S. Rajaratnam: Recounting the life and work of one of Singapore’s core founding fathers
The Straits Times, 13 Jul 2024
Old Guard member S. Rajaratnam played a pivotal role in Singapore’s history, and his contributions are covered in the second volume of a biography by former journalist and ex-MP Irene Ng out in July 2024.
These edited extracts from S. Rajaratnam, The Authorised Biography, Volume Two: The Lion’s Roar, published by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, touch on the 1964 racial riots, the Separation in 1965, and the crafting of the national pledge, as well as his visit to China in 1975, the first by a Singapore leader since independence.
How S. Rajaratnam handled Singapore’s 1964 race riots in the face of ‘arsonists playing firemen’
As he listened to the frantic voice on the phone, S. Rajaratnam realised that his greatest fear had come to pass. As one of the chief architects of Singapore’s independence, he had experienced some tough situations – but this was the worst tragedy to befall his country in his five years in politics.
It was July 21, 1964, barely a year after Singapore merged with Malaya and two Borneo states, Sabah and Sarawak, to form Malaysia in September 1963.
The voice on the phone that late afternoon was that of his close colleague Othman Wok, the social affairs minister. Othman had looked up to Raja, as the culture minister was usually known, since their journalism days in the 1950s. Raja had led the Singapore Union of Journalists as its president with Othman as his deputy.
After Raja, together with Lee Kuan Yew and others, formed the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1954, Othman had joined the new left-wing party. What bound them was a common vision: to build a non-communal society based on justice and equality.
Now, on this hot, horrible day in July 1964, Othman bore news of a racial clash that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. “Some Malays are causing problems,” he reported. “Beating up Chinese bystanders. Things are getting out of control.”
Othman, the only Malay minister in the Singapore Cabinet, was leading a PAP contingent as part of a 20,000-strong procession to mark Prophet Muhammad’s birthday that day.
Over the phone, he told Raja the scenes he had just witnessed: Malay youths punching a Chinese policeman struggling to control the rowdy procession as it headed towards the Malay settlement of Geylang, then breaking off from the march to attack Chinese passers-by at random. Sensing danger, he and several others had slipped into the People’s Association headquarters in Kallang. This was where he had rung Raja.
The day being a public holiday, Raja was catching up on his reading in his book-lined home, a bungalow in Chancery Lane. At 49, he was the oldest among the nine-man Cabinet, and often appeared unflappable in any crisis. “He was very cool,” Othman recalled, “one who never got excited about anything.”
Raja might project an air of equanimity, but internally his thoughts were racing. He knew only too well how quickly racial and religious passions could boil over and lead to mass riots.
In a series of phone calls, he quickly conferred with prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and others on the dangerous situation. This was the first serious racial clash they had to deal with since taking charge of self-governing Singapore in 1959.
Gripped by urgency, he jumped into his sun-baked second-hand black Hillman and drove to his office at City Hall. As soon as he arrived and sat behind his desk, he began working the phone.
As story after story came in of Malay groups attacking Chinese people, overturning their cars, scooters and hawker carts, and setting their homes and businesses on fire, his alarm ratcheted up another notch.
The topmost priority of the PAP leaders was to contain the violence. To their frustration, however, they found their hands tied. Under the merger agreement between Singapore and Malaya, internal security did not come under Singapore’s control but under the federal government in Kuala Lumpur.
As reports of casualties poured in, the Singapore leaders urged KL to impose a curfew. Malaysian prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman was away in America, leaving his deputy, Tun Abdul Razak, in charge. The curfew was finally called at 9.30pm. But still the streets seethed with savagery.
Disturbingly, reports began filtering in that the KL-controlled security forces, who were mainly Malay, were siding with Malays against Chinese. In turn, Chinese secret society gangs, having lost confidence in the police, led revenge attacks against Malays. The spiral of violence seemed unstoppable.
As the government’s communications czar, Raja knew that the public needed assurance. The government must be seen to be in control, even if it might not be. The former newspaperman had long understood the power of words. In such a tinderbox atmosphere, just one wrong word, one insensitive phrase, could set off another cycle of violence.
Rampage rages on
Raja planted himself in the thick of action in the operations room at the police headquarters at Pearl’s Hill. His old journalistic habits – checking and analysing the facts, drawing inferences and extrapolating patterns – kicked in. Accustomed to working under high pressure, he bent over his battered Adler portable typewriter and typed out a press release on the spot. Even as he detailed the police update, he made sure to emphasise the government’s key message: stay calm.
Outside the station, wild stories of attacks and counter-attacks spread like wildfire across the island. Malay families fearing reprisals began fleeing from Chinese-dominated areas. Chinese families high-tailed it out of Malay areas.
It proved a formidable challenge for the leaders to keep the public informed amid the curfew and the chaos. Hours after the riots, at 10.45pm, Lee, with Raja standing by, made radio and television broadcasts in Malay, Mandarin and English appealing for a return to sanity.
Still the rampage raged on. By midnight on that first day, four people would be killed and 180 injured.
Raja was mortified to learn that the worst fighting was taking place near the Kallang Gas Works on the fringes of his own constituency of Kampong Glam, which was famous for its Malay heritage and notorious for its Chinese gangsters. To add to his horror, he received reports that at Sultan Mosque – the heartbeat of the Muslim community in his ward – some federal security troops had passed their batons to Malay rioters to beat up the Chinese.
As the body count rose, so too his anguish and anger. Over the next four days, the toll would mount: 22 people killed and 461 injured. The scale of the communal clash was unprecedented in Singapore’s post-war history.
For a man who had devoted his life to paving a non-communal path for his country, the racial clashes were especially hard to confront.
Raja had often preached to all who would listen that building a non-communal foundation was the only effective defence against the racial and religious strife that had ravaged so many other newly independent countries. Yet the clashes erupted. They gave a hollow ring to his much-vaunted ambition for Singapore: to be an example to the world of a united multiracial society based on the principles of social justice and non-communalism.
It was a brutal time for Raja and his fellow leaders as they grasped that, without any control over the security forces, Singapore’s stability – and, in fact, its very future – lay at the mercy of the Federation.
