AUGUST 30 — Yesterday I participated in a symposium organised by the Singapore Indian Development Organization (SINDA). The symposium centred on the topic of Singapore and its future. And the question posed to me was: what will drive the collective Singapore identity in the future?
When I first heard the question, the immediate answer that popped into my head was just one word: Laksa!
More than any example or statement about harmony and a shared heritage, nothing came more strongly to my mind than the literal melting pot of flavour that is each and every good laksa we consume.
It's what I tell taxi drivers on rides home from the airport when they ask: did you miss home?
Yes, I love my laksa.
Of the near endless variety of deliciousness available in this country, this particular dish stands out because it so obviously contains Chinese (noodles) Indian (spices) and Malay (coconut and lemongrass) elements. It’s a one dish example of the cross pollination of cultures that is the bedrock of our identity.
Of course there's more to our cuisine than laksa and more to our culture than cuisine and one of the points raised by the panelists was this: a culture that resorts to its meals to define it is a shallow culture and if you dig a little deeper — you'll unearth that we have more differences than similarities no matter how many bowls of noodles we slurp.
I recognize the value of this perspective but across the board I think Singaporean culture is strongest where we see a melding of the base cultures that comprise our identity.
We see this in more than food — we see it in Singlish, the Sarong Kebaya, in the temples that house Indian and Chinese gods etc.
All this mixing stems from the fact that we are an immigrant nation; in fact more so than almost any other nation. All of us have roots abroad even if it’s just over the Causeway in Malaysia. We all made the journey from somewhere to here and along the way we effectively collided with other communities with whom we had to work to build a nation and a city.
This collision led to the creation of a basic Creole culture — embodied in many Singaporean families.
Personally I’ve always felt this hybridisation should have been the base of our identity -— it gave us laksa, for goodness sake! But as the nation has developed, we chose to downplay our hybrid heritage and focus on the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others (CMIO) concept.
This was a strange policy in my opinion as people who had never seen China and couldn’t speak Chinese became classified as Chinese and the same applies for many Indians.
CMIO created a deeply racialised nation where every conversation contains something along the lines of "this Malay guy did this" or "that Chinese girl said that."
It always begged the question if everyone here is Indian, Chinese and Malay then who is Singaporean?
This situation has become more complex with the massive influx of new (or even newer) immigrants we’ve seen over the last two decades. We now have "Singapore Indians" and "India Indians", "Singapore Chinese" and "PRC Chinese"'etc but by nationality many of these "PRC Chinese" and "India Indians"'are also Singaporeans.
It’s all rather confusing and while this island has always had a more established population and a new immigrant population, the scale of recent expansion means many new immigrants see little need to look beyond their own culture.
There is really little need for PRC citizens to learn to speak Singlish, or deal extensively with members of other communities because their own community and language is so prevalent.
Basically people are no longer assimilating into a Creolized base culture but living in Singapore within their own culture. All this weakened the idea of a base "Singaporean identity."
So what’s the solution?
The symposium concluded that we need dialogue — gently and persistently coaxing out of a population a consensus: this is Singaporean.
I hope so because listening to all these passionate Singaporeans it is obvious we know we're Singaporean but it seems we still struggle to say why.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
