Talking Race in Singapore History
by Sarah Ismail
The Singapore History Gallery in the new National Museum of Singapore tells the Singapore story, or rather, the Singapore stories – as one of the gallery’s features is the use of multiple narratives to form an overarching meta-narrative to tell the island’s tale. Still, the flowing lines converge at points, sectioning history into chapters familiar to any one who watched a National Day parade.
There is however, one difference that so far has gone unremarked. The story’s chapters told within the gallery are the expected – Early Singapore, Founding, Port City, Japanese Occupation, the constitutional struggle in the 1950s, and sudden Independence. They are the turning points and significant moments of history, where a historian can point at and declare beyond doubt – here, did an era end and another begin. Missing is the familiar soap opera or sturm und drang that is Merger and Separation.
This is not to say that the museum curators have been as careless as to forget those significant years from 1963 to 1965. They are present, with ex-Minister Othman Wok’s recollection of the racial riots and the famous moment of anguish when Lee Kuan Yew cried.
However, they are not given the same prominence that readers of Singapore history have come to expect. The Singapore Story has a middle-age waistline at its midway point, larger than the rest of it and the subject of much conversation and brow-beating. It is understandable given the sheer magnitude those two years have had on forming this nation’s history – transforming the nation into the nation-state, for one.
The lack of this particular punctuation point stands out, or rather does not at all. Rather, a visitor in the gallery is told of the 1959 PAP win, and the stumbling steps towards the Singapore we know today. Abang Malaysia recedes, for this is a Singapore story.
We do not know why the great scar of Singapore history, which we frequently rip anew in ululating cries of “Never again!â€, is smoothened over, in a place that will set the tenor for the Singapore story. However, without speculating on the reasons for this choice, or debating its correctness, it is possible to suggest that a foreign visitor will leave with the impression that Merger/Separation was merely yet another trial for a young nation, along with the Bukit Ho Swee fire. A new chapter marker has been set; the Independence chapter now begins at 1959 with Self-rule, not at 1965 with the Great Ejection.
Has there been anything lost? Possibly. Since the advent of National Education in 1997, the history teacher has been reinvented, or undergone a skills upgrade and become a nation-building teacher. History, as embraced and consumed in Singapore, has been about the lessons it has to offer.
And the lesson that is constantly driven home to every child, woman and man is the 1964 racial riots. It is a cautionary tale – a warning against communalism, and the need for inter-racial tolerance and harmony. They remind us that there are Singaporeans still living who can remember when a nation nearly tore itself apart.
The events of September 11th and the Singaporean Jemaah Islamiyah discovery of 2001 only underscored the importance of that lesson, ripping anew the wound so that the scar across history might be that much deeper – and have greater impact.
Emphasising the importance of racial harmony is undoubtedly good. However, it seems occasionally that deliberate, inter-racial outreach and frank dialogue only began in force after 2001. And now, Race joined by another R, the even more sacred cow of Religion. Inter-faith dialogue has become the alternative buzzword for inter-racial, due to shifting personal identities and the avoidance of the unfashionable use of ‘race’.
In many ways, we have only begun to build bridges between perceived gaps, or notice the privately-funded bridges already in existence. We are searching anew for a language to cement bonds and ease suspicions.
In times like these, the question then arises: can we use our history not to frighten but to inspire?
Malaysia may have already begun. A new Ethnic Relations course has been drafted, and will be required of all university students. The 1969 racial riots will no longer be an exercise in finger-pointing. Rather, the course will focus on what Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin calls the positives of race relations in Malaysia.
Singapore history is ripe with stories of inter-racial relations and understandings that occurred without the aid of a Racial Harmony day or a housing quota – tycoons that build beggar hospitals and schools, free to all-comers; Malay families that absorbed a Chinese neighbour’s extra child without questions or qualms; Christian missionaries that built schools to teach, not to evangelise.
In rethinking the way we frame our histories, can our perceptions of ourselves change as well? Instead of a nation a hairsbreadth from genocidal warfare, we could have a nation continuing what it has done along – interacting with and familiarising the Other, and building that “one united people”.
The National Museum of Singapore has perhaps started down that road already. The stormy race relations of Merger are just another bump on the roadmap of Singapore nationhood as portrayed in the History Gallery. Taking greater prominence are the shared experiences of Singaporeans, under the Japanese Occupation, labouring in a port city, building an island home.
Another problem pertaining to race relations possibly looming on the horizon makes a frank dialogue and rethinking of Singapore’s past necessary. If Malaysia is any indication, the question of inter-racial and by extension, inter-faith marriages has become a sticking point with the courts. This is especially so when it revolves around the biracial fruits of these unions. As inter-racial marriages become more common in Singapore, it is a matter of time before the faith in which a child is raised, or assets divided, becomes a flashpoint.
The merger years – that great scar of our past – has its lessons to teach, and should never be ignored. However, there are other stories that can be marshalled into gentler lessons. So far, Singapore history has taught us that we once knew how to hate. Surely it’s not too much to ask that it also teaches us that we once knew how to love.
The author holds a MA(History) and a BA(Architecture) from the National University of Singapore. A co-editor of Citizen Historian, she is also the present deputy editor of What’s Up, a current affairs newspaper for students.