Fighting fake news
On the second day of the riots, Raja was made Singapore’s point man for dealing with the Federation government on the racial troubles.
His KL-appointed counterpart was Federation minister Mohamed Khir Johari, who was close to the Tunku. Khir was designated the “director of operations” with full authority to work with the security forces in Singapore.
With security escort, Khir, who was also chairman of the Singapore Umno branch, could go anywhere in Singapore even when the city was locked down in curfew. The Malaysian minister recalled later: “I was more or less like the ‘uncrowned king of Singapore’... I had full freedom to travel everywhere.”
It struck Raja as reprehensible that, at this moment of high racial tension in Singapore, Khir would include in his delegation the very same communal demagogues whom the PAP leaders had fingered for the riots – Singapore Umno leaders Syed Esa Almenoar and Syed Ali Redha Alsagoff.
The Singapore minister’s suspicion was now thoroughly aroused: Were the arsonists playing firemen? It was as clear as day that while Khir was ostensibly going about his duties to maintain peace on the island, he was assiduously courting Malay support for Umno.
As the American consul-general in Singapore, Arthur H. Rosen, reported to Washington, “for a few days, Central Government leaders virtually took over the Singapore Government... Kuala Lumpur’s muscles were flexed for all to see”.
In working with Khir during this precarious period, Raja’s single-minded goal was to restore order and stability to the island. By this time, he was deep in the trenches dealing with a barrage of rumours and lies that could find a ready audience and trigger another outbreak of violence.
One pernicious rumour that sent shock waves across the island involved the alleged massacre of a Muslim religious teacher, Sheikh Osman, who was an imam at Joo Chiat mosque, and his family by Chinese rioters. Outraged by the “news”, more than 1,000 Malays gathered at a mosque in Jalan Labu on July 23, where they were incited to avenge the alleged killings.
When Raja learnt that, lo and behold, the imam and his family were in fact alive and well, he collared Khir immediately to make a television appearance with the religious leader to scotch the rumour.
As Raja sought to pierce the fog of what would be called fake news today, the germ of suspicion began to grow in his mind that the riots were orchestrated. Reading through Utusan Melayu’s reports, he found the paper’s non-stop racist attacks on the PAP breathtaking in their audacity and malice. It fed Umno secretary-general Ja’afar Albar’s incendiary campaign. The Malay daily, written in Jawi script, was widely read by the Malays in Singapore’s rural heartland.
This, Raja believed, was the moment when Umno showed its hand: On July 24, the Umno journal, Merdeka, made the outrageous claim that the incidents had happened because of the PAP government’s treatment of the people “and of the minorities in particular who feel that they are being oppressed and victimised”. The ultras, through Merdeka – which was controlled by Albar – began calling for a change in the top leadership of the PAP.
‘Not your neighbours’
On July 24 at 3.30pm, the minute the day’s curfew ended, Raja and deputy prime minister Toh Chin Chye visited the riot-stricken areas in their wards.
The duo, dressed in white short-sleeved shirts, surveyed the sorry scene from an open-top Land Rover as it rumbled through every dusty lorong and street in Kampong Glam, Rochor and Crawford. Shards of broken glass here, burnt wooden carts there, stones and debris everywhere – all reminders of the recent horrors.
The sheltered corridors of the two-storey shophouses that used to throng with merchants of different races selling goods side by side – spices, flowers, textiles, rattan ware – were eerily silent.
Raja and Toh took turns on the microphone. Their voices boomed out a central message: Keep calm and help restore order; don’t allow rumours to disrupt the peace.
Hearing blaring voices and roaring vehicles in the streets, a straggle of residents emerged cautiously from their homes onto the five-foot ways. Others clambered onto their clay-tiled roofs, and perched like nervous sparrows on the alert.
As the leaders reached the towering Sultan Mosque, where many Malays had taken refuge, all was quiet. Some came out to cluster behind the cast-iron railings of the mosque’s low boundary walls. Their expressions were guarded, even closed. Raja addressed them in bazaar Malay. Most of the Chinese attackers, he told them, came from outside the area. “They are not your neighbours,” he said.
As their Land Rover turned into the Chinese quarter, the ministers found the mood sullen. Some residents sulked with arms crossed, while others skulked in the shadows of the five-foot ways. As the convoy reached them, they erupted into a chorus of taunts. As Toh recalled later, “we were rebuffed with jeers from our Chinese constituents when we urged them to keep the peace and remain calm”. As the leaders would discover later, the Chinese anger stemmed from talk that the Singapore government had failed to protect them during the riots, thus forcing them to depend on Chinese secret society members.
As the fissure between the Malays and Chinese threatened to widen to an unbridgeable chasm, Raja called on his fearful community leaders to regroup. At the constituency centre, he said: “Let us stop this madness while there is still time, while the desire for friendship between communities is still strong.” With his encouragement, the community leaders began forming groups to keep order in each street and to restore racial harmony.
These efforts marked the beginning of “goodwill committees”, or jawatankuasa muhibah in Malay, that would soon be set up in every constituency to help keep the peace between the races. Raja’s Kampong Glam set the early gold standard: Its goodwill committee was made up of four Malays, four Chinese and two Indians.
Lee Khoon Choy, then political secretary to the prime minister, had one word for Raja’s leadership during the riots: “Inspirational”. “He was our political strategist in managing racial issues, urging all the PAP wards to form their own goodwill committees and guiding us,” he recalled.
Yet while the PAP leaders were rising to the challenge, their political stock was falling. Ground reports they received indicated that the government was losing public support. As Raja thought through the implications, he became even more convinced that this was a battle that the Umno demagogues could not be allowed to win.
S. Rajaratnam on the 1965 Separation: ‘My dreams were shattered’
Drawing on previously classified documents and interviews, Irene Ng casts new light on the events leading to the Separation in 1965. Here is an edited excerpt.
Raja looked over the Separation Agreement that Lee Kuan Yew had handed him, and said: “I will not sign it.” He could not bow to the decision to split Singapore from Malaysia. And he would not. It was Aug 7, 1965, and he was enduring the most painful hours of his political life.
Lee had broken the news to Raja as soon as he strode into Temasek House in Kuala Lumpur just past 8am. Raja had rushed up after being summoned by a phone call from Lee in KL at about 1am.
