It is now politically fashionable to assume that all local scholars and academicians are timid and careerist apologists of the establishment.

However, there are always admirable and commendable exceptions like UKM's former Assoc Prof Dr Mohamed Salleh Lamry who authored the recently released general history of the Malay Left - Gerakan Kiri Melayu Dalam Perjuangan Kemerdekaan. (Bangi, Penerbit UKM, 2006).

Besides the wealth of information gathered, chronicled and interpreted in a coherent, systematic and intelligible manner, the 203-page Gerakan Kiri Melayu Dalam Perjuangan Kemerdekaan also makes a moral or psychological breakthrough by consciously refusing to label communists as 'terrorists' or 'communist terrorists' like the colonialists, fascists and their indigenous clones, ex-mercenaries, cultural agents and ideological proxies did and have still been trying to do.

According to its author, it is 'now no longer appropriate'.