History of Identities in Singapore

A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore
From Colonialism to Nationalism

Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew
ISBN: 9781137012340
DOI: 10.1057/9781137012340
Palgrave Macmillan
Please respect intellectual property rights

This material is copyright and its use is restricted by our standard site license terms and
conditions (see http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/connect/info/terms_conditions.html). If you
plan to copy, distribute or share in any format including, for the avoidance of doubt, posting on
websites, you need the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan. To request permission
please contact rights@palgrave.com.
A Sociolinguistic History
of Early Identities in
Singapore

A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06
10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

This page intentionally left blank

A Sociolinguistic History
of Early Identities in
Singapore


National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew © 2013
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN.
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–01233–3
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian.
Sociolinguistic history of early identities in Singapore:
from colonialism to nationalism / Phyllis Chew.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–01233–3
1. Sociolinguistics – Singapore – History. 2. Singapore – History.
3. Singapore – Languages. 4. Nationalism – Singapore – History. I. Title.
P40.45.S55C44 2013
306.44095957--dc23 2012037967
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi

Acknowledgements xvii
1 Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early

Identities in Singapore 1
Group and individual identities 2
Racial, regional, religious and national identities 3
Bottom-up: individual identities 5
A sociolinguistic history 8
Time and place 10
Singapore: sociolinguistic paradise 13
Concluding remarks 16
2 Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making 19

Ethnic and occupational compartmentalization 20
Media representations 22
Census taking 25
Education and identity 27
Malay-medium schools 27
Chinese- and Indian-medium schools 28
English-medium schools 30
Religion and identity 32
3 Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided 37

“Malay” identity 38
The Orang Laut 39
The Bugis 40
The Minangkabaus 41
The Javanese 41
The Baweanese/Boyanese 42
Critical commentary 42
“Chinese” identity 43
The Hokkiens (Minnanhua, Fujianese) 43

vi Contents
The Teochews (Chaozhouhua) 44

The Cantonese (Guangdonghua) 45
The Hakkas (Kejia) 46
The Hainanese (Hainanhua) 46
“Indian” identity 48
The Tamils 48

The Telegus 49
The Malayalams 49
The Punjabis 50
The Bengalis 50
4 Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive 54

An animistic identity 55
A Hindu identity 56
A Buddhist identity 59
An Islamic identity 62
Chinese–Malay fraternity 65
5 Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology 70

Sanskrit scripts and the creation of a
Buddhist–Hindu identity 71
Jawi and the creation of a Muslim identity 73
Syncretic identities through Jawi: the Arabs
and Arab Peranakans 75
The Arabs 75
The Jawi Peranakans 76
Jawi or Rumi? Competing identities 78
The decline of Jawi: reasons and implications 81
6 Individual Identities: The Use of Lingua Francas

and Language Choice 87
Bazaar Malay 88
Singapore English (SE) 95
The origin of Singapore English 96
Singapore Hokkien (SH) 98
Language choice and identities in colonial Singapore 103
Code-mixing and code-switching: flexible identities 106

Contents vii
7 Hybrid Identities: Three Case Studies of Attraction

and Engagement 111
Pidgins and Creoles 112
Baba Malay Creole 113
Chetty Malay Creole 117
Kristang Creole 120
Input from other languages 123

8 Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating Solidarity

and Plurality 129
An acculturation–assimilation cline 130
Three principles 130
A three-generational model 132
First generation 133
Second generation 134
Third generation 134
Later-generational interaction 136
Other later-generational identity symbols 140
Dress 141
Food 143
Religious rites 144
Literary endeavours 148
9 Language, Power and Political Identities:

The 1959 Singapore Political Elections 152
The education divide 152
The emergent national elite and Lee Kuan Yew 157
Riding the linguistic tiger 159
Avoiding the English-educated incumbent 160
Aligning with the Chinese-educated masses 161
Forming a political party 162
Other linguistic strategies 164
Conclusion: a linguistic sequel 168
10 National Identities: The Reordering of Pluralities 170

Top-down: the reordering of pluralities 170
Racial compartmentalization 171
Language shifts: the reordering of pluralities 173
The ascendancy of English 175
Race and migration 176
The management of religious distinctiveness 177

viii Contents
Bottom-up: individual identities in the 21st century 179

The integrative nature of Singapore English (SE) 180
Conclusion: new realities 182
Notes 187
References 212

Index 233

Illustrations
Figures

3.1 Chinese languages in Singapore in the 19th century
and before the attainment of independence in 1959 43
5.1 Malay-language alphabets, the Jawi script 73
5.2 Language alphabets, numerals in Jawi and Rumi 74
5.3 Greetings in Rumi and Jawi 79
5.4 Spelling samples from the Baba popular press 80
6.1 Difference in sentence structure between
SH and Minnanhua 99
6.2 The influence of Teochew and Cantonese on Minnanhua 100
6.3 Words from Malay in SH 101
6.4 SH and Minnanhua words with different pronunciations 102
6.5 A comparison of the lexis of English, SH and Minnanhua 102
6.6 Lingua francas and their use in colonial Singapore 103
6.7 Linguistic repertoires of the Chinese Malay
and Indian communities in colonial Singapore 104
7.1 The /h/ deletion in initial position 115
7.2 The /h/ deletion in final position 115
7.3 Differences between Chetty Malay and Bahasa Malaysia 118
7.4 Linguistic changes from Standard Malay to Chetty Malay 120
7.5 Kristang words of Portuguese origin 122
8.1 The three-generational model: the acculturation–
assimilation cline 132
9.1 Type of school and enrolment figures 156
9.2 Percentage of educational budget allotted to schools
in 1949 and 1950 by the British administration 157
10.1 Home languages in Singapore in 1900, 2000 and 2010 175
10.2 The cultural orientation model (COM) (with International
Singapore English and Local Singapore English as examples) 182
Table
6.1 Language of choice in public domains in colonial Singapore 105
ix

x List of Illustrations
Photographs
1 Singapore as a sociolinguistic paradise 14

2 Chinese mosque next to a temple 33
3 Samsui women 47
4 The Sikhs in Singapore 138
5 Dress styles 142
6 Bi- and multi-orientation 143

7 The Tanjong Kling mosque in Malacca 145
8 Singapore postage stamps 177

Preface
If names are a part of identity, then the many historical names of

Singapore belie its singular nature. In old maps, it was referred to as

Pulau Panjang (in Malay, “Long Island”) or Po Luo Chung (a Chinese way
of saying Pulau Ujong, “Island at the Tip of the Peninsula”). Fourteenth-
century writers also knew of a place they called Lung-ya-men (龍牙門), the
“Dragon’s Tooth Straits”, which refers to the western entrance of Keppel
Harbour – the main trade route from the South China Sea to the Straits
of Malacca and beyond (Miksic and Low, 2004: 19–20). Li Chung Chu
travelled south from Shanghai to visit an old friend, the first Chinese
consul to Singapore. He wrote a full account of what he discovered
during his month’s stay in the Nanyang (meaning “South Seas”) and silat
(meaning “Straits”) – also alternative names for Singapore. The most
well-known name, from the modern name of Singapore is derived, is
Singapura, a Sanskrit term meaning “Lion City”.1 The second-best-known
is Temasek, a Javanese word meaning “Sea Town” (from Tumasik). Then
there was Malayur – a Tamil word meaning “Hill Town” – mentioned in
the library of Marco Polo. What part do all these names play in a socio-
linguistic history of early identities?
As early as the 14th century, Temasek was viewed as the nexus of
the trade routes in Southeast Asia (Roff, 1967). This prominence is
substantiated by very recent discoveries of archeological artifacts such
as ceramics and glassware from the Riau Archipelago. Shards of Thai
ceramics from the 15th century, and late 16th- and 17th- century Chinese
blue-and-white porcelain shards, have also recently been recovered
from the Singapore River and Kallang River (Miksic and Low, 2004).
The Johor-Riau-Lingga Empire, a Malay maritime empire, made a living
from ships passing through the Straits of Malacca. Singapore competed
with rival polyglot ports along the Straits of Malacca coast, such as
Palembang, Jambi, Kota Cina, South Kedah, Lambri and Semudra. Before
the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century, there were the Arabs,
Persians and Indian traders a millennium earlier. Who were Singapore’s
multilingual inhabitants, who must necessarily have included women
and children? What were the pidgins, Creoles and lingua francas that
thronged its market places and created its forgotten identities?
xi

xii Preface
A study of identity remains perpetually relevant because all of us are,

in reality, engaged in a lifelong project of constructing who we are So
any study of identity, be it sociolinguistic or otherwise, will doubtless
deepen our comprehension of history and social interaction.
Some themes run throughout this book concerning the sociolinguistic
history of Singapore. The first is that the lens of language is utilized to
examine each of these identities – racial, religious, orthographic and

national. This is because while there has been ample research into the
early geographical and political history of Singapore (see Turnbull, 1989;
Lee, 2008), there has been, as far as I am aware, no language-centred
diachronic survey. This is astonishing in view of the Malay proverb that
bahasa jiwa bangsa (“Language is the soul of a race”). For the Chinese,
there is a similar belief: 语言是一个民族的灵魂 (“Language is the soul of
a people”) or 母语是民族文化的载体，是民族生存发展之根 (“The mother
tongue is the carrier of the culture and is pivotal to the development
of the nation”). What kind of Malay was spoken – Bugis, Javanese,
Achenese or Boyanese? What kind of Chinese – Guangdong, Fujian,
Hainan or Chaozhou? And last but not least, what kind of Indian –
Tamil, Singhalese, Punjabi or Urdu? While sociolinguists have studied
the relationship between language and identity in Singapore (Ho and
Platt, 1993; Pakir, 1991; Gupta, 1994: Lim, 2004; Deterding, 2005; Rappa
and Wee, 2006), their studies have centred on post-colonial rather than
colonial Singapore. A sociolingusitic history of past identities becomes
very important simply because very little research has been done on the
multifarious languages that symbolized the multicultural past, and the
identities that went with them.
The second theme that unites the chapters is that this is a history not
merely of past identities but of past identities in terms of present iden-
tities. I want to tell the story by giving it a retrospective sociopolitical
significance that it did not always have. There are cultural and discur-
sive frames that influence the present lives of Singaporeans which are
as yet little known. How were traditional identities reorganized to form
national and global identities? Or, more specifically, how did the very
powerful People’s Action Party (PAP) use sociolinguistic strategies to
win a political victory at the dawn of independence in 1959?
The third theme is that of globalization. Globalization is not a recent
phenomenon, as is commonly assumed. Archeological excavations
conducted by Dr John Miksic (2010) since 1984 under the aegis of the
National Museum in Singapore have recovered indisputable evidence
of a thriving empire consistent with the conclusion that Singapore
was home to an urbanized cosmopolitan community for most of the

Preface xiii
14th century. Indeed, Singapore has been “global” for a very long time.
How, then, did migrants caught in the throes of a globalization which
began a few hundred years earlier organize their respective identities
through the use of language(s)? What hybrid identities emerged from
such contact?
Finally, one important theme that emerges is the human penchant
for attempting to break free of traditional identities imposed by insti-

tutional powers which constantly define them. Individuals are seen as
having the ability to fashion their own identities despite the imposition
of “racial” identities by the colonial power and “national” identities by
their elected governments.
Methodology
A long-term view has been chosen because I am interested in the history

of a general cosmopolitan humanity and also in how telling such a
history through a linguistic lens may give us unexpected insights. I
remember, too, Teilhard de Chardin’s observation that if we mix black
and white powder and cast the mixture on the floor, we will see grey
powder, but an ant crawling on the ground will see only black and
white stones (quoted in Cuenot, 1967). Without a longer perspective, I
believe we will remain short-sighted onlookers in relation to not only
early identities but also current sociopolitical dramas that are unwit-
tingly influenced by past identities.
The fieldwork for this study was done primarily in the National Archives
of Singapore and the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library in Singapore.
Oral history records were scrutinized, as they are a good balance to offi-
cial narratives. While memory may be socially constructed, the subjec-
tivity of oral history has increasingly been viewed as an advantage, as
it helps to reconstruct the informant’s world-view. In my interviews
with members of the older generation, I was interested not just in their
recounting of events but also in the way they recounted them, in the
language they used, and in their accent, intonation and code choice, all
of which throw light on both their conscious and unconscious identities.
In addition, I have used histories, old newspapers, eyewitness accounts,
travel journals, works of fiction, and government records such as census
records.
I must admit that it has been difficult to study early identities through
a sociolinguistic lens. Hence, some of the research must depend on
linguistic theories for clues, inevitably making parts of the history
anecdotal or conjectural. Population movements are difficult to record.

xiv Preface
There are no tape recordings of how people spoke in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Even when historical documentation is available, it is
seldom possible to ascertain the linguistic origin of displaced or extin-
guished groups, and it is usually a word list or phrase book and some
metalinguistic comments. Unfortunately, most of these documents are
the products of non-linguists and show obvious cultural and linguistic
bias in their descriptions. There is also very little data on inter-ethnic

relations in the census, making information on linguistic identities
hard to come by. Due to the lack of oral records from the pre-colonial
period, this study, of necessity, is more solidly located in the colonial
period (1819–1959), although the last chapter of the book brings us to
the present.
Finally, I hope others will continue the story that I have begun.
Opportunities to employ the long-term view occur very rarely in
Southeast Asian sociolinguistics. Advances in this area will be slow
because the investment required to master relevant languages and
scripts means that the number of specialists working on colonial and
pre-colonial research will always be small. The interdisciplinary nature
of this work may be daunting to linguists. Nevertheless, I believe such
efforts are worthwhile for the gems that may be uncovered.
The remainder of this preface is a summary of the chapters.
Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in

Singapore’ introduces some fundamentally relevant notions concerning
both the role of language and identities. The primary notions of language
are its quintessentially changing character, its essential mirroring of
history and its functional capabilities in the hands of its users. On the
other hand, the essential characteristics of Singapore are its strategic
geographical position, its multifarious, multilingual and multicultural
inhabitants, and its propensity for acculturation and assimilation – all
of which make it a “sociolinguistic paradise”.
Chapter 2, ‘Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making’ expands on how
identity was changed in the colonial period (1819–1959), from one that
was basically regional and religious to one that was racial. This chapter
elaborates on how a racial identity was constructed through town plan-
ning, media representation, census taking and, finally, the powerful
“ideological state apparatus” of education and religion.
Chapter 3, ‘Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided’ examines the
regional identities of the inhabitants of colonial Singapore as denoted

Preface xv
by their mother tongues. Each designated racial group, such as the

Malay, Chinese, and Indians, was not linguistically homogeneous, as is
commonly assumed. There were many sub-identities within the distinc-
tive Malay, Chinese and Indian groups that had migrated to Singapore.
These identities were not as divisive as might be expected.
Chapter 4, ‘Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive’ is a case study
of how Malay, a trading language and lingua franca of Singapore, holds

itself up as a mirror to Malay religious identity. The language, a symbol
of layered religious identities, bears, interestingly, the religious marks of
the indigenous (animistic) people, along with the Hindu, the Buddhistic
(Sanskritic), the Perso-Arabic (Islamic) and the Western (Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch, English) – an unsurprising phenomenon, since colo-
nial ports are centres of trade routes, receptive always to new sociopo-
litical and religious directions.
Chapter 5, ‘Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology’ expands
on the notion of “religious identity” and discusses the less well-
known relationships between religion, orthography and identity. This
chapter examines the ancient Kevi and Pallava scripts as symbols of
Hindu–Buddhist identity and the Jawi script as a symbol of Muslim
identity, and includes a more detailed discussion of three ethnic groups
in Singapore: the Arabs, the Jawi Peranakans and the Malays.
Chapter 6, ‘Individual Identities: The Use of Lingua Francas and Language
Choice’ is a survey of “bottom-up” processes and shows individuals
to be capable of choosing their own preferred identities, as revealed
in their choice of lingua francas. This chapter explores the nature of
Bazaar Malay (BM), Singapore English (SE) and Singapore Hokkien
(SH) – lingua francas which contain within themselves the seeds of
hybridity and cross-cultural influences and which have contributed to
the “bridging” of differing multicultural identities in the polyglot port
of Singapore. There follow examples of the context of use behind each
lingua franca, with each context being a manifestation of early hybrid
identities in Singapore.
Chapter 7, ‘Hybrid Identities: Three Case Studies of Attraction and
Engagement’ recounts how the presence of pidgins and Creoles has
remained largely hidden in historical accounts, not least because of the
belief in race purity and the subsequent low status given to the offspring
of racial interbreeding. The languages which are related to hybrid iden-
tities and selected for closer examination are the hybrid codes of Baba
Malay, Chetty Malay and Kristang.

xvi Preface
Chapter 8, ‘Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating Solidarity and

Plurality’ proposes a solidarity–plurality model using a cline with
parameters such as dress, food, religious rites and literary endeavours
as a means of examing the processes of acculturation and assimilation
resulting in early hybrid identities a little more closely. Such a cline or
continuum is useful for the study of intergenerational identities because
it suggests a gradual/fluid movement rather than a strict delineation of

identity stages.
Chapter 9, ‘Language, Power and Political Identities: The 1959
Singapore Political Elections’ discusses how identities presented in
earlier chapters under the headings of racial, regional, religious and
orthographical became manifested in a reordered division of whether
one was “English-educated” or “Chinese-educated”. More specifically,
it analyses how the father of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, rode
“the linguistic tiger” (see Bloodworth, 1986) to win the first political
election in Singapore and become one of the world’s most successful
political party leaders.
Chapter 10, ‘National Identities: The Reordering of Pluralities’ discusses
how identity is both a top-down, macro, group process and a bottom-
up, micro, individual one and shows how these two are in perpetual
tension and negotiation. It considers how familiar impulses of attrac-
tion and collaboration have continued to spawn new identities. It
concludes that tendencies towards cosmopolitanism maintain their
onward march despite top-down pressures of distraction and detour,
and that the advent of globalization has enabled identities to be more
constructive than essentialist.

