Malays and the red and white flag societies in Penang, 1830–1920s
Mahani Musa’s 1999 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society traces the evolution of the Red Flag and White Flag Societies in Penang from the 1830s through the 1920s, arguing that these organizations originated as religious mutual-aid bodies (jumaah) among Indian Muslim and Jawi Peranakan communities before being transformed into Chinese-model secret societies through alliance with the Ghee Hin and Toh Peh Kong, and ultimately persisting in criminal and cultural guises until the Japanese Occupation.
Summary
Musa challenges the prevailing assumption that secret societies were exclusively a Chinese phenomenon in colonial Malaya. Drawing on the Penang Riots Commission Reports (PRCR) of 1867, colonial office correspondence, the Penang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, and the personal diary of Sheikh Omar Basheer, she reconstructs a three-stage development. In the first stage (1830s–1850s), the societies functioned as religious jumaah—mutual-aid organizations formed by Jawi Peranakan, Indian Muslims, Arabs, and Malays to protect their womenfolk, property, and communal interests in a rapidly cosmopolitanizing Georgetown where the Chinese population was already outnumbering the Malays. The second stage (1850s–1867) saw the religious orientation abandoned as the societies allied with the Chinese Ghee Hin (White Flag) and Toh Peh Kong (Red Flag) between 1863 and 1865, becoming entangled in territorial struggles over Georgetown that culminated in the Penang Riots of August 1867. The third stage (post-1867) was defined by government suppression attempts that proved only partially effective; the societies re-emerged through boria troupes, gangsterism, and eventually football clubs before finally dissolving in the 1920s–30s under the pressure of the Malay reformist movement.
A central analytical thread is the role of the boria—a musical performance tradition of Indianized Shiite origin—as both the cultural vehicle and the organizational skeleton that kept the flag societies alive after their formal suppression. Musa demonstrates that boria troupes, organized by mukim (district), maintained the territorial rivalries of the Red and White Flags well into the twentieth century, with troupes still identifying themselves by flag affiliation as late as 1920. The article also foregrounds the internal dynamics of the Malay Muslim community—divisions between jumaah and tariqat (Sufi order), the influence of gambling and opium, the absorption of released Indian convicts into Malay society as Jawi Pekan, and the absence of traditional Malay political hierarchy in Penang—as the structural conditions that made the societies possible.
Musa corrects several earlier scholarly claims, notably Khoo Kay Kim’s assertion that both societies had been completely suppressed by the end of the nineteenth century, and Wynne’s unsubstantiated linkage of their origins to the Kedah–Siam War. She argues instead that the societies were of local Penang origin, formed by the Jawi Peranakan and Indian Muslim communities, and that the dates given in the PRCR (c. 1855–7 for the White Flag, c. 1859 for the Red Flag) mark their transformation into Chinese-type kongsi rather than their actual founding.
Key Findings
- The PRCR witness Saiboo (aged 34 at the time of the 1867 enquiries) testified that the White Flag had existed before his birth and that the Red Flag had been formed into a kongsi only in the preceding eight years, pushing the origins of both societies back to the 1830s in their original religious form (p. 152).
- By 1860, Georgetown’s population of 59,959 comprised 16,928 Chinese, 3,792 Malays, and 7,310 Indians; the Red Flag fielded approximately 1,000 men and the Toh Peh Kong 3,000, while the White Flag and Ghee Hin combined numbered around 25,000 during the 1867 riots (pp. 153, 163).
- The Red Flag entrance fee was $1.16 (six cents to the Doorkeeper, ten cents to the Instructor of the secret sign, the remainder to the Society); Chinese members of the Ghee Hin paid $3.60 while Malays and Indians paid $1.60 (p. 167).
- After the 1867 riots, Sheikh Omar Basheer’s fatwa prompted nearly 7,000 Muslims to take an oath of non-affiliation and surrender their arms; those who refused were declared apostates and denied burial among fellow Muslims (p. 169).
- By 1920, between forty and fifty boria troupes operated in Penang, still organized under Red Flag (12 troupes listed) and White Flag (14 troupes listed) affiliations by mukim (p. 175).
- The Darul Makmur Football Club, founded in 1920 by former flag society leaders, had grown to 1,300 members by 1927 before being banned by the government in 1928; the Muslim Jelutong Football Club (1926) met the same fate in 1936 (p. 178).
Conclusion
Musa’s definitive takeaway is that the Red and White Flag Societies, despite their Indianized Shiite cultural trappings, were fundamentally local Malay institutions representing early attempts at organized communal self-governance in the absence of traditional Malay political hierarchy. Their ultimate demise was not achieved by colonial legislation alone but by the emergence of a politically mature Malay intelligentsia—fostered by the colonial education system and the reformist movement of the 1920s—who offered the Malay community new organizational forms (associations, vernacular press, new-style madrasah) that rendered the old secret societies obsolete.
Context
- Primary archival collections include Colonial Office correspondence (CO 275, CO 273/518), Straits Settlements Records (SSR), the Penang Riots Commission Reports (1868), the Penang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, and the personal diary of Sheikh Omar Basheer held at Universiti Sains Malaysia Library.
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in correcting the Chinese-centric framing of secret society studies in Malaya and in demonstrating, through the boria troupe data and PGSC reporting, that the flag societies persisted far longer than previously acknowledged.