Valiya Purayil Abdullah (1913 – 15 March 1996), better known as V. P. Abdullah, was a Singaporean journalist and politician who was, for several decades, the editor of the Kerala Bandhu and its successor, the Malaysia Malayali, both of which catered toward the local Malayali community.
He stood as a candidate for the Municipal North-East Ward in the 1948 general election as an independent and for the Bukit Timah Ward in the 1951 general election as a member of the Labour Party, positioning himself each time as an advocate for the rights of the working class, though he was unsuccessful in both.
A member of the Labour Party's General Council in the 1950s, he was elected its chair in 1953, at a time when it had suffered significantly as a result of infighting. As the head of the party, he pushed for several amendments to its constitution with the intent of remedying this and eventually oversaw its 1954 merger with the Singapore Socialist Party to form the Labour Front, though he also led the Labour Party's withdrawal from the Labour Front just months after the latter's formation.
Early life and education Abdullah was born in 1913 in the village of Mattul in North Malabar, Kerala, where he also received his education. A Malayali, he was also Muslim. He came to Singapore in 1937, joining the Malabar Muslim Jama'ath, which represented the local community of Muslim immigrants from Kerala, shortly after.
Journalism career
Kerala Bandhu The year after his arrival in Singapore, the Kerala Bandhu, a Malayalam-language weekly catering toward the Malayali community of British Malaya, was established by K. K. Abdul Rahman in Batu Pahat "more out of interest than any other reason". This venture was not profitable, suffering from low readership and poor management. On hearing of the founding of a local Malayalam periodical, Abdullah began sending Rahman news items. The latter was "attracted by [Abdullah]'s enthusiasm" and brought him over to Batu Pahat to help run the newspaper. To improve readership, Rahman moved the business to Singapore on Abdullah's suggestion, where there were more Malayalis. In its first two decades, each of the paper's limited staff took on various roles. During the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, which lasted from 1942 to 1945 as part of World War II, the Kerala Bandhu, now a daily, was known as the Swathanthra Bharatham. One of three Indian newspapers circulated locally in this period, it was distributed to the Indian military at Rangoon. The newspaper was most successful in this period, and he was made the editor-in-chief.
By 1951, he had reportedly been "attached to several vernacular papers." It was around this time that he hired K. Koya, whom he had met in 1948 and who was previously with the then recently shuttered Videsha Malayali, as sub-editor and as a translator; Abdullah claimed to have found quickly that Koya was "of a different political opinion", being pro-Communist. This was reportedly evident through Koya's translations and his selections for news items and headlines, and through Koya's brief arrest by the Special Branch the year of his hiring. He reminded the latter that Communism was banned in Singapore and told him not to "make use of his paper for his own political philosophy." Abdullah later recalled that Koya sometimes used headlines which "would have had serious consequences", thus forcing reprints and resulting in "constant conflict" between him and management. Koya first left the paper in the first half of the 1950s after a dispute with Abdullah's then managing partner, V. M. Mathews, over headlines, returning to India for several years.
On 4 March 1951, Abdullah was elected the treasurer on the interim executive council of the newly founded Singapore Union of Journalists (SUJ). He continued to serve on the union's executive council for several years into the mid-1950s. Koya returned to the Kerala Bandhu in January 1954; Mathews had asked him to as the paper was then "in difficulties." Abdullah later recalled that in 1959, when the People's Action Party (PAP) came into power, Koya's political stance became more apparent in his work once more, resulting in the two feuding and Abdullah having to look over Koya's work before it made it to print. He accused Koya of "playing up and down news items" according to his biases and described rectifying this as "mental and physical torture". This eventually culminated in the paper being banned in the Federation of Malaya in August 1960 as a result of Koya's output being pro-Communist. Abdullah then fired Koya in early November, believing this to be necessary for the business to continue and alleging that Koya refused to comply with the policies of the paper, after which he was successful in having the ban on the Kerala Bandhu lifted, though he was required to keep the Ministry of the Interior informed on any changes to the paper's editorial board and chief reporters. Around this time, Abdullah left the paper for two years for "personal reasons". Sivaraman Nair then took over as editor until his return.
Dispute with SUJ At the time of his dismissal, Koya was a member of the executive council of the SUJ. The union then asked Abdullah to demonstrate why Koya's dismissal had been necessary; the union alleged that he only made "vague allegations of policy violations" without "being able to substantiate any of his allegations." The union held negotiations with Abdullah that were overseen by Wee Toon Boon, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Labour and Law, and Abdullah withdrew his termination of Koya on 22 November. However, he again fired Koya on 10 December, accompanying this with a $536 cheque.
