Tunku’s musings cast in new book
KUALA LUMPUR: Tunku Abdul Rahman’s role in achieving independence for the country and defeating pundits’ predictions that newly-independent Malaya would fail is well documented.
But for a few privileged enough to spend time with Bapa Malaysia, their cherished memories had mostly been kept private.
Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, however, painstakingly recorded two years’ worth of his conversations with the Tunku and has now published a book on them.
Conversations with Tunku Abdul Rahman compiles selected comments by Malaysia’s first prime minister, as told to the former journalist, newspaper director and onetime political secretary to Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.
“The book condenses 23 hours of my conversations with the Tunku between 1982 and 1984, and contains amazing insights into the man.
“I had taped the conversations, which Tunku said I could publish whenever I deemed fit – publish and be damned, that’s what he told me,” said Abdullah in a speech read out by his wife Puan Sri Fauzah Mohamad Darus at the book launch yesterday.
In 220 pages, readers are taken through Tunku’s thoughts on his successor Tun Abdul Razak, the infamous riots of May 13, 1969, former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, former Indonesian president Sukarno and the Malay rulers.
Abdullah, 79, said the original tapes were deposited in the National Archives and to the archives of Cambridge University, where both Tunku and Abdullah had studied.
Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Shah, who launched the book, spoke on a chapter where the Tunku talked about Malaysia’s constitutional monarchs and how he had to play a balancing role in preventing excesses by some royal households.
“Although not exhaustive, I find the Tunku’s comments and views on the monarchy sobering and instructive,” he said.
Conversations with Tunku Abdul Rahman is published by Marshall Cavendish and retails at RM59.90.