Acknowledgements
The research for Chapters 2 to 5 was supported by the National Institute

of Education, Singapore, ACRF grant R1/508 CGL, for which I am duly

grateful.
The research for Chapter 8 was supported by a grant from the Lee
Kong Chian Fellowship, for which I am also grateful.
My thanks go to the staff of the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library,
especially Messrs Tong Bao Wee, Aziza Sidek and Isabelle Kam.
To the staff of the Oral History Unit, National Archives of Singapore,
for helping me with the Oral History Records.
To historians Dr Lysa Hong and Dr Quek Ser Hwee for directing me to
relevant historical sources.
To Dr Saeda Buang, Mr Ong Cheng Teik and Dr Abbas bin Shariff for
their help with the Malay sources.
To Dr Radin Fernando and Dr Lim Beng Soon for reading earlier drafts
of this book.
To Dr Richard Salomon for his help with the Sanskrit, Kevi and Pallava
sources.
To sociolinguist Dr Margit Waas, who first drew my attention to
Kristang.
To my interviewees (in alphabetical order): Mr Ang Kim Seng, Mrs
Hedwig Anuar, Mrs Chia Tim See, Mr Joe Conceicao, Mrs Robert Eu,
Mrs S.K. Goh, Eunice Khoo, Mrs Amy Laycock, Mr Lee Kip Lee, Mrs Lim
Long, Mr David Marshall, Mr Ong Pang Boon, Mr Ong Pang Hwee, Mr
Ong Pang Kim, Mrs Rose Ong, Mr K.M. Ravendran, Mrs K. Selvarajoo,
Ms Rosie Tan, Mdm Lee Poh Tin, Mrs Seow Peck Leng, Mr Sum Ping,
Mr Edward Tan, Mrs Julie Tan and Dr Ann Wee for providing me with
useful insights.
To my Head of Department, Dr Lubna Alsagoff, and to Dr Peter Teo at
the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
for their encouragement with regards to research and publication.
Last but not least, I wish to express my gratitude to the three anon-
ymous reviewers of this book. Their comments and suggestions have
been invaluable, and all oversights and errors of omission are mine and
mine alone.
xvii


1
Introduction: A Sociolinguistic
History of Early Identities in
Singapore

A brief look through recent publications in sociolinguistics convinces
us that the notion of identity is central. It is “sociolinguistics’ home
ground” (Coupland, 2001: 18). Common identity markers include
parental status, ethnicity, age, gender, job, religion, personality and
political persuasion. A study of identities is also closely related to the
study of language, not least because language is the principal means to
hold and communicate thoughts and emotions (Sapir, 1949; Spolsky,
2010; Bucholtz and Kira, 2010). Language and identity are, as Joseph
(2004: 13) concludes, “ultimately inseparable”. For example, bearing
the marks of culture and history, language carries with it past iden-
tities and this is seen in the language of the Sejarah Melayu (“Malay
Annals”), which exemplifies the identity of 17th century Malay (Johor-
Riau) aristocratic society just as the Tuhfat al-Nafis (“The Precious Gift”)
exemplifies a later 19th century society (cf. Matheson and Andaya,
1982). Lexical borrowings from the Portuguese in Bahasa Malaysia
(Malaysian language) are also seen through common Malay words such
as bola (“ball”) and amah (“Chinese nurse”). Human beings therefore
enter a world already filled with words or linguistic categories which
has assimilated social and historical experiences. It follows then that
a child who is brought up in a particular society speaking a particular
language is already “socialized or “culturalized” with an identity from
the day he or she is born. This chapter sets the stage for a sociolin-
guistic history of Singapore by identifying subcategories of identities
such as “group” and “individual”, rationalizing the choice of site and a
diachronic perspective, and providing the thematic direction for later
chapters in the book.

2 A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore
Group and individual identities
Two broad identity types are identified in this book – group and indi-
vidual. Group identity is basically top-down, where either colonial or
nationalistic institutional governance determines which type of collec-
tive identities are to prevail. In Chapters 2 to 5, these include racial,
regional, religious, and orthographical identities since most people are
born into such pre-existing structures. There are also national iden-

tities, managed by governments bent on the creation of their own
vision of realities and supported by a system of rewards and punish-
ment (Chapter 9). When these productive-creative top-down forces are
taken for granted, citizens continue with their passive postures, thereby
serving and perpetuating the interest of the existing social order. In our
study, group identities may be linked to what has been termed “essen-
tialism” whereby collective categories such as nationality, class, race,
gender, etc. are taken as given, in terms of which people’s linguistic
behaviour can be analysed. Essentialism assumes some kind of endow-
ment already in the individual and is based on the belief that the deep
and true functioning of language is located outside the human will,
usually in some quasi-metaphysical force such as the unconscious mind
or society. This means taking language as a force acting on the people
and treating linguistic facts as symbols and indicators of some social
and psychological reality that appears to exist independently of others
(Omoniyi and White, 2006 ).
In contrast, individual identities are linked more closely to the
“constructionist” paradigm. Here, people intentionally choose the
identity they wish to construct for themselves (cf. Gumperz, 1982; Le
Page and Tabouret-Keller, 1985). It is a bottom-up rather than top-down
process where individuals have choices in using language in a commu-
nicative way, which reflect their own self-conception and their own
preferred identities (Chapters 6 to 8). Identities are not genetically prede-
termined but are shaped through constant recurring questions such as
“Who am I?” (cf. Erikson, 1968: 22). Hence, a study of the idiolect – the
particular combination of accent and dialect, an assemblage of formal
and informal registers, and patterns of stress and intonation unique to
each individual – becomes relevant in the study of individual identities
(cf. Edwards, 2009).
Group and individual identities are often in potential conflict in the
sense that while the group may wish to submerge the individual in
the wider identity of the collective, the individual tends to see itself as
supreme. Nevertheless, what appears to be differentiated is in reality

Introduction 3
complementary because we have often to subordinate the “I” to the

enlarged “we” if we wish to succeed in wider identities such as family,
a sports team, a religious group or a nation. Dualities such as these
are therefore agonistically theoretical rather than realistic. The group
(social) and individual dimension cannot be neatly separated from one
another – they are not mutually exclusive or inseparable but represent
different ways of observing the same phenomena (Fishman, 1995;

Joseph, 2004). Group and personal, bottom-up and top-down, process
and product, essential and constructive notions of identity all have
their rightful place in epistemology as well as an essential part to play
in our history. Indeed, they not only influence each other closely but
are often tightly interwoven with one another and often it is difficult
to tell one from the other.
Racial, regional, religious and national identities
Four essentialist-motivated identities feature prominently in our study:

race, region, religion and nation. The first, race, may be defined as a
subdivision of the human species, members of whom inherit physical
characteristics which tend to distinguish that subdivision from other
populations of the same species (Chapters 2 and 9). Race is related to
how European/Western images of the “self“ and “other” have been
constructed. Often, one of the central aspects of colonial discourse is
to construct the “other” as backward, dirty, primitive, depraved, child-
like, feminine, etc.; and the “self” as advanced, superior, modern,
civilized, masculine, mature and so on (Errington, 2008).1 However,
such a construction of superior-inferior and backward-advanced is a
double-edged sword. While it may on the one hand generate separatist
tendencies, on the other it heightens the innate attraction to the “other”,
as seen in sexual liaisons and cross-cultural contact, leading eventually
to the creation of mixed codes and lingua francas (Chapter 6).
Regional identities stem from a likeness in origin, customs, shared
memories of emigration or settlement as a group and even anatomical
similarities (Chapter 3). There has been a palpable sharing and aware-
ness of a common regional identity arising from the flexibility of
boundaries, even if these may periodically erupt in chiefdom rivalry
from time to time. Each racial groups such as the Malay, Chinese and
Indians were not linguistically homogeneous as assumed in the popular
imagination. Here was not a hierarchical but a multilateral diversity,
which led not just to easy intermarriages and their attendant hybrid
pidgins and Creoles, but also to the creation of novel lingua francas

which enabled myriad races to trade generally peacefully with one

another for hundreds of years. It was not a binary but a regional multi-
lingualism, more akin to an “early globalization” which enabled the
maintenance and flourishing of the nexus which was and continues to
be Singapore.
In recent years, religion has made a “comeback” as an important,
if not chief, identity signifier (Safran, 2008). For one, it is no longer

banned in the former Soviet Union, and nation states which once sepa-
rated church and state are once again struggling with new religious
movements which aim to assert the authority of religion in matters
of morality and ethical choice (Spolsky, 2010).2 In Singapore and
Southeast Asia, an account of religion and religious identity becomes
relevant as trade and colonialization is often accompanied not just by
the spread of the traders’ and colonialists’ language(s), but also of their
religion(s). The Hindu and Arab traders brought with them the religions
of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. So too, the spread of Christianity is
linked to efforts by missionaries who came on the heels of the Western
colonialists (Chapters 4 and 5).
One notes that religious identity is linked inextricably to language
use. For example, religion bound Christian Europe to Latin, the Islamic
world to Arabic, and Jews to Hebrew. When Christianity underwent an
East-West split, the use of Latin versus Greek became its most potent
symbol. Similarly, sectarian splits in Islam came to be associated with
dialectal differences in Arabic. These alignments in belief and language
were unlikely to be accidental as members of various religious groups
needed to be able to recognize each other, and language, together with
other means of identification such as clothing and rituals, became
important (Joseph, 2004: 173). Nearer home, while Pali is the language
of Theravada Buddhism, it is Sanskrit and Chinese and, occasion-
ally, Tibetan which is the language of Mahayana Buddhism. So too,
in the Tamil/Sinhala linguistic conflict in Sri Lanka, the Tamils, who
are Hindus, see no way to remain Hindu without the Tamil language
(Muhleisen, 2007).
Religious orthography also plays a part in the construction of iden-
tity. For example, the Hindu script is equated with India, South Asia
and Hinduism, while the Urdu script is equated with the Perso-Arabic
and with Islam. Not surprisingly, people have died in India for the
Devanagari script of Hindi or the Perso-Arabic script of Urdu. In our
history, we see a parallel in orthographical reforms concerning the
Romanization or alphabetization of Riau-Lingga Malay from the orig-
inal Jawi, which on the one hand meant the elevation of one kind of

Introduction 5
Malay – the Riau-Lingga – over other kinds of Malay such as Bugis and
Achenese.3 This potential of scripts as an identity marker has been
exploited by both colonialist and nationalist powers. For example, as
part of the divide-and-rule policy, the British had kept Jawi as the offi-
cial script in the Unfederated Malay States (1885–1909) and in a way
contributed to the present-day identity-split between PAS and UMNO.4
On the attainment of independence in 1959, it became important

to imagine yet another top-down identity – the national identity
(Anderson, 1991). This was effected through the creation of talismen
such as passport issuance, money coinages, a national airline as well as a
language or script (Bonfiglio, 2007).5 National or political identities are
also intrinsically linked to language, for example, support for Taiyu (a
Taiwanese language) in Taiwan may be read as an assertion of a Hoklo-
dominated ethnicity that is seeking to challenge the dominance of a
Mandarin-based national identity, promoted by the ruling Nationalist
Party (KMT) and its wai-shen-jen (“Chinese mainlanders”) ethnic base
(Hsiau, 1997). Ironically, while a “national” language may on the
surface unite multifarious cultural and linguistic groups, it also divides
those who once shared common regional or geographical languages.
For example, in the 1960s, the development of a common language
for Indonesia and Malaysia appears easy considering the lexical resem-
blance of the three languages. However, as each country began to guard
their “nationhood” jealously after independence, the three languages
have in recent years become more consciously differentiated. Hence,
just like very similar Norwegian and Swedish languages, which are
also listed as distinct languages, the rather similar Bahasa Indonesia
and Bahasa Malaysia are now listed as different languages in line with
clearly defined geographical boundaries (Steinhauer, 2001b).
Bottom-up: individual identities
While the individual is inevitably constrained by the superimposed

essentialist notions of race, region, religion, orthography, and nation,
this does not mean that the individual is devoid of the power of choice.
The individual has the ability to choose his preferred identities and even
between members of the same family, ethnicity or class, there are differ-
ences in thinking and perceptions. In addition, there are differences in
their public and private persona depending on the social circles they
are in, who they are interacting with, and the various contexts they
operate in. Individuals possess the ability to actually exploit linguistic
resources available to them to project the identity or identities they

specifically desire and to change their speech moment-by-moment

and place-by-place as an indication of that choice. As individual needs
and motivations change, so, too, identities are constructed and recon-
structed (e.g. Butler, 1990; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Block,
2006a, 2006b). Sometimes, individuals may wish to emphasize gender
(e.g. Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2003), ethnicity (e.g. Spear and Waller,
1990), power, authority or professional status (e.g. Holmes and Stubbe,

2003), and at other times, organizational or institutional identity (e.g.
Gioia and Thomas, 1996). In brief, identities may not necessarily be
entities into which one is “raised”, rather one “assumes” an identity and
then works on it (Matthew, 2000).
As depicted in postmodern theorizing of identity as fractured and
discontinuous, individuals are seen as constantly engaging in a
self-conscious, ongoing narrative in the company of others. Le Page and
Tabouret-Keller (1985) have shown how multiple identities are signalled
simultaneously and they do this by analyzing each utterance a speaker
makes as “an act of identity”. The “partialness principle” (Bucholtz and
Kira, 2005: 605) describes the multi-variant nature of identity: that
identities are at best partial, produced through contextually situated
configurations of self and others but always acquiring social meanings
in relation to other available identity positions and other social actors.
We construct an identity for ourselves and also for others – sometimes
they are slightly or substantially different and they may change with
time. Even Saxena’s (2007) study of youths in the formal, traditional
and staid nation of Brunei portrays identities as fluid, permeable and
changeable. The approach is a dynamic one, allowing for constant
flux, negotiation, and interplay between different aspects of an indi-
vidual’s diverse social and personal identities in response to contextual
influences.
One way to participate in the “discourse” of the group is to enter
the social world that the group has constructed so as to imitate their
functional aspirations and ambitions. In multicultural ports such as
Singapore, the discourse of the group depends not just on the variety
of accent of dialect, but also on macro factors such as language choice
and code-switching. For example, some languages are ranked higher
than others because they are associated with income level, occupa-
tion, education and symbolic behavior; and most speakers are aware
of this when they interact with others. While all languages are equal,
without an “H” (high) or “L” (low) status in the eyes of linguists, in
real life, somebody is always either above or below due to differences
in societal status. For example, in Sanskrit dramas, the upper-class

