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Back in the opening stages of the 20th century, when the fever of nationalism had taken hold of the younger generation of Kaum Muda reformers, Malaysia's pioneering nationalists like Burhanuddin al-Helmy, Ibrahim Yaakob, Ahmad Boestaman et al were adoring members of the Sukarno fan club.
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As students studying at the Sultan Idris Training College, the younger generation of Malaysian activists like Ibrahim Yaakob not only read the writings of Sukarno, but also joined the PNI in secret.Other leaders like Burhanuddin al-Helmy travelled to Sumatra to meet with their Indonesian counterparts; nationalists, leftists as well as Islamists, and plans were made on both sides to struggle against both British and Dutch colonial rule simultaneously.Our history books don't really remind us of these facts, but the reasons for such historical erasures seem obvious as they are commonsensical.Men like Ibrahim Yaakob and Burhanuddin al-Helmy were left-leaning nationalists who did not couch their ideology in the language of race-based ethno-nationalism.They were also among those who were inclined to sympathise with the Malayan Communist Party and were among the first who stated that Malayan citizenship should be extended to all who had been born in Malaya then , which naturally included the descendants of Chinese and Indian migrants.

When Ibrahim Yaakob and Burhanuddin al-Hemly founded the Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM), it was the first organic Malayan nationalist party and its inspiration came from Sukarno and Hatta's PNI.

The Broken Dream of Malaya-Raya: Ibrahim Yaakob and the Rise of the Malay Left. (Part 2 of 3) By the 1930s the Malay archipelago was swept by the fervour of anti-colonialism and ethno-nationalism.
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To an extent, their Malayan counterparts in the peninsula were likewise influenced by these ideas and in the writings of men like Ibrahim Yaakob, Ishak Haji Mohammad, Ahmad Boestaman and Burhanuddin al-Helmy we encounter numerous references to the Malay world of the past.
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The Japanese occupation gave Ibrahim Yaakob and his fellow radicals the opportunity to develop and disseminate their ideas as never before, even though it was obvious that Japanese military rule was as harsh and restrictive as British colonial rule had been.
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Having already tried to work with the British as well as the Malay royalty and aristocracy, Ibrahim Yaakob found it easy to co-operate with the Japanese out of political necessity.
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Ibrahim himself had also agreed to help the Japanese by purchasing the Malay newspaper Warta Malaya (with the help of Japanese funds) in August 1941 in order to launch a sustained anti-British campaign in the Malay press.

After the Japanese had consolidated their hold on the Malay peninsula, Ibrahim and the other ex-leaders of the KMM such as Ahmad Boestaman were invited to join and lead the Japanese-sponsored native militias and armed forces, the Giyugun and Giyutai.
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As the commander of the Malayan Giyugun, Ibrahim deliberately chose to refer to it as PETA, hoping to strengthen its ties with its (stronger) Indonesian counterpart.Meanwhile other radicals like Ishak Haji Mohammad returned to their careers in journalism when given the opportunity.Together the Malay radicals worked to promote a sense of common pan-Malayan identity amongst all their followers and supporters in all the movements and institutions that they found themselves working in.

Betrayed by the Japanese

However, it soon became obvious to radicals like Ibrahim that the piecemeal efforts by the Japanese to accommodate their demands were cosmetic at best.Despite Ibrahim's constant reference to the Giyugun as ,PETA', it was obvious that the Malayan defence units were in no way comparable to their Indonesian counterparts, either in terms of size or ability.

Furthermore, the Japanese Military authorities themselves had made it quite clear that the Malayan civil and para-military organisations were meant to play only a supporting role behind the Japanese military administration, and that the Malays themselves were not to be given any real chances to prove themselves or work towards their political independence.The different treatment given to the Burmese, Indian and Indonesian military units made it painfully obvious to them that the Malay civil and para-military bodies had no real power or influence at all.Thus while serving in these organisations, the radicals covertly tried to further their political goals despite the pressure from the Japanese Military authorities to conform to the official pro-Japanese line that they had established. (In his work ,Sedjarah Dan Perdjuangan di Malaya' (1948), Ibrahim described how he and the KMM activists managed to set up ,socialist cells' and co-operative communes within the militarised state structure.One such co-operative venture was the ,Malay Farm' of Geylang, where the ,Kesatuan Melayu Muda memperaktijkan Sosialisme dan mengadakan peladjar2an kepada orang muda sebagai kader Sosialist, meskipun perkataan Sosialist tidak pernah disebut2nja tetapi praktijnja di Malay Farm Geylang itu adalah Sosialist').

