Usman Awang in Singapore

Tan Jing Quee

December 2001

The passing away of Usman Awang in November 2001 was in many ways, a
watershed in the literary history of Malaysia and Singapore. He was perhaps one of
the few literary giants who are known on both sides of the Causeway, read by a
diverse section of the reading public. He is easily the most accessible of the major
writers of the Malay language, partly because his writings have been widely translated
into English, Chinese and several other languages. The fact that this is so perhaps says
something of the universality of his appeal.

Usman Awang became the poet laureate of Malaysia towards the later part of his life.
Few people remember, however, his early connections with Singapore, for it was in
Singapore that he began his journalistic and literary career before moving on to
greater heights in Malaysia. It may be useful, therefore, to revisit Usman’s links with
Singapore and the early generation of Malay scholars in Singapore.

Usman Awang or Tongkat Warrant as he was more popularly known, has foten been
described as a humanist, but I think he should be more appropriately described as a
socialist humanist. His concern for the poor and the underprivileged, his anti-colonial
and anti-war ideological perspectives fused with his sense of justice, racial tolerance
marked him out as more than a humanist simplicitor. He has clear political sympathies
for the oppressed, although it was not known if he had a specific political affiliation.
In this sense, his socialism was instinctive rather than a fully formed and clearly
articulated vision.

Usman was born in Kuala Sedili, in the state of Johor, and went to Malay schools in
the rural towns of Sedili and Mersing. He began life as a farmer, peon and policeman,
before making the major decision to move to Singapore in 1952. At the time he was
23 years old. He began work as a proof reader, graduated to become the editor of
Utusan Kanak Kanak, and eventually Utusan Zaman and Mastika, a literary journal of
some importance in the fifties. He was to remain in Singapore until Utusan Melayu
moved its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur in 1957.

The five years he spent in Singapore were crucial years in his literary apprenticeship
and growing maturity. Singapore was then a major political center for the left wing in
the country, with a vibrant literary and cultural scene. There were strong organizations
of students, cultural bodies and trade unions. A strong anti-colonial movement had
developed among these groups, a seething, pulsating society in the process of change
and transition from a colony to self-government.

At the same time, Singapore was also the center of the Malay literary world, and most
of the major writers worked and lived in the island. Strong anti-colonial sentiments
among the Malay intellectuals were fanned by the influential daily Utusan Melayu,
then under the charge of Yusof Ishak and Samad Ismail. In the fifties a major debate
arose in the Malay literary world in Singapore, on the issues as the proper function
and responsibility of the writer, between the proponents of what came to be known as
Art for Society as opposed to Art for Art’s sake. The polemics which engulfed the

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Malay literary world in the period led to the formation of Angkatan Sastrawan 50s
(ASAS 50), who argued for and advocated the view that writers had a clear and
obvious social duty and responsibility. The debate was more than a difference in
literary style or preference. It hinged on the more important issue at that juncture as to
whether the writer should stand aside from the emerging anti-colonial struggle.
Usman was one of a whole generation of writers including M S Masuri, A Samad
Said, Keris Mas, Arena Wati, who took cudgels on behalf of the cause for a literature
of social concerns and social relevance. Among them were a group of socially
engaged students, including Ali Aziz, Kassim Ahmad and Syed Hussin Ali who were
then studying at the University of Malaya located in Singapore, who were to pay
major roles in subsequent years in literature and politics.

This debate had its reverberations in the Chinese literary world at the time, which was
embroiled in a similar debate on broadly the same issues. Accordingly the debate
generated considerable interest in Chinese literary circles, creating an empathy for
ASAS 50 among many Chinese writers.

At the same time, the debate on the issue of the National Language came to the fore.
It is now conceded that the left wing trade unions under Lim Chin Siong, took a
decision early on in support of Malay as the national language and at the same time
arguing for a reduction in the role of the English language and the elevation of the
languages of the local communities, principally Chinese and Tamil. Lim’s role in this
has been acknowledged by Usman and Samad Ismail and others.

The left wing support for the use of Malay as the national language and the common
lingua franca, created a strong surge of interest for the learning of Malay. This
momentum was accelerated after 1959, when widespread classes for Malay in night
schools, adult education centres and private tuition was widespread and extensive.
This movement for the study of Malay declined after Singapore left Malaysia after
1965. Since then, the island republic had gone on to embrace the English language
with a new fervour and intensity, bringing in its wake the widespread dissemination of
western values, culture and mores. The impact on Singapore society was so profound,
that in the nineties a debate to emphasize on the superiority of Asian values was
initiated to counter the trend. A campaign to speak Mandarin and study the mother
tongues was launched. It is perhaps a forlorn attempt against the background of the
material incentives associated with mastery of the English language in the context of
globalization. From the hindsight of recent history, one sometimes wonders, what
would have been the socio-political situation in the region, had the political
reunification process in the sixties not been so traumatic, and had Singapore stayed
the course. Would Singapore have retained its position as the pre-eminent center for
Malay literature and scholarship, and whether the creative and intellectual scholarship
and energies among non-Malays would have attained more breadth and depth.

