I believe the original manuscript was much more substantial but had to be paired down to avoid legal difficulties. I never sighted the original manuscript so only the author himself can confirm whether my belief is true. Kua is a fascinating character. Little did I know I first encountered his writing in “Class and Communalism” by Hua Wu Xin, which I read while at university. I then chanced on a review of the book in the journal “Race and Class” – part of my staple of journals – which alerted me to the fact that Hua Wu Yin was a pseudonym. The reviewer suggested rather stingingly that while the author remained anonymous, he happily named other Malaysian leftist or Marxists. I knew very little about the left in Malaysia and didn’t make much of this criticism until a connection was made between Kua and the author Hua. I can’t recall how that connection emerged. More importantly, Kua engages in a critical engagement with really existing democratic practice in a book length essay, which remains rare.