Upon arriving at the two-storey bungalow, Raja found Lee in a “very agitated frame of mind”. Without any pleasantries to ease the blow, the PM laid out the Tunku’s proposals. They sounded to Raja like an ultimatum mixed with a threat: either leave Malaysia willingly, or be responsible for a racial bloodbath.
The full horror of the situation hit him when Lee said he did not want to be responsible for a bloodbath and had to accept separation from Malaysia. Raja’s answer was to challenge and overturn that decision. In an anguished voice, he asked: How could they betray the leaders from Sabah and Sarawak? He went over how the Borneo territories, fearful of Malay domination, would not have joined Malaysia in 1963 had it not been for Singapore’s assurance of its countervailing presence. And how could they abandon their Malaysian Solidarity Convention (MSC) allies and supporters? They had stuck out their necks to fight alongside the PAP for a Malaysian Malaysia.
Lee impressed on him that the Alliance government had control over the military and the police. Raja emerged from their meeting in a mutinous mood. He was relieved to find someone else in the house as opposed as he was: Toh Chin Chye, who had arrived earlier that morning to the same news, and had been stewing in his outrage.
Separation bombshell
Both of them were very tired, having hardly slept a wink all night, but they were pumped with the adrenaline of their convictions. They reminded Lee that one of the party’s founding aims was merger with Malaya. They had fought so hard for it. For hours, they turned over the options, the risks, how to avoid the extreme solution of separation. While they did not dismiss the threat of a racial riot, they thought that “perhaps the Tunku was bluffing”, said Raja later. It was possible that the Malaysian PM was using it as a weapon to get rid of Singapore so as to make it easier for him to digest “the new acquisitions” of Sabah and Sarawak.
They weighed the risk of repression against the certainty of the death of their Malaysian quest. His jaw set firmly, Raja told Lee: “Let’s take the risk.” Toh was as adamant in pursuing this line.
“The PM went through the whole arguments all over again,” Raja recalled. “I didn’t see things that way, neither did Dr Toh. The argument went round and round. It was highly emotional,” he said. “We felt very strongly, and eventually, the PM had to report to the Tunku that we were against it,” said Raja.
At 12.30pm, Lee went to see the Tunku at the Residency, his official residence. He conveyed the opposition of Toh and Raja to separation, and asked if the Tunku would reconsider the earlier proposal for a looser federation or a confederation. But the Tunku had made up his mind. He also turned down Lee’s request for him to see Toh and Raja.
With spirits low and hands empty, the Singapore PM returned to Temasek House to update Raja and Toh. This was followed by what Lee described as a “painful silence”. It stretched between them for several hours.
Raja, a chain-smoker, sat in the patio and puffed one cigarette after another. Toh, meanwhile, sat at the desk by the foot of the stairs near the dining room. Methodically, he wrote on a piece of paper the arguments for and against separation. When they eventually emerged from their reverie, it was with a renewed resolve to resist separation. After further futile remonstrations, Lee finally asked: “Well, would you accept it, if you heard it from the Tunku himself?”
That was how, for the second time, he found himself wending his way to the Tunku. He told the Malaysian PM that Toh and Raja “were not going to sign and were absolutely adamant about it”. They wanted to see him. Again, the Tunku refused, saying: “Nothing more to discuss. You tell them.” In desperation, Lee asked the Tunku to write a letter to them, saying “then they would take your word as final”. Reluctantly, the Tunku agreed.
In the Tunku’s account of that meeting, as reported by the Australian deputy high commissioner W.B. Pritchett, “Lee raised no objections personally to the separation but said that he was having trouble with Toh and Rajaratnam”. Lee assured him that, with a letter, Toh and Rajaratnam would sign.
The Tunku’s handwritten letter, addressed to Toh, made clear that his decision to “break with Singapore” was final, and that he saw absolutely no other way out. “If I were strong enough and able to exercise complete control of the situation, I might perhaps have delayed action,” he wrote, “but I am not, and so while I am able to counsel tolerance and patience, I think the amicable settlement of our differences in this way is the only possible way out.”
Lee was a tight bundle of nerves by the time he showed the Tunku’s letter to Toh and Raja. It presented a “very painful moral dilemma”, as Raja related later. To accept the Tunku’s ultimatum was to betray Sabah and Sarawak, and all their allies and supporters in Malaysia. On the other hand, to reject it could well unleash a savage racial war, and possibly lead to an armed Malaysia bearing down on an unarmed Singapore.
The prospect of a military takeover filled Raja with dark thoughts. For a fleeting moment, Raja considered resorting to an underground struggle by forming a united front with the armed communists. Toh also toyed with the thought. It was, however, dismissed quickly enough – Raja admitted later that it was “a bit of lunacy”. Nevertheless, it reflected the depths of their desperation.
To cut short further arguments, Lee told Toh in exasperation: “Look, the Tunku won’t see you, but if you don’t trust my judgment – that really I think he will not be able to hold the situation – then I will become your deputy and you become prime minister and you take full responsibility for what I am sure must be a deliberate build-up towards a bloodbath.” The DPM, who had no ambition to take over, told Lee not to talk that way. Shortly after that, Toh signed the Separation Agreement.
Raja stared at the blank space next to his designation “Minister for Culture” on the piece of paper that would decide Singapore’s fate. He took out his pen from his shirt pocket, fiddled with it; then a quick scrawl of his signature. When the deed was done, he must have felt as if he had signed away a piece of himself. It framed a moment in history when nothing would ever be the same again.
Painful trip to Seremban
On Aug 9, the day Lee proclaimed Singapore’s independence, Raja was not in Singapore. He had to carry out one final duty in Malaysia – to break the news directly to the PAP branch in his home town of Seremban.
He cut a sad and sombre figure as he faced the activists gathered in his brother Seevaratnam’s house. He told them Singapore was “kicked out” of Malaysia. The Tunku wanted the PAP out, he said, because the Alliance was alarmed by the widening influence of the PAP and the MSC. Chen Man Hin, the branch’s founding secretary, recalled: “He left it to us to decide whether to carry on with the fight in Malaysia. But we were in a state of shock. All the party leaders were not with us, how to survive? We felt let down.”
