These days we are told time and again that the younger generation have no role to play in the process of political development in the country. Young people, and young students in particular, are reminded to keep their heads in their books and to let the older generation run the country.

This is the "natural" way of things, they tell us, and so it has been from the beginning of time. But was this really the case? Was there never a time when the younger generation were allowed to speak out?

History furnishes us with countless examples to the contrary. The French revolution was built on the bodies of martyrs who never had a chance to while away their years in peaceful retirement.

Men like Georges Danton, Camilles Desmoulins and Saint-Just were killed in their 20s, and Robbespiere himself died in his 30s. Later, Napoleon Bonaparte marched on Egypt when he was only 28.

Even closer to home we have the examples of India, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines, where the struggle for national liberation and independence was started by disaffected youth who had turned against their colonial masters.

The colonial governments regarded these young upstarts as "ungrateful wretches" who bit the hand that fed them, but they in turn justified their actions on higher principles of liberty and justice.

Oddly enough, we in Malaysia seem to have forgotten our own history as well. Malaysian politicians may argue that the younger generation have better things to do than to engage themselves in protest or reform movements, but they forget that the independence of Malaysia itself was fought for by a handful of young Malayan activists who put down their school books and turned to the world of radical politics instead.

Like Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest, these youngsters turned the ideological discourse of their masters against them and rose up in revolt.

In 1938, the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM - Young Malays Association) was formed by a number of young Malay radicals that included Ibrahim Yaakob, Ishak Haji Muhammad, Ahmad Boestaman, Onan Haji Siraj, Abdul Karim Rashid and Sultan Djenain among others.

Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy, the future president of PAS, joined it as well in 1939. Ibrahim Yaakob became the KMM's first president. Its vice-president was Onan Haji Siraj and its secretary was Abdul Karim Rashid. Sultan Djenain was said to have served as the link between the KMM and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).

The Kesatuan Melayu Muda was literally that: a youthful organisation. None of its founder-members were above the age of 30. Both Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Ibrahim Yaakob were 27 years old, Ishak Haji Muhammad was 28, while Ahmad Boestaman was only 18 when they joined.

A majority of the KMM's members were products of British colonial vocational education. They were mostly ex-students who came from the Sultan Idris Training College, the Kuala Lumpur Technical School and the Serdang Agricultural College.

The KMM's radical agenda was set by men like Ibrahim Yaakob, Ishak Haji Muhammad, Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Ahmad Boestaman, who were themselves articulate writers and propagandists for the nationalist cause.

The movement's aim was to struggle for independence and to work towards closer links with the other Malay peoples of Indonesia. Men like Ibrahim Yaakob and Burhanuddin al-Helmy envisaged the eventual creation of a vast Malay bloc which they referred to as Malaya-Raya, that encompassed all of Peninsula Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo and the Philippines.

The elder generation of Malay feudals and ruling elite viewed the KMM with utter contempt, playing it down as a "flash in the pan" and a movement made up of undisciplined youths.

But in many ways the rise of the KMM was itself a response to the decrepitude and inertia of many of the traditional institutions of power and rule in Malay society itself.

Under British rule, the self-serving feudal political culture of the Malay royalty and aristocracy was allowed to develop and prosper in many ways. In both British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the conservative and traditionalist elites proved to be useful to the colonial regimes.

It was not only the Malay Sultans and the Indonesian priyahi nobles who lent their support to the colonial establishment: the Islamists of the conservative-traditionalist camp did so as well. In both of these colonies, the forces of conservative traditionalism provided additional support for the colonial governments against the growing tide of anti-colonial sentiment that was slowly developing among the radical vernacular intelligentsia.

Fed-up with the sycophantic and venal attitude of their elders, the young radicals of the KMM decided to take matters into their own hands. With no financial or political support from any other party, these youngsters launched their own nationalist movement to take on the might of the British colonial government, then the biggest and strongest imperial power in the world.

The radical nationalists of the KMM received their big break when the British colonial government was overthrown by the Japanese during the Second World War. For their part, the KMM had co-operated with the Japanese even before the occupation by the Japanese Army.

Prior to the Japanese landing, the KMM had used hostesses and bartenders to extract information from members of the British expatriate community; used aborigines to help monitor the movement of British troops in the rural interior and locate their camps; and formed an "intelligence branch" to compile information that was later fed to the Japanese prior to their landing.

This information was fed to the Japanese intelligence services working under the Fujiwara Kikan (Fujiwara Office) which supervised intelligence-gathering from Malaya and Thailand.

It was also through the assistance of the KMM that the Japanese military intelligence managed to smuggle a group of Acehnese militant nationalists from Selangor to Sumatra, in order that they may begin covert anti-Dutch operations in Aceh and the rest of Sumatra prior to the Japanese invasion.

With the remnants of the humiliated Western armies marched off to sweat under the yoke of the Japanese army and the conservative Malay rulers humbled before their subjects, the Malay radicals found themselves at last in a world that granted them the freedom to dream aloud.

The Malay radicals who were once under British control then busied themselves with the task of dismantling the very same colonial structures around them.

After the Japanese had consolidated their hold on the Malay peninsula, Ibrahim Yaakob 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. Ibrahim was promoted to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the local militia.

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 their followers and supporters.

However, it soon became obvious to radicals like Ibrahim that the piecemeal efforts by the Japanese to accommodate their demands were cosmetic at best. The Japanese ordered the disbanding of the KMM.

Furthermore it was obvious that the Japanese-sponsored Malayan defence units were in no way comparable to their Indonesian counterparts, either in terms of size or ability. The Japanese Military authorities themselves had also 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. 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.

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 spoke of the need for the pan-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.

In late 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.

KERIS was made up by a number of ex-KMM members, though it also attracted the support of less radical nationalists like Dato' Onn Jaafar and the Malay ruler Sultan Abdul Aziz of Perak.

The dream of the radicals seemed to be within arm's reach when Ibrahim Yaakob and Dr. Burhanuddin managed to meet the Indonesian leaders Sukarno and Hatta while the latter were in Taiping, Perak on August 12.

But this short-lived project was the closest that the Malay radicals ever got to establishing their cherished goal of reunification and independence for the entire Indonesian-Malayan peoples.

By the end of the war, Japan was forced to surrender Malaya back to the British, but on the condition that the colony that was returned to her former colonial masters would be a domesticated one as well.

Ibrahim Yaakob and his colleagues had been deemed unacceptable by both the departing and returning colonial powers, and like Subhas Chandra Bose and U Ba Mau to whom he likened himself, he too was forced to leave Malaya on Aug 20, 1945, just before the British would return to repossess his homeland once more.

On Aug 17, 1945, the radical nationalist leaders Ahmad Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta proclaimed the Indonesia's independence. The radical nationalists in Malaya, however, were forced to take a back seat once again as the returning British authorities made every effort to promote the traditional Malay feudal ruling elite at the expense of the radical nationalists and Islamists.

In the years that followed, Dr. Burhanuddin would become the president of the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party (PAS), Ahmad Boestaman the president of Parti Rakyat (People's party) and Ishak Haji Muhammad would lead Parti Buruh (Labour Party).

Ibrahim Yaakob would spend the rest of his days living in exile in Indonesia, working to bring about the unification of the two countries.

Whatever may be said about the youth of Malaysia today, we cannot and should not forget the fact that such figures once existed in the past. The forgotten legacy of the KMM tells us a different story altogether, of a time when Malaysian youth were able and willing to question the circumstances around them even when it seemed as if all hope was lost.