Educating Malayan Gentlemen: Establishing an Anglicised Elite in Colonial Malaya

By Adeline Koh

The early part of the 20th century saw a huge shift in colonial educational policy across the British Empire, with the implementation of a strict limitation on teaching English to native subjects. This was a stark contrast to the previous attitudes on educational policy — particularly in India — whereby English would be taught with the hope of “civilising” the natives. In 19th century British imperial policy, the English language was conceived as an imperative civilising force — a tool for the enlightenment of the “savage barbarians” in the tropical colonies under the British rule. Lord Macaulay’s attitude towards English is characteristic of most European officials’ belief at that time — that the colonial language had a civilising and humanising influence on their subjects:

Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred
and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as
that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged
from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized
communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class
abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest functions, and in
nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris
and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which, in the time of our
grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab, may in the time of our grandchildren,
be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how
was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the
mind of the young Muscovite with the old women’s stories which his rude fathers
had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not
by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or not
created on the 13th of September; not by calling him “a learned native” when he
had mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign
languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and thus
putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western Europe
civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have
done for the Tartar. (Macaulay, 1835, para 16)

In contrast to the 19th century view on English education, 20th century attitudes towards the teaching of English to natives grew more conservative. The growth and consolidation of the British Empire by the early 20th century showed how important “native education” was becoming to colonial governments as an ideological tool. But English education could be both an important implement as well as a highly dangerous one. While it was essential to train a sizeable number of natives across the empire to be conversant in English so that the colonial bureaucracy would be able to find native clerks to work within the imperial civil services, it was discovered through the early Indian example in the 19th century that English was also a highly dangerous tool to arm the natives with. The problem with English was that if too many natives spoke it as fluently and became as highly educated as Europeans, they would inevitably challenge European rule, particularly those pertaining to racial exclusions, which prevented them from reaching higher levels of power within the colonial state machinery across the British empire.

The fear of the native who became too arrogant for his colonial masters was thus crystallised in various forms. The colonial administrator Frank Swettenham, who was instrumental in determining the course of educational policy in colonial Malaya, had his materialise in the form of the Indian “babu” — “half-educated”, blundering and ultimately coming across as a comical character with ridiculous political aspirations, which only showed the fallacy of educating natives in English. He wrote:

Misapplied English education has a good deal to answer for, and, if the babu has a
soul, it may demand a reckoning from those who gave it a speech in which to make
known the impossible aspirations of a class that is as rich in wordy agitation as it is
poor in the spirit and physique of a ruling race. Many babus cannot quench revolt.
Perhaps the babu is ‘thing [sic] too much’ in India; they could do without him. And
yet he and education, combined, make a growing danger that may yet to have to be counted with. (as cited in Stevenson, 1975, p. 76, note 28)

This paper examines the difficult and problematic nature of English education in the colonial Malaya of the early 20th century. Specifically, what is explored is the way in which English was used as a discretionary tool both to civilise and to tame native subjects in order to avoid the frightening problem of a “half-educated” Indian “babu” manifesting among colonised Malayan subjects. The bulk of this interpretation of British educational policy in colonial Malaya stems from an examination of Malayan-centred textbooks produced in Malaya in the 1930s in order to create a more Malayan-centred education distinct from an English education, which had only English and European references at their core.

Through a careful reading of these textbooks, one can begin to discern an outline of ideological formations in Malaya (later the basis of the nationalist imaginings of the people of Malaya). A systematic reading of these Malayan textbooks from the 1930s will show the engineering of an elite English-speaking sensibility across the different “native races”, or non-European races, of Malaya. It is a way in which one can discern the ideological foundations of the Malayan “collaborative elite,” or a native bourgeoisie that served as intermediaries between European colonials and the rest of the labouring colonised masses.

English in Malaya¹ — as within all British colonies — served as an instrument of power. Used to separate master from servant, colonial from colonised, it was a language of the elite, a language of the colonial state.

