Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. 347 pp. (B&W photos.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-9971-69-692-4.
The history of decolonization and the making of independent nation states continues to interest scholars across various disciplines. Competing accounts of the tumultuous fifties and sixties, formative years for the forging of a national identity in Malaya and Singapore, have emerged to enrich our understanding of the past. The monumental memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew can be read against The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore (Poh Soo Kai et al. , Strategic Information and Research Centre, 2010). The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaysia: Tangled Strands of Modernity adds a scholarly, well-researched dimension to this list. Focusing on an important student organization, the University Socialist Club, the authors embark on a riveting account of the Left in Singapore. The Left, whose role is often elided or consigned to footnotes, emerges as a key player in the exciting years of nation formation. The careful control of tonal objectivity in the authors’ skillfully chosen language makes this an admirably balanced account in which no individual or group is privileged.
Solidly grounded in traditional historical sources such as colonial office records and other written documents like student writings, the authors also use oral histories and interviews. As they see it, “our book is one instance of how oral histories can contribute to the imperial archives and student writings to enrich academic scholarship” (11). Organized chronologically, the history of the Socialist Club is explored within the larger context of major political events of the fifties and sixties. Thus the role of the club acquires wider resonances in the context of the Fajar Trial, the resistance to Malaysia and Operation Coldstore, to name a few. The thematic concerns which undergird this study of a formidable student club shares with other postcolonial writings themes such as identity (both individual and societal), the envisioning of a nation, and the surveillance mechanism of managed decolonization. The book is enriched by the authors’ familiarity with subaltern and postcolonial theories on decolonization and nation formation. Referring to Partha Chatterjee’s “derivative nationalism” they see the paradoxical position of the Socialist Club members whose anti-colonial stand did not prevent the adoption of a Western model of modernity. More significantly, the authors are fully cognizant of the power of the discursive dimension in the Cold War order of information gathering. Words were not only referential but “patently accusatory and transformative” (257). Thus terms like “socialist,” “communist,” “left-wing,” and “right-wing” acquired loaded meanings.
Beginning with the Socialist Club’s formation in 1953 and its early activities, the authors then trace the club’s continued role in speaking up for “stifled Malayans” after the Fajar Trial. They question the binary Manichean thinking of official accounts which see a simple divide between apathetic English-educated students and chauvinistic, Communist-influenced Chinese-medium students. Far from being apathetic, club members organized talks to educate students on socialism, helped to “invigorate left-wing trade unions” (86) and, together with other students groups, attempted to form the Pan Malayan Students’ Federation. The club’s promotion of Malay as the national language showed a non-communal approach, privileging class over ethnic-cultural ties. Divergences did occur because conflicting opinions operated both within the club and between the club and its critics. The term “socialist” engendered various shades of meaning as Fabian socialists, liberal socialists and democratic socialists lay claim to “socialism.” In spite of sharing socialist ideals, club members’ overlapping roles reveal that the identity of left-leaning student activists was not homogeneous, but fluid.
A note-worthy contribution is the authors’ recognition that even after Operation Coldstore, club members continued to use their publication to educate and inform. One detail which draws our attention is the club’s refusal to accept Lee Kuan Yew’s offer to grant a new permit for the publication of Fajar if the publication’s name was changed. Such a change of name would alter the historical legacy of the club by dissociating it from “its anti-establishment credentials and history” (200). The range of its critiques on many important issues such as the merger debate would be further neglected.
The theme of curtailment adds to our understanding of the surveillance which the postwar world order mandated. Besides more overt forms, surveillance consisted of the “systematic collection and use of specific forms of information” (155). The authors note the state’s use of paternalistic imagery in representing the student activists as naïve youths easily susceptible to leftist propaganda and thus in need of paternal guidance and chastisement. Arrests, incarceration and the toll on individuals are poignantly portrayed via the use of interviews which makes history come alive, complementing the documented evidence in a mutually enriching manner. Oral history as a reflection on identity is rightly seen as a continuing dialogue between past and present since “even the silences of memory are socially significant” (235).
Careful selection of materials offers us a balanced picture of the achievements and shortcomings of the University Socialist Club. Some members were silent about violations of civil liberties by communist states. The club’s vision of a non-communal Malaya where multi-racial workers unite across racial lines to forge a modernist Malaya underestimated the divisive power of ethnic ties. A socialist nation could not square with that of a fledgling Singapore where, after 1965, rapid industrialization required a vastly different concept of capital acquisition and social engineering.
The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity will appeal to scholars across many disciplines and the general public. Careful not to dismiss the official state narrative of nation formation as mere propaganda or promote the memories of the Left as gospel truth, the authors succeed admirably in adding a nuanced perspective to the history of Malaya and Singapore. Informative biographical sketches of the club’s members will educate future generations about a group of important individuals in our past. For some, the club’s members were too idealistic, fuelled by “moral authority, derived from their nascent roles as intellectuals and change makers” (134). Yet many of them paid a heavy price for their beliefs. They deserve a place in our reflection on the legacies of the past as these impinge on the present.
Wong Soak Koon
Independent Researcher, Universiti Sains Malaysia (retired)