The activists spoke back in alternately angry and plaintive tones. “Many of them were quite angry and felt betrayed,” Raja recalled later. “They were right to feel that way and, even to this day, I would consider the agreement to separate as one of the most shameful moments of my life.”
As he put it later: “Separation, to me, was the crushing of my dreams. I believed in one nation, regardless of race and religion. My dreams were shattered.” It was also the severance of the political umbilical cord that linked him to Malaya, where more than 300 of his relatives still lived. “So to me, it was a separation from kith and kin.”
When Lee wept publicly in announcing the separation at a press conference in Singapore on Aug 9, calling it “a moment of anguish”, it was what Raja felt too, except perhaps it was a deeper, more personal, and almost existential feeling of despair.
Lee was well aware of Raja’s torment. As he told the press then: “Mr Rajaratnam is a very brave man, and he had to go down to Seremban to face his school friends, his own family, his own brother to tell them why now they are foreigners to each other.” Raja had signed the Separation Agreement, Lee added, “partly because of logic, reason; partly loyalty. Loyalty to each other because we have been in battle for so long, so close together that we would not let each other down”.
The strength of their relationship and their leadership would be tested to the limit under the strain of the current crisis.
End of the road?
To the outside world, the top PAP leaders presented a tight-knit united front. But internally, the group was roiling with grief, anxiety and tension.
On Aug 10, when feelings were still raw and running high, Lee told Frank Mills, the British deputy high commissioner to Singapore, that “he was still worried about the solidarity of the PAP Cabinet, particularly Toh and Rajaratnam”. The two men believed separation was a negation of the first article of the PAP’s original constitution, which called for the reintegration of Singapore and Malaya, and “there was still risk they would abandon Goh Keng Swee and himself as men of no principle for advocating it”.
Lee confided that, if either Toh or Raja quit, he could not hold his position in Singapore. “Toh had already offered to resign and might do so again,” he told Mills. He had carried the Separation Agreement through Cabinet only because of the support of Goh, Lim Kim San, Eddie Barker and Jek Yeun Thong, and “shaky support” from Othman Wok.
As for Goh, he was his usual acerbic self when probed on the Separation Agreement by Pritchett, the Australian diplomat. His comments on this aspect, reported Pritchett, “were jeers at Rajaratnam’s histrionics”.
Certainly, Raja had reason to feel personally wounded, if not more than a little betrayed. All along, he had believed that the negotiations between Goh and the KL leaders were aimed at seeking some modification of Singapore’s attitude, such as refraining from polemical statements. The idea that separation was in the works had not occurred to him. Given his fundamental disagreement with it, he would not be human if the thought of resigning from the Cabinet had not crossed his mind. But he dismissed it. But however devastated he was at separation, leaving the Cabinet would be another level of betrayal that was beyond him to even contemplate. As would leaving Singapore for Malaysia.
He said later: “I believed in multiracial democracy. And Singapore. I could have gone back to Seremban. But to me, politics is the essence of everything. It would have been betraying my political ideals.”
The Separation was a crucible. It intensified everything for Raja and his colleagues – their purpose, their hopes and their fears.
Since its founding in 1954, the PAP had argued that Singapore could not survive on its own. At Separation, Raja recalled their existential moment: “We thought maybe that’s the end of the road – even for us, for Singapore.”
Crafting the National Pledge: How S. Rajaratnam put Singapore’s essence into words
One of Mr S. Rajaratnam’s enduring legacies is the National Pledge, which he drafted in 1966. Here is an edited excerpt from Irene Ng’s new book in which she gives new insights into his priorities as he worked on the draft.
One February day in 1966, Raja sat in his spartan office in City Hall and settled into his rich world of ideas. Each day brought new conflicts and decisions. But few were more demanding on Raja’s creative faculties than the task at hand – distilling the essence of Singapore’s ideals and identity into one sentence.
The exercise had begun in response to a request for help from education minister Ong Pang Boon. With Singapore’s independence, an important part of Ong’s brief was to inculcate national consciousness among the half million pupils who made up over a quarter of the country’s population.
In his letter headed “Flag Raising Ceremony” dated Feb 2, 1966, Ong sought Raja’s advice on the wording for a students’ pledge of allegiance to the flag. Furnishing two versions drafted by staff, he asked Raja for his comments and for “whatever amendments you wish to suggest”.
This was not the first time that Ong had turned to Raja for help with ideas and public presentation. Nor was he the only minister to do so. Among his colleagues, Raja was respected for his strategic counsel, communication skills as well as his generosity of spirit. Despite his own demanding workload, he never minded slaving away on other ministers’ projects, taking no credit for being the originator of the ideas.
This particular project from Ong, however, struck a deep emotional chord in Raja, the restless sage of Singapore’s national ideology. He had long placed his hopes on the young to realise the country’s multiracial vision, understanding that the process would take generations.
Multiracialism tested
A year into independence, the government’s commitment to multiracialism was being tested anew. Chinese-educated groups were now banging on its door to assert their cultural dominance as the majority. They demanded that the Chinese language become the dominant language, and slammed the government’s policy to make English the common working language and retain Malay as the national language.
Scenting a political opportunity, Malay extremists from KL sought to fuel the anxieties and suspicions of the Singapore Malays, who were now in the minority again. Some Umno leaders renewed calls for special rights for Malays in Singapore while fanning fears that the Chinese were seeking to displace Malay as the national language on the island.
Meanwhile, the pro-communist Barisan Sosialis, influenced by the revolutionary fervour in China, boycotted Parliament. It vowed to take the “battle to the streets” with illegal strikes and protests. Political unrest was also rife in the immediate regional neighbourhood, with simmering anti-Chinese sentiment driven mainly by fears of communist insurgents linked to the People’s Republic of China.
It was a dangerous time. For Raja, there were few nightmare scenarios worse than ethnic bloodshed and anarchy: What if, under the external and domestic pressures, the people in Singapore responded not as Singaporeans, but as Malays, Chinese, Indians and others. Should the government fail to keep the country together, it would become a failed state, creating opportunities for communist subversion or foreign intervention.
