PBMUM: The Rising Malay Tide

Ahmad Fikri Ahmad Fisal 

The 1969 fiasco unraveled important issues that gravely concerned the Malay masses: low Malay admission rate into universities, rural Malay poverty, and lack of appreciation for the Malay language.

Championing these issues were the communal Persatuan Bahasa Melayu University Malaya (University of Malaya Malay Language Society), in which Anwar Ibrahim was a leader during 1969-70.

Becoming more aggressive, PBMUM launched Operasi Ganyang in October 1970 where they burned English-medium posters and splashed paint over English signs and notices.

UMSU, which was a noncommunal organization, disapproved of PBMUM’s actions. Tensions between the two escalated to a point until Khoo Kay Kim, the celebrated historian, had to mediate an agreement between the two camps.

All in all, PBMUM’s impact was massive. The vice chancellor himself could not stem this aggressive tide of ethnic nationalism.

He pledged to use Malay for all communications and administrative purposes at UM, to replace English-language signs, to hold UM’s council and senate meetings in Malay and to prioritize facility in the Malay language among academic staff.

The conversion was quick; it took only a year before Malay was declared the sole official language of UM. The Malay Universiti Malaya became a more frequent reference supplanting the English “University of Malaya.” UM now required all students to pass a Malay-language exam to proceed to upper secondary level.

Following this Malay tide was moral policing on campus. Raja Mokhtaruddin, acting as master of the Fifth College, banned bare legs above the knee for women, movies with a sexual bent, alcoholic drinks, couples’ courting, and visits by women or men to each other’s sections.

This policing spread to other institutions like Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Institut Teknologi Mara, which ironically had a reputation of being socially oriented and morally lax at that time.

AUKU: De-politicization and Bureaucratization

The Razak Administration, henceforth, launched the infamous New Economic Policy, which included the creation of a Bumiputera middle-class as one of its main objectives, in order to shore up Malay support after the 1969 debacle.

The educational medium of instruction from the primary level to university would be changed from English to Malay in phases. University admission had to abide by government-introduced quotas. By 1971, proportion of Malay undergraduates passed half and kept on rising until it far surpassed the ethnic group’s share of the country’s population.

The government now had a stronger hold on universities, setting specific goals: further national unity, develop research and a skilled workforce, and help redress racial and socioeconomic imbalance. Practical sciences were prioritized over academic sciences and arts.

UKM lecturer Rustam Sani condemned this by stating that university education became slaves to the “prevailing needs and demands of industry and business.” Wan Mokhtar, head of UKM staff association said that university now would produce “factory workers” rather than “philosophers and thinkers.”

UM’s Speakers’ Corner was razed (until new vice chancellor Syed Hussein Alatas revived it in 1989), names of UMSU’s active leaders was removed from displays in the union building, and student publications were curbed until official clearance was given.

Semesters became more packed with the rationale that less time was required to produce qualified students, which also meant less time for political engagement.

The 1975 amendments to the Akta Universiti dan University Kolej (AUKU) were harsher on campus freedom. Students were prohibited to show open support to any political party.

Any student charged with a criminal offense would be automatically suspended. A less politically active Students’ Representative Council (SRC) replaced the glorious UMSU.

UM students now had to accept a new code of conduct called Ikrar UM (UM Pledge). Basically, the pledge warned students that they could be expelled for violating the university’s rules. Even more, a deputy vice chancellor in charge of Hal Ehwal Pelajar (Students Affairs) was appointed.

Complaining that universities has lost their autonomy and were now just “a government agency”, since 90 percent of the University Council now consisted of government representatives, mass staff resignation ensued. In 1983-84 alone, more than forty lecturers resigned.

The quality of university education declined as well. Discouragement of critical thinking, deteriorating standards of English, “diploma disease” and uncontrolled race-based criteria in student admission and staff promotion lowered the intellectual quality of the universities.

The president of USM’s Academic and Administrative Staff Association was dismissed in 1985 for complaining about the deteriorating quality of university education.

To counter this deterioration, some academics, such as Chandra Muzaffar, made efforts to return autonomous powers to universities. They proposed a University Charter and recommended that parliament form a University Commission to implement the charter’s values.

The charter preached not only generic civil liberties, but also academic freedom, access to information and professional standards of teaching and research.

The government unfortunately ignored this proposal twice.

Yet, calls to amend the AUKU still rose periodically. Former Opposition Leader Tan Chee Khoon said in 1975, “These repressive measures, far from curbing students’ political activities, will harder their attitude…”

In 1991, Gerakan Youth’s Chang Ko Youn said, “The more we control them…the more they will strive to be rebellious and become defiant of authority.”

It was only in 1996 that a small degree of government control in universities was ceded.

Conclusion: What is the role of students and universities?  

Who are these people enrolled in local universities? Are they students (pelajar), schoolchildren (murid), or “’U’ kids” (budak “U”).

As time went on, memories of past UM students’ activism faded and resulted in the de-politicization of the students. Astoundingly, a survey in the early 1990s found that 59 percent of all students, mostly Malays, approved of the AUKU.

Students began to believe that they were not entitled to greater academic freedom, as generations before them enjoyed. Students began to believe the repeated words they kept hearing, telling them that their duty was just to study and excel in exams.

UM deputy vice chancellor in 1987, Mohamed Yunus Noor, said that “A university student with first class honours but who failed to participate in extracurricular activities is not much good to society.”

Syed Hussein Alatas avowed, “If the Act disallows students from expressing ideas and discussing issues, then I’ll be the first to go against it.”

We may blame the government and the AUKU all we want. But the truth is there is a greater problem and that is “intellectual containment”. Students and staffs alike are now successfully de-politicized.

The bumiputera were told not to bite the hand that fed them, while the non-bumiputera saw little benefit in active political participation.

But there is hope. University autonomy will return. That is the government’s promise in the National Education Blueprint. Let’s pray that our universities return to its glory days.

* Fikri Fisal is an amateur historian and is currently a History senior at the University of Michigan.

* Source used for this article is Meredith Weiss’s “Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow.”