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| The Political Commissar and the Beautiful People |
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| Sizeable scholarships for study in the U.K. or America were simply handed to those willing to study anything not provided in the local institutions of higher learning, such as, engineering, architecture, law, physics, political science, and practically all research degrees. Ganesalingam of Senior One (1950) decided to try one of the scholarships being thrown out of the USIS. When at last everything seemed to be arranged for his departure, he suddenly, and tragically, disappeared. One never knew the cause of his ailment, for he had a smile ready on and for all occasions. Tall, dark, slim, and soft-spoken, his teeth in a constant gleam, he was always in the act of pushing his straight black hair back where it/they belonged; he seemed so optimistic ever since the Cambridge results were published in the Straits Times. He was one of the brave ones: he wanted to do engineering. Some however distinguished themselves despite the circumstances. Two such Victorians, one class of 1947 or 48, and the other `46, did just that: Arthur Rajaratnam got himself a London Imperial College Ph.D. in physics, and A.Sivasubramaniam a Ph.D. in soil mechanics from Manchester University. The latter Victorian became the President of the Students Union there, in 1953/54, and was even presented to the Queen Mother! Just think of that. That`s the closest a Victorian ever came to the Ma`am who left us her name. |
| This post-war generation with degrees inevitably became the heads of all state and federal departments, and all the services, and became ambassadors and/or nominated or easily elected leaders of the nation. In short, they all became "top dogs" without rat-racing with one another, for when the British bosses left after Independence, the gaping hollow created in the upper reaches of power simply beckoned to them, or rather sucked them into the vacuum. This top-dog-generation, sad to say though, produced only a handful of men or women of true lasting achievement. |
| : Only a few names come to mind on an international scale rating. One dedicated workhorse surgeon and research scientist, the tenacious Victorian: S.S.Ratnam; one illustrious Anderson School historian and administrator :Wang Gung-wu; one self-effacing - and notwithstanding very well known - entrepreneur on a grand scale: the Victorian T.Ananda Krishnan;one long-known eminently-trained, indefatigable linguist: Asmah Haji Omar; two runaway billionaire cinema magnates: the Run Run Shaws; one very cut-and-dry Brahmin nominated leg. co. member and astute property-lawyer, R.Ramani, later Malaysia`s UN Representative; one or two poets from either side of the Johor Straits writing in English whom I`d rather not name for fear of arousing the wrath of the Asian Eliots and Yeatses; a good many really gifted Malay prose writers, among them: Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad (Za`ba), A. Samad Said, Ishak Haji Muhammad, Shanon Ahmad, Kamaluddin Muhammad (Keris Mas); [We`ll respectfully leave politicians out of this list for after all they will all have statues, monuments, and boulevards dedicated to them to remind us of their sagacity!], and perhaps a few others who merit a place in the Malaysio-Singaporean Pantheon that I may have bypassed in my blindness. Nonetheless, these famous Malaysians and Singaporeans were/are known to have made the grade only by dint of, or mainly by, limiting the number of strings on their bows, even to the extent, in some cases, of leaving but one slender horse-hair to play their tonitruantes notes on. |
| But the question still remains: Did the country produce any intellectuals? Did some sort of "intelligentsia" arise in the country? One might not be wrong in assuming there indeed might have emerged some such entity but it remained conveniently hidden to the public eye. But then, surely one must be wrong? Right or wrong, there was no gainsaying the fact that this special species of Homo sapiens was a rare breed, albeit, few and far between! Not, perhaps, until one stumbles across a Victorian who had to stop schooling at seventh standard. His weltanschauung was perhaps somewhat uni-prism-ed, or at least coloured, glimpsed, as it were, through the tinted glasses of his implacable ideological stance, but he was totally loyal and equally sincere vis-à-vis his wished-for world. As sincere as he is, ironically, today in his adherence to religious commitment, I`m told. He is still living, living a detached life as a recluse in a foreign country. He was a personal friend and honoured guest of several top leaders behind the post-war Iron and Bamboo Curtains. He discontinued schooling (or rather had to), to work in the accounts department at Town Hall, that is, after his father retired from the Customs Department. The family first lived in Imbi Road, and then retreated to the confining lack of privacy in a lean-to/shack on a promontory overlooking Chinese farmlands in the primary jungle-covered hills along 2nd and 3rd miles on Klang Road. |
