With regard to the 'Tunku Tapes Part 6' (Dec 31) by K Das, Tunku Abdul Rahman is being hypocritical in his criticism of Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his antipathy toward the latter clearly shows.

For instance:

K Das : I was thinking of Lee Kuan Yew in the early days. He had all these potholes but he used his force...

Tunku : I know him well. He used to consult me. He used to clear the path first. He just travelled on the potholes with the referendum he had. I said to him, "Are you sure you are going to win your referendum because this other PAP leader Dr Lee Siew Choh appears to be very strong."

He was very sure. He was going to do this, he was going to do that and then he started to campaign very early, playing Chinese music and what have you, going all over the place. He worked really hard. He cleared his path.

K Das : But if he is afraid of losing the battle, he will tell that man to back down.

Tunku : He won't ask him to back down, he will just put the man in detention. He is not that type of man. But one thing - you can take that from me - he is one of those who hate all this Malay adat (etiquette) and custom. He hates all this.

As far as I can remember, opposition members in Singapore who called for a boycott of the referendum over whether or not to join the larger Malaysian federation were detained in what was called 'Operation Cold Store', which as far as I can recall was initiated by Kuala Lumpur.

So much for Tunku's advice to Lee Kuan Yew and any illusions that he had much respect for democracy and tolerance of dissent.

In fact, there probably were more people detained under the ISA in Tunku's time and during the time of his predecessors Tun Abdul Razak and Tun Hussien Onn than there were detained under the ISA in Mahathir's time, so all Alliance and Barisan Nasional prime ministers are guilty of the same draconian measures.

K Das : I cannot understand why he felt at that time he was special. He was just another doctor in Kedah. What was so special about him?

Tunku : That is why he hates all these aristocrats and so on because he has no standing. You know his grandfather came from India. His father is half Indian or three-quarters Indian. Then his father came to Alor Setar and married a Malay and so he is half or three-quarters Malay and one quarter Indian. But nevertheless, he has felt a certain er, you know as if they looked down on him.

To overcome that inferiority complex, which as I told you before is the worst disease a man can have, you would do things you wouldn't normally do. Like in my case, in those days when I was in Cambridge, they despised coloured people who came from India and elsewhere. Anybody whose colour was black or dark, they would call an Indian and they really showed it. To overcome this feeling of inferiority I bought the most expensive, at that time, super sports car and I sped through town in it making quite a nuisance of myself. Just to be noticed.

K Das : As a young man it is different.

Tunku : But the inferiority complex is there. It forces you to do all the things you do not want to do.

I'm not a psychologist but I don't see how reaction and response to racial prejudice and insults can be caused by an inferiority complex. My student days in Britain were generally very pleasant and I made plenty of friends among the British and other nationalities, some of whom I still keep in touch with today. However, there were the occasional unpleasant cases where I faced racial taunts and insults.

On one of these occasions, a white guy said 'Asian ****' loudly but pretended that he was not saying it directly to me. However I glanced around in his direction and he said to his friend, "that guy must have an inferiority complex" which was rubbish.

With incidents of racial violence happening there - including some which were fatal - I was always on my guard. Does that mean I had an inferiority complex?

Does it mean that just because Nelson Mandela fought against the racist apartheid system in South Africa that he suffered from an inferiority complex? Well that's probably what his white South African oppressors would like to believe but is that so?

Of course, the 1970's was quite probably a much better time for Asian people in Britain since it was after the Civil Rights movement in the United States and racism was considered something distasteful and ignorant, especially among liberal middle-class students.

After all, that was also just after the height of the "love and peace" era with rock musicians, artists and political activists denouncing racism in their songs, artwork, pamphlets, protests and demonstrations.

During Tunku's time in Britain and especially in an elitist university, the situation was probably worse for him and his reaction of buying the most expensive sports car to show off to his British peers was the kind of reaction only a very privileged Asian like him could afford back then.

However, at the end of the day, only Tunku knows his reasons for acting thus and is not here to answer our questions. Perhaps he did suffer from an inferiority complex as a result of the discrimination and prejudice he and other coloured students faced but what could he expect. If he understood the circumstances of Britain's colonial domination of non-white nations, he would have in turn looked down on the racists around him.

Also alleging that Mahathir's apparent dislike for the aristocracy is due to an inferiority complex arising from his part-Indian descent does not make sense and smacks of latent racism on Tunku's part. After all, the Malacca sultans were part-Indian too.

If Mahathir has republican tendencies as Tunku alleges, so did the French, the Americans, Chinese and many more, as well as some British and Australians so is it fair to say that they have an inferiority complex?

From what I've read somewhere, Mahathir's father was a merchant (i.e. a capitalist) and republican tendencies are the result of the rising economic power of the capitalist class vis-a-vis the ruling feudal class in respective countries resulting in them displacing or downgrading the power of the monarchy and aristocracy either violently as in France or politically as in Malaysia.

Either way, it has resulted in constitutional monarchies like in Malaysia and many other kingdoms around the world or in an outright republic. However, all but a handful of countries in the world are effectively capitalist republics, even though some may have a constitutional monarch as a figurehead and let's not forget Cambodia - a socialist country with a king.

However today, people especially in the advanced capitalist and imperialist countries are even questioning the relevance of their constitutional monarchy. So are they suffering from an inferiority complex?

The only difference is that Tunku, being a lawyer by profession, probably had a greater respect for the judiciary and the process of law.