Contested Nationalisms and Propaganda: Birth Pangs of a Malaysian Nation, 1957-1969 By Cheong Soon Gan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Peter Zinoman (Chair) Professor Jeffrey Hadler Professor Andrew Barshay Fall 2012 Contested Nationalisms and Propaganda: Birth Pangs of a Malaysian Nation, 1957-1969 Copyright 2012 by Cheong Soon Gan Abstract Contested Nationalisms and Propaganda: Birth Pangs of a Malaysian Nation, 1957-1969 by Cheong Soon Gan Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair This dissertation looks at how the newly independent Malaysian state used propaganda as one of the tools in forging a new nationalism and specific values of citizenship in the face of enduring ethnic cleavages and contesting visions of nationhood. I look at the period from independence in 1957 to the race riots in 1969 that claimed nearly 200 lives and plunged the country into a state of Emergency for a year. As Malaya achieved independence, the contest between competing visions of the nation that began after World War II not only remained unresolved but also continued to intensify during the 1960s. One vision constructed a nation based on the primacy of the indigenous ethnic group, the Malays, while non-Malays advanced a vision that emphasized the equality of all ethnic groups in the nation. The former became the basis of the official nationalism of independent Malaya/Malaysia, but the ruling coalition tried to blunt opposition to it by co-opting elements of the latter without resolving fully the tensions between these diametrically opposed ideas. The post-colonial government found itself having to continually defend, justify and advance the official meaning of Malaysia through its developmental policies and propaganda campaigns in the 1960s. The state conducted its propaganda campaigns through both personalized and mass channels using two departments: the Information Department that placed men and women on the ground to conduct face-to-face propaganda across the nation but with an emphasis on rural and semi-rural communities, and Radio Malaysia, the state’s primary medium for mass communication until television ownership and broadcasting overtook radio from the 1970s onwards. The dissertation looks at the history, operational procedures and goals of the two agencies from the standpoint of the practice of governmentality. It examines their colonial roots, during which they were key components in the anti-Communist war, to their post-colonial iterations, when they had to adapt to meet peacetime objectives. I suggest that the Department of Information and Radio Malaysia could not fully transcend their colonial legacies and the operational challenges inherent in bureaucracies to meet these new post-colonial challenges. More importantly, the two organizations 1 could not resolve the tensions within the message they were preaching, i.e. a contradictory official nationalism that stated, in effect, that all are equal but one is special. Also, some of the entrenched operational structures of the agencies undermined key planks of the official nationalism. It is for these reasons that the two agencies, and by extension, the government, failed to win over decisively the hearts and minds of its new citizens to its vision of the nation; a failure that contributed to its electoral setback in 1969 and the race riots that occurred as a result. 2 To Mum: Yes, it is done. i Contents Introduction iv Chapter 1: Eyeball to eyeball propaganda 1 Chapter 2: Radio: In every hut and palace 38 Chapter 3: Many tongues, one nation? 62 Chapter 4: National Anthem: A discordant symbol 119 Epilogue 143 Bibliography 153 ii Note on names Malay names are generally patronymic; thus, the name of the first Malayan to head Radio Malaya, Dol Ramli, means Dol, son of Ramli. It is the convention to refer to the person’s given name after the first mention, and so, Dol Ramli is subsequently identified as Dol. Many Indian Malaysian names are also patronymic and the same rules apply. The Father of Independence and the first Prime Minister of Malaya/Malaysia was Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra. It is the conventional practice to refer to him from the second mention as the Tunku, even though Tunku (or its variant spelling, Tengku) simply means “prince.” For Chinese Malaysians, the family name appears first, and so Tan Kee Tian, the Department of Information Field Officer whose report opens Chapter 3, is subsequently referred to as Tan. iii Introduction On a late October day in 1957, a Chinese supervisor of plantation workers in Segamat District set out on his 125-mile trip to Johore Bahru, the state capital of Johore. That journey would have first involved finding his way to Segamat town. From there, he would have either taken a slow bus that meandered from central to southern Johore, or a more direct train service—either way, the journey would have taken at least half a day, if not more. This unnamed supervisor, whose formal title was conductor or kepala (literally, head), had been nominated by his manager to attend a civics course organized by the Department of Information. When he arrived, he and 27 other frontline supervisors from plantations all over the state were housed at the specially built Civics Course Center, where they spent three days listening to talks on the government’s labor policies, the work of the Chinese Affairs department, and topics such as trade unions, cooperative movements and the Good Citizens Movement. When not attending lectures, the department organized visits to various government departments and places of interests, including the Telecoms Exchange building, the Police Signals Headquarters, the Social Welfare Home and Children’s Home, the State Council (State Cabinet) chambers, and the Combined Operations Room at the Contingent Police Headquarters, the nerve center of the government’s fight against the communists in Johore. The participants even crossed the narrow Straits of Johore to visit the studios of Radio Malaya in Singapore. It must have been a giddy three days for some of them, since quite a few had never been to the state capital, much less encountered the bright lights of the city of Singapore.1 These civics courses had been conducted since the British returned to power in Malaya after World War II. As part of its effort to reconstitute its civilian colonial government, Britain established the Department of Information and Radio Malaya in 1946 as its twin propaganda arms. Not long after that, the colonial government declared war on its erstwhile WWII allies, the Communist Party of Malaya. This conflict came to be known as the Emergency, and lasted from 1948 to 1960, although the communists had ceased to be an effective fighting force by the mid-1950s. The work of the Department of Information, which was initially broad-based, soon became focused on wartime, anti- communist propaganda. But by the time this Segamat estate supervisor settled into his course, Malaya had been independent for just under two months, and the department was beginning to tinker with its strategies to meet this new political reality. Thus, in addition to the topics mentioned above—standard fare for a wartime colonial propaganda agency— the speakers also emphasized “the role which everyone must play for the nation now that Malaya is Independent, [while also explaining] the rights and responsibilities of a citizen.”2 The aim of the civics course was to win over the hearts and minds of a key section of society: grassroots leaders who had a direct influence on the masses. This was sometimes not an easy task, for there was considerable suspicion of and resistance to the government. Some of that resistance was expressed through racial animosity, a direct 1 “Report on the Civics Course for Chinese Estate Conductors and Kepalas, October 27-29, 1957,” November 27, 1957. SIO TR 204, Report on civics courses in other states/settlements. 2 Ibid. iv result of the colonial government’s divide-and-rule policies that created, maintained and deepened the ethnic cleavages in the colony. In fact, the Segamat supervisor was initially one such skeptic, as he confessed to the department’s officers. In their report, they said: One candidate from an estate in the Segamat district expressed his pleasure profusely for having had the opportunity to attend the course, although before corning he had some misgivings as to the true intentions of Government in asking him to come to Johore Bahru to attend a course, as some of his colleagues in the Estate had told him through their own ignorance, that the Government had sinister designs upon him and that they might never see him again. Now that he had completed the course he said he would tell all his friends how wrong they had been and how much he had benefitted through the generosity of Government in arranging courses like this for the people. As final proof that he had actually visited various institutions and Government Departments, this candidate obtained a list of all these places from the conducting officer, to take home and to show his friends.3 This civics course is one concrete example of the focus of this dissertation, which examines how the newly independent Malaysian state used propaganda as one of the tools in forging a new nationalism and specific values of citizenship in the face of enduring ethnic cleavages and contesting visions of nationhood. I suggest that the official nationalism between independence in 1957 and the race riots of May 1969 was a failed project because the state could not resolve the contradictions and tensions within its vision of the nation.