In an interview with Aljazeera Arabic, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad revealed the reasons for changing his feelings towards the British from feelings of love and admiration to hatred and discontent, as he revealed the plot they were planning towards his country, which is very similar to what they did with Palestine in the 1940s, when they deprived its indigenous citizens of their land and gave it to minorities that they had previously encouraged to come to the land of Palestine.
According to the statements he made in his first episodes of “Witness to the Times,” he was an admirer of the English at the beginning of his life, and when he was in his early stages until adolescence, when the Malaysians after the British colonization of their country felt the great difference between the rule of the British and the rule of the authoritarian monarchy that controlled The country, which dominated the entire wealth of Malaysia, at a time when people are experiencing difficult economic conditions.
Mahathir explained that his position during that period was like many of his peers in Malaysia, as they were greatly affected by the discipline and discipline of the British, and that what increased his admiration for them was that he studied at an English school, so he read English history and culture according to their perspective and their own vision, which depicted the British as a people that was never defeated.
But this image was strongly shaken by Mahathir's minds when the Japanese defeated the British and forced them to withdraw from Malaysia, and then "I realized that the British could be defeated by an Asian nation and army, and that the Japanese were more disciplined and better-planned than the English."
This was not the only reason that changed the image of the English with the mind of the young Mahathir in the 1940s, as the Malawians began to feel the British despised them and viewed them as lazy and unworthy, and at the same time, they encouraged the Chinese and Indians to come to live in Malaysia and sought to grant them rights to education.
Mahathir explained that the Malawians fully discovered the English scheme against them when the British sought to support the Malawian Union, which was seeking to dismantle the Malawians and open the way for the control of the Chinese and Indian minorities, over the country in preparation for making it an international settlement subject to the rule of the British, as they did with Palestine when they encouraged the Jews to come to it from all corners of the earth, and they gave them support to control all aspects of life at the expense of the Palestinian landowners.
But the Malawian elite realized the British scheme, so they foiled it and rejected the Malawian union that the English were planning, and this was the beginning of the "Umno" party that brought the country to independence and forced the British to leave and end their colonization in 1957.
MNA/PR