This had the effect of excluding many Chinese students. Although the Chinese and Indian communities could maintain their own Chinese and Tamil-language primary schools, all their students were required to learn Malay, and to study an agreed “Malayan curriculum.” Most importantly, the entry exam to the University of Malaya (which moved from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in 1963) would be conducted in Malay, even though most teaching at the university was in English until the 1970s.

Henceforward Malay and English would be the only teaching languages in secondary schools, and state primary schools would teach in Malay only. The Education Act of 1961 put UMNO’s victory on the education issue into legislative form. This produced a crisis in the MCA in 1959, in which a more assertive leadership under Lim Chong Eu defied UMNO over the education issue, only to be forced to back down when Tunku Abdul Rahman threatened to break up the coalition. The MCA leaders were torn between the need to defend their own community’s interests and the need to maintain good relations with UMNO. The two issues were related, since the Chinese advantage in education played a large part in maintaining their control of the economy, which the UMNO leaders were determined to end. However, since there was no effective opposition party, these issues were contested mainly within the coalition government, which won all but one seat in the first post-independence Malayan Parliament. Malay political movements emerged based around this. The Malays felt unhappy with the wealth of the Chinese community, even after the expulsion of Singapore. The most vexed issues of independent Malaysia were education and the disparity of economic power among the ethnic communities. This provoked Tunku Abdul Rahman to demand that Singapore withdraw from Malaysia, which it did in August 1965. Racial tensions intensified as PAP created an opposition alliance aiming for equality between races. Lee in turn threatened to run PAP candidates in Malaya at the 1964 federal elections, despite an earlier agreement that he would not do so (see PAP-UMNO Relations). Both UMNO and the MCA were nervous about the possible appeal of Lee's People's Action Party (then seen as a radical socialist party) to voters in Malaya, and tried to organise a party in Singapore to challenge Lee's position there.

The federation increased the Chinese proportion to close to 40 percent. This balance was altered by the inclusion of the majority Chinese Singapore, upsetting many Malays. At the time of independence in 1957, the Malays were 55 percent of the population, the Chinese 35 percent and the Indians 10 percent.

Alliance of the sacred suns discord