Introduction 7
male characters like kings and the Brahmin ministers speak Sanskrit
throughout. However, the upper-class female characters like the queens
use the Maharashtri Prakrit of high prestige for poetry and the normal
Shauraseni Prakrit for conversation. On the other hand, the Magadhi
Prakrit is reserved either for low characters like thieves or for comic
effect (Despande, 2011). In every society, languages are often perceived
hierarchically. Similarly, in colonial Singapore, Hainanese is a language

of later migrants, relative to the earlier Chinese migrant languages such
as the Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. The Hainanese were thus left
to take up occupations not already filled, such as those in the domestic
arena. Their lower occupational status also affected the lower status of
their language in society. As a code of choice in Singapore, Hainanese
has always connoted “L” values and presuppositions.
While one may inherit one’s race, language is not necessarily inher-
ited and nowhere is this more evident than in migrant cities where the
second and third generations begin to speak languages vastly different
from that of their parents and grandparents (see Chapter 8). Here, resi-
dents often have a proficiency of varying degrees in several languages –
most of which function as lingua francas for intra- and inter-group
communication. The individual’s choice of lingua franca(s) become a
means not just to mark in-group or out-group affiliations but also their
respective racial, regional, religious, educational and political identities
(see Chapter 6). Our history reveals a complex range of language prac-
tices that encompasses several languages, including different varieties
of the same language, multiple modalities and various social contexts.
Migration, diaspora and language-contact have been the building
blocks of Singapore identity. The multicultural and pluralingual identi-
ties (Fishman and Garcia, 2010) in Singapore are due no less to globali-
zation, which may be said to have existed before the word itself was
ever coined. In the study of Indian identities, Pillai (2008) observed that
cross-cultural boundaries were already permeable as early as the 19th
century. Here, “crossings” (Kramsch, 1993) may occur not necessarily
through physical unions such as marriage but also as a more meta-
phorial openness to the “other”. In other words, while racial bounda-
ries were manufactured and operational in the colonial era, crossings
were frequent and these were manifested in hybrid languages such
as Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, Chetty Malay Creoles, and in Kristang
(Chapter 7). Reid (2010) argues that as early as the 15th century, the
people had emerged from a process of ethnic mixing and were recog-
nized by Portuguese labels such as “Jawa”, “Malay”, “Jawi”, “Luzon” and
“Siam” – usages which were subsequently stabilized largely in terms of

more exclusive European understandings of nation and race and which

in time became fixed and immutable categories. Not surprisingly,
monolingual communication has long been the marked choice and
mixed code has been the normal unmarked interaction for centuries
(cf. McLellan, 2010). It must be noted that syncretic, hybrid identities
were also apparent in other aspects of material culture such as dress,
food and religion. For example, after the fall of the last Hindu-Buddhist

kingdom in the 15th century and subsequent spread of Islam in what
is known today as Indonesia, Hindu-Buddism reappeared again in the
17th century with the influx of Chinese immigrants, who mixed it with
Daoism and Confucianism (Suprajitno, 2011).
In his Hierarchy of Identities model (HOI), Omoniyi (2006) postu-
lates that the individual is able to “align” (Chew, 1998) him-or herself
with different identity categories by varying their acts in response to
the demands and needs within particular moments of identification.
Multiple positioning options are available for the individual at all
times and each of them is allocated a position on a hierarchy based
on a degree of salience it claims in a moment of identification. This
degree of salience is variable from one moment to another as a result
of changes in socio-situational factors. In other words, the location of
an identity on the hierarchy fluctuates as the amount of salience asso-
ciated with it fluctuates between moments. The most salient identity
option at any one moment of performance within a given interactional
context is foregrounded through talk and located, therefore, at the top
of a hierarchy of identities. Omoniyi (2006) defines “moment” as a tool
in the HOI – it is a measurement/monitoring device in the identifica-
tion process, and may be identified through a division of timescale,
with the use of different colours and patterns so that at any time one
may know which identity is foregrounded and which is not.
A sociolinguistic history
A sociolinguistic history is chosen not least because the validity and

depth of our conclusion often depends on the scale at which we observe
them. For many of us, our perspectives are often for the shorter term –
the next few days, or weeks or months, or maybe a year or two, rarely
a decade, and certainly not a century or millennium. As scholars look
through the microscope, they have the privilege of looking at specific
points. It is what has been called a “microscopic” view. In doing so,
we have the advantage of knowing a lot about a small thing, but we
tend to forget the whole picture. Therefore, the macroscope, not just the

Introduction 9
microscope, becomes crucial for it allows the inclusion of not just the
synchronic but also the diachronic perspective and allows the distant
and near past to inform the future.
A historical stage allows an examination of social and political power
on a wide canvas (cf. Fairclough, 2006; Wodak and Meyer, 2009),
although this may not be something that is very popular in sociolin-
guistics. However, I believe it is a platform on which the study of iden-

tities could be more advantageously positioned. It has been said that
history makes us wise, especially if we know how to read its truths. I
think what Francis Bacon means here is that we begin to realize that
the era in which we live and ourselves are just tiny “specks” in the vista
of time and space. In other words, our preoccupations are not “unique”
or “special” in any way and if we realize this we become “humble” and,
therefore, “wise”. Hence, rather than view identities as “contemporary”,
“current” or “special”, we should instead widen the context, such as by
exploring the past as a means of comparison and contrast. According
to Edwards (2011), the most egregious failing in contemporary social
science understanding is the lack of socio-historical contextualization.
A diachronic perspective enables us to understand that change is
primary – all things either make progress or lose ground and everything
moves forward or backward. Nothing is without motion and movement
is important to existence since all material things progress to a certain
point, and then begin to decline. Unfortunately, linguists have tended to
collaborate with politicians and writers by presenting language as a long
march toward a uniform standard, rather than in presenting it as one
that is inherently changing, with variations and linguistic digressions
a normality rather than an abnormality. For example, the languages in
our history, such as Javanese, Achenese, Tagalog and Vietnamese and
Malay, were once “H” languages used in administration, philosophy
and religion but, due to social-political changes, have suffered a drop
in status and function. In Malay, meanings of words also change over
time, symbolic of the fact that Malay society has grown away from
its religious roots to more secular leanings. For example, sastera in
present-day Malay means “literature and the arts”; although its root in
Sanskrit refers to religious writings that contain lessons, directions or
guidance on how something ought to be done.6
Language change also implies contact with other languages and other
cultures since there is no evidence that any language has developed
in total isolation from other languages (Thomason, 2001: 8). Once
a language (and its speaker) meets another, both begin to change.
Languages (and their speakers) mutually accommodate each other,

bringing their “systems” closer to each other, at least with respect to the
structures of the utterances they produce. These result in the phenom-
enon whereby an individual word tends to homogenize its linguistic
behaviour with respect to similar parts of the lexicon.7 Prolonged contact
may result in subvarieties and, subsequently, sub-identities, as seen in
the case of Singapore Hokkien from the parent Fujian Hokkien or the
Eurasian Kristang, a child of various European languages (Chapter 6).

Theoretically, an “enlarged” perspective becomes possible with the
“middle path”. Extreme essentialism and constructivism are no longer
possible if inclusion and integration as well as dissection and separation
are to be valued. Essentialism shares aspects of structuralist theory and
basically regards individuals as the passive embodiments of social rela-
tions and the structure of society. Like the grammar of language, which
predetermines the speech acts of individuals and is not created by their
speech, individual acts are embodiments of the structure of society
without the conscious knowledge of the individual actor (Rajah-Carrim,
2010). On the other hand, an extreme constructivist view often equates
the individual as the only real being and social institutions as reflec-
tions of a static human nature. Social development is accomplished by
a strategy of changing individual ethics and ideology and the agent of
social historical change is individual consciousness, values and ideas.
In this study, however, the “middle path” between the two approaches
is preferred – one which takes into account ideological, economic and
political factors as important agents of change but which is opposed
to the fatalistic determinism of essentialism which implies individual
resignation. It is a viewpoint allowing for the active participation of
human beings in the dynamics of history and for an active, critical
outlook.
Time and place
We are mostly comfortably positioned in colonial Singapore – from the

landing of Sir Stamford Raffles on its shores in 1819 to the attainment
of self-governance in 1959 – but our time and place frames are fluid
and I will quite frequently step out of this window and almost always
go backward and forward in time. British rule in the Malay Peninsula
began in 1786 with Sir Francis Light’s acquisition of the island of
Penang. The Straits Settlements of Penang, Singapore and Malacca
became Crown Colonies in 1867, and British colonial rule continued
in the Malay Peninsula until 1957 and 1959 when the Federation of
Malaya and Singapore, respectively, gained independence.

Introduction 11
Geographically, Singapore and her other 3,000-odd chain of sister

islands straddle the Straits of Malacca in a region called the Malay
Archipelago. Situated at the heart of the trading network based on Malay,
Buginese, Chinese and other local shipping on one hand, and steamer
links to India, the Middle East and Europe on the other, it is not surprising
to find her referred to in many historical accounts as the premier, urban,
mercantile centre – the El Dorado of Southeast Asia (Arseculeratne, 1992:

7).8 She was a part of Nusantara, an ancient geographical reference to
the Malay world where kingdoms stretched lazily across regions such
as the Malaysian, Indonesian and Filipino archipelago. She was also a
part of Dunia Melayu (“Malay world”), which included Indonesia, the
Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore (Asis, 2004). Geographically, she
is an integral part of the Riau-Lingga group of islands, many of them
separated by numerous straits along the peninsula of Malaya and adja-
cent islands, the greater part of the coasts of Sumatra and Borneo, the
seaports of Java, and the Sunda and Banda islands. Examples of its multi-
cultural sister ports around the vicinity of the Straits of Malacca includes
Penang, Batavia, Tanjong Pinang, Melaka, Palembang, Jambi, Tamiang,
Kota Cina, Patani and Semarang. One may note here that whatever
Singapore is a part of, the relative lack of boundaries in Southeast Asia
has made extensive population movements throughout this region
endemic and syncretic cultural identities an unmarked quality (Andaya,
1993). For example, before the coming of the Europeans in the late 15th
century, a ruler may arrive at a spot and open a settlement without fear
of encroachment since “land” was not something which was possessed
but something which was considered “dead” unless it was used. The
earliest Indo-Malay kingdoms were coast-based centres, usually situated
at the mouths of rivers, a strategic point which allowed the ruler to tax
and control the movement of maritime traffic (Milner, 2008).
Historically, this “heart” may be seen as a continuation of a phase of
history that began in the late 13th century (Kwa et al. 2009). We know
then that a port settlement called Singapura functioned as the export
gateway to the immediate hinterland of the Riau Archipelago and South
Johor. Later, in 1819, the British claimed the island, then called Singapura
(“Lion City”) as their own, renaming it to a more Anglicized-sounding
Singapore. They allowed unrestricted immigration of labour and freedom
from taxation upon commerce (Tregonning, 1972). This attracted the
Babas, the Chetties, the Chulias, Burmese, Indians and Jawi Pekans
who already had lengthy experiences of European and Asian practices,
and in some cases, knowledge of English from the surrounding sister
ports. The Armenians and Jews came from nearby Labuan, Calcutta

and Rangoon, and further afield such as Baghdad and Iraq.9 Traditional
traders included Filipinos, Javanese, Madurese, Bawaenese, Bugis,
Siamese, Cochin Chinese, Cambodians, Burmans, Mons, Armenians,
Jews, Gujaratis, Bengalis, Armenians, Arabs and Parsis (Trocki, 1979;
Sandhu and Mani, 1993).
What is significant is that with the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869, Singapore became an international port of call and was referred

to not just as a “powerful fortress” (Ross, 1898: 6) but also as the “New
York of the Malay Peninsula” (Tregonning, 1972: 129). It acted as the
administrative capital of British Malaya and the international export
gateway of the Malayan hinterland since hinterland products such as tin,
rubber and crude oil were processed into staple products in Singapore
and then shipped to Britain and other international markets (Heng
and Syed, 2009). Many battles have been fought around its seas as a
means of controlling its wealth.10 In this history, I will often refer to the
historical, regional (geographical) and metaphoric sense of Singapore
rather than to the common assumption of an area with legal or claimed
boundaries. Due to Singapore’s minute size and relatively short history,
it is more productive for me to view the strategically located island as
belonging to more or less structured places in a networked geographical
region. Indeed, Singapore has traditionally been used as a metonym for
the cosmopolitan settlements growing and developing along the coastal
areas of the South China Sea, the Java Sea and the Straits of Malacca, or
what has been called the “Mediterranean of Asia” (Widodo, 2009).
Like the Comoros, Colombo and Hong Kong, nexuses are often small –
in the case of Singapore, 704 km (272 sq. metres) with a population
of around 5 million. In other words, nexuses grapple with structural
changes “immediately” and their nimble and “cutting-edge” language
policies are worthy of study since they are often trailblazers. It is rare to
find mainlands – continents, peninsulas – which have undergone in a
relatively short period, dramatic changes. In Singapore, one can witness
languages being born, infiltrating, hybridizing, colonizing and dying.
While death is normally a gradual process which only becomes evident
when the language shaves off little by little much of the fascinating
machinery that it has accumulated in its earlier phases; in crossroads,
it is often enacted in double-quick time. Such a seemingly “micro”
study may enable us to understand the “macro” order. In the words of
Singapore’s chief architect, Lee Kuan Yew:
“ ... Singapore is the microcosm of what has happened to the rest of

the world – it cannot change policies but is a mirror of what is taking

Introduction 13
place outside ... so what we will be in 100 years depends upon what
the world will be in 100 years” (Straits Times, 22.12.2004: H6).
In brief, Singapore affords us a wonderful opportunity to study changing

identities in a shorter period of historical time than would normally
suffice.

