Two faces:

DR Syed Husin Ali was detained at the Kamunting detention centre under the Internal Security Act or the ISA from Dec 7, 1974, to September 1980. But sometime in July 1976, this academician-politician-social activist-and-author was interrogated at an undisclosed holding centre somewhere in Kuala Lumpur ...

Interrogator: "Syed. We know that you have connections with the underground. We know that you were the intermediary between underground elements with Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Musa Hitam. You must tell us about it."

Syed Husin: "That is a lie."

Interrogator: "If you admit this, then you can immediately leave this place."

Perhaps, Syed Husin need not have to endure the long period of detention and the incessant mental and physical torture had he ‘admitted’ to what his tormentors wanted him to ‘admit’ that day in 1976.

In 1996, Syed Husin came out with Two Faces: Detention Without Trial, in which he chronicled his experiences during his detention under the ISA. The short dialogue above is extracted from the book.

Two Faces: Detention Without Trial was his story to his children and other members of his family, told in a simple narrative style, of what had happened to him during the six years he was away from home.

It also tells Malaysians what would happen to them should they be picked up, usually an hour or two after midnight, and detained without trial under the controversial ISA.

The book, first published by Insan, was an instant bestseller and reprinted three times in the same year to meet demand.

Years later, after he was told that he no longer had a job at Universiti Malaya and had led his Parti Rakyat Malaysia (formerly Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia) into a merger with Parti Keadilan Nasional to become Parti Keadilan Rakyat, Syed Husin was asked whether he regretted ‘not admitting’ to what his interrogators wanted him to ‘admit’.

Many people would have been pleased, he was told.

Syed Husin, ever the mild-mannered, soft-spoken man, said he had no regrets, adding that it was wrong to make false allegations against anyone.

"Even if I had the opportunity to save the country from Mahathir then, there was no guarantee that he would be replaced by someone better."

Anyway, he said, it was wrong to make false allegations against anyone, especially when, as a result of the allegations, that someone is detained without trial and subjected to all kinds of physical and mental torture.

Two Faces is in the bookshops again, republished this time by the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD), to coincide with the growing outcry against the draconian ISA.

Syed Husin is deputy president of PKR and lends his support to efforts to have the ISA removed from the statute books.

His seminal book, published in 1975, is the Malay Peasant Society and Leadership. It was a pioneering work on the nature of rural Malay society and was based on a PhD thesis he submitted to the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Since then, he has written several other books in a style and presentation that is less constrained by the demands of academic research but still bound by the discipline of a scholar when making observations and when verifying facts.

Among the books are Social Stratification in Kampung Bagan; Apa Erti Pembangunan; Poverty and Landlessness in Kelantan; Isu Raja dan Perlembagaan; The Malays: Their Problems and Future; and Ethnic Relations in Malaysia: Harmony and Conflict.

The last two were republished after the March general election last year – The Malays (The Other Press) in May and Ethnic Relations in Malaysia (SIRD) in October.

They would have had spiced up the debate during the campaigning period before polling on March 8 had they been out before the general election which probably was the original intention of the author and publishers.

In The Malays, written while he was under detention in Kamunting, Syed Husin attempts to analyse various problems facing the Malay people, covering religious, social, economic, political and other related fields.

The new edition is a revised and updated version of that book and includes discussion on how the government has failed the Malays.

Ethnic Relations in Malaysia is a collection of 11 articles – four written between 1974 and 1984 and seven between 2000 and 2008 – dealing with the nature of ethnic relations in the country and the related situations of harmony and conflict that took place at different times and under different circumstances.

In the introduction, added just before the book went to the press, Syed Husin writes: "The agenda for national unity in Malaysia, 51 years after Merdeka (Independence), has still not succeeded but, instead, appear to have receded further and further into the distant mirage."

Perhaps, with all the unifying efforts being undertaken by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak’s administration since April under the 1Malaysia concept, the outlook may, after all, be not so bad, and may even be brighter.