indigenous Malay rights and, at the same time, impressing upon the Chinese community that Malaya must exist for them as more than "just a pleasant and profitable place to live."

With the eminent independent five-man Constitutional Commission—headed by a British Privy Councilor and composed of a Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, a former Governor General of Australia, an Indian Chief Justice and a Pakistani Justice—the TUNKU and his associates in the Alliance worked closely to produce a constitution acceptable to almost all the people. After traveling through the country for six months, receiving memoranda and hearing evidence, the Commission arrived at recommendations of reasonable compromise. Proposed was a constitutional Paramount Ruler to be elected every five years at the time of the General Elections from among the nine hereditary sultans—in effect a rotating kingship—who would choose the Prime Minister and accept his advice on all matters. The Parliament was to be wholly elected, composed of a House of Representatives of 100 members and a Senate of 23, two-thirds to be elected by the States and the remaining 11 nominated by the Paramount Ruler.

On citizenship, the Commission accepted the Alliance recommendations almost in their entirety but advocated jus soli, or citizenship by right of birth. The TUNKU persuaded the MCA, strained as was the UMNO by violent differences between temperates and extremists on the citizenship issue, and the MIC to accept a provision to permit those born in Malaya of alien parents after independence to choose their nationality upon attaining 21. Islam was accepted as the state religion but freedom of religion was to be enjoyed by non-Muslims. Non-Malays accepted the need to continue for a few years the system of giving Malays special privileges with regard to land reservations, quotas for admission to public service and for receiving permits and licenses for business, scholarships and other educational aids.

In May 1957, the TUNKU again took to London a delegation comprised of representatives of the Alliance and the Rulers in order to reach final agreement on independence for the Federation.

At midnight on August 30, 1957, in the broad green padang between the Moorish-style Federal secretariat and the pseudo-Tudor Selangor Club, as the clock in the tower of the Secretariat boomed the first strokes of the new day, the Union Jack was hauled slowly down and the Federal flag slowly hoisted on a second mast as thousands shouted Merdeka, followed by another shout Bapa Merdeka, as the head of the UMNO Youth Section placed a gold medallion on TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN inscribed "Father of Independence." The climax of his efforts on behalf of Malaya came later in the morning of August 31 when, as Prime Minister of the Federation of Malaya, the TUNKU accepted from the Queen's representative, the Duke of Gloucester, the Constitutional Instruments by which the Federation of Malaya became a sovereign country.

After independence, the Alliance Government, with the support of all races, mobilized resources and stopped supply of food and other assistance to the Communists. As a result, hundreds of bandits surrendered, including Chin Peng's deputy. During the next three years, the TUNKU had many opportunities to end the Emergency on Communist terms, but, remembering Chin Peng's unfulfilled promise to surrender in 1955, he refused.

During the constitutional struggle for independence, the TUNKU did not adopt a creed denouncing colonialism or use the British as whipping boys. Rather, he criticized feudal Kedah and royal Malaya for autocratic policies that kept the people backward, and both Malays and racial minorities for making excessive demands. Before and after independence, he reminded the people of the British legacy—justice before the law, "honesty and integrity" and " a good administration"—which he proposed to retain. Aware of Malaya's serious shortage of trained and competent leaders, he has been willing to use the services of men of other countries: "We must see that the efficiency of the excellent government machinery we have inherited from the British will not suffer," he has admonished. The goodwill that continues to prevail between Malaya and Britain has permitted the continuation of a mutually productive partnership within the Commonwealth.

Since independence, the TUNKU has held unswervingly to the Alliance and worked hard for its perpetuation, often risking his popularity and influence among his own people. The Alliance, still not a cohesive whole, is exacerbated by communal problems of simple citizenship for non-Malays and retention of educational and other special privileges for Malays. In mid-1959, the first post-independence general elections were held. Six months earlier, in February, the TUNKU turned over the reins of office to campaign throughout the country by motorboat, car and on foot to prevent the breakup of his multiracial organization. A hard-hitting, tough campaigner in the hustings speaking before upcountry pagodas and East Coast mosques, greeting crowds with the cry "Merdeka," he reiterated and argued "there is too much talk about differences of race, religion and class rather than about our similarities" and appealed to citizens of all stock "to sink our differences and speak about what is good for the country as a whole."