| For anyone who didn`t know of his family origins, he could not be easily placed at first sight. His complexion practically "white" (he could have easily passed for an Italian), his extremely fetching looks almost faultless in their proportions, his English locution non-dialectal, his manner cheerfully polite and serious, even reserved, his slight build of medium-height impeccably athletic - he was in short an enigma. His conversation though eminently Marxist-oriented, even Trotskyite-ish, ranged over politics, poetry (he favoured Shelley over Keats or other contemporary Romantics, barring I think Lord Byron), history, and sociological issues with an élan that could have cowed his British jailors with Ox-bridge backgrounds. The important thing was that he was self-taught. There was no way by which he could have been indoctrinated by anyone in person, unless this transpired through his own selective reading. Which schoolboy in those days would pour over every page of Sabine`s Political Philosophy? It was not a school text book. Even if one may now see the futility of the chimera he might have vainly chased after, at least one thing`s certain: he was, and most probably still is, an intellectual in every sense of the word! That`s probably because he constantly questioned the situation in which the country was being placed. And he was a Victorian who made his own particular - though not winning - choice in life. |
| Quite often, he would disappear from his post. One suddenly did not notice him cycling down Brickfields in all haste during lunch time, his clean white shirt and black longs flapping in the gusts he stirred up; he always looked straight ahead, a hint of desolateness, I used to think, shading his mien into a permanently introverted expression. The British authorities must have felt a stint or two in detention might give him a break, no doubt, from his pen-pushing job. But then, he always re-emerged. He enjoyed the favours and protective solicitude of Sir Clough Thuraisingham, then nominated leg-co member and later Member for Education. All good (or even sad) things had to have an end, and in March 1952, he was given two weeks to do a disappearing trick or face yet another spate of detention. All the British had to go on was inconclusive evidence, and so rather than keep him under constant surveillance, the no-nonsense Templer regime, decided not to dilly-dally any further. A magistrate`s court issued a banishment order in his name. To my knowledge, he became the first officially proscribed Victorian. Since his ancestors hailed from an island in the Palk Straits, he returned to Ceylon, where barely a year having gone by, he became the General-Secretary of the General and Clerical Services Union of the country. He remained a political activist and dedicated trade unionist all his life. |
| Yet, he narrowly escaped detention for life under the British administration. Three days after he embarked for Ceylon, a top-level courier from MCP headquarters in the jungle was shot down by the security forces. In his courier bag, the proof the authorities had vainly sought to be able to put him behind bars for good: a letter from MCP HQ addressed to Political Commissar E.Thirugnanamoorthy! (aka E.T.Moorthy) |
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| Coda |
| The engagé Victorian, as can be expected, had/has three very beautiful sisters, who are still in the region with their families. The eldest married one of the most famous school-day Victorians, the intrepid S.Nadeswaran (Class of 1948), Calypso and Negro Spirituals artist, dramatic performer, and later, after emerging from Raffles College (where he was jailed with the "Fajar" group on the eve of the final B.A. exams.), and qualifying from Australia, became the City of Singapore`s Assistant Town Planner, though just as swiftly he fell from grace. A robust figure crowned with Tyron-Power-ish magnetic looks, he used to thrill us all youngsters with his own performances on the stage of the assembly hall. Paragnanamoorthy (E.P.Moorthy), younger brother of the political commissar, once wrote a one-act play that Nadeswaran directed and the two acted in: one of the landmarks in the display of VI`s artistic talents. Even the always morose or menacing-looking F.Daniel burst out laughing during the performance. The late E.P.Moorthy, the budding playwright, turned to teaching in Taiping after school, and then settled in Singapore with a Malay lady, his wife. The eldest brother, E.S.Moorthy, also a Victorian, settled in Singapore, at first as a trade unionist...and then learned how to toe the line. Nadeswaran, by the way, passed away in Singapore last May. |
| "Nades" had a way of making a joke of everything, the usual glint in his eyes turning to white fire. Asked about other schoolmates and what they were doing some years back, he said: "What schoolmates? Everybody is queuing up to make the Straits Times obituary columns!" |
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| © T.Wignesan, Paris, December 12, 2000 |
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