The better-educated spoke English and could rise up through colonial state mechanisms. Hence, the British considered English education in Malaya dangerous because they feared the security of their privileged position in Malaya being threatened by the English education of too many natives. Utilised by the British colonial state as a tool to structure and govern Malaya, English education in the 1920s was specifically reserved only for a distinct elite class, which spanned the “major” races of Malaya — the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. Only those in this elite class were allowed to learn English, and those who belonged to this select group were usually of aristocratic origin. The English considered it highly dangerous to allow anybody but the native aristocracy to learn English, as this would give the common people delusions of grandeur.

In his annual report on Perak in 1890, Swettenham argued:

The one danger to be guarded against is to teach English indiscriminately. It could
not be well taught except in a few schools, and I do not think it is at all advisable
to give to the children of an agricultural population an indifferent knowledge of a
language that to all but the very few would only unfit them for the duties of life and
make them discontented with anything like manual labour. (as cited in Stevenson,
1975, p. 57)

Furthermore, the British felt that educating the “masses” in English would encourage the bulk of the “native” population to revolt against British rule. As an editorial in the Ipoh English language newspaper The Times of Malaya opined, giving the Malays in particular a higher education “would be to put in ‘their hands an intellectual weapon whereby they might attempt our undoing.’” (as cited in Stevenson, p. 58) This being so,mEnglish education was reserved solely for the elite. For the bulk of the rest of the non-Caucasian population, Swettenham felt:

While we teach children to read and write and count in their own language, or in
Malay, the ‘lingua franca’ of the Peninsula and the Archipelago, we are safe’, and
that ‘Beyond that I should like to see the boys taught useful industries, and the girls
weaving, embroidery and mat making.’ (as cited in Stevenson, 1975, p. 58)

English was thus associated with intellect, power and control — and only knowledge of English would allow one to access these three things within the colony. On the other hand, non-Caucasian “vernacular” languages such as Malay, Chinese and Tamil, were institutionally linked with manual labour and low status within the colonial state and society.

Hence, within the colonial state, English was institutionalised as a language of the elite — and only the elite were allowed access to it. As English became the language of the colonial state, the administration and the bureaucracy, it also became essential for one to understand it in order to be able to navigate the rules of the society. Not being able to speak English would also mean that one would be powerless against the judicial system and unable to understand how to go about getting a job or starting a business. In this way the British hoped to be able to control the non-Caucasian population, because allowing the latter an English education would give them access to knowledge of the colonial system — and very possibly destabilise the self-accorded privilege that the British enjoyed through colonial state institutions. English, therefore, functioned as a tool of centralised colonial power. Keeping the language of the state out of reach of most non-Caucasian people in the colonies meant that it would keep them under control as they would not be able to access information or understand enough to negotiate the system.

English education functioned as a method of control over the native elite. French philosopher Louis Althusser termed this as an “ideological state apparatus” — one of the key methods utilised by the state to ensure that power relations were maintained, and that they would reproduce themselves through the manufacture and normalisation of ideology. Prompting these elite natives to speak and think a certain way would help the colonial state to maintain its control over Malayan society. This was done through the normalisation of a certain way of thinking; by making these elite Malayan subjects believe that things operated in accordance with the laws of the colonial state, in order to engender an Anglophile sensibility compliant with British interests. For this purpose, again, English was extremely important.

The foundational writer on European colonialism and nationalism, Frantz Fanon, wrote in Black Skin, White Masks: “To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” (c1967, pp. 17–18) Learning how to speak English in a particular way for the Malayan elite would also mean that they would learn to think like the British, to share British values and become more “westernised” and hence, naturally favour the outlook, desires and goals of the European colonials.

The textbooks that this study concentrates on show several dynamics very clearly; they were specifically engineered to teach the colonised to recognise themselves in certain ways: Firstly, to recognise themselves as an elite class and masters over the other non-Caucasian natives. Secondly, these textbooks tried to teach them their role as subordinate to the British, to accept the British as benevolent masters and to identify themselves as children vis-à-vis their colonial masters who were trying to uplift and civilise them. Thirdly, they taught the colonised elite to become Victorian English gentlemen by imbibing them with upper-class Victorian distinctions that were endemic to the British public school system, such as notions of being from a “correct” background and the idea of team sports such as cricket, polo and notions of “fair play” and “being a good sport”. Finally, they were to understand the racial divisions in the colony, accept racial stereotypes as truths and understand the importance of these racial stereotypes to good governance and rule.

