This article appeared in The Edge Malaysia on 18 March 2024 by Edmund Terence Gomez
A tribute to Professor Syed Hussein Alatas, The Life in the Writing is a telling tale of under-appreciated scholarship. In this updated edition of a book first published in 2010, author Masturah Alatas makes a compelling call for recognition of her father’s scholarship.
In this edition, with 15 new chapters, Masturah’s “biography and memoir” methodically captures her father’s central ideas. She revisits his life through his key writings, beginning with his first major book, Intellectuals in Developing Societies. In this study, issued in 1977 by British publishing house Frank Cass, Syed Hussein introduced the term “bebal”, which he saw as a “particular type of stupidity that often believes itself to be rational”.
The long process of getting this manuscript published — even finding a reputable international publisher, a problem faced by many academics — is dwelt on at some length by Masturah. So arduous was the process to get this study published that Syed Hussein managed to complete writing what was to become a classic critique of colonial discourse, The Myth of the Lazy Native, also published by Frank Cass. Masturah notes how her father wanted this book “to make a significant contribution to Malaysian historiography and post-colonial studies” which, she correctly concludes, “he did”.
A central aspect of The Myth of the Lazy Native was Syed Hussein’s critique of Revolusi Mental, a book project led by Umno leaders after the 1969 riots, which he saw as “a Malay ruling party sharing a false consciousness of colonial capitalism” and a “desire to avoid the responsibility for the government failure to uplift the Malay community”.
What followed from here was Syed Hussein’s return to his focus on corruption. As Masturah notes, he “spent his whole life writing about corrupt and servile times”. His major publications on the subject were The Sociology of Corruption (1968), the first book on this topic by an academic in Malaysia, and Corruption and the Destiny of Asia (1999). However, Syed Hussein’s persistent warnings about corruption were ignored. Today, by the government’s own admission, Malaysia is weighed down with systemic corruption.
An interesting question arises when reading Masturah’s account of her father’s intellectual life. Why was he preoccupied with seemingly diverse subjects such as forms of corruption, the role of intellectuals in emerging — usually authoritarian — countries and the ludicrous, but widely accepted, myth about “lazy natives”? What is also intriguing is Masturah’s disclosure that in the latter part of his life, her father was grappling with the concept of “evil”. In fact, in Corruption and the Destiny of Asia, he expressed his distress at the “evil motive to exploit the unfortunate in the most defenceless and vulnerable position”.
Syed Hussein’s fundamental concern was his intent, through his scholarship, to “free the captive mind”, a theme that runs through his books. A “captive mind”, as he saw it, is one that cannot think creatively and originally as it is constrained and limited by colonial or Western paradigms of thinking.
His view of a mind that cannot think originally merits thought, as the term “captive mind” can be applied more generally to the masses. A major concern today is how people have uncritically bought into the extremely divisive political discourses on race and religion, a topic that deeply troubled Syed Hussein.
With the minds of people held captive by such discourses, politicians are capturing control of federal and state governments, consolidating their position and abusing it to accumulate wealth. For Syed Hussein, by freeing their minds, people would be able to think independently and critically, realising that the role they need to play in society is to give voice to injustices, the vilest of which is unquestionably the “evil” done by governing elites against the poorest in society.
Masturah raises a riveting detail about her father, the activist scholar who was deeply engaged with current events. She reflects — although too briefly — on Syed Hussein’s entry into politics through the then newly formed Gerakan, in order to address the social inequities he had researched. As Gerakan co-chairman, he led the party in a remarkable battle in the 1969 general election, winning control of the Penang government. In spite of this stupendous electoral victory, he soon left Gerakan and returned to academia.
What could have been delved into more was why Syed Hussein left Gerakan after this epochal election where Umno was taught a vital lesson on accountable rule. Although one of the new chapters discusses at length the socioeconomic debates after the 1969 riots, the reasons for her father’s short stint as a politician are not disclosed. What is clear is that some members and, subsequently, Gerakan itself joined the ruling coalition, an act Syed Hussein would have seen as a betrayal of the trust of the electorate. At the heart of these crossovers was a struggle for power, with those elected by the people pandering to political elites who had nearly been ousted from government.
Despite his disappointment with how things turned out in Gerakan, Syed Hussein went on to play an advisory role in government to help forge policies to unify a nation torn asunder by the post-election riots. The core reform debates centred on the wealth of the nation and how it was to be distributed. From these debates emerged the Rukun Negara and the New Economic Policy (NEP), a national transformation plan that aimed to eradicate poverty and restructure society.
The NEP’s focus on creating privately owned Malay businesses, however, drew Syed Hussein’s ire. In 1972, he published Modernization and Social Change: Studies in Modernization, Religion, Social Change and Development in South-East Asia, in which he lamented: “It is the first time in the history of the world that a capitalist government officially plans to create capitalists. The Plan intends to incubate entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs in the history of capitalism, both ancient and modern, have never been the product of official incubation.”
Syed Hussein was well aware that a government attempt to create Malay-owned enterprises could lead to corruption in the form of cronyism and bribery. After all, these issues had been raised in The Sociology of Corruption, published a year before the 1969 riots. By not heeding his concerns, Malaysia has now reached the point where long-running policies to create ethnic-based enterprises have contributed appreciably to corruption and unaccountable wealth accumulation by governing elites.
Masturah’s other crucial insight into her father’s life was his concern about the growing politicisation of the university, an attempt by politicians to “capture” the minds of university students and academics. She raises the question of his untimely termination as vice-chancellor of Universiti Malaya, a post her father held for only one three-year term. Although Masturah herself does not imply this, his resistance to political intrusion in the campus was probably why his contract at UM was not renewed. In Syed Hussein’s last address as vice-chancellor, while presiding over UM’s 1990 convocation ceremony, he made a plea to “keep the politicians out”, lest the university be ruined. The repercussions of not heeding his warning are patently blatant three decades later.
Syed Hussein also spoke of the rise of the “kangkung professor” — yes, it was he who coined the term — a reference to “an academic who is promoted to the rank of professorship too easily and too quickly without having publications of calibre”. The phenomenon of kangkung professors, a scourge now of universities, is an outcome of the capture of these institutions by governing elites.
For Syed Hussein, the university capture by politicians had led to the notion of (self) “censorship”, a matter he was researching in retirement, and to the extreme subservience of academics to power elites. When asked about this “culture of fear” being a barrier to intellectual work, his response was telling: “It exists, but who creates it? Is it your own self or really an outside force creating fear in you?” As Masturah notes, for her father, writing was “an act of courage”. The price he paid for his courage was that his scholarship was not recognised by the government, with only a few academics encouraging their students to read his publications. University capture has silenced much of academia. Indeed, what Masturah implicitly points to is the demeaning of scholarship and academia by political elites.
Masturah’s revealing portrait of a thoughtful academic provokes many questions. What were the forces that conspired to push Syed Hussein and his groundbreaking scholarship to the margins? Why was his voice ignored when he warned Malaysia of bebalism, corruption, political capture of the universities and the growing problem of minds captive to divisive discourses of race and religion? A long-standing hegemonic political system was a key contributing factor. Major reforms are imperative. With Malaysia’s social landscape besieged by unsound policies, conflict-ridden political narratives and an education system that churns out imitative and uncritical minds, this book serves as a timely reminder that we would do well to stop ignoring Syed Hussein’s legacy in our search for solutions.