Word: merdeka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Late one night last week the searchlights illuminating the spacious cricket ground of sleepy Kuala Lumpur (pop. 300,000) suddenly went out. Two minutes later, precisely at midnight, the lights flashed on again, and as a crowd of 50,000 voices shouted Merdeka (freedom), the Union Jack slowly fluttered down to be replaced by a red, white and blue flag very like that of the U.S., save that instead of 48 stars it bore the single star and crescent of Islam. After 83 years of British rule, Malaya was an independent nation...
Comparing the Bolshevik Revolution with his countrymen's own 1949 revolt against the Dutch, Sukarno plugged for Soviet support in his aim to add West New Guinea to his fledgling republic. "In Indonesia," he told the engineers, "the revolutionaries . . . greet each other with the cry of merdeka, which means freedom . . . I ask you now to join me in exclaiming merdeka five times." Dutifully the freedomless Russians roared the strange new word. And from then on it was the vociferous cheer of welcome for the sprightly visitor from southern Asia...
...principles of the Asian Panch Shila, upon which the Indonesian state is founded, calls for belief in God and respect for all religions, Sukarno cut short his address so that Moslems present could attend evening prayer. Said he: "I say salaam aleikum (peace be with you). I close with merdeka, merdeka and once more merdeka...
...criminal courts, winning acquittals for his clients and some $112,000 a year for himself. Bored with the businessman's Progressive Party, he switched to the Singapore Labor Party, vaguely socialistic and violently anticolonial. A flamboyant, pipe-smoking, bush-shirted political campaigner, he posed as the prophet of merdeka...
...Action Party is far enough to the left to be the chosen instrument of the Communists, and the British cannot quite decide whether he is a prisoner of the Communists or the simple nationalist and follower of Nehru that he professes: to be. In Asian ears his merdeka has a sharper ring...