It was in 1995 when Kassim Ahmad called and asked to meet me. I went to see him instead, out of respect for an elder man as well as recognising that he was my father’s friend back in his younger days in Alor Setar.
It was a small, nondescript office by the ferry terminal on Penang Island. As I entered the crowded office — there were stacks of papers and books everywhere — Kassim unpacked some goreng pisang wrapped in a newspaper, which he must have just bought from a street vendor by the bus terminal outside. That was our snack during the ensuing conversation.
He wanted to speak about Balik Pulau, the place and the parliamentary constituency, about rural development and social change in general. Kassim stood as a candidate for the Balik Pulau seat during the 1982 general election but lost.
Rural Balik Pulau had a legacy of leftist Malay politics as one of its foremost figures, Ahmad Boestaman, was based there after he was released from ISA imprisonment by the British. On top of the somewhat independent streak quite characteristic of Penang politics, there was the added radical Malay left element in the southwestern part of the island.
Even as a boy, I was taken in by this proletariat versus bourgeois debate and in some ways, that had to do with Kassim who was always, to me, the president of Partai Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia. There were still relatives in Balik Pulau then who were part of the Malay left — ageing former members of Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API) and Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS).
When foreign direct investments started flowing, beginning in 1970, the “foreign capital exploiting local minah karan, concretised this notion of exploitation of labour by capitalists that was at the centre of leftist politics. I read about the surplus value theory very early on — a young man enamoured by the rhetoric of exploitation and the romance of egalitarianism.
Such youthful ideals gave way to pragmatism, I suppose, perhaps even expediency, although I am ashamed to admit to that. I sat across the table from Kassim as an Umno member of parliament for Balik Pulau and an economist trained in the neoclassical tradition, the very anti-thesis of Marxian economics.
Kassim, Pak Kassim to me in our conversation, had, by that time, left active politics, “finding his way home” through Islam. He had already published his Re-evaluation of Hadiths in 1986. We did not talk about that book where there would have been strong views from both sides. Instead, we spoke about Balik Pulau, where our views differed much less.
Kassim’s writings — and that brief conversation confirmed it — have always been intellectually honest. His courage came from both his scholarship and convictions and I find that so refreshing and admirable in a person — a quality I find to be rare and wanting in Malaysian academia.
He would have made the ideal academic had he not, like me, dabbled in politics, and by doing that, got enmeshed in political partisanship which, in Malaysia, is a strange mix of race, religion and a stilted sense of nationhood. That is what he and I have in common apart from our affinity for Balik Pulau: academics who did not make it in politics.
It shocked me that Kassim, already in his 80s, was arrested in his home in Kedah, flown under custody and without legal representation to Putrajaya and charged in the Syariah Court for insulting Islam, not by any state authorities but by the federal government via the Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department (Jawi).
That was in March 2015. Kassim subsequently challenged Jawi’s procedure and locus standi in arresting and charging him in the High Court, an action dismissed by the court. On appeal, the Court of Appeal in December 2015 unanimously found
Jawi’s actions against Kassim to be illegal, a decision that the federal government sought to reverse in the highest court in the land, the Federal Court.
Earlier this month, the Federal Court finally sat and unanimously rejected Jawi’s application to set aside the Appeals Court’s decision. This is a landmark ruling on the matter of constitutional rights of Malaysians generally, but more specifically, on the constitutional rights of Muslims in Malaysia. In this sense, this is not about Kassim but his doggedness and independent thinking, and the authorities’ actions against him created the opportunity for the courts to come up with their judgments.
This decision also comes about during the ongoing debate on the first Private Member Bill in Parliment’s history that the government indicated it will support — the so-called RUU 355 or Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act tabled by PAS president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang. Substantively, this bill proposes to amend an existing federal law in order to increase the limits of punishments that can be meted out by the states’ syariah courts.
States can then legislatively define crimes under the syariah court and impose punishments with these new limits. This is all about punishment, about being punitive and totally lacking the mercy and compassion advocated by Islam, but this represents the view of official Islam, hence the beginnings of a theocracy in Malaysia if it is adopted.
When we spoke about Balik Pulau, Kassim and I spoke as social scientists, with very different perspectives, of course, but with the common aim of how to address rural under-development. Clearly, notwithstanding one’s perspective of the human condition, the key to delivering overall economic development is the development of the mind. Progressive mindsets and a conscious view of the world and its possibilities are the results of mental development.
The singular characteristic of the first man, Adam, according to Islamic scripture, was his ability to learn and decide. He was, and we are, thinking beings. Attempts to curtail thinking by taking away the freedom to explore, or restricting boundaries of thoughts, betray that original mission.
In plainer terms, it does not result in our development. The problem of under-development, beyond access to basic amenities, is exactly this development of the mind. This is what economist Amartya Sen meant when he said freedom is development.
Under-development creates vulnerabilities to all kinds of pedlars of salvation. Beyond institutionalised religion is its commoditisation. There is now a growing industry peddling salvation and creating products and services peculiar to a particular interpretation of religion.
There are no production values to the economy from these activities, only the creation of economic rents through a view of religion. Its effects in distorting resource allocation and utilisation are as bad as rents created by fiat.
I am therefore relieved that the highest court in the land upheld the constitutional rights of individual Malaysians — Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Such rights will ensure a healthy competition of ideas and while we incorporate religious values and beliefs in legislation, the system itself is a secular one, and that freedom — the fundamental ingredient in development — is preserved.
In the meantime, Balik Pulau has become part of the property boom on an island economy that is Penang. The prices of real estate on an island will be determined similar to an auction — what is the highest price to clear the limited supply?
Prices are functions of demand for scarcity, not costs. Unless there are planning and developmental controls, which do not seem the case, prices will just spiral upwards. And the logic of dividing the island into its rural and urban parts is a false one. It is a single economic market that politics has always insisted is distinct.
I made education and the socialisation of education my main political agenda back then. That was what I told Kassim during the conversation. I allocated almost all the resources at my disposal towards this agenda and I used the pulpit to advocate these issues and to alert the people of the false premise of this urban-rural divide on a small island.
I am not sure if my own political longevity would have had a better impact but looking at where things are today, it is quite clear that there is displacement of the local population — those without the human and financial capital to acquire the appropriate purchasing power will be displaced by those who do.
I feel a tinge of sadness, even a sense of failure when I recall this conversation on Balik Pulau. But I am more convinced that freedoms, which, of course, come with responsibilities, are the fundamental building blocks of development. Without freedom, the mind will not be developed, without which, there will not be progress. It is the free man who limits his own freedom as a choice. It is the same free man who frees himself from the bondage of under-development.
The radical Malay left were progressives whose aspirations and hopes reflected an egalitarian view of people and how the resources in the world can be shared. I may disagree with their economics, but I stand with them on this egalitarian ideal that once coloured Balik Pulau politics.
Nungsari A Radhi is an economist and managing director of Prokhas Sdn Bhd, a Ministry of Finance advisory company, and a former MP for Balik Pulau. The views expressed here are his own.
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