The attacks from KL were still coming, but Raja – now pushing 50 – scrambled to mobilise allies in Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to rise up for a Malaysian Malaysia. It marked a new phase of action for him as a Malaysian patriot, reformer and rebel – a phase that that was to be short-lived, and that would end in calamity.

Its contours took shape under a cloak of secrecy on the damp, drizzly evening of 12 February 1965. The place: a spartan meeting room in Sri Temasek, a colonial bungalow that served as the prime minister's official residence on the Istana grounds.

There, Raja, together with four of his colleagues, huddled with five opposition leaders from Malaysian non-communal parties. It was their first preliminary meeting to discuss forming a convention to staunch the communal tide in Malaysia. That gathering, organised principally by Raja, set in train a series of talks that would culminate in the formation of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention (MSC) in May 1965.

But even a man with as heroic a heart as Raja must have had foreboding about undertaking such a journey. His unwavering ally was Singapore's deputy premier and PAP chairman Toh Chin Chye, who had made the seminal suggestion for a convention.

Raja, who by that time had already linked up with like-minded opposition leaders in Malaysia, nurtured and refined the idea until conditions combined to ripen it for adoption by Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP central executive committee (CEC). If the MSC was Toh's “baby” – as Lee later described it – then Raja presided as benevolent godfather at its conception.

Anxious to guide it to its full purpose, Raja had prepared painstakingly for the landmark February meeting. He had in hand copies of a draft statement he had composed earlier as a basis for their talks. He had briefed his colleagues in advance. Besides Toh, the others were Lee (who could join the meeting only mid-way because of a prior official function), labour minister Jek Yeun Thong and law minister Eddie Barker.