Fresh on his mind was the prediction by Ghazali Shafie, then the permanent secretary of the Malaysian external affairs ministry, that, after a few years out on a limb, Singapore would crawl back to the Malay-dominated government in KL on Malaysia’s terms.
Singapore’s most decisive battles were internal, and they turned on the character of the society being forged. In the country’s darkest hour, when almost everything worthwhile seemed at risk, Raja oriented himself towards a future worth fighting for, dug deep into his inner resources, and found the words that would define the nation.
Not ‘I’ but ‘We’
He began by reading the two versions of the pledge enclosed in Ong’s letter. One drafted by Philip Liau, the education ministry’s adviser on textbooks and syllabuses, was modelled on the American Students’ Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge (reaffirm) my allegiance (loyalty) to the Flag of Singapore, and to the country for which it stands; one sovereign nation of many freedom-loving people of one heart, one mind and one spirit, dedicated to a just and equal society.”
The other by George Thomson, director of the Political Study Centre, read: “I proudly and wholeheartedly pledge my loyalty to our flag of Singapore and to the honour and independence of our Republic whose banner it is. We come from different races, religions and cultures, but we are now united in mind and heart as one nation, and one people, dedicated to build by democratic means a more just and equal society.”
Raja put both versions aside. Having spent most of his adult life reflecting on the larger questions of national purpose, he decided to thread what he believed should be the core ideals with his own string. He toiled alone; just one man and his pen.
Eventually, he settled on this formulation: “We, as citizens of Singapore, pledge to forget differences of race, language and religion and become one united people; to build a democratic society where justice and equality will prevail, and where we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another.”
The prose of this first draft transformed the entire premise of the pledge as originally conceived by the education ministry. First, it is not about pledging loyalty to the inanimate flag. Rather, it is a promise made to oneself and to one another to live by a set of fundamental values. It is a pledge to shared ideals and a common purpose.
Profoundly, while the first two versions used the personal pronoun “I”, Raja opted for the collective “we”. This is the language of inclusion – the “citizens of Singapore”. It is not we as Chinese, as Malays, Indians or Eurasians, nor we as Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus or Christians and so on, but we as fellow citizens. It is not we the high, nor we the low, but we as equals. It brings into existence the “imagined community” of a united people, bound by a common destiny.
Second, Raja infused the pledge with a moral imperative – to build a democratic society centred on justice and equality. It requires people to combine democratic self-rule with self-restraint, politics with ethics. It is a democracy of a certain kind – one based on the bonds of collective responsibility and human dignity.
More radically, the pledge obliges people to put aside their age-old prejudices and disregard their differences of race, language and religion. This was what he meant by “forget”. Contrary to the opinion of some, Raja did not mean that he wanted people to deny or obliterate their differences, or to erase their cultural heritage.
What enraged him were racism, cultural chauvinism and racial politics. Given the political imperative of uniting the people, he had pursued a policy of “laying stress on those things which unite the races rather than those which divide them”. Unlike creating jobs or building houses, however, forging a sense of national unity could not be measured. It could only be experienced.
It was this sense of “forgetting” – when national consciousness transcended racial consciousness – that underlay his draft text for the pledge.
Third, he appealed to the best in the people. This sprang from his deep belief that man had “a divine spark which a good leader can bring out”. Aware that happiness and progress were legitimate aims of many peoples around the world, Raja upended prevailing assumptions on the means to those ends. It was by “helping one another”, as opposed to helping oneself, one’s family or one’s communal group. It called for a fellow-feeling for the weak, and solidarity and sympathy between people of different races and religions.
In essence, the phrases encapsulated Raja’s vision of what Singapore was about, what it meant to be Singaporean, and why the small island was worth living for, struggling for and dying for.
Given the torrent of urgent issues confronting him, it was a reflection of Raja’s mental discipline that he could complete the conceptual task. Still, he must have been desperate for time. On Feb 17, he skipped his meet-the-people session, a rare occurrence when he was in town. His former culture ministry aide, Ghazali Ismail, covered for him. The next day, Raja sent his draft to Ong in a typed two-paragraph letter.
The final version
The final version, sent in a circular headed “Oath Swearing Ceremony” from the director of education to school principals on Aug 15, had a few variations from Raja’s first draft. It read:
“We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.”
From available records, it is hard to be definitive about whose hand was behind this or that new word in the final version. There is not an iota of doubt, however, that the pledge owed much to Raja and his ideas. It bore his ideological signature and turns of phrase. He was its principal author.
The records show no sign of PM Lee Kuan Yew’s part in finalising the words of the pledge. Certainly, the pledge was something that he would not have been able to “even conceive” at the time, Lee confessed later. It contained a vision that he did not imagine could be realistically achieved, at least not for a long time. But “Raja believed firmly in it”, Lee said. “Given the mood of the people in Singapore at that time,” he observed, “only Raja had the conviction and optimism to express those long-term aspirations in that pledge.”
For Raja, however, the pledge was clearly more than an aspiration. Aspirations do not have to be binding, or defended. To him, the entire premise of the pledge was that it was exactly that – a collective promise made, a promise to be kept. People did not unite, fight and die for long-term aspirations that might or might not be fulfilled. They would do so, however, for something worth living for – a way of life that was dear to them. In fact, by the act itself of striving to live up to the ideals every day, they were protecting the nation’s values and fighting for them. That was the powerful idea behind the words as Raja had intended them.
The first recitation
Those behind the pledge, including Raja, must have held their breaths when, on Aug 24, 1966, the “oath”, as it was known then, was recited for the first time by students in all 529 government and aided schools. It marked the start of what was to become a daily ritual in schools.
As expected, it sparked an outcry from communal-based groups. Less anticipated, however, was the resistance from some conservative teachers. On Aug 29, Lee gave the effort a push in a meeting with school principals. He then made a surprising revelation: “I had not seen it (the oath) before it was circulated.” He added: “But I thought to myself in the English and even in the Chinese which I read, it is a bit too long for a primary school boy of six or seven.” Still, “the idea is right”, though he thought it could be further improved.
Strikingly, unlike the Singapore flag which was formally tabled at and approved by the Cabinet in 1959, there is no record of any Cabinet agenda item or discussion on the pledge. Neither was it taken through Parliament.