Singapore: sociolinguistic paradise
Like Guatemala, which, after five centuries of Spanish influence, had to

choose between 23 distinct languages, Singapore affords us the perfect
babel in which we may study multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-
lingual identities (Vanden and Prevost, 2002). In his story of “a rubber
king”, English orientalist, colonial administrator and creative writer,
Richard Winstedt (1916: 26–34), described the “colourful” passengers
in a Malayan Railway carriage in the following manner:
“A cotton-clad Chinese tradesman, a Jaffna Tamil swelling with rice

and office, a Punjabi cattle-dealer in a dirty pink turban and large
gold necklace, a sleek smooth-skinned Haji of his own race, a Malay
raja in khaki suit and neat black boots, a Chinese nonia faded like her
cheap flowery kebaya.”
Such ports are natural havens for the examination of racial, regional,
religious, orthographical, hybrid, inter-generational and national identi-
ties. Like Mauritius, and Goa, the image of Singapore that emerges from
the first six chapters of Sejarah Melayu is that of a great city to which
foreigners resorted in great numbers (Brown, 1970). The first census
of 1824 revealed 74 Europeans, 16 Armenians, 15 Arabs, 4,580 Malays,
33,317 Chinese, 756 natives of India and 1,925 Bugis.11 By the end of
the 19th century, it was “the most cosmopolitan city in Asia: nearly
three-quarters of the population were Chinese, but there were sizeable
minorities of peninsular Malays, Sumatrans, Javanese, Bugis, Boyanese,
Indians, Ceylonese, Arabs, Jews, Eurasians and Europeans” (Turnbull,
1989: 95).12 In the 1911 census, no less than 54 different languages
were recorded as being spoken in the settlement and 48 different races
(that is, counting “Chinese” and “Indian” as only “one” race each) were
represented. Alfred Russel Wallace (1869: 31), the British naturalist and
explorer, remarked that “few places are more interesting to a traveller
from Europe than the town and island of Singapore, furnishing as it
does, examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different

Photo 1 Singapore as a sociolinguistic paradise. “Stamford Road in Singapore,

decorated for the visit of the prince of wales in 1922. Reproduced with permis-
sion from the National Heritage Board and Editions Didlier Millet. From
Gretchen Liu’s book Singapore a Pictorial History 1819–2000, p. 171.” Permission
Forthcoming.
religions and modes of life.” To summarize, a sociolinguistic history

of Singapore enables us opportunities to observe not just code-choice,
but also code-switching and code-mixing in a globalized environment
(Fill, 2007).
While the censuses are adept in capturing larger and more super-
ficial characteristics such as “race”, only a linguistic analysis of

Introduction 15
languages spoken is able to reveal the true diversity of each racial

category. For example, Chapter 3 shows that the “Malay” race is not as
the census might assume, homogeneous. Their heterogeneity may be
discerned in localities which bear names such as Kampong Jawa, Bugis
Street, and Arab Street – all of which symbolize, respectively, mutu-
ally incomprehensible languages such as Javanese, Bugis and Arabic.
Andaya’s (2006) study of Sarawak identified 38 different subvarieties of

Malays. This heterogeneity of the native population was not unknown
to the British colonialists – passing through Singapore in 1921, John
Crawfurd, colonial administer, describes the Malays as “divided into
twenty tribes.” (Reported in Makepeace et al., 1991: 343.)13 Cust (1878:
137) found in his travels of the Malay Peninsula and some of the islands
of Indonesia a total of 243 languages and 296 dialects – making a total
of 539 varieties of speech. So too, while the Eurasians are viewed as
a single entity in British census entries, the different languages they
spoke revealed their diverse origins and cultures – the Burghers came
from Ceylon and spoke a mixture of Singhalese. The Melaka Eurasians
called themselves Kristang (“Christian”), which is also the name for
their language. From Indonesia, Eurasians were called Indiese mensen
(“Dutch”) or Indiese jongen (“young men”) or Indiese meisje (“young
girl”) or just Indos (in contrast to totok meaning “fully Dutch”), and
spoke Dutch and Malay. There were also Eurasians from India, known
as “Anglo-Indians” with their distinct brand of English. Even among
the British residents there were discerned Scottish, English, Irish and
Welsh. Lim (2008) recounts the Irish presence through street names
such as McNally Street, Dublin Road, St Patrick’s Road, Cuscaden Road
and Killiney Road.14
The births and deaths of languages lay in full view of its inhabitants.
Births were common when traders were forced to stay in their port of
call longer than they would have anticipated. During their stay, their
boats, junks and ships populated the port and marriages with local
women were frequent. From this intercourse, pidgins were born which
eventually grew into Creoles. After the departure of colonial power,
languages such as Baba Malay, Singapore Hokkien, and Kristang became
an embarrassment to nationalist governments, being viewed as “lowly”
by-products of cross-cultural liaisons. Their disenfranchisement lead to
their eventual demise but, as mentioned earlier, this is a gradual process
which only becomes evident when the language shaves off little by little
much of the fascinating machinery that it has accumulated in its earlier
phases. In such scenarios, within one or two generations, children
become semi-speakers – that is, retaining extensive passive (i.e. recep-
tive) competence in the language but losing their active (i.e. productive)

competence and consequently possessing less and less of their original

language to pass on to their children (see Chapter 6).
In the polyglot port of Singapore, religion is an active ingredient
since it provides focal spaces for the socialization between local-born
and new arrivals.15 As early as 1673, the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple in
Malacca served as the political headquarters of the Kapitan Cina of the
Chinese community. This was also the case with the Guanyin Temple

established in 1800 in Penang and the Thian Hock Kheng established in
1839 in Singapore (Frost, 2003). These temples (and clan associations)
helped alleviate the state of anomie that new immigrants often experi-
enced by reproducing the linguistic practices and cultural norms that
they were familiar with (Teo, 2010). In the 1870s, Isabella Bird (1883,
1967: 119), an early traveller to the Malay States, described the “bizarre”
presence of socio-religious traditions from the two great civilizations:
“The native streets monopolize the picturesque of Singapore with

their bizarre crowds ... the bustle and noise of this quarter is consid-
erable, and the vociferation of drums and tom-toms, an intensely
heathenish sound. And heathenish this great city is. Chinese joss
houses, Hindu temples and Mohammedan mosques almost jostle
each other, and the indescribable clamour of the temples and the din
of the joss houses are faintly pierced by the shrill cry of the minarets
calling the faithful to prayer ... ”
Indian and Chinese influence on institutions, languages, scripts, archi-

tecture, iconography, mythology and religion have been intense in
Southeast Asia, not least because this region is wedged between the two
respective great civilizations. For example, Indian influence still persists
in the coronation of some of the Malay Sultans today. The coronation of
the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Azlan Shah in 1985, sees, for example, him
decorated with a golden necklet and golden armlets (like a Hindu god)
and armed with a weapon associated with a renowned Hindu-Buddhist
Sumatran ruler. He sits on his throne like the Sanskrit singasana – in a
God-like immobile manner.
Concluding remarks
This study challenges the tendency to commonly portray Singapore as

a composition of separate ethnic groups, each with their own cultural
orientations and one where insiders rarely interacted socially with
outsiders. Such a tendency may be attributed to the concept of “the

Introduction 17
plural society”, by J.S. Furnivall (1956), which has attained a prominent

place in theoretical models and many social scientists such as Smith
(1960); Leon and Leon (1977); Coppel (1997); Lee (2009) and Hefner
(2001) have not only developed it further but also placed it on reading
courses in Southeast Asian studies for more than fifty years. According
to Furnivall (1956: 304–5), Singapore conformed to the model of a
“plural society”:

“In Burma, as in Java, probably the first thing that strikes a visitor
is the medley of people – Europeans, Chinese, Indian and native. It
is in the strictest sense a medley, for they mix, but do not combine
[my italics]. Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture
and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals, they meet
but only in the marketplace, in buying and selling. There is a plural
society, with different sections of the community living side by side,
but separately, within the same political unit. Even in the economic
sphere there is a division of labour along racial lines. Natives, Chinese,
Indians and Europeans all have different functions, and within each
major group, subsections have particular occupations.”
Accordingly, instead of a celebration of the multicultural identities,

there has been a trend to highlight the inherent diversity of colour,
race, religion and languages as a conduit to divisiveness and disruption.
Accounts of the racial-religious riots of 1964 and 1965 appear as a staple
in sociological studies on multiculturalism, for example, Kong and Tong
(2003); Lai (2006) and Aljunied (2009). Pereira (2003) depicts Singapore
as a place of “triads and riots”, secret societies identified by numbers and
symbols, ethnic and dialectal in origin. Turnbull (1996: 131) described
Singapore in the 1920s as “the Chicago of the East ... a haven of gun
and street gangs, who carried out a reign of terror in Chinatown and
rural districts.” Aljunied (2009) has recounted how Malay and Indian
Muslims took to the streets and attacked Europeans and Eurasians indis-
criminately during the Maria Hertogh Riots of 1950.
However, a more moderate view is discerned in Tregonning’s (1972)
History of Modern Singapore and Malaysia. Commenting on the May 1969
racial riots in Malaysia, Tregonning acknowledges that “although the
potential danger is recognized ... interrelationships are courteous and
smooth; racial prejudices if felt are a personal thing and are scarcely ever
a matter of issue.” (Ibid.: 101–11). Again, while writing on the consid-
erable rioting especially by the Chinese-educated against the govern-
ment in the 1950s as a run-up to the elections for self-government, he

reminded his readers that “up to that time”, there had never been a
Sino-Malay riot. Tregonning’s history concludes with a similar state-
ment: “with all the changes that had come, the two (Malay and Chinese)
had lived on the island side by side, and never once had fought each
other.”16 Following Tregonning’s lead, this study is inspired to explore
the extent to which different races were linked through symbols such
as language, religious practices, even food and dress. It argues that the

populace inhabited a shared world while belonging to their own partic-
ular ethnic communities; and that there was, in reality, no real gulf.
Such a sociolinguistic history takes advantage of a relatively longer
spectrum of time so as to achieve a more de-centred perspective.
Language is the lens of choice since it is often a proxy for deeper
cultural and sociopolitical representations as well as an indispensable
tool used by ordinary people and religious/political leaders to achieve
their complex objectives. While language and identity in sociolinguis-
tics texts are simply assumed, it should be noted that sometimes other
identity markers are capable of replacing it (Dorian, 1999). This history
therefore does not exclude identity-making through architecture, dress
and food (see Chapter 8), as well as through the media, censuses, and
town planning (see Chapter 2).
Chapter 2 begins with an exploration of racial identity; a concept first
popularized by the colonial powers and which still holds powerful sway
in Singapore today.

2
Racial Identities: Plurality
in the Making

Race was not traditionally a part of the native psyche of Singapore or
of Southeast Asia but a by-product of European encounters, which in
our history became normalized with the British presence in Singapore
from 1819. Edward Said (1979) has famously argued that the represen-
tations of the “orient’ in European texts, travelogues, interview tran-
scripts and other writings contributed to the creation of a dichotomy
between Europe and the “others.” This representation was central to the
creation of European culture as well as the extension of its hegemony
over foreign lands.
In 19th century European language studies, it was assumed that each
language was striving for perfection. This line of thought was influ-
enced by the then fashionable ideology of stadialism which expounded
that human culture could only “progress” step by step through a rigid
series of stages; and that the language of each culture at each moment
must reflect the stage of civilization which it has reached. Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach’s 1795 classic on the natural variety of mankind,
in which he postulated that the Caucasian represented the original
human archetype with the American, Mongolian, Ethiopian and Malay
types representing relative degeneration from the aesthetically supe-
rior, was then widely believed (Deutsche, 2005).
This chapter expands on how one collective identity from the top –
that of race – was constructed by the colonial power that owned the
means of communication and had the “power” to interpret reality and
the frame of reference. Since the 1860s, a large colonial bureaucracy had
committed itself to the classification of peoples and their attributes, a
practice which generated and reaffirmed European perception of indig-
enous peoples (Hirschman, 1987). More specifically, it elaborates on
how a racial identity was constructed through town planning and the
19

dedication of certain areas of the town to certain races and occupations,

media representations, census taking and finally through the “ideolog-
ical state apparatus” (Althusser, 1970) of education and religion.
Ethnic and occupational compartmentalization
A significant characteristic of the “founder” of Singapore, Sir Stamford

Raffles’ town planning was the creation of enclave structures through
the division and demarcation of living spaces on the basis of ethnicities.
In 1822, a committee was appointed which marked out the quarters or
departments of the population (Stockwell, 1998: 340; Widodo, 2009).
Indeed, within three years from the establishment of Singapore in 1819,
the population was “rationally” described as follows: “the Chinese
on the south-west of the river, the Bugis on the spot beyond the resi-
dence of the Sultan in Kampong Glam, the Chuliahs (Indians) up the
Singapore River, and the Arabs in Kampong Glam ... ” (Makepeace et al.
1991: 345).
The major racial classes as depicted by the 19th century census such
as the “Caucasians”, the “Orientals” (Chinese, Arabs and other Asians)
and the “Natives” (Malays from different regions) were allocated sepa-
rate settlement areas. For example, the Caucasians were found mostly in
Tanglin, the Malays along the Rochor River and in Geylang, the Arabs
in Arab Street, the Bugis in Bugis Street and the Chinese in Chinatown.
As for the Indians, they were concentrated in Chulia Street, High Street,
Market Street, the naval base in Sembawang, the railway/port areas of
Tanjong Pagar and the Serangoon Road area (Bhattacharya, 2011). The
Eurasians were allotted space in Kampong Glam between Waterloo
Street and Queen Street; and later to Upper Serangoon Road as desig-
nated by road names such as Lange, Richards, Aroozoo and de Silver
(Conceicao, 2004: 31). Each ethnic arena had its own unique restaurants,
shops and ethnic items of purchase and street names in various parts of
the city. Singapore street names may also reveal the names of their racial
and/or religious inhabitants, such as, Parsi Road, Chettiar Street, Chulia
Street, Hindu Road, Arab Street, Armenian Street, Zion Road, Bali Lane,
Irawaddy Road, Mandalay Street, Bencoolen Street and Bugis Street.
The motivation for ethnic-racial identification was so strong that
within each racial category were further subdivisions based on the geog-
raphy of regional origin and language (cf. Errington, 2008). For example,
the Teochews made Hong Kong Street their base, while the Cantonese
occupied Kreta Ayer or Chinatown, and the Hainanese the North Bridge

Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making 21
Road area. There was also a Shanghai Street and Nanking Street housing
inhabitants from Shanghai and Nanking in China. Hokkien speakers
(from present-day Xiamen and its adjacent areas) settled around Amoy
Street and Telok Ayer Street, forming enclaves around the Thian Hock
Kheng Temple.1 Occupational specialization added to further subdivi-
sions as inhabitants found it easier to identify names of streets according
to trades manned by linguistic groups. Hokkien Street was called Cho Be

Chia Koi (“street where horse carriages are made”) by the Chinese; and
Havelock Road was referred to by both Chinese and Tamils as Masak
Arak Sadakku (“liquor distilling street”) in an interesting mixture of
Tamil and Malay (Jayapal, 1992).2 It soon became quite a natural course
of events that new arrivals would veer towards occupations where they
could find others speaking the same regional language (Lim, 2002).3
Occupational specializations also followed linguistic lines, for
example, Hokkiens were well known as merchants, Teochews as agri-
culturists and Cantonese and Hakkas as skilled artisans. It must be
noted that the colonial administration indirectly encouraged such
specializations through the implementation of the colour bar, which
hindered occupational mobility. The British also found nothing
objectionable in favoring certain groups such as the Hokkiens, whose
customs they felt were more refined and superior, by directing that in
the allocation of land, “traders from Amoy claim particular attention”
(Sir Stamford Raffles to the Town Committee dated 1822, quoted in
Buckley, 1984: 83).
As in Malaysia where the Chinese work in the mines in town areas,
Indians in the rubber plantations and Malays were confined to villages.
So too in Singapore while one found the Malays predominantly rice-
growers and fisherman; South Indians road construction workers and
the vast majority of Chinese were in trade, common labor and general
commerce. A 19th century traveller, Isabella Bird (1831–1904) confirms
this fact:
... Then there are the native Malays, who ... besides being tolerably
industrious as boatmen and fishermen, form the main body of the
police. The Parsee merchants, who like our rule, form a respectable
class of merchants here ... The Javanese are numerous and make
good servants and sailors ... The washer men and grooms are nearly
all Bengalees. Jews and Arabs make money and keep it ... the Klings
make splendid boatmen, they drive gharries ... . (Bird, 1883, 1967:
115–116)

Another traveller in the 1930s, a Japanese by the name of Fujii (1943:

9) has this to say of “the colonial life”: “the car was driven by a Malay,
their domestic maid was either Chinese or Malay, their gardener was
Malay and their laundry was done by Chinese” (Ibid.: 7). Among the
Chinese, he observed, “the Hylams were houseboys and waiters, the
servants and amahs were Cantonese and the Hokkien were professionals
of various sorts.” So too Charles Allen (1983: 62) writing on social life

and customs in Southeast Asia, described the rather neat correlation of
race and occupation in the 1930s as follows:
Facing us in serried ranks were our subordinate staff; Indian and

Chinese account clerks who knew much more about the work than I
did and upon whom I was very dependent ... These clerks were known
as keranis – an Indian word that denotes clerk – and the office boys
were generally Malays and were known as peons.
The attention to segregation rather than integration was also seen in

the arena of sports where sporting identities were strongly aligned with
racial ones, for example, separate playing fields in different parts of of
the city were designated for Indians, Ceylonese and Malay Sports Clubs
(Conceicao, 2004).
Media representations
Printed materials in English provided another opportunity for the

enculturation of racial distinctions. As with other colonial ports such as
Colombo, Hong Kong and Guyana, it was a period where the majority
of the populace were illiterate and those who could read and write in
English belonged to the class who with the overt help of the media
played a prominent part in society. This section displays representative
snippets of print by the literati, who were mainly Caucasian govern-
ment officials, journalists, planters and travel writers.
Then (as is the case today – see Chapter 10), the “other” was often
constructed one-dimensionally and there was a tendency to sort people
into categories, placing discriminatory values on them. In his authori-
tative “Handbook of Singapore” (1892: 12), George Reith, a Presbyterian
minister in Singapore from 1889 to 1896 and freelance journalist for the
Singapore Free Press, refers rather unselfconsciously to the population as
“natives” and “wards.”4 Writing for the colonial administrators and resi-
dents, prospective colonial travellers and other readers in English, he

describes the people mostly by way of appearance, for example, “the

Balinese are very much like the Malays, but slighter in built, taller and
more agile. Their costume is a loin cloth, an apology for a turban and a
kris.” Like many British residents of the era, Reith was handicapped by the
fact that he did not speak the languages of the “natives” and neither was
he able, in view of the colour bar, to form a close friendship with them.5
Hence, British accounts were often a view “from the outside” or “from

the top.” In the same vein, the Portuguese Pierre d’Avity in 1615 refers to
“the exoticism of the Malays” as well as to the fact that they were “both
murderers and passionate authors of romantic songs and poems” (cited
by Gulliver, 2009: 9). J.R. Logan (1819–1869),6 a celebrated English lawyer
practising in Singapore, reported that “The Malay is a philosopher, and
while he realizes that Chinese energy means the acquisition of worldly
goods, he smiles at the effort, and hardly envies the yellow man his
possessions” (quoted in Swettenham, n.d.: 853). British travel writer John
Dill Ross (1898: 69) wrote a series of articles entitled “From Moscow to
Vladivostok “ in the Singapore Free Press, with typical impressions such as:
of the Malay ... I have found them horribly lazy, dreadful liars and
incurable thieves.
About the Chinese, his comments were, typically:
It is pleasant to see the Chinaman in the Straits developing into

something very different from this, and that he can, under favour-
able circumstances, become as sleek, gifted with nerves as sensitive
as could be wished. The moral fibre may possibly be put into him
by and by. A little strain of Malay blood seems to vastly improve the
Chinaman.
With a similar viewpoint, the British planter/miner/agriculturalist

Warnford-Lock (1907: 32–32) pens the following:
By nature, the Malay is an idler, the China man is a thief and the
Indian is a drunkard. Yet each, in his special class of work is both
cheap and efficient when properly supervised.
British resident in Singapore Joss Chinchinjoss (1900: 55–56) penned

a poem entitled “Chinese New Year”, an auspicious annual Chinese
festival, as one that is “unpleasant, alien and repulsive.” Below is an

extract from his poem on this major Chinese festival. It is meant as a

likely read for fellow British residents and their native collaborators:
The shriek of many porkers is the first unwelcome sound

Which pierce through the stillness of the night
(Their dying screams remind us of a place that’s underground)
And they paint their slaughtered victims red and white.

