I have known Dr Chandra Muzaffar of International Movement for a Just World (Just) for 15 years. Though we've met and talked only a few times, in Australia and in Malaysia, I have a healthy respect for the man - as a person, for his humaneness, for his intellect, and for his vision and his determination in the struggle for world justice and the creation of a global civil society.

I agree with Chandra's idea on the myth of 'discovery' as a powerful element of colonial psychology, which he argued still persists, peculiarly, even in today's post-colonial societies.

I don't have too many problems with much of what Chandra wrote, though I should tell him that there's a very healthy and heated debate raging within universities and in the media among history and political science academics in Australia about whether British colonialists and settlers had conducted genocide of Aborigines. The debates, as you can imagine, are between those on the political right and left.

Sad to say, however, that such debates aren't permitted in Malaysia, whose government is more keen to whitewash or distort history while effecting the dumbing-down of Malaysian students and repressing the freedom of Malaysian academics and intellectuals from public discussions.

Otherwise I would think Malaysia would be a far healthier, more honest and open society than the one that has been engineered and stymied by Umno, perhaps since independence in 1957, but certainly since 1969 and becoming far worse under former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad's dictatorship.

Nevertheless, one question Chandra raised in his letter caught my attention. Chandra asked: "How can one 'discover' a land that had been inhabited for thousands of years by a people with a long history and tradition?" Indeed.

Of course Chandra referred to the founding of Penang. I've stood before the larger-than-life statue of Francis Light outside the State Museum on Light Street, Penang, whenever I visit the place. But there's always a terrible niggle at the back of my mind that Light was not its founder.

I've done much reading of Malaysian history over many years and I'm convinced (and agree with Chandra) that Light was not Penang's founder in 1786.

But here's the thing: If it wasn't Light, who founded Penang? Another issue that relates to Chandra's original question: Did Parameswara 'discover' Malacca?

Because there's much evidence that he did not. When Parameswara arrived in 1400, and even before 1398 when Parameswara was driven out of Temasek and sought refuge first in Seletar, then Muar, there were already in Malacca pirates and fishermen. Malacca, then, has been described in many historical annals as "a small and insignificant" village. Parameswara took control of it and populated it slowly with his followers from Palembang.

At any rate, by the reckoning in many historical narratives that I've read, as opposed to versions written by Malaysian historians, Parameswara could not have been the founder of Malacca. Which means that Stamford Raffles can't have been the founder of Singapore (Temasek) in 1819, either.

However, I disagree with Chandra that the sultanate of Kedah was an 'independent' state.

The young sultan of Kedah, Abdullah Mukarram Shah, had quite easily ceded Penang and Province Wellesley, including the then strategic Prai river, to the British. He'd asked for protection from Light and the British East India Company against threats from Selangor but mostly from Siam, to whom he (and his successors) had paid bunga mas tributes every three years. But Light only offered the sultan a hefty annual pension that increased from $6,000 to $10,000, without military protection, to cede control of Penang and Province Wellesley.

When a state does this, it loses a degree of its independence, or autonomy. In the late 18th century, as Kedah sought British protection, so had Siam from China against Burma, sending triennial tributes to Nanking. Even war-states like Siam became tributary states of the expanding Chinese maritime empire. (China's empire was barely a homogenous entity; it was carved up by warring Chinese states, each with its own merchant armies).

Parameswara and Malacca earlier had paid tributes to the third Ming emperor, Ch'eng-tsu (Yung-lo), in return for Chinese protection against Siam. Indeed, Parameswara had even travelled to China to pay his personal respect to the emperor. The following year Parameswara sent his nephew to China. In 1419 it was Megat Iskandar Shah's turn to visit Nanking to seek more Chinese protection against Siam. These 'protection rackets' with the Chinese war-states continued until at least 1444.

In the northern states, Siam had regained its supremacy by 1818. It installed the Raja of Ligor as its proxy ruler 'overseeing' Kedah. Siam then forced Kedah to attack Perak over the latter's default in paying the bunga mas . But in 1821 Siam attacked Kedah, but only after consolidating its 'intelligence' for three years from 1818 to ensure that the sultan of Kedah hadn't the military or political backing of the British.

Countering criticisms for not aiding Kedah, the British argued that they had in fact protected the sultan of Kedah by not handing him over to the Raja of Ligor and Siam. But with the French in the area, the British didn't want a war with Siam, which they could have lost, thus ceding Penang and Kedah to Ayudhya.