“Revolusi ’48“, a brand spanking new documentary by the talented indie director Fahmi Reza, the filmmaker for “10 Tahun Sebelum Merdeka” documentary. This documentary tells us the story of the revolutionary Malaya military regime that fought against colonization of the British empire in 1948.
As a former full blooded public high school Malaysian student, the history books that we learned during our school days basically tells us stories of subjugated interstellar war among ourselves, whether the fight was for freedom or anti colonialism or *put your own reasons here*. But before I continue, I’d like to disclose that I skipped history classes in 2 different high schools that I went since form 1.
Guess what I got for History paper during SPM? FAIL. But it didn’t matter.
I only have 1 reason why I skipped those classes: The teachers, both of them in the 2 schools I went, were boring. They didn’t make me interested in history at all. The only history I’m interested in was the one I was making. Hah!
I did read about Temenggung Jugah, Tok Janggut & the lot of them in high school history books. But reading about them never actually stirred anything in me. They never or hardly described the real kind of fighting that took place. The psychological warfare, the bloody battles, the deaths, none of that was properly described in our textbooks, but yet they expect us to be patriotic about it. How do you expect us to understand if you keep on hiding the truth? They made us think that it’s over.
It is true, to a certain extend, that the truth is way much harder to grip with. But why hide it using colorful & sensible stories, telling us it’s all good now? Why can’t you write it in a way that it can stir curiosity? If you can’t put it in the official text, then leave some clues for us! Let the curious find our way to uncover the truth. The history high school books tells us that the fight is over. But no, the fight is never over when there’s REAL threats that wants our beautiful country Malaysia to go down. They never seem to tell us it is up to us to maintain this fight & to keep on fighting against those people that says they know what democracy really is, but barely able keep their own countrymen alive. And I’m not only referring to Malaysia, but also to those who govern the all watching eye who never seem to learn to NEVER PICK A FIGHT WITH MALAYSIANS.
We’ve been colonized before and we know how to fight back. Don’t make us do it again.