(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Dr. Mahathir as Write: Writing the Self and the Rest
Dr. Mahathir’s interest on the West has not always been conscious to us. Central to his
premise is the history of Europe and Western civilization. Although he talks about Asia, the
Malaysian nation and the Muslims; although he had asked us to ‘Buy British Last,’ in the
wake of looking East, Dr. Mahathir has always been a student of the West. 3 The world and
the nation has misread the man, and has misread him too much.
The ‘West.’ the Occident and European civilization have been instrumental in formulating
Mahathir’s sense of self, the Malay and national identity. From the beginning Dr.Mahathir
Mohamad as student activist in Kedah has intellectually countered the West. And not many
are aware of this. However, a useful insight on the man can be sourced from the perspective
of Dr. Mahathir as a writer, articulating and expressing as an informed subject about his own
society.
Dr. Mahathir started writing while in school, back after the Japanese Occupation at the age of
20 to complete his final year. Then being the editor of Sultan Abdul Hamid’s College’s
Darulaman magazine, he penned a front-paged editorial for the single issue produced in
1945. In it he welcomed victory in the war by the “Powers of Right and Justice, ” 4 He later
was editor of the journal published by the King Edward VII College of Medicine, the
Cauldron. He began his medical studies there in 1947. That was the year the young Mahathir
Mohamad started writing for the Straits Times. According to Wain, he began writing for the
newspaper after taking a correspondence course in journalism. 5 His article appeared on 20
July 1947 under the pseudonym C.H.E. Det, a variation on his nickname 6 A Straits Times
editor called him to the paper’s offices in Singapore and asked if he was interested in a job as
a journalist. No, he was not, 7 was the medical student’s reply.
Dr. Mahathir’s discourse spans spans 63 years now 8 since 1947. Dr. Mahathir not only writes
about the Malays, Malaysian politics and society, science and technology, education, and
Islam. Pertinent to this study is that he also writes about the West. In many of his later works
in the form of speeches and books, Dr. Mahathir has incessantly indulged on Europe and
Western civilization. Even by taking the nation for a ‘Look East’ Policy, Dr. Mahathir has in
essence engaged us with the West. And this is what we also see in The Early Years: 1947-
3
Another reading of Dr. Mahathir’s ‘Look East’ Policy is the tacit orientation in looking West, through Japan.
Japan is also an occidental nation.
4
Barry Wain (2009). Malaysian maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in turbulent times. Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, p. 10.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid. Others like Khoo Boo Teik (1996) in Paradoxes of Mahathirism: an intellectual biography of Mahathir
Mohamed (1996) givessomeinsightsbearinguponyoungMahathir’ssenseofidentity. CitingZakiahHanum, who was once thr director-­‐general of the National Archives in Robin Adshead (1989) ‘Che Det’ was formed by
adding the common Malay honorific to ‘det’,’ a familiar shortening of the last syllable of Mahathir. The adult
Mahathir converted the ‘Che’ into ‘C.H.E.,’ a set of European-­‐like initials. The resultant ‘C.H.E. Det’ became
Mahathir’s European-­‐sounding pseudonym in the articles published in from 1947 and through the 1950s.
Mahathir’s sense of identity was pronounced in those years. As a pseudonym, ‘C.H.E. Det’ was an artful
improvisation, probably born of the self-­‐consciousness of young adulthood for Mahathir employed it to
‘conceal the fact that the views expressed [in his articles] were being written by a Malay.,’ Khoo, p.81. See
Robin Adshead (1989). Mahathir of Malaysia. London: Hibiscus Publishing Company., pp. 26 and 34.
7
Wain, p.12.
8 As of July 2010.
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