It was into this intellectual and political milieu of an emerging anti-colonial

movement in the fifties that Usman Awang lived, worked and wrote in Singapore.
Many young Chinese students and scholars looked him up, discussed his poetry and
the Malay language. Many of these students learnt and studied Malaya language and
literature. They wrote basic grammar texts, translated, complied Malay-Chinese
dictionaries, to promote the study of the language; several of them went to study in
Indonesia, and came back as acknowledged scholars like Liaw Yock Fang, Lim Huan

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Boon, Goh Choo Keng, Yang Quee Yee and Tan Ta Sen. Yang Quee Yee and his
wife continued to promote the language to this day. He reputedly has the largest
personal collection of the literary journal Mastika. It is pertinent to note that during
the same period, the English-speaking literary world was involved in the new
Malayan idiom Engmalchin debate.

It is perhaps pertinent at this juncture to offer my personal perspective on some of

Usman’s qualities, which made him so engaging and admired. He never left that rural
simplicity, humility and easy charm which endeared him to so many. Like many
others, I heard of Usman a long time before I met and later got to know him
personally. When I first started learning Malay in the sixties, I was instinctively
attracted to the poetry of Usman. I was drawn to his honesty, sincerity, his sense of
justice and sympathy for the oppressed. I became familiar with is poetry (including
several English translations), which I confess related to me more than much of the
local poetry written in English, with some notable exceptions. For example, I had a
particular feel and affinity for the poetry of Ee Tiang Hong, for his simplicity,
sincerity and honesty—qualities which I discerned in Usman’s poetry.

Usman also published a collection of short stories and a novel, although I did not read
them till much later; somehow they have left lesser impression on me. Usman was
also a major dramatist who wrote many successful plays.

In my view Usman’s lasting reputation would rest on his poetry and two of his plays
Matinya Saorang Patriot, and Muzika Uda dan Dara. The first-mentioned play was a
major work, which contributes in a very fundamental way to a re-evalutation of the
two principal historical heroes Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat. Traditional legend and
scholarship had tended to elevate Hang Tuah as the supreme hero whose absolute
loyalty to his sovereign was held to be the supreme virtue. Hang Jebat had been
treated in a more ambiguous light, as a wrongheaded rebel or as a psychologically
unbalanced warrior, driven to commit the unforgivable act of treason. Usman
Awang’s play focuses more clearly on a positive, nobler Hang Jebat, and in the
process treated Hang Tuah with more ambiguity.

This reassessment, it must be noted was not new; Ali Aziz and Kassim Ahmad for
example had raised this question in the fifties. But Usman’s play possibly settled the
issue more decisively in favour of Hang Jebat in the historical re-evalutation. More
fundamentally, the play raises the question whether every generation has a right and
responsibility to re-evaluate historical figures in the light of current perspectives.

Usman’s other play, a musical, Uda dan Dara, will probably remain as the most
recognizable of his works, uniquely his personal creation. While the re-evalutaion of
Hang Jebat was based on historical, literary sources, Uda dan Dara was the product
of his own creative imagination, an affirmation of his lifelong belief in the equality of
human beings, and his deep-seated opposition to class division and discrimination.

I first met Usman in London, sometime in 1970. He was visiting London under a
fellowship grant. I met him with Albert Lim Shee Ping, then like me, a law student in
the United Kingdom. Albert had been a friend of Usman in Singapore in the fifties. I
was meeting Usman for the first time. I remember the meeting well: Usman spoke in

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Malay and both of us spoke sometimes in Malay but mostly in English. I recalled
Usman’s lamenting that there were far too few Malay translations of Chinese and
Indian novels and stories, and that the modern generation of students were more
knowledgeable of even second-rate western writers than major Asian writers from
Asia and Southeast Asia.

I wrote a short poem on that first meeting.

To Usman Awang

Meeting you here in London

To rediscover your humanity
To share your vision
To relive the words you wrote
No anger
No rift
Divides us
Despite May thirteenth
As friends we relate
Pleasantly surprised
Never having met
We could so communicate
Meeting you in person
Helps to reassure
Your dreams and mine
Of a better tomorrow

(1970)

I met Usman sporadically in KL and Singapore a couple of times, during social

occasions usually with some other friends of Usman. It was only for mid-1990s that I
began to meet him quite regularly when I went up to KL. My wife Rose recalled with
particular fondness how Kak Hasnah used to fry koey teow which Rose swears to this
day was the best she ever tasted. Later when Usman discovered Rose’s fondness for
durians, he would invariably request his son Iskandar to purchase the best durians he
could find, to welcome our visits.

We last saw Usman about six months before his passing. When we were in KL in
early September, we rang up to check whether we could call in. Iskandar said his
father was resting after his dialysis, and we did not call over. When Usman passed
away in November, we were in the US; we did not know of his passing until we came
home in December, when we were informed by newspaper reports on his death.

Usman shall always remain in my memory as a gentle, almost diffident man, with a
romantic presence, an inner strength and confidence, a man of few words, but much
loved and respected. He had a tremendous pride for his people and the beauty of the
Malay language, and its boundless possibilities for creativity and development. How
he belongs to the ages. The humble, soft-spoken poet from the rural backwaters will
always be remembered as a human individual, who spoke for a generation, and will be

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fondly cherished even more than the numerous awards which he had been granted in
his lifetime.