While I usually spend a chunk of my time looking at spray nozzles of RAF helicopters that were in service during the Malayan Emergency, I was particularly attracted to what I will present here as I also spend my time teaching political philosophy and political violence to my students.
Karl Hack (2009) describes the Malayan Emergency as "...lasting from June 1948 until 31 July 1960. It pitted British-led forces against the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and its Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA)...but the British broke the back of the insurgency as a large scale campaign somewhere between 1950 and 1954. Faced with this reversal, the Communists unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate to end hostilities in 1955”. While my students typically come from Southeast Asia and OIC countries, it goes without saying that the late Tan Cheng Lock is of the stature of world historical giants - after all, in his lifetime he was Tun, an honorific title of Lordship presented only to the most distinguished of Malaysians.
On the 1st of February 1949, approaching a year since the outbreak of the Malayan Emergency, Tan Cheng Lock, at the time not yet a Tun, presumably took a little time off from his busy and habitual undertakings, sat in a chair he could find himself comfortable in, and began typing the draft to what he decided to title as “Ancient Chinese Philosophy”. If he did not, then he must have had a kind of typist or stenographer with him. The draft was finalised four days later on the 5th of February.
What struck me and I found interesting was the particular date he did so, and this interest from here on, I will share with you, in what will be explained in three themes in sequential manner: I will discuss firstly, the question of what kind of historical colonial-man would sit to write such things. Secondly, I will discuss typical prejudices over the ‘philosophical-man’ of the Malayan Emergency. And finally, conclude where I began, having presented to you a provisional encapsulation of Ancient Chinese Philosophy.
Part I: What kind of historical ‘colonial-man’ would sit to write such things?: Tun Dato' Sir Cheng Lock Tan, SMN, DPMJ (Johor), CBE, KBE, J.P.,.
A picture exists of Tan Cheng Lock with his children together with their three dogs and it is as heart-warming as it sounds. Tan Cheng Lock was educated at the Malacca High School and at Raffles Institution, Singapore; married, on 20 June 1913, Yeo Yeok Neo, daughter of Yeo Tin Hye, President of the Malacca Chinese Hokkien Community; and had one son and four daughters - Tan Siew Sin, Tan Kim Tin (Mrs S.K. Chan), Wee Geok Kim, Tan Kim Yoke and Tan Kim Lwi. His son, Tan Siew Sin would later become a member of the Legislative Council of the Federation of Malaya.
His grandfather, Tan Choon Bock, was a pioneer tapioca and gambier planter, and was the founder and Managing Partner of the first line of steamships to open regular communication between the ports of Malaya in the sixties of the 18th century, which afterwards was converted into the Straits Steamship Co., Ltd., of Singapore. Born in the ancestral home at 111 Heeren Street (now Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock) on 5 April 1883, Tan Cheng Lock lived to be seventy-seven years old. He was the son of Tan Keong Ann and Lee Seek Bin; descended from Tan Hay of Fukien Province, China, who was a navigator and owner of a junk trading between Macassar (Celebes Islands) and Malacca, and who settled at Malacca and married a Chinese woman born at Malacca about 200 years ago.
The Chinese in Malaya developed strong habits of autonomous political, economic and cultural behaviour. Chinese social organisations were based on prototypes which had developed in China. The three principal institutions that were transplanted to Malaya were the lineage group (clan) association. The voluntary association based on affiliations of common locality, common dialect and/or common craft, and the secret society. These associations, together with the hundreds of schools established and financed by local private initiative, and served as potent transmitters of core Chinese values in the colonial period. Leadership within the Chinese community had, for the most part, been exercised by successful merchant-entrepreneurs drawn from the mining, plantation, small scale manufacturing and retail and distribution sectors.
What stands out is firstly his corporate credentials and one would not be blamed to think that he had dedicated the entirety of his energies into commercial endeavours. Tan Cheng Lock began his career as a schoolmaster at Raffles Institution, Singapore, in 1902; became Assistant-Manager of the Bukit Kajang Rubber Estates, Ltd. in 1908; in 1909 and 1910 floated the Ayer Molek Rubber Co., Ltd., the Malaka Pinda Rubber Estates, Ltd., and the United Malacca Rubber Estates, Ltd.; was Visiting Agent of the Nyalas Rubber Estates, Ltd., from 1912 to 1935 which he then was its Resident Director and its Chairman of Directors.
In 1935 he travelled with his family to Europe where they remained till 1939 and lived in India from 1942 to 1946. Tan Cheng Lock was a Director of the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, Ltd.; Overseas Assurance Corporation, Ltd.; Sime, Darby & Co., Ltd.; Cycle & Carriage Co., Ltd.; Estate & Trust Agencies (1927) Ltd.; Malaya Tribune Press, Ltd.; Atlas Ice Co., Ltd.; Chin Keng Lee & Co., Ltd.; Malacca Guardian, Ltd.; Kew (Machap) Estate of Malacca, Ltd.; Tong Watt Rubber Estate; Bukit Bulat Estate, Ltd.; Leong Hin San, Ltd.; and Trustee of the large Reserved Trust Estate of his grandfather, Tan Choon Bock. He was also engaged in tapioca and gambier planting.