This left the door wide open to tinkering with the pledge, if not a complete retraction. In fact, there was an attempt in 1968 by Ong to replace the words “regardless of” in the phrase “regardless of race, language or religion” with “whatever the”. His ministry officials resisted the change on pragmatic grounds: cohorts of students had already memorised the pledge.
For Raja, the introduction of the pledge must have seemed a sort of a triumph, but it came with a sense of accumulating tension that was almost palpable. The tension reveals itself in a paradox: on the one hand, he was fiercely protective over Singapore’s sovereignty and its multiracial vision; on the other, he still embraced the logic of eventual merger with Malaysia.
His internal struggle was important not only as a phase in his own intellectual and political development, but also as a turning point in the ideological and emotional history of independent Singapore.
The pain of trying to create and sustain a vision in the midst of deeply troubling realities was sapping, but it was a vision that offered solace and potential for growth and renewal for himself as well as for others.
The Singapore Pledge should be regarded as one of the founding documents of independent Singapore, and treated on a par with the Singapore flag and the Constitution. It should be enshrined through an Act of Parliament, and protected, so that no one can alter it without permission from Parliament. Singapore was founded essentially upon an idea. That idea was encapsulated in the National Pledge.
‘Marco Polo on his first visit to China’: When S. Rajaratnam met Zhou Enlai
As foreign minister, S. Rajaratnam paved the way for Singapore’s engagement of China in 1975. This edited excerpt from Irene Ng’s new book gives insights into his first visit to China.
It was past 9pm, Sunday, March 16, 1975. Raja, the first Singapore leader to visit China since Singapore’s independence, was in a Chinese-made Red Flag limousine, curtains drawn, being whisked through the near-empty streets of Peking to an undisclosed place. He was not told where it was exactly, but what he knew was enough. He was on his way to meet the ailing Chinese premier Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai) at a place that the Chinese had described as a hospital.
The late-night arrangement was not on the programme when he arrived in Peking with a four-man delegation three days earlier. In fact, he was told about it only that very evening over a dinner, after rounds of intensive talks with Chinese foreign minister Chiao Kuan-hua (Qiao Guanhua).
There were several unexpected turns during Raja’s nine-day goodwill mission from March 12 to 21, but none as momentous as his dialogue with Chou. It was a landmark event in the tumultuous – and currently stalled – state of Sino-Singapore relations. It would in fact end a decade of official sullen silence and open a new era in relations between the two countries.
This, however, did not come without drama and mystery. Indeed, Raja’s political reconnaissance to China felt not dissimilar to an expedition to a destination that had yet to be discovered. Much of the country was still caught up in the tumult of the chaotic Cultural Revolution. As with most things in the closed, paranoid China of that revolutionary era, Chou’s health and condition were shrouded in secrecy. Also under wraps were the name and location of the hospital where he was convalescing.
The only thing that the Chinese hosts would divulge to the Singapore delegation, and indeed the outside world, was that the 77-year-old premier had been admitted since last May on his doctors’ advice for working without rest throughout the Cultural Revolution, which had begun in 1966.
Breaking the ice
Upon arriving at the place described as a hospital, Raja stepped out of the car to find himself at the entrance of a villa near a lake. Accompanying him was Lee Khoon Choy, then the senior minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Chou, in a grey Zhongshan suit with a Mao badge with five stars, met them at the doorway. It was 9.35pm. The premier’s act of greeting the two Singapore ministers at the doorway was a gesture of considerable courtesy, given the difference in protocol rank. Chinese official photographers captured what became an iconic moment – Chou and Raja beaming at each other, their hands clasped in a warm handshake, and a smiling Khoon Choy in the background.
The Chinese premier then led the two Singaporeans to the sitting room on the left of the hall. More photos were taken of Chou and Raja exchanging pleasantries as they sat looking relaxed in armchairs, separated by a side table with a spittoon below.
The Chinese liked to use historical analogies, parables and metaphors, and this suited Raja well. To break the ice, Raja’s first words to Chou were that he felt like “Marco Polo on his first visit to China” – indicating that the purpose of his visit was to discover and explore new opportunities with an open mind. The remark drew a laugh from Chou.
The press photographers were then dismissed, and the real conversation began. Over the next 45 minutes, both sides sought to gauge each other’s thinking on key issues, and to signal and clarify their own stances in an atmosphere of cordiality and courtesy.
It did not take long before the Chinese premier broached the issue that grated on him more than any other – that of Russian ships calling on Singapore ports. He asked whether Singapore also provided repair services to Russian naval ships. Anticipating this question, Raja explained that the Singapore government would not discriminate against any country that wanted to repair its ships, including warships. However, after he had pointed out to the Russians that some of the engineers were British, the Russians had not sent their warships for repairs. Later, the Russians had asked to lease an island off Singapore for such repair purposes with their own engineers – a request that was rejected by the Singapore government, Raja said.
On hearing this, Chou laughed. He then related how the Russians had used the pretext of repairing their ships in Hong Kong for long periods of three to four months to consolidate their subversive activities. After a ship left, another would move in, carrying out the function of a Russian consulate in disguise.
At this juncture, Raja found it opportune to convey his own PM’s message that the Singapore government would not allow the country to be used as a base for subversive activities against its neighbours, including the PRC. He added that Singapore had no quarrel with China and “would not allow those who are China’s enemies to use Singapore as an arrow to harm Chinese interests”.
In response, Chou thanked PM Lee Kuan Yew for “Singapore’s policy of thoughtfulness”, and volunteered the assurance that overseas Chinese who had become citizens of a foreign country would not be regarded as overseas Chinese. The Chinese policy in this respect had not changed, he said, and was still based on the spirit of the Bandung Conference.
He then expressed his hope that Singapore could be a model of good relations that could be maintained “between China and an independent foreign country inhabited by Chinese and who have Chinese as their citizens”. He added: “We can call this relationship as that of kinsmen or relatives.”
By this stage, this repetitious reference to “kinsmen” had become somewhat tiresome to Raja’s ears. At every opportunity throughout his visit, he had expounded on Singapore’s multiracial policy with passionate conviction.