The SUJ felt that Abdullah had been unable to properly justify his reasoning for Koya's termination, in that he had been unclear in how Koya had violated the paper's policy, and called for the latter to be reinstated. The Minister for Labour and Law, K. M. Byrne, directed the dispute to the Industrial Arbitration Court after attempting to resolve it thrice to no avail, with Abdullah and Mathews representing the Kerala Bandhu. The SUJ was represented by secretary A. Mahadeva, president Chan Sun Choy and committee member James Foo. Abdullah finally revealed at a hearing in April that Koya had been the cause of the paper's ban, supported by evidence that was supplied to the court in camera. Mahadeva accused Abdullah of having "used the privilege of the court to brand [Koya] as pro-Communist and Communist so as to put him at a disadvantage in earning his living." The SUJ held that Koya did not violate the paper's policy as the Kerala Bandhu as a whole had been "hostile" to the PAP before it had come to power, which Abdullah denied, claiming that the paper was independent of any political or religious affiliation and that it took only a "pro-people" stance, though he struggled to clarify what the paper's policy had been.
On 24 April, the SUJ applied for all of the evidence heard in camera in the past two hearings to be "brought into open court". This was in response to Abdullah's labelling of Koya as "pro-Communist" and "Communist", which Mahadeva felt were "seriously damaging allegations" that were made in open court. However, this was denied as the evidence included items that were "of an intimate and personal nature involving the Ministry of the Interior of the Government of the Federation of Malaya." According to Charles Gamba, the president of the court, Byrne had "received a communication" from the Federation's Minister of the Interior clarifying this. The court instead "abruptly" ruled on 6 May to confirm Koya's dismissal, but also ordered Abdullah to pay Koya an additional $2,000 in compensation due to the length and nature of his service to the Kerala Bandhu.
Malaysia Malayali The Kerala Bandhu folded due to financial troubles on 1 June 1964. The firm Asiua Printers and Publishers Ltd. was then established with the intent of establishing a successor, to be called the Malaysia Malayali. The managing director of the company was dancer K.P. Bhaskar; Abdullah was a director and was also to continue as managing editor of the new paper. The firm then received the support and leadership of many noted figures of the local Malayali community. However, the reinvention did little to improve the paper's financial situation. In 1969, the firm agreed to let Abdullah "run it his own way" in an attempt to "revive" the business. Despite this, the Malaysia Malayali suffered several "break-downs"; it was kept afloat through Abdullah "[approaching] many well-wishers for monetary contributions." Readership continued to decline as English-language papers continued to grow in prominence. In 1971, 10 of the paper's employees went on strike. This lasted one day before Abdullah agreed to give the striking workers a $20 pay rise each. On 2 May 1980, he pleaded guilty to five counts of failing to contribute his share of Central Provident Fund contributions for employees. The Malaysia Malayali shuttered for good on 25 December 1988.
Political career Abdullah worked for the Azad Hind, opposing the British rule of India, during the Japanese occupation. He was an assistant at the organisation's Press and Publicity Department. As a local "Muslim leader", he participated in a series of Azad Hind broadcasts in 1944 which aimed to "further [intensify] the Indian war effort." He was later hired at the Ministry of Information, with whom he conducted an "extensive propaganda tour throughout Malaya." Abdullah was elected the chairman of the newly founded Indian Nationalist Muslim Majlis, representing the local Indian Muslim community, in May 1946. In the same month, he was elected to the committee of the newly formed Singapore branch of the Indian Relief Committee in Malaya.
Abdullah was a member of the delegation sent to represent Singapore at the first annual conference of the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), held in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur, in June 1947. He was involved in setting up the party's Singapore branch, the Singapore Regional Indian Congress (SRIC). He was elected the treasurer and a delegate of the SRIC's Joo Chiat, Changi and Paya Lebar division in February 1947. He was also elected to the SRIC's executive committee. As a member of the MIC, he was barred by the party from contesting in elections as the MIC, working with the All-Malaya Council of Joint Action (AMCJA), planned to "work for the further intensification of opposition to the Constitution Proposals." The AMCJA had called for a boycott of the elections as only British subjects could vote, which allowed many who the AMCJA held "[did] not regard Malaya as their real home and object of their loyalty" to "interfere in the running in the country" while many Malays were unable to vote as they were "protected persons" as opposed to subjects.
1948 general election In January 1948, Abdullah announced that he would be standing as a candidate in the upcoming Legislative Council general election, to be held on 20 March as the first general election in Singapore. He was one of two SRIC members to announce their candidacy in the election, with the other being Malathi Pillai, the secretary of the SRIC's women's section and a social worker who was the wife of Kerala Bandhu publisher K. S. Pillai. In response, the pair were expelled from the MIC, and in turn the SRIC, though it was expected that they would still receive a significant amount of support from those of the SRIC in an unofficial capacity in their campaigns. They were among the 12 members of the MIC across the region to have been expelled for this reason.