... ...
We think no more of sleeping – we turn and twist in bed
We hate Celestials with a deadly hate.
We wish that every Chinaman were hanged and drawn and dead,
Then morning – and the sound and stink abate.
District Commissioner John Robson’s (1894: 19) book entitled “People

in a Native State” was made up of ten chapters with classic titles
such as: “The British Resident”, “District Officer”, “Chinese Towkay”,
“Malay Policeman”, “Gentleman in PWD”, “The Man from Jaffna”,
“The Lady from Japan”, “The Shikari”, “The Tuan Doctor”, and finally
“Conclusion.” In a postscript, he tells his reader that his list is not
comprehensive, as there are another three characters which he identi-
fied as “The Planter”, “The Eurasian” and “The Chetty” and which “was
not worth portraying.” Everything is seen from the racial lens and his
description is reminiscent of a biologist who has recently discovered
a new species. One chapter may suffice as a typical example. In the
description of the “Chinese Towkay” (Chinese businessman), Robson
has this to say: “wonderful adaptability”, “thoroughly conversant with
European thought and ideas; he can speak Chinese, but finds it easier
to think in Malay and, if he can write, it is as likely as not to be in
English, and very good handwriting too”, “wears big diamond ring”,
“his nail grows to an inch or more – especially at the little finger”
(Robson, 1894: 18).
The books of the first Resident General of the Federated Malay States
(1896–1901), Frank Swettenham, are full of his impression of “Malay
laziness.” However, unlike other contemporary accounts of his time, he
favored the environmental rather than the genetic explanation for this
characterization. In brief, it was the unquestioned norm to place the
European at the top of the social hierarchy as one gifted with a scien-
tific and enlightened gaze while the colonized races on the other hand,

were assigned negative and passive postures. Through these printed

vignettes in the media, the colonized were made to understand their
racial identities in a hierarchical and well-ordered society.
To be fair, the British were circumspect not only of non-whites but
also of other Europeans, although to a lesser degree. For example, in “A
Padre in Partibus”, George Reith (1899: 144) portrayed his meeting with
a Dutch resident in Batavia in 1896 in the following way:

Do you speak English, Sir?
Oh – yes.”
What is the meaning of the syllabus Tji with which all the names
here begin?
Oh I do-on’t know. I sink it means pless. Yes, I sink zo. Pleis, town
like as de English town in de namen Stock-town, Darling-town and
Norzamp-town. I sink it means dat. O-yes!
This rather patronizing description of another European, a Dutchman,

ended with Reith’s recommendation that “the habit of distinct articu-
lation should be enjoined upon pupils learning to read” (Ibid.: 174).
Reith’s rather confident depiction may be seen as representative of
the then Victorian conviction between a nation’s language (the way a
language should be written and/or pronounced) and its effects on the
morals of a person.
Census taking
The census, acknowledged widely as a scientific and objective instru-

ment, played a part in legitimating linguistic and racial differences
between the ruler and the ruled. It may be said to be a means of fore-
stalling alliances in the colonies that could challenge imperial rule,
especially if the governing class was a numerical minority. For example,
the French worked to preserve linguistic differences between the
Arabs and Berbers in North Africa, and between the Vietnamese and
Montagnards in Indo-China (Brocheux and Hemery, 2010). In India,
the British managed to gain control of the large territory of India by
keeping its people divided along lines of religion, language or caste.
“Color” became an important criterion with the Dravidian conceived
as the most primitive since they had darker skins and the fairer
Indo-Aryans, as the higher and dominant castes, since their skins were

fairer. In Indonesia, the Dutch colonialists also employed this strategy

to strengthen ethnic differences (cf. Hoon, 2008).
The introduction of census taking in Singapore became a conven-
ient way to reinforce race and ethnicity as a scientific concept
in popular thought (Hirschman, 1987: 565). The category “race”
appeared in Singapore for the first time in the 1891 census of the
Straits Settlements with categories sorted “scientifically” under major

headings of “Europeans”, “Eurasians”, “Chinese”, “Malays and other
natives of the Archipelago”, “Tamils and other natives of India” and
“Other nationalities” (which included the Arabs, the Siamese, Jews,
Jawi Pekans and the Annamese) (Ibid.). There were two lists: one list
placed Europeans and Americans at the top, followed by Armenians,
Jews, and then Eurasians. The second was an alphabetical list from
Abyssinians to Singhalese.
Like races, languages were also assigned their own hierarchies so
that while colonial subjects could still be recognized as humans, they
were deficient (Errington, 2008). The indigenous languages linked to
the Chinese, Indian and Malay races were identified as “dialects” or
“patois” and were thought unfit to co-express scientific thought (Milne
et al., 2007). The fact that most of the indigenous languages lacked a
writing system and a literary history was also seen as a confirmation
of their alleged inferior status. This practice enabled the formulation
of mutually exclusive and exhaustive ethnic and linguistic categories
as a means of classifying the population under rule by the colonialists.
Linguists who were engaged with the census takers were thus involved
with the broader ideological challenge of creating and legitimating
colonial power.
The census also listed the religions that existed in the colony begin-
ning with Christianity. While Christianity is well-defined with discern-
ible boundaries and fits well as a relatively distinct entity, a strict
classification of entities to represent relatively “eclectic” religions such
as Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism would also mean forcing such hith-
erto inclusive and syncretic faiths to be more exclusive and ideologic-
ally attuned than they were in reality. For example, the Chinese masses
have historically drawn philosophies and practices from Shamanism,
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Such syncretism is not normally
regarded as contradictory as these religions are perceived as comple-
mentary rather than competing. However, by listing religions such as
Taoism and Buddhism as separate entries, the census inevitably played
its part in strengthening religious differences (see Chapter 10).7

Education and identity
In colonial Singapore, multiple schooling systems were created to meet

what was diagnosed to be the different needs of the ethnic-linguistic
groups. The use of different languages in the education system in colo-
nial Singapore helped lay the bedrock of a racially-conscious society
and enabled the colonial power to practice their governance of divide et
impera (“divide and conquer”).8 This section discusses Malay-, Chinese-,

Tamil- and English-medium education and their respective contribu-
tions to a racially-minded identity.
Malay-medium schools
The Malays were the only racial group provided free elementary educa-
tion by the British, who were themselves influenced by a paternal and
humanitarian sense of obligation to protect and preserve what they
viewed was the way of life of the “rightful” people. The Malays were
educated in the medium of Malay, ostensibly to ensure the continu-
ation of their close bond between the traditional institutional struc-
ture and the Malay language. Sir George Maxwell, who was then British
Chief Secretary to Malaya, described the policy in the following way:
Our policy in regard to the Malay peasant is to give them as good

an education as can be obtained in their own language. The last
thing we want to do is to take them away from the land. (quoted in
Wheeler, 1929: 155)
However, the overall result was the maintenance of a thought pattern

of the Malays different not just from the elite Malays but also from that
of other races. According to Roff (1972: 140), the nature of the educa-
tion was “conservative” and only suited them for “a future in peasant
agriculture ... and little else.” Indeed, most school textbooks published
in colonial Singapore depicted the rural Malay as happily fishing or
growing rice. Whatever literature was prescribed was confined to the
Malay classics, traditional Malay verse, and well-known extracts from
the Hikayat Abdullah.9 In addition, Malay novels of the period depicted
the towns as undesirable places where bad moral influences degener-
ated the “good” Muslims.
A vastly differentiated education was designed for the Malay elite,
leading to a gulf within the Malay group.10 The sons of the Malay aris-
tocracy, of which there were many (there being eleven states and two

federal territories in the Malay Peninsula) were educated in English at

the Malay College in Kuala Kangsar, so as to equip them for a job in
the British civil service. Some of the royals would also proceed to a
university in Britain thereafter (Loh, 1975). A few token scholarships
were also given to bright Malay boys.11 This meant that the Malay elite,
who would take over the governance of the country in the post-colonial
era, would discourse in English and would speak a different language

from the majority of the rakyat (“the masses”). These English-educated
Malays have been found to be liberal, a state of mind influenced by their
familiarity with English and its relatively more “Western” culture (cf.
Roff, 1967). Hence, the British helped create a divided Malay identity, as
seen in the ideological split in present-day Malaysia between the urban
versus rural Malay, the English-educated versus the Malay-educated,
and the conservative versus the liberal.
It must be noted that English education was only available to a
minority of the Malay population. From the onset, there was always a
fear that if too many natives spoke it as well as the British, they might
become just as educated and would probably challenge European rule –
particularly, the race-based exclusions which prevented them from
rising to higher levels of power within the colonial state machinery. In
1870, Frank Swettenham then Resident of Perak, pronounced that too
much English might give too many the “delusions of grandeur”:
“ ... I do not think it is at all advisable to give to the children of an

agricultural population an indifferent knowledge of a language
that to all but the very few would only unfit them for the duties
of life and make them discontented with anything like manual
labour. While we teach children to read and write and count
in their own language, or in Malay, the ‘lingua franca’ of the
Peninsula and the Archipelago, we are safe” and that “ ... I should
like to see the boys taught useful industries, and the girls weaving,
embroidery and mat making. (Perak Annual Report 1890, quoted
in Koh, 2007: 11)
Chinese- and Indian-medium schools

In contrast to the Malays, the Chinese and Indian migrants were freely
given licenses to found schools inspired by their own private vision.
While the Chinese received help from their clans and philanthropists,
the Indians who were mostly living in rural areas, received help from
plantation owners or missionaries to form their own schools. Indeed,
within two years of the establishment of the British port of Singapore,

their children were taught in privately-operated schools, in languages

as varied as English, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese, Hokkien and Teochew as
their operators saw fit (Lind, 1974: 69; Lee, 2008).
In 1810, with regard to the Chinese, there were two Cantonese
schools – one at Kampong Glam with twelve boys and another at
Peking Street with eight boys (Doraisamy, 1969: 16). By the turn of the
20th century, there were many more Chinese schools founded by the

different clans and dialect communities. Some well-known ones were
the Cantonese’s Yeung Ching School (Yangzheng Xuetang) founded in
1905, the Hakka’s Yingxin School and Khee Fatt School (Qifa Xuetang)
in 1906, and the Hainanese’s Yoke Eng School (Yu Ying Xuetang) in 1910
(Wee, 2009). These schools designed their own syllabi, and used their
own separate mother tongues as the medium of instruction, reinforcing
further sub-identities within the Chinese groups. In this way, vernac-
ular education became a means to maintain divisiveness and forestall
assimilation (cf. Pennycook, 1998).
Like the Hokkiens, Cantonese and Teochews from China, the Tamils,
Telegus and Punjabis began their own small elementary schools,
importing their teachers from India. These were schools with instruc-
tional mediums such as Urdu, Tamil or Telegu and with syllabi from
India (Nagata, 1975).12 However, unlike the masses of Chinese migrants
in Singapore, many Indians aspired for the better-organized English
education. For example, the Malayalee and Singhalese children preferred
to attend English-medium schools to learn Malay as a second language,
rather than attend their own Malayalee or Singhalese schools. This
divide between English education and vernacular education contrib-
uted to ideological differences within the Indian population, as was the
case with the Malays (Sandhu and Mani, 1993).
It was not uncommon for schools to impose a ban on pupils speaking
other languages than the one they had elected.13 In the English school,
former Singapore Ambassador Maurice Baker (1995: 20) recounted not
being able to speak in any language except English, although code-
mixing and code-switching was part of the practice in the home and
wider society. So too, Leow (1996: 4), a student of the Chinese primary
schools in the 1940s, recounted that he was reprimanded for speaking
English, and when he later attended an English secondary school, the
reverse was the case. Again, in the Arabic-medium schools, Syed Hussain
bin Abdul Gadir Aljunied, an elementary school student in the 1930s,
relates that at the Aljunied Islamic School where he was educated,
“strict punishment were meted out to those caught speaking English
and Malay.”14

English-medium schools
The Christian missionaries who followed on the heels of the imperialists
in their conquest of foreign lands saw opportunities in converting the
populace to Christianity through the teaching of English.15 Prominent
English-medium schools were often allied to particular Christian
denominations such as the Anglo-Chinese Boys’ School (Methodist)
and St Joseph’s Institution (Catholic) and the duty of the schoolmasters

in these schools was not just to teach the three Rs (reading, writing
and arithmetic) but also to sharpen in the minds of the young “the
fear of the Lord, to pray, to sing and to attend church.”16 It was not
surprising to find that a significant number of children who attended
such schools were subsequently converted to Christianity (cf. Yap,
1982). Singhalese Frederick Talalle (quoted in Arseculeratne, 1992: 166)
admitted that those who went to Christian missionary schools were
the first to convert: “There were no Buddhist schools, so automatically
we became Anglicans ... when I became a Christian after education in a
missionary school; I stopped celebrating the Sinhalese New Year.” Here,
one notes that religious affiliation helped reinforced diverse subgroup
identities within the Singhalese community (as in other communi-
ties), not least because the Singhalese who were Christians spoke in
English while those who were Buddhist tended to speak in Singhalese.
Arty Meegasdeniya (quoted in Arseculeratne, 1992: 132) recounts the
linguistic-religious identity divide within the Singhalese community:
“They avoided each other ... they would reply in English when spoken
to in Sinhalese.”
Complementing the efforts of the missionaries, the British also estab-
lished a premier English-medium school, Raffles Institution, which
would produce a collaborative elite to help man the lower ranks of
the administrative and executive service (Gopinathan, 1974).17 Such
schools attracted the children of the Babas or “Straits-born” who were
most open to the perceived socioeconomic benefits of an Anglophone
education for their children. Being later-generational Chinese, they had
experience of European and Asian trading practices, and knew that
knowledge of English would be crucial to their economic advancement
in the colony.18
For over a century, the Anglophone curriculum of the English schools
comprised a Latinate grammar, the teaching of science, a history of
Europe and the literature of Shakespeare. Such a curriculum was of
course vastly different from that of the private vernacular Tamil or
Chinese schools (Wilson, 1978: 155). For example, in Chinese vernac-
ular schools, Chinese classical texts like the “Trimetrical Classics”

