Tang Liang Hong: PAP negotiation of race, culture and language

I just want to put some historical context into the issues of race,
culture and language in Singapore's politics with TLH et., al. Although,
I am quite disappointed at the knee-jerk outrage / disgust / ignorance /
apathy / indifference / support of the various parties in the entire
affair. There was little if any considered analysis of the situation.
But, more about that another time. 

Firstly, some rehashed PS 101 (albeit a little cynically hashed) - the
role of all political power is to maintain and consolidate political
control. Primarily, nothing is done to further the needs of the general
population but the paramount fundamental is the pursuit & perpetuation
of political control of the apparatus of government. Government is for
the sake of safeguarding political power.

TLH was singled out as a "race chauvinist" during the GE because the PAP
needed to neutralize a tangible political threat during the last GE. His
grief thereafter is nothing to do with the issues of what the PAP
alleged him to be or what he said in that speech. He is where he is
because of his reaction & comments to the PAP's electioneering (which
were ill-advised and ill-wrought).

Side-stepped and swept away in the million whatever dollar verdicts, one
should explore the issue of how the PAP has taken a leaf out of the our
past colon (the French term used here & its not a typo - because I
believed that the French were more stylish colonists than the Brits)
masters in using race relations (amongst many other tools) in the
governance of our country & the perpetuation of PAP rule. Basically
divide & rule.

The policy of divide & rule were used by the Brits to maintain control
in India by playing good cop & bad cop with the Hindu-dominated Congress
Party & Jinnah's Muslim League. Closer to home, in Malaya, the Brits had
effectively maintain ties with the respective captains of the ethnic
groups among the Malays, Chinese and Indians with the Eurasians
effectively used as a class to man the British colonial service in the
politically non-essential positions.

The PAP inherited this situation upon attainment of Independence. In the
euphoria of Mederka and not wanting to upset the dominant political
flavor of the day, the PAP institutionalized our national language as
Bahasa Melayu to make Singapore politically correct for entry into
Malaysia. The teaching and learning of the Malay language was in the
ascendancy in the education system. 

I can speak from personal experience in this as my older siblings all
took Malay as a second language & I was left to take Mandarin as my
second language because by the time I had become of school-going age,
the sun was rising on the language of the Middle Kingdom. My folks, like
many parents, were moved by the pragmatism of the day.

In any event, the years before and after Independence, eviction from
Malaysia and the early 1970s, we had discourses about the immutable
Singaporean were written and propounded by the PAP propagandists of the
day, Rajaratnam, Devan Nair & even LKY himself (at one time). Even LKY
spoke against the ISA when the PAP was in the opposition many many moons
ago.

These were attempts to neutralize the dominant Chinese "face" of
Singapore by propounding the "Singaporean" identity & we saw the birth
of the campaigns to have the national dress mixing the sarong kebaya
with the sari, a dash of the cheongsam & some European frilly lace hems.
The ideal Singaporean would be adept at all the graceful arts of the
major dominant ethnic groups (in fact, TLH may, in another age, have
been the poster boy for the ideal Singaporean with his professed
backgrounds in Indian classical dance, Baba Malay pantuns & Chinese
culture).

All this fruitless fashion alchemy provoked an ill-received comment by
D.J. Enright - then a lecturer in English literature at the University
of Singapore. Remember him? If not, please read "Memoirs of Mendicant
Professor" - actually available at the National Library! Enright was one
of the first of the litany of expatriate academics to have crossed
swords with the PAP) & therein marked the first of many political
casualties of Singapore's culture, ethnicity & language wars.

The PAP, in the interim, was conducting a running political war of
attrition & affirmative attack on the Communists who were largely backed
by the Chinese and these Communists had infiltrated the Chinese media,
school boards, unions et., al., and the PAP obliterated their
effectiveness using the ISA and the ballot box (whoever was left
un-detained under the ISA).

The PAP changed tack with the late 1970s Speak Mandarin campaign in
order to neutralize the dialect speaking communities from being
politically and linguistically different and from asserting themselves
among the ethnic Chinese themselves. Also, I guess it was some of the
many electrical engineers' dreams (they were so many at the Min., of
Education & Culture) that the best way to soothe out such dialect group
differences was to have a broker language without causing fear or favor
among the dialect communities in Singapore. There was little love lost
for Mandarin (itself an alien import from the Manchus into China).

The Speak Mandarin campaign would also score more points with the
Mandarin language Chinese-educated intelligentsia, as opposed to those
dialect speaking towkay businessman who had little classic
mandarin-based education that only saw this move by the government as
another chance to make more money by setting up madarin dubbing services
for all the Hong Kong movies & videos.

In the 1980s, we saw the stirrings of Singaporeans' growing taste for
Western style democracy & the opposition. The PAP took action &
repudiated the model Singaporean mode adopted in the 1960s & started to
shore up the more conservative elements of the ethnic based community
groups and led to the formation of institutional totally new self-help
organs or links with existing ethnic based groups like CDAC, Mendaki,
the Eurasian Association & SINDA.

Naturally, there are real positives in the PAP's policies in trying to
address certain aspects of the ethnic communities that were left behind
in terms of economic development and opportunity & PM Goh deserves full
credit for helping the Malay community with Mendaki. I would reserve
comment on CDAC, SINDA & EA for another time.

But one minor criticism is that one can argue that the government itself
is abdicating or resiling on its duty to the underclass in direct aid by
throwing money and resources to these type of organizations that do not
have the sufficient legitimacy or clout to solve these problems beyond
organizing tuition classes, adult re-education programs, culture
appreciation courses, carnivals & picnics by the lawn of the National
Museum. Issues like marital abuse, substance abuse, suicides, poverty &
lack of material achievement are too difficult and complex to be solved
by these organizations.

The PAP also saw the need to plumb those in their respective communities
who needed some attention and face time with the PAP leaders & wanted to
be co-opted in the PAP grande strategy to immunize the populace from the
pesky western democratic truths like liberty, freedom of expression,
association & other such unsavory qualities.

There was a different propaganda tune to be played where we have BG Yeo
saying that Singapore was a "rojak" with each ethnic group like a rojak
ingredient retaining its special flavor but contributing to the overall
rojak dish - well personally, I never fancied myself to be a cucumber or
a pineapple - a passion fruit perhaps. We also had the quest for the
Confucianist- inspired Shared Values Parliament debate crusaded by BG
Lee to earn his stripes of a cognitive PAP ideologue & the eventual
whatever Parliamentary document was symptomatic of this fetish that the
PAP had with the culture/values item to perpetuate political control.

But in whatever form or guise the PAP's policies in relation to language
and race, I guess it ain't so bad so long as there is continued wealth,
prosperity and progress for our nation, right?