Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain (best novels to read in english TXT) 📗

national trends, "because I was known as a champion of the Malays," his Malay vote actually increased, he said.[22]

With the police still investigating his letter, Dr. Mahathir feared arrest. He learned from police friends that Tunku Abdul Rahman wanted to detain him, but they persuaded the Tunku it would only make a martyr of Dr. Mahathir.[23] Too late: He was already a hero in Malay eyes. The rapid sequence of shattering events — a traumatic election campaign, his defeat, the "May 13" violence, the Tunku letter, double expulsion — gave him an almost cult-like following in his community. As political scientist Khoo Boo Teik said, "It transformed him from being a failed electoral candidate into a living symbol of Malay nationalism."[24]

At no stage during his almost three years in the political wilderness did Dr. Mahathir lose interest in shaping the debate on Malaysia's future. In addition to running his clinic and investing, he stepped up his writing. In early 1970, he published his best known book, The Malay Dilemma,[25] which was promptly banned in Malaysia, remaining proscribed until he became prime minister in 1981. The ban added to Dr. Mahathir's maverick image without the contents of the book remaining secret, since it was available in Singapore and he accepted speaking invitations and discussed the substance of it. Two other publications that appeared a few years later were substantially written during this period. Panduan Peniaga Kecil, published in 1974, appeared in English in 1985 as Guide for Small Businessmen. It advised Malays how to get started in business and, in particular, how to succeed against Chinese competition.[26] The 14 essays published as Menghadapi Cabaran in 1976, and issued in 1986 as The Challenge, was a reflective work that emphasized the importance of spiritual values, education, discipline and organization. It was critical of corruption, destructive opposition to governments from pressure groups and allegedly decadent Western ways — resistance to hard work, untidiness, nudity and homosexuality.[27]

Contentiously, The Malay Dilemma argued that the Malays were the original or indigenous people of Malaya, and should be accepted as the "definitive race". It rejected non-Malay claims to political, linguistic and cultural parity with the Malays, but not on the grounds that the Malays were superior in any way. Just as countries such as the United States and Australia required a certain minimal assimilation of migrants to their own national culture, the Malays had a right to expect the non-Malays to do the same. The aim was "not designed to perpetuate the privileges of the original definitive race to the exclusion of the new immigrant races...settlers willing to conform to the characteristics of the definitive citizen will in fact become definitive citizens and will exercise the same rights and privileges". In practice, they would need to speak Malay and be educated in Malay, though they would not be required to adopt Islam.

The book defined its title: "The Malay dilemma is whether they should stop trying to help themselves in order that they should be proud to be the poor citizens of a prosperous country or whether they should try to get at some of the riches that this country boasts of, even if it blurs the economic picture of Malaysia a little." The answer was never in doubt: "The cup of Malay bitterness must be diluted. A solution must be found, an equitable solution which denies nothing to anyone and yet gives the Malay his place in the Malayan sun."

Dr. Mahathir's proffered solution was "constructive protection", a vague term implying a level of support somewhere in between leaving the Malays defenceless in the face of Chinese aggression and making their lives so comfortable that they would forget how to compete and progress. His concern about over-protecting the Malays was due to his belief in the then popular, later discredited, notion known as Social Darwinism to explain their inferiority and Chinese superiority. While he never used the term, Dr. Mahathir, like Social Darwinism's other adherents, applied the phrase "survival of the fittest" — first coined by the British economist, Herbert Spencer, after Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of "natural selection" — to the competition for survival in human society. Dr. Mahathir even embraced the eugenics offshoot idea, that the unfit transmit their undesirable characteristics.

The book surmised that the early Malays, inhabiting a lush land with plenty of food, did not suffer starvation and even the weak in mind and body were able to survive and procreate. The hot, humid climate was not conducive to either vigorous work or mental activity, so they were content to spend most of their time resting or talking to each other. In-breeding, and the absence of inter-racial marriages in rural areas, together with certain social practices, sapped their enterprise and had a disastrous effect on the Malay community over the long term. The Chinese, by contrast, from a homeland littered with disasters and with a custom of "cross-breeding", were the fit survivors of a natural weeding out process.

If all protection for the Malays were removed, the book argued, "it would perhaps be possible to breed a hardy and resourceful race capable of competing against all corners. Unfortunately, we do not have four thousand years to play around with." So while Dr. Mahathir accepted the need for constructive protection immediately, in the end it would be "the people alone who make themselves equal". In other words, he concluded that the ultimate solution to Malay inequality was to remake the Malays, changing some of their "inherent traits and character acquired over the centuries", including their "fatalism", and "failure to value time" and "appreciate the real value of money and property". It was a task that would absorb much of his energy in the years ahead.[28]

From the political sidelines, Dr. Mahathir could watch with satisfaction as his like-minded allies in UMNO came to exercise decisive influence over party policies. The trend, which could easily have been following a Mahathir script, was to put Malay political predominance, whose reality was questioned in the election result, beyond dispute. By