The many legacies of Ungku Aziz

ON June 15,1975, I wrote an article in Mingguan Malaysia in support of a national fund for higher learning. The title of my article was “Gantikan Sistem Biasiswa Kepada Sistem Pinjaman” (Replacing Scholarship System to Loan). It was Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Abdul Hamid who mooted the idea in a memorandum he sent to the government two years earlier.

I have my selfish reason for supporting him. When I joined Universiti Malaya (UM) in 1974, I received an annual scholarship of RM1,500 from a state government. The amount was barely enough to pay for the fees, let alone to survive in Petaling Jaya. Coming from a poor family, I had to work part-time at a motor repair shop and on some nights, I was a “jaga kereta” boy in Section 14, Petaling Jaya. It hit me back then the unfairness in the scholarship system.

Ungku Aziz was envisioning many more universities and colleges in years to come. He believed the existing system would not be sustainable in the long run. It would be a massive burden for the government to provide scholarships with a growing increase in student population.

He even suggested a name, “Tabung Siswa” (Students’ Fund) with an initial working capital of a modest RM3mil. Back then, RM12mil worth of scholarships were given out to students annually. Based on his calculation, the fund required RM6mil in the second year, RM9mil in the third year and RM12mil each in the fourth and the fifth year. By the sixth year, students will start paying back the loans. By the 12th year, there will be no injection of money from the government.

Twenty-four years later, the National Higher Education Fund (better known by its Bahasa Malaysia acronym PTPTN) came into being. It didn’t matter if Ungku Aziz’s suggestions were not incorporated in PTPTN. But more importantly, it was the spirit and the principle. Since its inception in 1997, PTPTN has disbursed RM62.2bil worth of loans, benefiting 3.4 million students.

Just bear in mind, this was the same person who suggested the setting up of what is now known as Lembaga Urusan dan Tabung Haji or LUTH (The Pilgrims Management and Fund Board). When it started in 1963, it had 1,400 depositors with a saving totalling RM40,000. Now it has 9.3 million members and is managing RM70bil worth of deposits.

Ungku Aziz who passed away last Tuesday was a giant among men. He was a monumental figure in academia, an outstanding economist, a truly public intellectual and a man of culture and the arts. He was a thinker first and last and a man who helped define academic excellence.

He was at the helm of UM from 1968 to 1988, the best-known vice-chancellor in the land. He left a legacy unparalleled among his peers. More universities, including private ones, are being set up and flourishing but thanks to his legacy, the UM is still a beacon of academic grandeur.

Mind you, the late 1960s and early 70s were the years of feverish student activism. And there was also a demand to restructure society after the May 13 racial riots incident in 1969. UM was to play a part in that.

Ungku Aziz was acutely aware of the debilitating poverty among the Malays. He famously came out with the “Sarung Index” – a simple measure of rural poverty. Just count the number of sarung in the household and divide that by the number of people (minus babies). The lower the number, the greater is the poverty level. Extreme poverty is a situation of an index less than one (more people than sarung).

He spoke and wrote extensively about poverty among the Malays, arguing among other things the culture of neglect as the fundamental flaw in addressing the issue. He gave a glowing tribute to another great Malay thinker and scholar, Zainal Abidin Ahmad (Zaaba), in his 1975 book, Jejak-Jejak Di Pantai Zaman. Zaaba was merciless in his assessment of his race failures and shortcomings.

One must also remember that Ungku Aziz was the first director of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) when it was established in Johor Baru in 1956. His interest in all things literary is legendary. I wasn’t surprised when he studied 16,000 pantun after many years of assessing the Japanese “haiku.” I was at DBP in 2007 when he gave the Tun Sri Lanang Lecture, analysing 78 pantun from the thousands he studied.

The lecture was published in 2011 as Pantun dan Kebijaksanaan Akal Budi Melayu (Pantun and the Wisdom of the Malay Mind). I was honoured to write the preface for the book. I was informed he was studying another 20,000 pantun when ill health took the better of him.

He will always be remembered as one of the finest minds ever to grace the land.

Johan Jaaffar was a journalist, editor and for some years chairman of a media company, and is passionate about all things literature and the arts. And a diehard rugby fan. The views expressed here are entirely his own.