When the Alliance began to fray three months before the election over the apportionment of the 104 candidates—six had gone to Indians, 28 to Chinese and the remainder to Malays—Dr. Lim Chong Eu, who had succeeded Sir Cheng-Lock Tan as President of the MCA, kept the Chinese in the Alliance by a vote of 80 to 60 and those who disagreed left the Association. A costly victory for Dr. Lim and the Alliance, the TUNKU sought to heal the wounds by managing to raise the number of Chinese candidates to 32, by making appearances in support of local candidates and holding conferences to work out local problems. Despite long and acrimonious disputes, the Alliance again had settled differences over candidates and policies before the elections and presented a united front. Responsible leaders of both parties, the TUNKU has said, "still realized they could not get along without one another."

The TUNKU’s political rivals, in 1959, had narrower aims, making inroads into political harmony by exploiting and dividing the country on race and religious issues. A Pan-Malaya Islamic Party, propagating Malay communalism, advanced the proposition of a "greater Indonesia." Two leftist parties and a socialist front advocated expropriation of all foreign holdings. The Peoples Progressive Party encouraged Chinese chauvinism. Well aware that the first victory was made easier by the enthusiasm for independence and that the road ahead would be more difficult, the TUNKU opposed these divisive influences to pin his faith on the charity of men and the demonstrated fact that for many years the races had been able to live harmoniously together.

Occasionally making jarring or contradictory statements and neither a dynamic nor powerful speaker, the TUNKU’s quick grasp of the political implications of a situation, his sheer reasonableness and the infectious spirit of live and let live he exuded again won the votes. Though the political task of teaching Malayans of different races and religions to think of themselves as a nation is by no means complete, the TUNKU’s leadership was largely responsible for sustaining the coalition Alliance Party's tenuous racial harmony among a polyglot population. The Alliance captured 73 seats, or nearly three-fourths of those contested, thus ensuring a stable government for another five years.

In July 1960, the Paramount Ruler proclaimed the end of the Emergency declared 12 years earlier to combat Communist subversion and terror. An estimated 700 stragglers were still hiding out on the Thai border. The enemy guerrilla army at its peak totaled 12,000 against which Malaya mustered 350,000 men, including police and local security units, spent US$580 million, and lost 11,000 lives including civilians. But 6,700 communists had been killed and 2,675 more were captured or forced to surrender. Special tactics were devised to cope with an enemy that struck and melted into the jungle and coerced hapless peasants in outlying villages to replace guerrillas who were slain or surrendered. The government resettled 500,000 villagers, mostly Chinese, in large communities for mutual protection.

The country still faces grave dangers from Communist subversion and infiltration. The Government must recover Chinese support in sufficient measure to counter insurgents working hard to subvert schoolchildren, youth organizations, trade unions, and political parties, supported by creeping Communist threats in adjoining countries. In the interim since 1959, Government encouragement has contributed to a marked growth in Malayan economic strength. Political unity has profited from non-Malay voter registration, redressing the voter balance of nine Malays to one non-Malay to a now estimated three to five Malays to one non-Malay.

As Prime Minister, the TUNKU has stressed education, economic development in rural and urban areas, rural development in social services to meet the needs of the poor to whom he is extremely sensitive, public health and industries. Regarding new industries as imperative, he has encouraged investment from abroad "implying mutual confidence and cooperation"—and capital is pouring in for investment in hundreds of new industries—and sought reasonable loans based on Malaya's unquestioned ability to pay. He has rejected economic aid as such but has been willing to receive the benefits of technical cooperation and expert skills as a member of the British Commonwealth and the Colombo Plan. Malaya has a Defense and Mutual Assistance Pact with the United Kingdom, signed within two months after independence. Already blessed with a per capita income of US$350 and the highest standard of living in Southeast Asia, Malaya is laying out some US$200 million on highways, harbors and other long range assets, hoping to make the young nation so prosperous that agitators will have no discontent on which to build.

His assessment of hostile demonstrations he encountered from his own people on the East Coast during the 1958 campaign was that rural folk were misled by religious and ultranationalist fanatics because they were illiterate and unable to read or understand the first principles of a democratic way of life. Forming his new Government, his first act was to create a Ministry of Rural Development under the able Tun Abdul Razak, and to include in it an Adult Education program to which he has given the highest priority. A gigantic scheme of community development is now underway to alleviate poverty in the rural areas.