(San Zi Jing), the “Hundred Family Surnames” (Bai Jia Xing) and the
“Millenary Classics” (Qian Zi Wen) were taught. Moral education
(usually Confucian), for example, respect to elders, good behavior,
the cherishing of public property, caring for other people, teamwork,
taking part in sport, etc., was important. Predictably, these differing
syllabi between the vernacular and English-language schools led to the
creation of disparate identities, a scenario which would later plague a

self-governing Singapore (Chapter 9).
English-language textbooks taught the concept of the “Victorian
Gentleman” by imbuing the students with the sort of Victorian upper-
class distinctions endemic in British public schools, such as the notion
of being from a “correct” background.19 In the depiction of Rosie in
“Happy Days” (Koh, 2007: 12; Sisters, 1936), a supplementary readers
series used in Mission Schools,20 an ideological positioning of race may
be discerned. For example, it is obvious to the teacher and the child that
the cook of the elite Chinese English-speaking child is a Hainanese, the
gardener and chauffeur is Malay and the amah very likely a Cantonese:
Saturday is the best day of the week. When Rosie wakes up in the
morning, she is happy to think she can spend the whole day at
home. She can do just as she likes all day. She can go to the kitchen
and watch Cook. Rosie likes to see Cook working. He can do things
so quickly and he knows where everything is. When he comes back
from the market, he puts what he has bought on the table and begins
to prepare the meals. He brings meat, rice, vegetables, lovely red chil-
lies, and many kinds of fruit. Rosie looks to see if he has got her
favourite fruit. Now, I am sure you can guess what that is. It is the
mangosteen. Amah cuts the shell for her and she enjoys the juicy
white part round the seeds inside. Mummy says it is very good for her
too. (quoted in Koh, 2007: 13)
Another book for Standard 1, entitled “Who am I” by Lumsden Milne,

has chapter titles such as the following: “Ayam the Chicken”, “Loong
Kee the Tailor”, “Kambing the Goat”, “Jit Sing the Hawker”, “Samat the
Sailor”, “Gurbal Singh the Watchman”, “Alwi the Fruitseller”, “Dollah
the Policeman”, “Mat the Fisherman”, and “Hok Cheng the Rickshaw
Puller.” Each chapter, such as that of “Hok Cheng the Rickshaw Puller”,
obviously plays its part in enforcing the ideological stereotype:
I am a rickshaw puller. I cannot speak English. I cannot speak Malay.

I only speak Chinese. I am a Hokkien. I live in Singapore. I have

been in Singapore for a year. Before that, I lived in India. (Milne,

1933: 29)
Sketches of the local people abound in prescribed English textbooks.

In the teaching of reading comprehension, various races are denoted
by obvious “ethnic” names such as Awang, Kim Seng and Muthusamy.
Very typically, Awang the schoolboy:

... likes drawing, handwork and reading ... teacher says he talks too
much ... evening he plays badminton and football ... helps his father
to harvest the rice ... sits in front of the house all evening ... . (Milne,
1933: 44–48)
On the other hand, Kim Seng the schoolboy:
Collects stamps ... brother studying to be engineer, father is a clerk

but wants him to be a doctor, and he goes to the cinemas during his
spare time. (Milne, 1933: 49–53)
In contrast, Mutusamy the schoolboy:
... is born in India, has two brothers – one is a teacher – hopes to be a

lawyer when he grows up – wants to go to England to study. (Milne,
1933: 54–56)
While the Straits-born or Babas were able to learn English and became
part of the ruling elite, graduates from the Chinese-medium schools
founded by the clans, and which educated the majority of the Chinese
population, were unable to speak English and were thus marginalized,
excluded from careers in government and the professions, and forced
to take ill-paid jobs in factories or on the buses (Bloodworth and Liang,
2000: 31). This divide would later play itself out in at the dawn of inde-
pendence (see Chapter 9).
Religion and identity
Religion can be used to strengthen identities already made distinct by

race, the media and education. While religions may teach peace and
tolerance, their exploitation by the powers that be of their very specifi-
city of beliefs and rituals toward only one way of attaining salvation

would certainly help to define and strengthen boundaries (Chew,

2006).
The British allowed the freedom of religious practice in Singapore,
liberally issuing permits for religious places of worship. Religion was
therefore free to reproduce the racial-linguistic order. As a case in point,
by the turn of the 20th century, the Catholic Church had formed
communal enclaves around each established parish (Liew, 2008: 9).

There was the Tamil church (Our Lady of Lourdes in Ophir Road), the
Teochew Church of the Sacred Heart, in Tank Road, the French church
(The Cathedral of the Good Shepherd on Bras Basah Road), and the
Latin and Kristang churches. A sub-arm of the Catholic Church, the
Chinese Catholic Mission, was also organized along the lines of regional
groups from their respective provinces in China. Each ethnic group,
for example, Teochew, Hokkien and Khek, had their own communal
place of congregation. Other Christian denominations, such as the
Methodists, followed suit with the establishment of churches along
regional linguistic lines, for example, the Foochow, Hinghwa, Hakka,
Cantonese and Teochew-speaking churches.21 However, one notes that
the higher the socioeconomic status of the church, the more likely
English is used exclusively (cf. Albakry and Ofori, 2011).
Photo 2 Chinese mosque next to a temple. South Bridge Road, Singapore, with
the twin minarets of Jamae Mosque on the right and in the background, and the
Hindu gate-tower of the Sri Mariamman Temple. Reproduced with permission
by the National Archives, Singapore.

Just as the Hokkiens were favored by the British above the other
Chinese groups (Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.), so too Christianity
was tacitly favored above all religions. Distinguished colonial admin-
istrator Hugh Clifford (1897), in his preface to “Nineteen Tales of the
Malay People,” describes the Malay populace in the following way:
... who being yet untouched by white men, are still in a state of

original sin ... the only salvation for the Malays lie in the increase of
British influence in the Peninsula, and in the consequent spread of
modern ideas, progress and civilization.
The prime site occupied by St Andrew’s Cathedral in the heart of

Singapore was expressly reserved in 1826 by Sir Stamford Raffles for
an Anglican edifice (Woods, 1958). Other prime sites in the city were
also allocated to churches such as the Presbyterians in 1878 and the
Brethren in 1879 (Makepeace et al. 1921: 262; Finlay, 1964: 26). British
Resident G.J. Vickery, writing in the Straits Chinese Magazine (1907)
published how a good friend of his was “only a Chinese but a man
indeed” primarily because of “his Christian Faith” which according to
Vickery “made him a man.” In her novel “Sold for Silver”, Nurse Janet
Lim (2004: 90) recounted how she had nursed a Chinese patient whom
everyone called “duchess” solely “because she had become a Christian
and was therefore superior to others.”
Interestingly, the British designated the Malay population as clearly
“Muslims”, thus setting the stage for Islam to become closely identified
as “the religion of the Malays”, rather than as a universal faith in its
own right irrespective of race. This was reinforced by confining Islam to
very specific areas of Malay life, for example, marriage, divorce, inher-
itance, the administration of Muslim affairs in general, including the
collection and disbursement of zakat (“tithes”). In addition, the British
made the Sultan the supreme head of religious matters, after their own
Anglicanism. Over time and with self-governance, it was not surprising
for the majority of Malays to begin to identify themselves first and fore-
most as Muslims, in oppositional contrast to the rest of the population,
who were encouraged to practice their own religions. Islam became so
much identified with the Malays that census compiler Vlieland (1932:
73–74) found himself in a position to announce in 1931 that:
... The Malay, for instance, habitually regards adherence to Islam in

much the same light as a European regards a racial distinction, and
will speak of a Muhammadan Indian and a Hindu (even if the two are

of precisely similar origin), as thought the distinction between them

were similar in nature and magnitude to that between a Frenchman
and a German. (Cohen, 2003)
Colonial law was developed in such a way that only the Malays were iden-
tified with Islamic family law and not the other races. For example, the
law considered Babas to be “Chinese”, hence encouraging them to tacitly

view Chinese religion as essential to their identity and to resist conver-
sion to Islam. Thus, unlike the Chinese Mestizos in the Philippines who
converted to Catholism and became fully Filipinized and the Chinese
Peranakans of Java who converted to Islam and followed the “royal road
to assimilation”, the Chinese of Singapore were greatly encouraged to
retain their Chinese religion or to convert to Christianity, rather than
follow the Malay into Islam.
Religion also reinforced the language, caste and regional distinctions
already inherent in the Indian community. Maiden Nagore, a clerk who
migrated to Singapore in 1920 at the age of seven, recollects:
The (Indian) Muslims had shops in Arab Street, Market Street and
Chulia Street. The Tamil Hindus were labourers, newspaper vendors,
tally clerks, foremen, hospital attendants, bus drivers and contrac-
tors. The Tamils (Hindus) ate thosai, idali and appam for breakfast.
The (Indian) Muslims sold prathas at Tanjong Pagar and Serangoon
Road. 22
The Indians who attended Tamil-medium schools remained “very”

Hindu since this language was linked closely to the Hindu faith.
Tamil is a language used for prayers, a practice which has endured to
the present day where 61.9 per cent of children use Tamil to pray at
home and 71.4 per cent as a language in the temple (Vaish, 2008).23
However, the Indians who attended the English-medium schools were
more Anglocized and a significant number of them had converted to
Christianity (Chew, 2006). They were also distinguishable by the fact
that they were economically better off due to their facility with the
English language.
Concluding remarks
This chapter has shown the use of race as an identifier par excellence.
As Hirschman (1986: 357) puts it: “More than rubber and tin, the
legacy of colonialism in Malaya was racial ideology.” Town planning,

occupational specialization, the print media, the census, the educational

and religious systems were all ideologically tuned towards the creation
of such a realization. Through all these strategies of boundary delinea-
tion, the colonialists were able to justify physical differences and, most
of all, to make alien ways of speaking into objects of knowledge.
Once identification by race became forefronted in the general psyche,
races such as the Chinese, Indians and Arabs who had traditionally

freely intermarried or assimilated with Malay culture and customs
began to more consciously hold themselves apart from the Malays,
following the European style of exclusive religious affiliation and racial
superiority (Hefner, 2001). So too the Malays, who although originally
did not think of themselves as having a common ethnicity, began to
identify themselves as bangsa (“race”) and as orang Melayu (“Malays”),
new labels which further differentiated them from the non-Malays in
the post-colonial era, and which were then subsequently canonized
by Furnivall’s (1956) concept of the “plural society” in the mid-20th
century.24
With such a legacy, it is not surprising that in present-day Singapore,
language has come to be regarded as a metonym of race and religion
and potentially a surrogate arena for ethnic conflict. Race continues
to be used as an effective administrative apparatus to discipline and
manage differences (Purushotam, 1997). Notwithstanding, while the
relevant identifier for the inhabitants in colonial Singapore by the late
19th century was “What race do you belong to?”, the more pertinent
question for an inhabitant was “Which region do you hail from?” For
this we turn to Chapter 3.

3
Regional Identities: Distinct but
Undivided

Before the official legitimization of race by the census of 1891, identity may
be said to have been more regional in nature, that is, dependent on whether
one’s language was sea-bound or land-bound (Reid, 2010).1 Hence, questions
such as “Where are you from?” became common parlance, and indeed,
almost always, the only relevant one (Bellwood, 2004). There was a palpable
sharing and awareness of a common regional identity arising from the
flexibility of boundaries, even if these may periodically erupt in chiefdom
rivalry from time to time. A sense of regionalism came too with commonly
used words, a likeness in customs, shared memories of emigration or settle-
ment as a group and even anatomical similarities. The lingua franca Bazaar
Malay, which may be regarded as the first major pidgin of Southeast Asia,
also gave rise to a shared “we” feeling and a collective identity.
British colonialization of Singapore in 1819 attracted not just the tradi-
tional flow of migrants from Sumatra, Java and the Rhio Archipelago, but
also the Chinese from China and the Indians from India. This chapter
examines the regional identities of the inhabitants of colonial Singapore
as denoted by their mother tongues. Such an alternative means of exam-
ination must inevitably suggest problems associated with the more usual
classification of groups in the preceding chapter by anatomical, primarily
racial means. In this chapter it will be shown that each designated racial
group such as the Malay, Chinese and Indians were not linguistically
homogeneous as commonly assumed by their racial terminology. What
follows is a discussion of the main sub-identities of the more distinctive
Malay, Chinese and Indian groups that migrated to colonial Singapore,
all of which add to our account of a quite incredible array of identities:
Malay – Orang Laut, Bugis, Minangkabau, Javanese, Baweanese/

Boyanese, etc.
37

Chinese – Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, etc.

Indian – Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Bengali, etc.
This was not so much a hierarchical but a multilateral diversity, which

led the way not just for easy intermarriages and the resultant pidgins
and Creoles, but also to the creation of novel lingua francas which
enabled myriad races to trade generally peacefully with one another for

hundreds of years. It was not a binary but a regional multilingualism,
more akin to an early “globalization” which enabled the maintenance
and flourishing of the nexus which was Singapore.
“Malay” identity
The word “Malay” is a term used for a wide range of Malay languages,
some mutually intelligible and some not quite so, along the Sumatran,
Borneo and Malay Peninsula especially the coastlines. While Malay may
be best understood as a “cover term” to be compared with “European”
(Milner, 2008), it was on the whole generally peaceful and tolerant
as seen in the practice of religious syncretism and cross-cultural
marriages.2
Subgroup intermarriages were also commonly practised, for example,
Brunei, which is distinctive enough to be the centre of its own world
with its own variety of Malay, has had many of its princesses married to
royalty in the Malaya Peninsula such as the Johor Sultanate. Certainly,
there had been considerable assimilation of Indonesians (Madurese,
Bugis, Balinese, and Javanese) in Malaysia through marriage and adop-
tion of Malay identity. Hirschman (1987) has already recounted how
difficult it was to measure a distinct Javanese or Boyanese population.
While the Orang Laut has been mentioned as the “original inhabitants”
in the history textbooks of Singapore, and assumed as “the generic
Malay”, there are in reality many linguistically distinct communities
of Malay. Still, today, there is disagreement as to which varieties of
speech popularly called “Malay” should be considered dialects of this
language, and which should be classified as distinct Malay languages
(Omar, 1983). For example, there are Malay dialects such as Kedahese,
Kelantanese or Sarawakian where there is only limited mutual intel-
ligibility even if they form part of the political union of present-day
Malaysia.
While the British encouraged the existence of “sub-ethnic caul-
drons” each with their own respective languages in Singapore, such

Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided 39
as, the Javanese in Kampong Ayer Gemuroh near Tanah Merah, the
Orang Laut in Kampong Kallang, the Bugis in Kampong Soopoo, Jalan
Pelatok and Jalan Pergam, and along the coastlines of Rochor, Changi,
Kallang and the Beach Road area, (Mydin, 2008),3 this did not prevent
the linguistically and culturally distinct groups from quickly mastering
the lingua franca (Bazaar Malay or the Johor-Riau dialect) so as to frater-
nize in the wider community. Once in possession of the lingua franca,

regional groups easily merged into the wider “Malay” community.
Their children became native-speakers of Bazaar Malay and this facili-
tated cross-cultural marriages resulting in a further hybridization of
language. There have been many oral history respondents who refer to
themselves as speaking Bugis-Makassar or being Bugis-Baweanese due
to mixed parentage in the oral history records (Chia, 1993). However,
the resultant linguistic “hybrid” subcategories derived from such unions
have hardly ever been recorded, as this is not a priority in either coloni-
alist or nationalist discourse.
Once settled in Singapore, the second and third generation regional-
ists became assimilated to a more “generic” Singapore Malay culture,
although their parents may still possess sociolinguistic customs from
their places of origin. A semiotic change of dressing usually follows the
assimilation of language. For example, the Baweanese, or the Javanese
and Bugis as the case may be, would begin to eventually replace the
female kebaya and sarong batik with the two-piece Malay baju kurong
while the men began to put on the songket kain samping, in line with
Malay dress in Singapore.
The Orang Laut

