page_title: Ketuanan Melayu
section_title: "Malaysian Malaysia!"
hierarchical_section_title: Ketuanan Melayu / Independence and Malaysia / "Malaysian Malaysia!"
caption_attribution_description: English: Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, being escorted by United States Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld through an honour cordon and into the Pentagon. They met to discuss bilateral security issues including the war on terrorism: see DefenseLINK news photos.&#32;US Department of Defense&#32;(2002-05-02). Retrieved on 2009-05-05.
context_page_description: Ketuanan Melayu is a political concept emphasising Malay preeminence in present-day Malaysia. The Malays of Malaysia claimed a special position and special rights owing to their long domicile and the fact that the present Malaysian state itself evolved from a Malay polity. The oldest political institution in Malaysia is the system of Malay rulers of the nine Malay states. British colonial government transformed the system and turned it first into a system of indirect rule, then in 1948, using this culturally based institution, they incorporated the Malay monarchy into the blueprints for the independent Federation of Malaya.
  The term Tanah Melayu in its name which literally means "Malay homeland", assumes proprietorship of the Malay states. In this way Britain strengthened Malay ethno-nationalism, Malay ethnicity and culture and Malay sovereignty in the new nation-state. Though other cultures would continue to flourish, the identity of the emerging political community was to be shaped by the "historic" political culture of its dominant Malay ethnic group.
context_section_description: In the 1963 Singapore state elections, the Alliance challenged the governing People's Action Party (PAP) through the Singapore Alliance Party. UMNO politicians actively campaigned in Singapore for the Singapore Alliance, contending that Singaporean Malays were being treated as second-class citizens under the Chinese-dominated, though ostensibly multiracial, PAP government. However, all of the UMNO-backed Malay candidates lost to the PAP. The PAP politicians, who saw this as a betrayal of an earlier agreement with the Alliance not to contest elections in Malaya and Singapore (respectively), decided to run on the mainland in the 1964 general election. Although the PAP attracted large crowds at its rallies, it won only one seat — that by Devan Nair, who represented the Bangsar constituency. It is thought by some historians that Finance Minister and MCA President Tan Siew Sin's appeal to the Chinese to avoid challenging the Malay special rights and risk merger with Indonesia helped the MCA retain its status as the "undisputed leader of the Chinese in the Malayan peninsula". Nevertheless, UMNO leaders were furious with the PAP.
  New problems soon cropped up. Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of the Singaporean government and the PAP, declared his open opposition to ketuanan Melayu, calling for a "Malaysian Malaysia" instead of the implied Malay Malaysia. He argued that "Malays began to migrate to Malaysia in noticeable numbers only about 700 years ago. Of the 39% Malays in Malaysia today, about one-third are comparatively new immigrants like (Syed Jaafar Albar), who came to Malaya from Indonesia just before the war at the age of more than thirty. Therefore it is wrong and illogical for a particular racial group to think that they are more justified to be called Malaysians and that the others can become Malaysian only through their favour."
  Lee later lamented: "Malaysia — to whom does it belong? To Malaysians. But who are Malaysians? I hope I am, Mr Speaker, Sir. But sometimes, sitting in this chamber, I doubt whether I am allowed to be a Malaysian. This is the doubt that hangs over many minds, and ... [once] emotions are set in motion, and men pitted against men along these unspoken lines, you will have the kind of warfare that will split the nation from top to bottom and undo Malaysia." At times, however, Lee worsened things by making racial comments of his own. Many of his speeches harped on the ethnic composition of Malaysia, reminding listeners that the non-Malays were now in the majority, with 61% of the population to the Malays' 39% asking at one point, "Why should we go back to old Singapore and once again reduce the non-Malays in Malaya to a minority?" Lee exacerbated deteriorating PAP-UMNO relations by constantly demanding that the federal government "smack down their 'ultras'", whose ranks included prominent UMNO leaders such as Syed Jaafar Albar and Syed Nasir Ismail.
  Lee's statements upset many, especially Alliance politicians. Tan Siew Sin called him the "greatest, disruptive force in the entire history of Malaysia and Malaya." The Tunku considered Lee too extremist in his views, while other UMNO politicians thought Lee was simply pandering to Malaysian Chinese with his rhetoric. Lee's statement about allegedly recent Malay migration met with stinging rebuttals; Albar declared: "To say that the Malays are in the same category as other races is an insult..." The UMNO newspaper Malaya Merdeka warned: "If the Malays are hard-pressed and their interests are not protected," they would merge Malaysia with Indonesia. It was this that the Tunku feared the most. To him, the ultras were not the real extremists — it was those who sought a "Greater Indonesia" to "fix" the Chinese that were the real threat.
  The strain in race relations led to the Singaporean 1964 Race Riots, which PAP Malay politician Othman Wok later insinuated were planned beforehand by the ultras. In the year following the riots, tension continued growing. Syed Jaafar Albar declared that "Wherever I am, I am a Malay", drawing harsh return fire from Lee, who stated i
caption: Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of the Singapore government, publicly opposed ketuanan Melayu, and propagated his idea of a "Malaysian Malaysia".
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