Syed Hamid Ali – a life transcending the Malaysian ethnic divide Syed Hamid Ali (b. 1943) has had a colourful and adventurous life. He is a well-known and respected figure for those generations of University of Malaya (UM) students studying between the second half of the 1960s and 1975. He was a founding member of the UM Socialist Club and held key positions in the UM Student Union (secretary general 1967-1969 and president 1969-70). He was also active in the left-wing Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM, which was renamed as Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia, PSRM, in early 1970s) and became the branch chairman of its Pantai branch in 1967. His life trajectory during this period of time was reflective of the rise and fall of the vibrant and tumultuous university student movement in Malaysia, whereby key university student leaders and their supporters were detained without trial at the end of 1974. An amendment to the Universities and University Colleges Act was introduced in 1975 which further imposed a firmer grip on student political activism. During that time, the multiethnic UM Socialist Club played a pivotal leadership role in creating a non-communal and socially progressive platform for university student activism under UMSU (Silcock 1964: 193, Hassan 1984: 16). In the aftermath of the 1969 racial riots, university students launched a campaign calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Besides Syed Hamid Ali who was the president of the UMSU, Anwar Ibrahim who headed the Malay-based Persatuan Bahasa Malaysia Universiti Malaya (PBMUM) was equally vocal in support of the campaign. They nonetheless justified their position based on two distinct rationales. Anwar Ibrahim criticised the Tunku for conceding too much to the Chinese community, echoing the perspective of Dr Mahathir. He felt that the Prime Minister did not try hard enough to overcome the socio-economic problems of the Malay community and advance the status of the Malay language in the implementation of the National Education Policy (Hassan 1984: 5, Muhammad 1973: 88). Syed Hamid Ali, on the other hand, argued that the political, economic and social policies under the Tunku were impotent in tackling the problems of Malay poverty and redressing interethnic economic gap due to their excessively pro-capitalist nature (Hassan 1984: 5, Muhammad 1973: 102- 3). During my interview with Syed Hamid, I asked him about this difference in perspectives between the two organisations. He explained to me that the Socialist Club tried to offer a political platform for university students to discuss current issues. It tried to inculcate among the students a sense of