Historical studies of the Orang Laut have often been placed within the
larger piracy discourse and depended on colonial sources that were natu-
rally antagonistic to native raiders. For example, a 14th century report
entitled Tao-i-chih-lioh (“Island Foreigners”) by Chinese trader Wang Ta
Yuan described the Orang Lauts as gathering together at any one time
in two or three hundred prahus (“small boats”) to attack the ships as
they attempt to enter the “Dragon’s Teeth Straits” (description of the
Straits of Singapore). Orang Lauts were identified as people without reli-
gion and culture and referred to using derogatory terms such as bodoh
(“stupid”) and jorok (“unrefined”). Through the eyes of the more reli-
giously conservative Malays, the Orang Laut is often seen as “impure”
due to their more liberal diet and living conditions (Mohamed Shahrom,
2003). In addition, the sea-bound Orang Lauts were largely illiterate and

lived a nomadic lifestyle, their history was conveyed through oral tradi-
tions and they left no enduring monuments, nor were there any native
chronicles written that solely pertained to them (Gibson-Hill, 1952).
The Orang Laut language reveals traces from Sumatran rather than
Riau Lingga which is the underlying foundation of Bazaar Malay. This
makes them more likely to be affiliated to the following tribes: the
Mawken (also spelled Moken or Morgan or Mantang), the Sekah, the

Sibutu Bajaus and the Bajaus of Kendari Bay (Makepeace et al., 1921:
345). In 1884, Schot (cited in Sopher, 1977: 176–179) collected a list of
150 words spoken by the Orang Laut. Only one-third of these words are
variations of Bazaar Malay:
Orang Laut (Mawken) and Johor-Riau Malay (Standard Malay today)

Apoi – api (“fire”)
Ka’e – kayu (“tree”)
Binai/binaing – bini (“woman”)
Bitua – bintang (“star”)
Mata aloi – mata hari (“sun”)
Within the settler Orang Laut, four groups – the Orang Kallang, Orang
Seletar, Orang Selat and Orang Gelam – may be discerned, largely
through the subvarieties of the language, as depicted in accent, syntactic
and lexical function (Sopher, 1977). Due to their diversity, settler groups
inevitably intermarried not just within their subgroups but also with
other Malay groups (Collins, 1998, 2001).
The Bugis
Like the Orang Lauts, the Bugis (also known as Basa Ugi or Buginese)
were distinguished for their heterogeneity rather than for their homo-
geneity. While most of the Bugis in Singapore hail from the pre-colonial
states of Bone (the standard dialect) in Sulawesi (formerly Celebes, and
today the third largest island in Indonesia),4 this does not suggest that
their mother tongues were homogenous for there are many distinct vari-
eties of Bone Bugis, not always fully mutually intelligible.5 Indeed, the
examination of several dialects of Bugis shows some to be sufficiently
different from others to be considered separate languages (Mills, 1975).
Oral history interviews of Malays living in colonial Singapore
confirm the Bugis often used Bazaar Malay (that is, Johor-Riau dialect)
to communicate with one another, leading very quickly to their rapid
assimilation within the “Malay” masses in Singapore.6

The Minangkabaus
Like the Orang Lauts and Bugis, the Minangkabaus from Western
Sumatra have visited Singapore and Malaysia for the purpose of
trade for centuries due to the traditionally very porous boundaries of
Southeast Asia. Through the years, they have settled in Singapore and
created their own communities.7 This was encouraged by the fact that
Minangkabau is Bazaar Malay’s and Standard Malay’s closest linguistic

relative, something which has been deliberately under-publicized due
to political spheres of interest drawn up by the Dutch and British in
what has been called the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, whereby the
Dutch abandoned their claims north of the Straits of Malacca for
the confirmation of their claims by the British south of the Straits.8
Hence, Minangkabau, which was much akin to what was spoken in
the Peninsula, especially the state of Negri Sembilan, now ventured
on a course of its own, developing through time accentual differences
pertaining to particular regions. Four main Minangkabau dialects
have been identified according to geographic origins: Tanah Data,
Lima Puluh Kota, Pasisia and Agam. Differing linguistic groups there-
fore tended to huddle together, in the Geylang and Arab Street areas,
as they engaged in earning a living in the colonial port. In bustling
Singapore, they specialized in the selling of nasi padang (a rice dish
made of meat, vegetables and fermented soya beans), religious items,
toys and clothes. Others worked as taxi drivers and gardeners and
joined the uniformed services. Many also worked as sailors on ships
owned by trading companies.
The Javanese
Unlike Minangkabau, the Javanese language is mainly unintelligible to
other Malay groups. Javanese diglossia of high and low speech styles
also deters comprehensibility. Depending on whether one uses the
high or low variety and on the parameters of the speaker’s judgment
with relation to contextual variables such as setting, topic, the social
status of the audience in relation to him or herself, the speaker will
then produce an “appropriate” speech that is either informal or official.
Sometimes, the speaker may steer a middle course using Krama vocabu-
lary but mixing it with Madya equivalent, thus becoming “neutral”
(Steinhauer, 2001a).
The Sejarah Melayu (“Malay Annals”) is scattered with Javanese
phrases. In his rendering of the Hikayat Hang Tuah (“History of Hang
Tuah”, a legendary warrior), Winstedt (1969) wrote that the Malays in
Malacca were “all half Javanese” – a fact not surprising if one bears

in mind that at least half of the total population of Indonesia are of

Javanese descent or live in an area where Javanese is the dominant
language. However, very little research has been done of early Javanese
migrants to Singapore, particularly in the first decades of the 19th
century since, like the Orang Lauts, Bugis and Minangkabaus, they were
not visibly distinguishable from each other even if they were culturally
and linguistically distinct.

In terms of occupational specialization, the surveyor J.T. Thomson
(1821–1884) mentioned the advanced skills of Javanese artisans in the
production of brass items such as kettles, pots and hinges in the early
1850s. Many worked as book publishers and pilgrim brokers in the
Arab Street area (Roff, 1967: 37).9 Mydin (2008) notes that in the late
19th century, thousands of Javanese coolies sought work in Singapore
at the Botanical Gardens as well as the gardens of Government House
(present-day Istana).10
The Baweanese/Boyanese
Baweanese or Boyanese is a considered a dialect of Madurese and is
mutually unintelligible to the aforementioned linguistic groups. The
Baweans in Singapore speak a slight variation called the boyan selat
(Mantra, 1998). These present-day Singaporeans originally travelled
from the island of Bawean (Boyan) in the Dutch East Indies (modern
day Indonesia), an island located approximately 150 km north of
Surabaya in the Java Sea. Like the other Malays, they came to the port
for better economic opportunities and they have been observed to live
in Singapore in a village called Kampong Boyan (“Boyanese Village”) by
the banks of the Rochor River, between Jalan Besar and Syed Alwi Road.
While the Bugis were basically traders, the Baweanese usually worked as
horse and cart, and, later, motor car drivers.
Critical commentary
Although Malays do have some common historical cultural notions
such as: a common ethnic awareness which has been consciously
promoted since independence through a common language and reli-
gion; a common literary tradition (no matter how diverse some of its
products have become); and the claim to a common origin on the
western shores of the South China Sea, it cannot be denied from the
above account that the community is at heart linguistically and cultur-
ally heterogeneous.
However, in, for example, present-day Malaysia and Singapore, in both
colonialist and nationalist discourse it became important to delineate

Chinese languages sub-varieties
Hokkien Xiamen, Quanzhou Zhangshou, Tongan,
Anxi, Yongchun, Longhai, Jinjiang, etc.
Teochew Chaozhou, Shantou, Chaoan, Chaoyang,
Jieyang, Chenghai, Puning, Huilai, etc.

Cantonese Guangzhou, Zhaoqing, Shunde, Taishan,
Heshan, etc.
Hakka Mexian, Dapu and Huizhou
Hainanese Wenchang and Haikou
Figure 3.1 Chinese languages in Singapore in the 19th century and before the
attainment of independence in 1959
the image of the “homogenous” Malay as the “native” so as to pit them

against other races such as the Chinese and the Indians. However, it
should be noted that, like the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians
also contain within themselves a great cultural and linguistic diversity,
causing them, like the Malays, to quickly master the lingua franca, adapt
to the local customs and to merge into the respective categories created
for them in colonial Singapore.
“Chinese” identity
In the first twenty years of British rule, Malay migration to Singapore

was overtaken by that of the Chinese, making Singapore the only other
country outside mainland China and Taiwan where the ethnic Chinese
consitutes a majority of the population – about 75 per cent. Like their
Malay counterparts, the Chinese are known to be “excellent” migrants,
endowed not just with powers of hardiness but also linguistic flexibility,
as shown in their command of various languages (Pan, 1998).
The Hokkiens (Minnanhua, Fujianese)

Hokkien (also known in China and Taiwan as Minnan (闽南) and else-
where as Amoy or Fujianese) will figure significantly in our history
not least because the majority of Singaporean Chinese came from
Hokkien-speaking regions of China such as Xiamen, Zhangzhou and

Quanzhou in the province of Fujian as early as the Tang dynasty (618–

907 CE).11 Historically too Hokkien (rather than Mandarin) has been a
major influence on how Chinese terminology was translated into English
and other European languages as seen in “tea” (茶; tê), “cumshaw”
(感謝; kám-siā), “ketchup” (茄汁; kiô-chiap), and “pekoe” (白毫; peˈh-hô),
“kowtow” (磕頭; khàu-thâu), and possibly “Japan” (Jiˈt-pún) (Chew, 2009).
What is little recognized about Fujian is that it possesses many

scarcely known minority races and languages and due to the hilly and
inaccessible domain, people from Fujian speak different languages,
which are more diverse than the Romance languages of Europe. Early
Singaporean settlers from Fujian could have spoken languages from any
of the following seven Fujianese linguistic groups (Chew, 2009):
● Quánzhōuhuà, in cities such as Jìnjiāng, Nán’ān, Zhāngzhōu,

Xiàmén;
● Fúzhōuhuà, spoken by people living in the cities of Fúzhōu and
Fúqìng;
● P ǔtiànhuà, spoken by the people in Pǔtián of southeastern Fújiàn
and counties under its administration;
● Hakka, spoken by the people in Yǒngdìng in southwest Fújiàn, and
in Liánchéng and Chángtīng in Lóngyán, and in Pínghé, Zhào’ān
and Nánjìng in Zhāngzhōu City;
● Lóngyánhuà, spoken by people living in Lóngyán;
● M ǐnběihuà, spoken by residents living in Wǔyí Shān in the north of
Fújiàn; and
● M ǐndōnghuà, spoken by those who live in the northeastern part of
the province whose capital is Níngdé.12
Singapore’s most widely spoken Hokkien belongs to the first group.

This Hokkien is popularly known as the Amoy (Xiamen) variety, and
its closest relative is Ang Kwuay or Tang-wuar. Another Hokkien sub-
dialect spoken in Singapore is Cheow Wan and of course there are many
more that I have not mentioned. Suffice to say, just as Bazaar Malay
enabled the Malay to converse with one another, Singapore Hokkien
(SH) played the same role (see Chapter 7).
The Teochews (Chaozhouhua)

The Teochews constitute the second largest Chinese linguistic group
after the Hokkiens in Singapore.13 Teochew shares about 50 per cent
mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, being its historical offshoot.14 The

Teochews originate from the Chaozhou region in the eastern part of

Guangdong province of China, including Chaozhou, Shantou and
Jieyang. Like the Hokkiens, the Teochews have their own linguisitc
subvarieties such as Teoh-Yeo and Hoklo. However, the majority of
Singaporean Teochews speak the Swatow (named after the main
Teochew city in southeast China) variety.
New migrants coming from various regions of Chaozhou province

would therefore have to pick up Swatow, especially if they were drawn to
live, as most did, in the Teochew quarters of Singapore such as Circular
Road and South Bridge Road. The majority of Teochew (today, Chaozhou)
speakers settled along the banks of the Singapore River, especially in the
Chinatown area where many of them worked in the commercial sectors
as well as in the fisheries industry. Indeed, the majority of the Chinese
living along the banks of the Straits of Johor was largely Teochew until
the Singapore Housing and Development Board (HDB) initiated mass
redevelopment from the 1980s onwards.
In addition, in order to communicate with other Chinese from
different parts of China, it was prudent for the Teochews to learn to use
Hokkien, the language of the Chinese majority in Singapore and the
intra-group lingua franca.
The Cantonese (Guangdonghua)

While Hokkien and Teochew are languages of the Min family tree,
Cantonese is from the Yue family; hence Cantonese is very different
from Hokkien and Teochew in both phonemic and lexical structure.
While most of Southeast Asia’s Chinese claim a Hokkien identity, the
exception is perhaps found in the cities of Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh
in Malaysia where the main Chinese language is Cantonese.15 Like
Hokkien, Cantonese itself has three linguistic subvarieties: Luoguang,
Seiyap and Gouyeung – and while they are distinct from each other,
they may be understood by Cantonese speakers with some effort, but
perhaps not by Hokkiens and other Chinese regional groups.
Traditionally, Cantonese businesses dominated the shops along
Temple Street, Pagoda Street, and Mosque Street. Nevertheless, within
the Cantonese subgroup there is occupational specialization, for
example, the migrants from Taishan spoke a distinctive sub-Cantonese
dialect and dominated the carpentry industry in Singapore. Generally,
the Cantonese worked as doctors, politicians, teachers of classical
Chinese, tailors and restaurant operators during the early and mid-20th
century.

The Hakkas (Kejia)

In contrast to Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese, the Hakka language
came from the inland mountainous regions of China and is completely
incomprehensible to all the Chinese groups recounted above. Due to its
Tungsic rather than Altaic roots, Hakka contains some unique expres-
sions in vocabulary and grammatical structure, not commonly found
in other Chinese languages (Kiang, 1991). Hakka, however, bears marks

of its historic assimilation: as the Hakkas migrated through different
regions of China, their language has borrowed and absorbed words
from non-Hakka groups. In Kwantung, it borrowed many words from
Cantonese, while in Taiwan a number of contemporary Hakka usages
have come from Japanese, Hokkien, and recently Mandarin Chinese.
Like the other Chinese groups already discussed, Hakka contains
within itself many sub-linguistic groups such as Hopo, Taipu, Fuichui,
Kiaying, and Sin-On (Choo, 2009). Many Hakkas chose to be vegetable
growers away from the other Chinese linguistic groups in town, while
some ventured into pawn-broking and textiles (Ibid.). Like other Chinese
regional groups, the Hakkas organized themselves into self-governing
associations or societies for mutual help and social activities once
settled in Singapore. These were factors which no doubt helped to
preserve their mother tongue, while they proceeded to master Hokkien,
Cantonese, Malay and English as lingua francas to be used with other
groups in the colony.16
A distinctive Hakka sub-linguistic group in Singapore is the Samsui
women who left their families behind in China to work on the construc-
tion sites of Singapore in the early 20th century. These women were
noted for their distinctive navy blue outfits and bright red headwear,
which was meant to protect their hair as they worked. The headwear
was first worn by Wang Chao Yun (王朝云字子霞), a concubine of Su
Dongpo, in the Hakka Fui Chiu district of Guangdong province and it
eventually became the traditional headgear of Hakkas.17
The Hainanese (Hainanhua)

Like Hakka, the Hainanese language, stemming from the north-eastern
region of Hainan, including Wenchang and Haikou, is not intelligible
to most of the Chinese in Singapore. Hence, it was difficult for them
to network or break into the more lucrative areas of business such as as
trading, shopkeeping, plantation management or mining.18 Nonetheless,
they eventually carved for themselves a niche in the service industries,
dominating a range of occupations largely associated with food and
beverages, such as coffee shops. Most of them worked as shop helpers,


