Book review: The Accidental Diplomat, by Maurice Baker

by Maurice Baker
World Scientific
2 stars
Toh Han Shih

The most interesting aspect of Maurice Baker's autobiography is the revealing stories of diplomatic and political events which he witnessed in his long career as a Singaporean academic and diplomat.

During the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, Carlos Pena Romulo, the late Filipino diplomat, had an argument with then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, as Romulo later told Baker. In the heat of the argument, Romulo predicted that India would one day be attacked by China. Nehru, charmed by premier Zhou Enlai at the Bandung conference, dismissed Romulo's prediction as absurd.

In 1962, China attacked and defeated the Indian army over the two nations' disputed Himalayan border. Years later, Nehru told Romulo how right the latter had been.

In 1970, relations between Singapore and Malaysia were rocked by the "Long-Haired Crisis". At that time, the puritanical government of prime minister Lee Kuan Yew forbade men from sporting long hair. That year, three long-haired young Malaysian men were eating at a hawker centre in the city state. Detectives arrested the men, forced them to have haircuts and locked them up for one night. This action provoked Malaysian student demonstrations against the Singapore High Commission in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Baker, who was then the Singapore high commissioner in Malaysia, received a letter with a cartoon depicting Lee as bald. Baker also received locks of hair including pubic hair. He was also handed an official protest note by a Malaysian Foreign Ministry official expressing its "most serious concern" at the "ill-treatment" of the three Malaysians.