Despite the constant monitoring of their activities, the Malay radicals tried to promote the interests and goals of the radical Malay nationalists during the period of occupation: They continually spoke of the need for the Indon-Malay peoples to unite together and they tried to negotiate with the Japanese authorities in Japan itself for the unification of the Malay Peninsula with the rest of Indonesia, and for their eventual independence.When such overt means of negotiation did not bear fruit, Ibrahim and his colleagues were also prepared to resort to more covert methods as well, a reminder of his earlier days in the political underground.

In July 1945, under the watchful eye of the Japanese military command, the Malay radicals were given the chance to form the Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Semenanjung, KERIS (Union of Indonesian and Peninsula Malay peoples) under the leadership of Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy.But KERIS never managed to get very far in its activities, due in part to the decline in fortunes for the Japanese army.

By 1944 the strained Japanese High Command was already contemplating the prospect of granting independence to Indonesia.The Malay nationalists were keen to see that independence was granted to the Malay peoples of the peninsula as well.In July 1945 KERIS was formed and during a brief meeting in Taiping, Perak, the leaders of the Indonesian nationalist movement Sukarno and Hatta met with the leaders of the Malay radicals, Ibrahim Yaakob and Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy.
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Caught up by the internal politics of the Malay nationalist groups at the wrong place and at the wrong time, on his own account Ibrahim had missed his opportunity to leave Malaya with Sukarno and Hatta who had been flown back to Indonesia just in time to proclaim her independence on August 17, 1945.
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Ibrahim Yaakob's exile and the gradual eclipse of Malaya-Raya.
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Its author was known simply as I. K Agastja, but a cursory glance at the list of biographical details in the introduction immediately made it clear to all who the mysterious author was: Ibrahim Yaakob.

By 1948 Ibrahim was living in exile in Indonesia, under the name Iskandar Kamel.
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Once again, Ibrahim would put his frustration into words and turned to his pen, but this time his writings would be lent an even more radical character by the changing geo-political circumstances in the Indon-Malay world which would pit the student of the SITC not only against the British colonial powers but also against a gamut of new foes and adversaries.
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But the transformation of Ibrahim Yaakob to I.K Agastja and the Malay activist to the nasionalis progressive was not merely a nominal metamorphosis: In the Sedjarah we find Ibrahim at his most critical and incisive, where the gentler style of the past gives way to sharper and more explicit condemnation of the machinations of the British colonial powers.
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Such instances of betrayal have been documented even in his earlier Melihat Tanah Air, where Ibrahim condemns the British for their propensity to label the Malays as lazy and backward according to their racist stereotypes of ,native' races.This observation, which would be echoed by many postcolonial social scientists (such as S. H. Alatas) who have argued that the economic and developmental policies of the British were in fact instrumental in the construction of the myth of the lazy Malay and thus intrinsic to the process of marginalising the Malays from the economic, social and political arena of Malaya, makes another appearances in Ibrahim's later polemic:
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But Ibrahim does not look at the economic and political condition of the Malays as if they were existing in a cultural and political vacuum.In the Sedjarah, he locates his analysis in the context of a plural economy that has been constructed artificially by a foreign imperial power and where cleavages of race, class and national interests are clearly visible.

The net effect of this imperial policy of divide and rule is, as Ibrahim correctly points out, the construction of a political hierarchy in a cosmopolitan colonial context where the interests and welfare of the British colonial-capitalist class is held paramount and the rights of the non-white colonial subjects (be they the native Malays themselves or the migrant communities) are systematically compromised or played off against each other.