The rest of this paper focuses on only the first and second points in the survey of these 1930s colonial textbooks: how these textbooks taught students to recognise their elite position in relation to other non-Caucasians, and how their intent was to induce subservience and gratitude towards British authority.

Ideological control of the non-Caucasian elite by the colonial state was specifically accomplished through the creation of a “Malayan-centred” education; “Malayan-centred” so that the Malayan elite subjects reading these textbooks would be able to identify with the characters in these textbooks, and would be more easily and completely ideologically convinced. In addition, they would learn to identify with the British interpretation of Malaya, and see themselves through a British lens rather than from that of their own cultures.

In a preface to a textbook for older students (at a form comparable to the Cambridge “O-level” today), the editors of the textbook wrote that this textbook was composed of:

… passages selected from well-known books written for English readers by men
of distinction from various spheres, with only such alterations as will avoid special
difficulties in the school. The pupil is introduced to books that are to be found in the
great libraries of the world. He learns that notable books have been written about
Malaya by many authors, and finds that it is within his power to read these books.
And it is hoped that the extracts here given will make the pupil wish to read more
of the books from which they come — books of adventure stories which will interest
him, and of first-hand descriptions of places and things that he himself has seen
or would like to see. (Cheeseman & Gillet, as cited in Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?,
pp. v–vi)

The writers of the stories were all European, generally British, who were either colonial administrators or travel writers and they were called “men of distinction” by the editors. Through reading the stories, the Malayan elite children were taught to have great respect for the European point of view, the European way of thinking, and the European way of considering Malaya. They were also taught to consider the European point of view as the authoritative point of view and to respect their masters’ point-of-view.

Additionally, these Malayan-centred textbooks were more effective as a form of ideological control because they would be of greater hegemonic persuasion than those textbooks that were written for English schoolchildren, which useds only European examples. By being “Malayan-centred”, and by focusing on local images such as local flora, fauna, folktales, people, the children would be able to identify more easily with the subjects of these stories, and hence, imbibe the moral values and ways of thinking which the subjects of these stories had.

A textbook for lower-primary students teaches children to read simple English through elementary descriptive passages, such as the following:

Hamid bin Arifin lives in a kampong in Kuala Kangsar. His patch of padi is on the
left of his attap house. You can see hens and little chicks running about the house,
scratching for bits to eat. Hamid is chopping a log. The chips are flying here and
there. Aminah is fetching water from the well. The chickens are running round and
round the guava tree catching each other. They are having such fun! (p. 23)

Such local imagery — the attap house, the chickens running around, the guava tree — is effective because it is evocative and easy to identify with. This strong connection between the rhetorical, visual, aural and kinaesthetic imagery in the stories, and the sights and sounds of everyday life encourage the elite Malayan child to interpret the world around him or her in English. This will allow him or her to think about, describe, express and finally, replicate an English-inflected worldview. This Malayan-centred English education will thus cause the colonised subject to “assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” (Fanon, c1967, pp. 17–18)

These textbooks furthered teaching the elite Malayan subjects to recognise themselves in a role that the colonial state had clearly marked out for them — the role of the colonised elite, the intermediaries between the British and the native masses. Elite Malayans were to make sure that their subjects knew of the former’s social class, in terms of their being masters over the other poorer, non-aristocratic, non-Caucasian subjects. All the narratives that make up these textbooks portray the protagonists of their stories as bourgeois, middle-class children who live in houses, their lives replete with important fathers, mothers who take them shopping, who “lunch”, and have the requisite racialised amahs, gardeners and caretakers in their service — all the whom are the underclass who labour happily to support the lifestyle of the Westernised, bourgeois, elite child.

In Happy Days, a textbook for Standard I (upper-primary school in contemporary terms), we are led through the life of the privileged child Rosie, her adventures in school and with her friends. Like other children of her class, Rosie has a cook, a gardener, a chauffeur, an amah, all of whom love the child, serving her enthusiastically so long as she is polite to them, but whom the child is taught to take for granted. Notice the dynamics, for example, in the following section.

