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Sultan Badlishah

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Sultan Badlishah

Sultan Badlishah (1894–1958), the twelfth son of Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah of Kedah, was the first Malay ruler to be educated abroad, the first to attend Oxford University, and the only member of the Kedah royal family to be naturalised as a Siamese citizen. [1, pp. 119–120] His reign (1943–58) coincided with Malaya’s transition from colonial rule to independence, during which he emerged as a leading defender of the Malay rulers’ traditional authority against both British colonial pressure and the emerging political party UMNO. [1, p. 119]

Early Life and Siamese Upbringing

Tunku Badlishah was born on 17 March 1894, the eldest son of the Kedah sultan’s consort Che Sofiah. [1, p. 124] After his mother’s disgrace and divorce from the sultan, he was raised in the household of Che Puan Manjalara, the sultan’s Thai wife, whose connections facilitated his early departure to Bangkok at approximately seven or eight years of age. [1, p. 124] There he became an adopted son of Crown Prince Vajiravudh, later King Rama VI, and was known by the affectionate moniker Tunku Chah. [1, p. 125] He received his education at King’s College (Ratchwithayalai) in Bangkok and subsequently attended Wadham College, Oxford, in 1919, studying law and history. [1, p. 125]

Upon returning to Siam in 1921, Badlishah chose to enter the Siamese civil service rather than return to Kedah under British colonial administration. [1, p. 125] He joined the Privy Purse Department and rose within three years to the rank of Phra Si Surintharawiwongsa. [1, p. 125] King Vajiravudh remarked that British attempts to secure Badlishah’s return to Kedah had repeatedly failed because the young man was too loyal to Siam to become, in his own words, ‘a slave of the English’. [1, p. 125] He became the only member of the Kedah royal family to be naturalised as a Siamese citizen and to hold a Thai noble title. [1, p. 124]

Return to Kedah and Ascension

In 1925, following a formal request from his father, King Vajiravudh agreed to lend Badlishah to the Kedah administration, keeping his post open in Siam. [1, pp. 126–127] Badlishah returned to Kedah and was appointed State Treasurer, a position he held until March 1935. [1, p. 129] After the death of Regent Tunku Ibrahim in 1934, he was invested as Raja Muda of Kedah in 1935 and became Regent two years later. [1, p. 129] He succeeded his father as Sultan of Kedah in May 1943. [1, p. 129]

In October 1943, the Japanese deposed him and ceded Kedah to Thailand; after the war, the British restored him to the throne, and his reign is officially recognised as lasting until July 1958. [1, p. 129]

Defence of Royal Authority in the Independence Era

Sultan Badlishah’s most consequential political intervention came during the Malayan Union crisis of 1945. After being pressured by Sir Harold MacMichael to sign the Malayan Union agreement under threat of deposition, Badlishah immediately telegraphed the Colonial Office declaring his signature had been given under duress. [1, p. 130] In February 1946 he wrote formally to London, asserting his treaty right under the 1923 Anglo-Kedah Agreement to appeal directly to the British monarch. [1, pp. 130–131]

In the subsequent rivalry between the Malay rulers and UMNO, Badlishah became the most outspoken defender of the rulers’ prerogatives. [1, p. 131] In 1948, Kedah UMNO affiliates formally requested his replacement, arguing that his appointment had been made by the Japanese and was therefore invalid. [1, p. 131] The Conference of Rulers, with Badlishah as a leading voice, rejected UMNO’s proposal to create a Malay Deputy High Commissioner at the Federal level, a decision that deeply alienated UMNO President Dato’ Onn Jaafar. [1, p. 132]

When Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, Badlishah’s half-brother, assumed the UMNO presidency in 1951 and subsequently led the party to victory in the 1955 elections, the long-standing personal enmity between the two brothers gave way to reconciliation. [1, pp. 133–134] Tunku Abdul Rahman later recalled that upon Malaya’s independence, Sultan Badlishah ‘took great pride in my achievement and we became friends again’. [1, p. 134]

Legacy and Documentation

Sultan Badlishah recorded several firsts in Kedah’s royal history: he was the first Kedah ruler raised in a foreign land, the first to receive overseas education in both Siam and Great Britain, the first Malay ruler to attend Oxford, the first multilingual ruler (conversant in Thai, English, and Malay), and the only naturalised Siamese subject to serve as ruler of a Malay state. [1, p. 134] His direct descendants have occupied the Kedah throne continuously since 1958. [1, p. 130]

The principal scholarly treatment of his life and reign is Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian’s 2020 article in the JMBRAS, which draws on correspondence held in the Thai National Archives, the National Archives in London, and the Rhodes House Library at Oxford. [1, pp. 134–135] The article extends the author’s long-standing research programme on Kedah–Siam relations and provides the first sustained treatment of Sultan Badlishah’s reign in the Society’s journal. [1, p. 135]

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian (2020). Tunku Badlishah Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah, a postscript to the BangkokKedah personalised relations JMBRAS 93(2): 119–35. Read on JSTOR