I, KKK: The Autobiography of a Historian
By emblazoning the word, “KKK,” which is often attributed to Ku Klax Klan, a white supremacist group in the United States (US) the book’s title seemed to suggest a direct provocation. A visceral one at that. Yet this book is anything but.
Instead it gave a powerful Tour De Force into the life of the late Professor Emeritus Khoo Kay Kim. The only Historian in Malaysia to have a road named after him albeit in Petaling Jaya. A stone’s throw away from University of Malaya, even the erstwhile Kolej Damansara Utama, that was once the factory of Philips.
If one approaches the book with a certain academic structure, there is none. There is no Chapter breakdown. No index. No footnotes. No bibliography.
Ironically, it was not unlike how Professor Khoo Kay Kim would like himself to be remembered. A storyteller based on facts that he can retrieve from primary sources.
In little over 140 pages, Professor Khoo Kay Kim did not veer off to talk about the University of Malaya as a whole except its origins being in Singapore, prior to moving to Kuala Lumpur.
Given that University of Malaya was once the hotbed of student activism, Professor Khoo Kay Kim affirmed that he was not too interested in such activities.
Not for the lack of love of the country’s current affairs. But the hustle and bustle of student activism were simply a manifestation of their personal struggle entwined with the ideological optics that had consigned them to speaking up.
Professor Khoo Kay Kim made a single mention of socialism, an idea which he understood, yet not necessarily convinced that it can be applied to any country. If anything else, Malaysia has to retract it steps- based on understanding history- in order to forge ahead as a multicultural country.
The book described his childhood, days in the secondary school in Perak, in turn enrollment in the University of Malaya, in the Singapore campus, as a happy one.
Yet Professor Khoo Kay Kim, rather interestingly, also described “Malaysia,” as one of the most complex countries in the world.
A potpourri of cultures, traditions and history, all converging in a country, cannot be anything else but profoundly difficult to govern.
Abiding interest in the past
Yet what Professor Khoo Kay Kim was hinting at was the tendency of many not to take an abiding interest in their past. Yet was already trying to forge ahead, second time around, as an Asian Tiger.
To Professor Khoo Kay Kim, an avid lover of sports, in Ipoh, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, especially football, in latter stage, hockey, the general ignorance of Malaysia towards its sports history alone was enough of a kink to ensure that Malaysians do not know how to work together let alone mix around.
To the extent earlier Malaysian Chinese schools were keen on sports at all, they were focused on basketball and table tennis.
Whereas those who hailed from the schools in English medium were almost always encourage to dabble in football, rugby, hockey and cricket.
Such divisions in the education systems in Malaysia, at the secondary and tertiary levels, continue to leave a searing effeft on the social dynamics.
Professor Khoo Kay Kim also revealed his love for English Literature. Not so much history at first.
More surprisingly, Professor Khoo Kay Kim explained that he didn’t like reading that too many books. A suggestion to read “War and Peace,” by Arnold Tolstoy, for example, got him all bored by the middle section of the book. With one parting message: Families are either happy or unhappy.
Yet though out the course of his life, even marriage with a Malaysian lady of Ceylonese background, named Radhi, his family was often filled with warmth. In fact, of the three sons he has, Professor Khoo Kay Kim has never tried to influence anyone of them to be good in sports or studies. He, together with his wife, who was a teacher at Bukit Bintang Girls School, was more interested in allowing their children to grow on their own.
The fact of the matter is that Professor Khoo Kay Kim has chosen a rather peculiar approach to leave his wisdoms behind.
Well acknowledged as a leading authority on Malaysia history, Professor Khoo Kay Kim was more adept at making history comes alive. Not by quoting from various historians necessarily. Rather by imparting a central method by which the likes of his PhD supervisor the equally eminent Professor Wang Gung Wu, the Doyen of Chinese History, to look more deeply into one’s local then national surroundings.
Beyond that to take an avid interest in the lives and welfare of all the students who come waltzing through the door of Professor Khoo Kay Kim with all kinds of historical projects that were related to their own upbringing. The approach was not strictly based on oral regurgitation of what the elders had once said. Rather what do the source materials reveal ?