Saturday is the best day of the week. When Rosie wakes up in the morning, she is
happy to think she can spend the whole day at home. She can do just as she likes all
day. She can go to the kitchen and watch Cook. Rosie likes to see Cook working. He
can do things so quickly and he knows where everything is. When he comes back
from the market, he puts what he has bought on the table and begins to prepare
the meals. He brings meat, rice, vegetables, lovely red chillies, and many kinds of
fruit. Rosie looks to see if he has got her favourite fruit. Now, I am sure you can guess what that is. It is the mangosteen. Amah cuts the shell for her and she enjoys the juicy white part round the seeds inside. Mummy says it is very good for her too. (Happy Days, 1936, pp. 27–28)

In this brief passage we are introduced to several dynamics: Rosie’s day is organised for her pleasure, and the servants in her house are there to provide her with innocent pleasure and amusement. Cook provides a visual, benign feast for Rosie, the exotic imagery of his shopping and ritualistic preparation of the food approximating the same sort of pleasurable entertainment value that we get from a cookery programme nowadays. His shopping, of course, must always be mindful of the adored child; hence he buys her favourite fruit — the mangosteen. After Rosie is sated by the appealing performance of Cook — who is referred to only by a job designation, her Amah further pleases the child by offering the fruit to the child, displaying the former’s knowledge of her place as a servant. Amah too, remains unnamed.

In narratives such as these, therefore, the elite child is taught to assume that she or he should be served by members of the lower order and be patronisingly respectful of them, but that these lower classes should know their place. The elite child is taught to not treat them as equals, their individuality not even acknowledged as they are not referred to by their names. But it is important that they are depicted as happy, enthusiastic and grateful to serve their elite masters, and thankful that their masters bestow on them gratitude for their service. In preparation for Rosie’s birthday, for example, Rosie’s mother buys some material to make her a dress. We are told that: “When they got home, Mummy showed Amah the cloth and the thread. She told her to make Rosie a pretty dress.” (ibid., p. 33). The way the narrative is written demonstrates the master-servant relationship; Amah is told to make a dress, not asked; in other words, she has been given an order. After she has made the dress, Rosie tries it on:

It was so pretty that she ran to Amah to thank her. Amah was glad she had taken so
much trouble with it. She likes to do things for Rosie, because Rosie always thanks
her very sweetly. She never gives Amah trouble. (ibid., p. 34)

Rosie’s patronising politeness ensures the gratitude and continued enthusiasm of the servant in her role — maintaining manual labour efforts that support the lifestyles of the native elite.

If the native elites are taught that they are superior to the rest of the non-Caucasian subjects in the British colony, they also have to be taught to accept their inferiority to the British and Europeans in general as natural. This means that these native elites were specifically taught to regard the British as benevolent rulers who were driven by a mission to civilise; to uplift them from their natural state of savagery and teach them to be “modern”; to industrialise; to have better values and to respect humanity in European terms. They were also taught to identify with European superiority and to valorise the British as the most desirable rulers, especially in relation to their own native rulers.

This can be clearly seen in an example taken from a Cambridge “O” level history textbook used in Malaya, on Raffles:

In course of time the whole of the Malay Peninsula, from the British coastal colonies
to the borders of Siam, became a British Protectorate. And the methods of this
Protectorate have been as efficient and benignant as if Raffles himself had controlled
it. Slavery, serfdom, piracy, rapine — all the worst miseries and savageries of that
ancient land — have long died out. The deadly kris has lost its edge. Peace, order,
justice are everywhere maintained. More than six hundred thousand schools have
been established. Over a thousand miles of railway have been built, and between
two and three thousand miles of metalled roads. Tin mines have been opened up,
and rubber plantations introduced. The material development of Malaya has been
one of the economic wonders of the world. But the feature of the Protectorate which
Raffles would observe with the deepest pride, were he alive today, is the happiness
of the people. More prosperous than they have ever been, safe at last from the
old haunting fears, the old perpetual insecurity, tyranny and wars, the Malays are
unquestionably happy. Singapore, then, the Queen of British Malaya, is Raffles’ true
memorial. He has been forgotten at times in London; he has never been forgotten
there. Raffles Quay, Raffles Place, Raffles Museum, Raffles Hotel, Raffles Library,
Raffles Institution, Raffles College — everywhere the city cries out his name. And in
the centre of Raffles Plain — in front of him the azure roadstead with its crowd of
ships from all over the world, behind him the green peninsula with its millions of
contented villagers, stands Raffles’ statue, watching for all time over his child. There,
if anywhere on earth, his spirit lingers at peace, his dream fulfilled. (Cross, as cited in
Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?, pp. 219–221)