In fact, at the welcome banquet two days earlier, he had devoted about half his speech to the subject. The country was made up of immigrants from diverse countries – China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Ceylon and the Middle East – and the languages and cultures of the various communities were nurtured and transformed to suit its needs. And although ethnic Chinese formed the majority of Singapore’s population, “its political system and social outlook have been and will be shaped by the South-east Asian environment of which it is an integral part”, he had stressed.
At his meeting with Chou, Raja again explained the difficulties faced by Singapore in the region, referring to the onerous label “Third China”. Chou responded by asking Raja to convey to Lee that “he should be at ease with this problem”.
Turning to the question of diplomatic ties, Chou said he had been fully briefed by his officials. He reiterated that China would like to have diplomatic relations with Singapore as early as possible, but “understood Singapore’s difficulties and would be prepared to wait until Singapore was ready to do so”. He also indicated support for Asean, saying that the member countries should never allow superpowers to exploit their differences and to exert their hegemony.
Chou’s willingness to accommodate Singapore’s wish to be last in Asean to establish relations with China reflected a departure from his previous preference, as voiced to the Australian leader Gough Whitlam in 1973, that Singapore be the first in Asean to do so. His clear support for Asean – once excoriated by the Chinese as a “so-called alliance” in service of “US imperialism and Soviet revisionism” – also marked a sea change from China’s rhetoric in years past.
Significantly, Chou did not raise the issue of Singapore’s decision to train its troops in Taiwan. The only question he had for Raja was whether the Taiwanese had given Singapore any trouble. Raja replied that “they were not causing us any trouble”, and that was the end of that subject.
The Chinese premier’s explicit recognition of Singapore as a sovereign country, along with his understanding of Singapore’s position on diplomatic relations with the PRC, amounted to a diplomatic and public relations coup for Raja. Within less than an hour, the two leaders had sidestepped many of the ideological obstacles that had blocked official cooperation for a decade.
When the Singaporean leaders stood up to say farewell to Chou, he escorted them to the front of the gate. The Chinese leader left a lasting impression on Raja for his consummate courtesy from beginning to end, as well as his sophisticated and refined diplomatic style. The Singaporeans were also struck by his systematic approach throughout their dialogue.
The next day, the official photos, taken by Hsinhua (New China) News Agency (now Xinhua), were splashed over the front pages of the Chinese national paper People’s Daily and local Peking newspaper Quong Ming Ribao (Guang Ming), signifying the importance that China attached to Raja’s visit despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
In Singapore, too, the same photos were given page-one treatment. The reports and captions followed the Chinese official version that the meeting was held in a lounge of the hospital where the Chinese premier had been recuperating.
The Singaporeans found out only later that the place was actually an exclusive resort in the walled Chungnanhai (Zhongnanhai) compound, a former imperial garden reserved for the party leadership.
Raja thought the Chinese premier looked “quite healthy”. “His eyes were sharp and he did not look like an old man though he sounded tired,” he told Asean diplomats upon his return. Khoon Choy observed in his report: “Although he looked pale, he was mentally alert.” It was only later that the Singapore leaders learnt how seriously ill Chou was – he was suffering from terminal cancer – and how much pressure he was under from ruthless party radicals determined to keep China focused on class struggle and revolution, and isolated from the outside world.
Chou must have known that he did not have much time left to set China on the course of economic reform and opening to the outside world.
In his assessment to Lee on March 29, Raja noted that both Chou and Chiao “made it known that, though they would like to normalise relations, they understood our position and were prepared to wait”. Chou clearly demonstrated strategic patience and took the long view of bilateral relations with Singapore. “The keynote was one of accommodation and not stressing differences. So our concern that the Chinese might embarrass us over Taiwan proved groundless,” wrote Raja. “There was no reaction when we mentioned training of our armed forces in Taiwan.”
While there were differences of views over some issues such as on the Law of the Sea, “at no time, did the Chinese press us to review our positions on issues where we disagreed with them”, noted Raja.
In his analysis, the Chinese, at least for the immediate future, wanted stability in South-east Asia. With Western interest in the region diminishing, they believed that instability and confusion would favour Soviet interests. “As of now, we must take Chinese gestures of friendship and regard for an independent Singapore at their face value,” he advised. “Under Chou’s leadership, generally one of moderation, accommodation with Singapore is most likely to be genuine. There are others in China who disagree with Chou’s policy but they are today not in the forefront.”
The economic connection
Raja’s mission to China and his meeting with Chou would go down in Singapore’s modern history as one of its major diplomatic turning points. It was a watershed moment that ended years of Sino-Singapore animosity and set their relationship on a new course of engagement amid inherent tensions.
The historic meeting not only facilitated the exchange of views between leaders whose countries had never engaged in official dialogue before, but also allowed them to assess each other’s intentions, clearing old cobwebs of hostility and enabling them to find a pathway to a modus vivendi that respected each other’s interests and sensitivities.
A statesman par excellence, Chou displayed a willingness to consider, and meet, Singapore’s concerns, both in the general tenor of his response and on specific points of overseas Chinese and Asean.
On Raja’s part, he was consistent with Singapore’s “one China” policy: There was “one China”, and the status of Taiwan was a domestic matter to be settled by the people of China, including those of Taiwan. This did not, however, preclude Singapore continuing its unofficial relations with Taiwan, including military training arrangements. Raja’s clear and unwavering position on this fundamental issue laid the foundation for Singapore’s long-term relations with China.
Another breakthrough achieved by his meeting with Chou was the mutual understanding that building a healthy economic relationship was the way forward. While both sides explored opportunities for trade, the focus was not so much on immediate concrete outcomes – although typically that was what grabbed the news headlines – but the potential for growth in the future.
Up till then, bilateral trade had been conducted by private groups and individuals, with the trade balance weighing heavily in China’s favour. Singapore’s main imports from China were food and textiles, while its exports to China were mostly rubber and other commodities transhipped from Malaysia or Indonesia.
With his visit, Raja opened the way for government-to-government economic relations and enlarged the scope for bilateral trade.
Filing his report from Peking, Ngeow Pack Hua, the Nanyang Siang Pau journalist accompanying the mission, observed: “All in all, my view is that Singapore foreign minister Rajaratnam’s visit to China has not only helped to pave the way for the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries, but also lay a foundation for further economic cooperation between the two countries in the years ahead.” And so it proved.
