TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

M. SARAVANAMUTTU
what they were - the military clique who took their country into war.
It was not long before he got into trouble with them for refusing to
mobilise a labour force to plant cotton at Padang Serai and was demoted
in service. When I went to see him at his house by the river in
1944 I found a very disillusioned person, longing for the end of the
purgatory that we were all going through. He was in the right frame
of mind to receive his nephews with open arms when they were dropped
behind the lines in 1945 and to assist their guerilla activities in
every possible way. Fortunately the atom bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki led to the surrender of the Japanese without the necessity
of a battle for the reconquest of Malaya and the liberation in September
1945 saw the Tunku a happy man again.
Then came the notorious McMichael Treaties. In my enthusiasm
for an United Malaya I supported them and wrote an editorial
saying that it was nonsense to treat the old treaties with the Sultans as
sacrosant. 1 received a curt note from my old friend, "Sara, don't
you dare set foot in Kedah. Your life will be in danger." It came
as a shock to me but it also brought me to my senses; it made me realise
the Malay point of view and prepared me to support Dato" Onn
when he stomped the country to rouse the Malays in revolt against
the Malayan Union.
But it also showed Tunku Abdul Rahman as a Malay of Malays.
In the prewar days, he was noted for the free manner in which he
mixed with all races - a trait that he carries to the present time. In
fact, there were some who said he had more Chinese friends than
Malays, but his friendship for individuals from other races was not
inspired by sloppy sentimentality. It was the true comradeship that
is born "when two strong men stand face to face" - to complete that
oft-misquoted quotation from Kipling. And Rahman made ample
amende honorable for that threatening note to me at a party I gave
him when he first became Chief Minister. He publicly stated, "I am
doing today what Sara advocated years ago and about which I
fought with him those days." A magnanimous gesture from a truly
great personality.
The Tunku, however, soon became an unhappy and frustrated
person in post-war Kedah. His father had died during the Japanese
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