Several things should become very apparent in this passage. First of all, it is posited that the Malays are the original rulers of the land — the land is termed the “Malay” Peninsula rather than the Malayan peninsula. Second, it is subtly and rhetorically argued that British control is unquestionably superior to the former Malay control over the land, and that Malays are related to savagery, as “Slavery, serfdom, piracy, rapine” are interminably linked to the poignant imagery of the “deadly kris” — a symbol of Malay power. This “deadly kris” has given way to the glories of European civilisation in accordance with the logic of moving towards what the British consider a higher order of humanity; “Peace, order and justice are everywhere maintained,” a state of affairs considered to be a European preserve. The reader goes through this passage and relates Malay rule with the “deadly kris” — redolent with backward, savage Oriental despotism, and European rule with all the blessings of industry and modernity: “Peace, order and justice are everywhere maintained. More than six hundred thousand schools have been established.” In this passage, it seems that the British have given the people of Malaya education through schools, industry through mines and rubber plantations, and infrastructure through metalled roads, and that for this, the Malay people should be grateful that their own despotic sultans have been replaced by the benign paternalism of British rule: “More prosperous than they have ever been, safe at last from the old haunting fears, the old perpetual insecurity, the Malays are unquestionably happy.”

Therefore, it is to be seen as patently logical that the Malays should accept British rule because of the blessings the British have brought to them. The colonised elite children are thus taught that “the Malays are unquestionably happy.” To top it all off, Raffles is posited as the benevolent founder to whom these colonised elite children should be grateful; hence, the city should “cry out his name.” He is portrayed as a god-like, benign figure watching over the city as his ghost rests, and to whom these colonised elite children should pay homage.

The elite child is taught to be grateful to the British and to their rule. The best sorts of natives, according to the colonial administrators, are the ones who know their place, meaning that they would want to be like the British but never challenge them. The editor of The Malay Mail, J.H.M. Robson, wrote in the newspaper on 6 September 1898: “The Malay to be encouraged is the modest man who wants leading forward by the hand, not the sharp, cheeky, half-caste Penang Malay.” (as cited in Stevenson, p. 62) This ideal sort of complaisance is reflected in a short story in one of the textbooks written by one of the colonial educationists, R.O. Winstedt. It is called “Gula”, about a Malay man who was “so sweet he was like sugar”. Gula’s attitude is reflective of what a “real native” should be like. Winstedt’s narrator asks Gula whether modernity has been good for him:

‘Yes, Dato,’ I laughed, ‘but the old order has changed a lot — hasn’t it? The Raja came
here today in a motor-car; you came by train. Your grandson talks to me in English. Is
the change for the worst?’ ‘The peaceful life brought by the white man is very sweet
to a tired old fellow, Tuan; and the young men like the novelties of the day. As you
say, my grandsons are clever. They talk English, and earn good wages, and make
more money out of a good deal in rubber than my father ever possessed.” (Winstedt,
as cited in Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?, p. 115)

The goals of this paper have been to flesh out key ideas and some of the trends in colonial education in Malaya in the 1930s: the historical role of English education in the colonial state of British Malaya, and the engendering of a specific type of elite sensibility that would cultivate a class of rulers who would be grateful for their privilege, and at the same time, subservient to European rule. This paper deals with two aspects of this sensibility:

(1) allowing these elite subjects to recognise their privilege and know the “right ways to act” in relation to this privilege in their society;

(2) ensuring that the elite subjects internalise their inferiority to the white man. The distribution of power that resulted from this construction of an Englishspeaking-elite sensibility and the organisation of power according to language may go some way towards explaining how a colonial language managed to manifest the power of the colonial masters even long after the demise of the colonial state.