Dedicated to insuring a stable, responsible government at home, the TUNKU also has fostered good relations abroad. He has personally led goodwill delegations as Chief Minister to Indonesia and as Prime Minister to Vietnam, Ceylon, Japan and the Philippines. Consistent with his principles, however, he was the first to walk out on the Commonwealth Ministers meeting in London, in May 1960, in protest against the unyielding policy of apartheid in South Africa. He feels the need to create a Southeast Asian consciousness and regional thinking—"After centuries of Balkanization," he argues, "we need cooperation for our self protection." On his state visit in January 1959, he called on the Philippines and Malaya to start work on a program of greater economic and cultural cooperation in Southeast Asia to meet the threat of communism. The following November, invitations also were sent to Indonesia, South Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Laos. With favorable response from the Philippines and Thailand, delegates from Malaya were in the Philippines early in 1960 to draft a Southeast Asia Economic and Friendship Treaty (SEAFET) its designers hope will be the basis of a nonpolitical nonmilitary alliance that can develop mutually beneficial arrangements for rice distribution, commodity pricing, and shipping, and discuss such possibilities as a common international airline.

The TUNKU, in June 1958, made the pilgrimage to Mecca in fulfillment of a promise he had made to give thanks for Malaya's peaceful attainment of independence.

A Prime Minister who enjoys both the pomp of court ceremony and meeting farmers in their rice paddies, the TUNKU is taller, heavier and gayer than the average Malay and has an enviable capacity for worrying only when he can do something about a problem. He alternates easily between his elaborate official residence and his own unpretentious home where he tries to be a portion of each day to romp with the children he and Sharifah have adopted—Abdullah, age 15, and Suleiman, four, of Malay ancestry, and Mariam, age seven, of Chinese ancestry.

For relaxation, the TUNKU has written such light novels as the Princess of Langkawi, which has been filmed, and a play Mahsuri. Maintaining an energetic pace from dawn to midnight, he customarily wakens at five for prayers, later digests the newspapers and each morning, carrying an open umbrella, walks the quarter mile to his office. His anxiety to be in the good books of the people and the press is well known and, noted for his wit and candor, he can seldom resist the urge to turn a news conference into a joke and have his audience rocking with laughter. Beside the long walks, and the golf and boating he enjoys during his rare leisure hours, a favorite hobby is taking pictures and making color movies. He is President of the Football Association of Malaya and the newly formed Asian Badminton Federation and introduced the Asian schoolboy to soccer tournaments "to create better understanding among young people." He is interested in aviation, still enjoys the races and is a modest bettor. A devout but not orthodox Muslim, he is fond of an evening drink over a poker game with family and friends. Since the pay and allowances of the Prime Minister do not ever cover expenses, the family makes ends meet with the allowance provided by his royal house in Kedah.

He was awarded the First Class Order of Kin Kanh by the Government of the Republic of Vietnam in 1958, received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Belgium from the King of the Belgians in August 1958, the Order of Sikatuna, Rank of Raja, on his state visit to the Philippines in 1959, and the K.O.M., highest honor awarded by the Government of Brunei.

As unorthodox yet devout a nationalist as he is a Muslim, the TUNKU’s sort of heterodoxy has set a standard: "I have wanted all my life to do something for the people of Malaya, and in particular to better the lot of my own race, the Malays. If I am credited with nothing more I can at least thank God that I was able to lead our country along the path of independence, and beyond. . . In Malaya, with the complications of its multiple races, we have come to understand that the basis of our peace and happiness is tolerance and goodwill among our fellowmen, and I trust that this may be remembered by all those who are called to play their part in the service of Malaya and the Malayans."

August 1960
Manila

REFERENCES:

Hanna, Williard. "Elections in Malaya: Part I, The Winners." AUFS Report. Southeast Asia Series, June, 1959.

______. "Elections in Malaya Part II, The Losers." AUFS Report. Southeast Asia Series, June, 1959.

Kennedy, J. A History of Malaya, A.D. 1400-1959. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1962.

Manila Chronicle. March 11, April 8, May 7, 1960.

Manila Daily Bulletin. October 6, 1959; January 13, 1960.

Manila Times. February 15- 16, 1960.

Miller, Harry. Prince and Premier. London, George G. Harrap, 1959.

Philippines Free Press. January 3, 10 and 17, 1959.

Philippines Herald. April 8, 1960.

"Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Ibni Almarhum Sultan Abdul Halim Shah." Fact Sheets, no. 39. Issued by the Information Services, Federation of Malaya, 1958.

The Statesman. New Delhi, May 6, 1969.

Time. July 27 and August 31 1959; May 2, 1960.

Times of India. May 6, 1960.

Reports from and interviews with persons acquainted with Tunku Abdul Rahman and his work.