Tan Cheng Lock was also active in public life. He served as a Justice of the Peace of Malacca since 1912 and on many Government Committees including the Rice Cultivation Committee, the Technical Education Committee, Trade Commission, Housing Committee, Committee on Destitution, Rubber Restriction Committee and the Chinese Marriage Committee; was Malacca Municipal Commissioner from 1912 to 1922; was from 1923 to 1934 Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements, and from 1933 to 1935 (inclusive) was Unofficial Member of the Governor's Executive Council, Straits Settlements; President of the Malacca Chinese Chamber of Commerce and of the Malacca Hokkien Community Association; and served for a number of years as Vice-President & President of the Malacca Chinese Chamber of Commerce and as President of the Straits Chinese British Association, Malacca, and of the Malayan Estate Owners' Association of which he was one of the founders; Patron of the Malacca "Chiang Chew Hoo" Association, the ancestors of whose members were the Chinese pioneers who first emigrated from China to Malaya some 500 years ago; a Trustee of the 300-year-old and well-endowed "Cheng Hoon Teng" Temple dedicated to "Kuan shih-yin", Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Tan Cheng Lock was also an official representative of the Straits Settlements at the Coronation of King George VI in London in 1937; and awarded the C.B.E. in 1933 for public services.
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he helped revive the Chinese Volunteer Company, Malacca, where he served as a volunteer from 1915 to 1919. After the liberation of Malay from the Japanese in 1945, Tan Cheng Lock took an active part in the popular movements for self-government in Malaya and was elected first Chairman of the All-Malaya Council of Joint Action at its inauguration in December 1946.
Between 1948 and 1952, yearly levels of violence would increase from 1948 and peak in 1951, and subsequently begin to dip in 1952, this change in casualty pattern is accompanied by evidences of repressive crackdowns (arbitrary imprisonment) by the British on leftist nationalist groups, the relocation of approximately half a million individuals into concentration camps, mass deportation, and the exemplary destruction of villages. It was at the end of the month of February 1949, the month he wrote his brief on Ancient Chinese Philosophy, that Tan Cheng Lock was elected President of the newly established Malayan Chinese political organisation named as the Malayan Chinese Association on the 27th. Early in the previous month, Emergency Regulations 17D (ER 17D) was instated that allowed for government to arrest whole villages and those areas found to have communist ties alongside other pre-existing edifices of control such as the practice of deportation of those arrested. On the 19th of January, nine days after its enactment, ER 17D was employed against inhabitants of Hylam Kang in Johor, where 651 individuals were arrested. The day after Tan Cheng Lock completes his brief on Ancient Chinese Philosophy, ER 17D was used against the inhabitants of Temiang/Sikamat, Negri Sembilan – in fact, through the month of February at least 1572 known arrest were made through ER 17D. Within the first 100 days of Tan Cheng Lock’s tenure, as he was addressing a public meeting at Ipoh, Perak, on the 10th April 1949 as President of the newly formed association, he was wounded in the right shoulder as a result of a hand-grenade thrown at him when making an address in the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
Plans over the objectives of the MCA were discussed between High Commissioner Henry Gurney to JD Higham. The High Commissioner would later lose his life to assassination in October 1951. Gurney underscores to Higham that the MCA was to promote and assist in the maintenance of peace and good order for the attainment of peaceful and orderly progress in Malaya. He stresses that the association will not be confined to Federal citizens but to any Chinese who had lived there for five years and intends to have their permanent home in Malaya and that Chinese members of Federal Executive Council and Federal Legislative Council are to be ex-officio officers of the Association. Gurney makes it clear that “very large sums” could be collected particularly from Singapore as the association may appeal for funds to assist in the settlement of squatters – the question of squatters near jungle fringes of course had been an issue even before the implementation of the notorious Briggs Plan. While Gurney was proven wrong in his prediction that a Yong Shook Lin would become MCA President as Tan Cheng Lock would serve its office until 1958, with Yong Shook Lin later on resigning from MCA as a prominent member of the Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce and joining the distinguished Dato Onn together in his newly established Independence of Malaya Party (IMP).
Gurney ends by emphasising that the Association is likely to be widely supported by the Chinese and may become a powerful body in the future as he was expectant to see how far the MCA will be prepared to declare itself openly against Communism and co-operate for the purposes of the Emergency. Perhaps, Gurney's more intimate feelings toward the Tan family is exposed in his letter to Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones at the end of the month of February. He conveys his concerns over not knowing enough about “how Chinese millionaires in Singapore and the Federation really get their money” or of “how they spend it". He discusses his concern over "big" Chinese paying protection money and that while it was not as such to warrant prosecution in any court, but on the evidence of that degree, arrests and detention of a number of "Chettiars" and “a millionaire” who had “all confessed to the Police” were made. At the time the Police had also interrogated Tan Siew Sin (whom we mentioned earlier, and reported to have been shaken by events) in this connection. He was of course Tan Cheng Lock's son and at the time a member of Legislative Council. It goes without saying, that in the midst of tectonic shifts in the conduct of the Emergency campaign, that I found it particular interesting that a person of Tan Cheng Lock calibre would carve up the time to weigh in on such an olden subject particularly Ancient Chinese Philosophy.
To be continued in Part II.
DR.MA
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