THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

126 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
was an unthinking beast. I defended the labourer, but was myself shouted
at. Why is the world so cruel to the downtrodden? This was an example
of inhumane colonialist attitudes. Colonialism must be destroyed by the
working people themselves, as had happened in other countries.
One evening, while eating a plate of noodles at the Bukit Bintang
Amusement Park, my heart wept as I heard the lyrics of a song sung by
a young woman on a nearby stage. It ran:
Indian boys pray in their temple,
Each carrying a candle,
We are like the grass on the ground,
Stamped upon by others day and night.
The haunting pantun (Malay quatrain) was very political, depicting the
deplorable plight of the Malays. The composer must have been moved
by the fate of his own people; humble folk manipulated by others. Yet,
these folk were too helpless to do anything about it. Imagine a patch of
grass stamped upon day and night; it first turns yellow, then brown, and
finally dies. Those lines accurately reflected the fate of the Malays.
I then recalled another quatrain composed by another Malay soon after
the British took over Penang Island. Hundreds of Malays from the
mainland Seberang Prai were brought over to the island to clear it. Shilling
coins were fired from the mouth of a cannon and Malay farmers
scrambled to clear land with changkuls (hoes) to gather the coins. With
their work completed, they built their huts to begin a new life in the
clearings. But not long after, surveyors came to demarcate boundaries
and notices were given to the farmers, demanding payment for boundary
sites, fees for surveying and drawing of plans. Thus, many farmers were
forced to return to Seberang Perai. In bitter disappointment one of them
must have composed the following pantun:
Penang is a new town,
Captain Light is the Ruler,
Should one recall the past,
Cascades of tears flow down one’s chest.
These four lines described so aptly the sad plight of Malays, at first invited
and later duped. This is the ugly face of colonialism. “When will we be
free from the shackles of British colonialism?” I asked myself.
Exemplary Women of Our Past
The Melaka Sultanate had fallen into the hands of Westerners in 1511
and had remained in their clutches for four long centuries. Colonialists