JWW Birch
Recollecting a work on JWW Birth, the Resident General of Perak in the 18th century, Professor Khoo Kay Kim explained that from original sources kept in Singapore Archival Library, the very character of JWW Birch was deserving of serious scrutiny for instance.
When JWW Birch’s exploits in siphoning some amount of funds from the Opium Trade in Singapore were discovered, it was no longer tenable for him to be retained under the service of the colonial aristocracy. Instead of banishing him back to the United Kingdom, JWW Birch, a dishonorable character, was allowed to encamp in Perak. Recreated as the Resident General to the Sultan of Perak then.
When the inner demons of JWW Birch could not be removed, these habits attended his stint in Perak, which made him even more haughty and arrogant. At least enough to cause the local chieftain Raja Maharajalela to plunge a Malay Kris into JWW Birch when he was about to emerge from his bath in the Perak River.
When such incidents do occur, Professor Khoo Kay Kim did not classify this as an act of anti colonial rebellion. Rather of the insouciance of the colonial service of the United Kingdom over the misconduct of its officer.
While this book seems one filled with nothing but anecdotes, it does gives the readers a sense of what can be achieved if only they try.
For instance, there is no need to lionize Lee Kuan Yew per se notwithstanding his immense contributions to Singapore
In one debate between Lee and Han Suyin in the early 1950s, for example, the latter had him defeated thoroughly. While Professor Khoo Kay Kim did not intend to be sinister, the underlying message was not to over glorify nor underestimate any phenomenon at all.
Each incident has a tell tale sign of giving away the shortcoming of another.
No drama
Similarly, Professor Khoo Kay Kim also did not give any dramatic account of the incident of May 13 1969. When convoys of army trucks had passed through the roads in Section 16, where his wife, Rathi, would be able to watch from the balcony of their bungalow, it was the neighbors who asked her not to trigger more stress on herself since she was carrying her segond pregnancy. She obliged, as did Professor Khoo Kay Kim did: they went back into their house.
The lack of drama might have been seen as staid if not boring. Yet the book was a page turner. Granted that it was written in elegant and most thoughtful prose.
Among others, Professor Khoo Kay Kim paraphrased one of his former teacher in University of Malaya that it was “better to be novel and lucid,” rather than to be substantive but lacking in merits.
Each of the scholars from the arts and sciences in UM or elsewhere who have felt sufficiently convinced that they have made some small contributions to this construct called “Malaysia,” for the lack of a better phrase, can attempt to write about their own lives.
The sum total of their recollections, as long as they are well corroborated, can add to the national historical discourse. Each of them can then inspire other Malà ysians to understand under which optic have they sought to clarify the intellectual mission of Malaysia going forward.
Hence, whether it is Rajah Rasiah, Jomo Sundaram, Terence Gomez, Lee Kam Hing or more at University of Malaya, each of these seasoned thinkers and dedicated academics ought to offer Malaysians a glimpse of the trials and tribulations that they have gone through in order to spur all Malaysians forward.
In all, the intellectual autobiography of Professor Khoo Kay Kim was superb. It didn’t contain any typographical errors or any succulent sentences that would have made the book unnecessarily unwieldy. In a spirit of decency and humility, Professor Khoo Kay Kim was able to flesh out his life and that of Malaysia in the main.
Why not a Department of Philosophy?
That being said, Professor Khoo Kay Kim was not merely interested in English Literature and History only. If anything else, Professor Khoo Kay Kim remained puzzled why has UM not had a Department of Philosophy since 1950 to this very day. Notwithstanding the fact that Philosophy is one of the most important subjects in the arts and sciences.
With Professor Omar Bakar, a former Deputy Academic Vice Chancellor of University of Malaya, who has been annointed as the 7th Rector of the International University of Malaysia, perhaps both University and Malaya can explore the possibility of a joint Department in Philosophy ?
After all, Professor Osman Bakar is indeed one of the best minds in the history of Islamic philosophy; a field which Professor Khoo Kay Kim’s eldest son, Eddin Khoo, happened to specialize in at Newcastle University.
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