Bilateral trade between Singapore and China in the early 1970s was about $700 million to $800 million. By 1990, the year diplomatic ties were finally established, it would reach $5.2 billion.The above is an edited extract from S. Rajaratnam, The Authorised Biography, Volume Two: The Lion’s Roar by Irene Ng, published by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. The hardcover ($65.90) and paperback ($55.90) are now out in bookshops. The e-book ($45) is available at https://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/7913. The book will be officially launched by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on July 22.
* Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong at the official launch of The Authorised Biography of S. Rajaratnam, Volume Two: The Lion’s Roar, on 22 July 2024
Singapore cannot exist other than as an island city-state connected to the world: PM Wong
By Ng Wei Kai, The Straits Times, 23 Jul 2024
A global city that could overcome its small size and lack of hinterland by plugging into networks worldwide – that is how first-generation Cabinet minister S. Rajaratnam envisioned Singapore in 1972. The country grew and prospered when globalisation took off, as he predicted.
As Singapore faces nativist and protectionist pressures today, staying open is not just essential but existential, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.
“Singapore cannot exist other than as an island city-state connected to the world,” PM Wong said on July 22 at the launch of the second volume of Mr Rajaratnam’s biography titled The Lion’s Roar.
Reflecting on the life and legacy of Mr Rajaratnam, PM Wong said Singapore’s first foreign minister was ahead of his time when he outlined – in a speech to the Singapore Press Club in February 1972 – how the Republic’s transformation into a global city, enabled by modern technology, underpinned its survival.
With the end of the Cold War 20 years later, globalisation brought about significant economic integration worldwide. Singapore became a major hub for finance, trade and logistics, and home to multinational enterprises, PM Wong noted.
But the world has changed, with nativist sentiments rising across many countries and protectionism gaining ground.
As more countries put up barriers to trade, investment and talent, there are calls for Singapore to do the same, PM Wong said in a speech at the book launch held at the National Library Building.
Written by former MP and journalist Irene Ng, the 776-page book published by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute traces Mr Rajaratnam’s life and career from 1963 to his death in 2006, and comes 14 years after the release of the first volume, titled The Singapore Lion, in 2010.
PM Wong said Mr Rajaratnam himself had anticipated that the pressure would inevitably grow among businessmen and professionals who resent foreigners being awarded contracts on the basis of merit.
“There will be calls for projects to be awarded to locals, even if the work is of inferior quality... But Raja warned: Any government that takes this path just to win elections will lead Singapore towards ‘irreversible disaster’”.
Adding that Singapore would do well to heed that warning, PM Wong said the Government knows that staying open comes with its share of costs – the rapid pace of change that takes place in any vibrant economy means that there will be some who are displaced from their jobs or who struggle to keep up.
Instead of turning inwards and putting up barriers, the right approach is to ensure fair competition and fair employment practices, help every worker reskill and upskill, and support people to bounce back stronger from setbacks, he said.
That is why the Government has expanded the SkillsFuture initiative, and worked with the community to strengthen safety nets and uplift disadvantaged families, PM Wong added.
It will soon introduce new laws to uphold fair employment practices, he said, noting these initiatives are part of efforts to renew Singapore’s social compact under the Forward Singapore exercise.
PM Wong also set out two other lessons from Mr Rajaratnam’s biography – that Singapore must continue cultivating solidarity between its citizens, and the Republic has the agency to determine its future.
The event was attended by 150 guests, including Cabinet ministers past and present such as former prime minister Goh Chok Tong and Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean. It also featured the launch of an interactive “chatbook” by the National Library Board, which uses generative artificial intelligence to allow users to ask questions on Mr Rajaratnam’s life and legacy.
On solidarity, PM Wong said it was Mr Rajaratnam’s view that it is the sense of community and solidarity that explains the rise and fall of societies.
When a community first forms, everyone is prepared for austerity, discipline and self-sacrifice, and society prospers. But this sense of solidarity is weakened over time as life becomes more comfortable, he said. People lose their social anchors and seek to advance their own individual interests, eroding this sense of community and common purpose.
There are powerful forces at play that test Singapore’s solidarity, pulling it in different directions, PM Wong said, citing race and religion.
The internet amplifies more extreme voices and views, pulling people apart, he noted.
“We already see this dynamic working in so many countries around the world. Echo chambers form online. People gather around their own tribes,” he said.
PM Wong said this makes it harder to form consensus on national issues. Extreme views gain ground and societies eventually become deeply divided, making it impossible to govern.
To keep Singapore together, controversial issues are addressed by expanding common spaces and seeking a consensus that unites as many as possible, rather than accentuating differences, he said.
This starts with making genuine attempts to engage and listen, and to bridge the gap between those with different views, he added.
Singapore can endure only if its citizens care for one another – a fact that Mr Rajaratnam understood well, said PM Wong, quoting the pioneer leader’s original draft of the National Pledge, which read “to build a democratic society, where justice and equality will prevail, and where we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another”.
On the agency to determine the future, PM Wong said Singapore’s founding leaders did not throw up their hands in despair when the country was thrust into independence.
Singapore in 2024 is in a much stronger position than in 1965, though it also faces new and daunting challenges, PM Wong said.
“Now, like then, there will be cynics and sceptics who say that we can’t make it. But Raja reminds us: ‘A nation creates its own future every time and all the time. Nothing is predestined,’” he added.
While Mr Rajaratnam once noted that historically, successful societies have typically gone into decline, he was also quick to stress that trend is not destiny, said PM Wong.
In times of prosperity, there will be a proliferation of leaders who promise a better life for less or even no effort, he noted.
Time and again, such “bread and circus” leaderships have won the hearts of people, said PM Wong. But the people discover too late that there is no bread or circus, and they are in an arena confronting hungry lions.
“To be clear: I offer no bread or circus; no quick or easy solutions. But I know that, working together, we have the means to go against the trend, and keep Singapore exceptional,” said PM Wong.
“Importantly, we have the will to build on what we have today and to take Singapore onwards and upwards.”
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