Photo 3 Samsui women, wearing their traditional distinctive headgear taking
their meal in Singapore in 1954. Reproduced with permission by the National
Archives, Singapore.
chefs, and waiters in the hospitality sector or as houseboys in the homes

of the Babas.19
Critical commentary
As we leave our Chinese populace, one point is salient: like the Malays,
the Chinese were in possession of distinct regional identities and unique
languages. They were a heterogenous and not a homogenous group as
colonialist or nationalist official discourse would like to suggest. Like
the Malays, they came to the busy nexus to seek their fortunes and a
significant number of them never returned to their homelands. Instead,
they intermarried with other regional groups and by the second or
third generation were on their way to forming a more encompassing
“pan-Chinese” or “Singaporean” identity (Yen, 2002).
The occupational specializations of these groups meant that they
would have to exchange goods or trade with one another in their daily
routine. This inevitably led to assimiliation and multiculturalism. Just
as Malay speakers have to resort to Bazaar Malay to communicate, so
too speakers of the varied linguistic Chinese community would have
resorted to the Amoy variety of Hokkien to do so. However, in the

nationalist rhetoric that followed independence in 1959, plurality was

reordered and a widely spoken Hokkien was relegated to “dialect” status
while Mandarin was promoted as the “representative” mother tongue
of the Singaporean Chinese (see Chapters 9 and 10).
“Indian” identity

Just as there are many Chinese and Malay languages, there are also
many Indian languages contributing to a cacophony of identities. For
ease of reference, I will divide these languages, and their respective iden-
tities, into “northern” and “southern”, although there is evidence of
many borrowings between these two groups. Northern languages such
as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Bihari and
Assamese are members of the Indo-Iranian family tree; while southern
languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu are
members of the Dravidian language family. Most Indians in Singapore
are from the south and of the southern Indians, 80 per cent of them
are Tamils, while the rest are the Telegus from Andhra Pradesh, and
the Malayalees from the Malabar Coast areas. Of the northern Indian
settlers, the biggest numbers are the Punjabis and then the Sikhs (Sandhu,
1993). Distinct Indian identities have manifested themselves not just in
the occupational, regional and linguistic arenas, as is apparent among
the Chinese and the Malays, but also prominently in another aspect –
in the varying denominational Muslim mosques, Hindu temples and
Christian churches which they have built in Singapore.
The Tamils
While the Tamils are discussed in the census and elsewhere as a homog-
enous entity, in practice they are not so. First, the Tamil community in
Singapore is divided into sub-linguistic and religious subgroups, such
as the Tamil Muslims who speak Tamil. Then there are Tamils from Sri
Lanka claiming descent from the Jaffna Kingdom who speak Jaffna Tamil.
Within the Jaffna Tamil are also further subgroups such as the Sri Lankan
Tamils (Eelam Tamils native to Ceylon) who are linguistically and cultur-
ally distinct from the other two Tamil-speaking minorities in Sri Lanka,
namely, the Indian Tamils and the Moors (Gair and Lust, 1998).20
Within themselves, the Tamils in Singapore are also divided into
two distinct classes – the laboring and non-laboring classes, reflecting
the social structure of South Indian society and adhering loosely to
the social and religious norms prevailing in South India.21 The first
identity is numerically abundant – they were employed as workers in

municipal and other developmental work, some of them the descend-

ants of convict labour, speaking only the vernacular, Bazaar Malay and
a spattering of English. The second identity found employment in the
lower or middle rungs of government service, small-scale businesses
and professions such as teaching and journalism and spoke not just
their mother tongue but also Bazaar Malay and English.
The Telegus

Telegu is a language identified with people from Uttar Pradesh and is
related to other Dravidian languages such as those from Andhra Pradesh
in Orissa, India (Department of Statistics, 1957). Within Telegu itself,
there are four regional dialects which distinguishes Telegu pronuncia-
tion to a great degree. Most of the first Telegu migrants to Singapore
were illiterate and did not speak the standard Telegu dialect, which
contained borrowings from Sanskrit and English. Their speech there-
fore signalled them as “uneducated”, itself becoming another distinc-
tive marker of identity to later Telegu migrants. Nevertheless, this
unschooled Telegu variety is the dominant speech of masses of Telegu
speakers in Singapore.22
The Malayalams
Malayalams (also known as Malayalees) refers to people from the moun-
tains beyond the Western Ghats in India, and Malayalam the language
that was spoken there. The diversity of identities created by language,
caste and religion is a striking feature here. Not all Malayalees speak
the same variety, as there are many dialects of Malayalee. There is, for
example, a very formal style called Maniprabhalam, which utilizes many
Sanskrit words, and is used to discriminate a higher caste Malayalee
from a low-caste one. Yet another marker of identity is religion for in
Singapore, Malayalees may be Hindus, Christians or Buddhists. The
Hindu Malayalees are divided by different castes as denoted by surnames
such as the Nairs, Menons, Pillays and Ezhavas. The Christian Malayalees
are also divided through their respective denominations such as the
Mar Thoma Syrian Christians, Orthodox Syrians, Syrian Catholics,
Anglicans, Pentecostals and Brethren and Catholics (Sreedran, 1997).
Almost all of them were originally drawn to work in the Sembawang
Naval Base, built by the British in 1939 in Singapore and with time, reli-
gious and regional differences were ironed out in the relatively liberal
and cosmopolitan environment of Singapore. Learning either Tamil,
English or Bazaar Malay as lingua franca played a crucial part in their
integration (Ibid.).23

The Punjabis
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Singapore settlers from
Punjab and Pakistan. It is closely related to old Iranian languages such
as Avestan, Pahlavi and modern Iranian (Persian tajik, Kurdish balochi ).
One of the reasons why other groups of Indians in Singapore may be
familiar with some Punjabi is because it is a significant language in
modern media and communication, being a popular language of Indian

Bollywood cinema.24 However, we cannot assume that all the migrants
understand Punjabi because Punjabi has many different dialects spoken
in the subregions of great Punjab (just like Telegu and Tamil).
Users of Punjabi identify themselves as mostly Sikhs, that is, adher-
ents of the Sikh religion and came to Singapore and Malaya after British
intervention in 1874.25 In the early days, they worked mainly as security
guards and watchmen, and in the police force. Some were also money-
lenders.26 Wright (1972: 10) recounts a familiar street scene in colonial
Singapore:
... the jagah or watchman, often a tall bearded Sikh, would have placed
his charpoy, a native bed framework right across the office door. Then
when the office opens he sits on his charpoy, perhaps with a sacred
book in his hands, and in a sing-song voice chants the lines, or like
a troubadour of old recipes for the edification of all passers-by, the
stirring pages of his people’s history, scenes from Chilliangwallah,
Gujarat and the Sobroan, and the hard smiting Khalsas of the Land
of the Five Streams.
Similar to what has happened with Malayalee, Punjabi lost its influ-
ence in the cosmopolitan cauldron of Singapore, and succumbed to the
draw of the lingua franca, English and Malay, as its owners attempt to
communicate with the diverse people in Singapore.
The Bengalis
Bengali is not mutually intelligible to speakers of Punjabi or Hindi, or
to southern Indian languages such as Tamil and Telegu. This is because
it is in reality an Eastern European language spoken in present-day
Bangladesh and parts of Tripura and Assam. It evolved around 1000–
1200 AD from the Magadhi Prakrit and has a long literary tradition with
its own script (Cardona and Jain, 2003). Because a greater part of the
vocabulary of Bengali was derived or borrowed from Sanskrit, Bengali
bears striking similarities to Malay even though these two languages

are from two different families – the Indo-Aryan and the Malayo-
Polynesian branches respectively. This is probably due to the fact that
some early Bengali (today Bangladesh) to Malacca may have played a
significant role in the diffusion of Sanskrit loan words to Malay. We
may consider words such as the following: bangsa (Bengali Bamsa), bayu
“breeze” (Bengali bayu “air”), berita “news” (Bengali Barta), beza “differ-
ence” (Bengali Bheda), Negara “country” (Bengali Nagar “city” or “town”),

dusta “wicked/untrue” (Bengali duhkh “sorrow” or “unhappiness”). Two
very popular words in Malay: guna (“use”) and guru (“teacher”) are used
both in Malay and Bengali! (Beg, 1977)
Critical commentary
Indians are found in a diversity of occupations.27 They first arrived
as merchants, traders, missionaries and adventurers. However, with
the colonializaton of Malacca, Penang and Singapore (also known as
the Straits Settlements), the British Raj in India began to export thou-
sands of Indian convicts to the Settlements as cheap labor for filling up
swamps, land reclamation, and other construction work (Siddique and
Purushotam, 1990).28 Later, educated Indians came as clerks, interpreters,
overseers, lawyers, moneychangers, small shopkeepers, cow-keepers,
milk sellers, draughtsmen, dressmakers, teachers, watchmen, caretakers
and technical personnel.
Like their Chinese and Malay counterparts, the Indian community
with their numerous regional and subregional languages is neither
distinct nor homogenous (Periasamy, 2007). While many returned
home after their contracts ended, others stayed behind, intermarried
within themselves and with other races, and, like the Chinese and
Malays, evolved to a wider “Singaporean” identity.
Concluding remarks
This chapter has highlighted regional identities in colonial Singapore.

It was common for a Chinese to identify him or herself primarily
after a regional language such as, “Cantonese”, or “Hainanese” and
following that, to identify themselves through their original townships
or ancestral village such as “Chaozhou” (Swatow) or “Tong-an.” So
too, the Indians identified themselves through regional labels such as
“Gujaratis” or “Punjabi” referring, at the same time, to both the region
and the language. In the same way, the Malays identified themselves
more as belonging to a village, town or province rather than as the
Malay “race.”

This chapter has also revealed the little-known existence of many

sub-linguistic groups within the Malay, Chinese and Indian communi-
ties in Singapore. One notes here that I have not been able to include
all of them in my survey – notable ones missed out include the Bajarese,
Bataks and Acehnese as part of the Malay regional community; the
Shanghainese, Kheks, Foochow, Henghuas, Hockchius and Anxi of
the Chinese community; and the Hindis, Urdus, Sindhis and Gujaratis

of the Indian community. Their heterogeneity remains to be uncov-
ered, not so much from official sources but perhaps more from oral
history accounts which may illustrate the ethnographic diversity at the
ground level as well as provide a more nuanced narrative of the study
of identities.
An examination of regional identities is important not least because
there has been a tendency by state bureaucracies to rationalize ethnicity
into a manageable few and to ignore subregional differences. For
example, Sir Stamford Raffles had conveniently labelled the Malays as
“one people, speaking one language, though spread over so wide a space,
and preserving their character and customs, in all maritime states lying
behind the Sulu Seas and the Southern Ocean, and bounded longitu-
dinally by Sumatra and the western side of Papua or New Guineas”
(Raffles, quoted by Aljunied, 2005: 4). This may be explained by the fact
that the British officials had little time to become acquainted with local
languages and customs being “barely fluent in Malay, and none could
speak Chinese” (Mary Turnbull, 1989: 36). English-speaking nationalist
leaders, nurtured by the colonial power, followed in their predecessors’
footsteps by imagining Singapore to contain only four major races and
four major languages.29
In Chapter 2, linguistic diversity was used as a weapon to heighten
racial disparateness, setting people apart as a means of demarcating
boundaries. However, perhaps because of the rich diversity of the popu-
lace and the hardy spirit which most migrants tended to imbue, there
was a concerted effort to learn and master the lingua franca, which
quickly enabled them to communicate easily with one another, to
congregate for social activities, mutual aid and to cultivate a relatively
high tolerance of differences. The regional groups were thus distinct
but undivided. There were not just four ethnic groups pitted against
each other, but an innumerable diversity, simply too many to draw clear
picket lines of conflict; therefore, it was more practical to practice a
“unity in diversity.”

Historical texts have often downplayed regional identities. Perhaps

the loss of myriad regional identities in history may also be attributed
to the fact that goal-oriented citizens migrating to Singapore were
quick and adept in mastering the lingua franca, Hokkien, Bazaar Malay,
Tamil or English – whatever was available and which was readily under-
stood. Nevertheless, a sociolinguistic survey has allowed us to unravel
the complexity and validity of early regional-linguistic identities in

Singapore.

4
Religious Identities: Syncretic and
Inclusive

Religion is a key identity marker not least because almost every tribe or
village that has been visited by anthropologists has testified to the fact
that religious beliefs and behaviors stand at the core of every civiliza-
tion. According to Reid (1993: 5) over a thousand faiths based on sacred
scripture took hold in Southeast Asia, which eventually led to “an
Islamic arc in the south, a Confucian political orthodoxy in Vietnam, a
Theravada Buddhist bastion in the rest of the mainland, and a Christian
outrider in the Philippines.” In Singapore, mosques, temples, viharas
and churches have continued to coexist generally peacefully cheek by
jowl.
It is beyond the scope of this historical survey to give equal atten-
tion to the multifarious religious identities of Singapore each with
their attendant linguistic affiliations. Hence, I have only chosen to
examine Malay identity to display the relatively fluid and syncretic
nature of the region of Southeast Asia, of which Singapore may be
considered its “heart” in our period of study. Malay (just as the Indian
and Chinese languages) serves as an intriguing study as it is not only
the current national language of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia,
the major lingua franca in our period of study (Chapter 6), but also
carries with it the potent linguistic marks of past religious affiliations
such as the animist, the Hindu, the Buddhistic, the Islamic and the
material.
Sociolinguistic studies of language contact show that the first elements
to enter the borrowing language are lexical items. Very little has been
done on the currency of loan words in Singapore yet they are important
(cf. Azizah and Leitner, 2011).
54

Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive 55
An animistic identity
The earliest peoples, that is, the proto-Malay or the Orang Aslis, may be
identified as animists.1 Within the Orang Aslis are many sub-linguistic
groups such as the Kubu, Lubu and Sakai (Hashim, 2009). One group
is the Jakuns, which contains within itself distinctive linguistic tribes
such as the Biduanda, Blandas, Mantra or Orang Benua.2 These groups
have generally retained their animistic religious practices (Collins,

2001, 2004). At the time of political independence by Malaysia in
1957, the Tomean and Jakun groups of the southern part of the Malay
Peninsula were generally using Malay as their home language although
continuing to display numerous cultural differences with other Malay
speakers in West Malaysia (Adelaar, 2004).
The basic Austronesian database compiled by the University of
Auckland of 145,228 lexical items from 680 languages spoken throughout
the Pacific region contains only four Malay words said to be exclusively
Malay, that is, kayu (“wood”), batu (“stone”), babi (“pig”) and, perhaps,
padi (“rice”).3 The rest are borrowings. Hence, a study of the extensive
borrowings that has taken place in the Malay language will enable us to
understand the impact of religion on Malay identity. Such borrowings in
Malay may be explained by Kachru’s (1994: 139) deficit and dominance
hypothesis. In the former, borrowing is to remedy the linguistic deficit,
that is, one needs to borrow words in order to refer to objects, peoples
or creatures which are peculiar in certain places, which do not exist in
his/her own environment and which were not previously significant
in the lives of his/her community. On the other hand, the dominance
hypothesis presupposes that whenever two cultures come into contact,
the direction of culture learning and subsequent word borrowing is
usually from the dominant to the subordinate. Words may be borrowed
not because there are no native equivalents, but because they seemed
more prestigious or elegant.
Early Malay, in line with its Austronesian heritage, shares a rich
concrete vocabulary of its natural surroundings, with many references
to birds, and insects. It was a language of basically tangible things, solid
objects that could be seen (Winstedt, 1962):
Animals – bird, dog, egg, feather, fish, rat;

Adjectives – big, dirty, dry, heavy, long, narrow;
Body parts – back, blood, bone, ear, nose, breast;

Colors – black, red, white, yellow, green;

Directions – above, at, below, far, inside, near;
Kinship – child, father, husband, man, mother;
Numbers – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten;
Plants – branch, flower, fruit, grass, leaf, root.

Their verbs were confined to actions which they were used to doing in
their own environment such as the following: “to breathe”, “to burn”,
“to climb”, “to count”, “to flow”, “to hide”, “to squeeze”, and “to split.”
Another feature which Malay shares as a member of the Austronesian
group of languages is reduplication, as seen in words such as barang-barang
(“things”) and kanak-kanak (“children”).
In addition, as a non-literate tradition, affectivity in the language
assumes a major role and is shown by the relative widespread use of
linguistic devices such as duplication, onomatopoeia, alliteration
and phonetic symbolism (cf. Tham, 1990: 52). For example, “hard”
in English can be a “hard look”, “hard knock” or “hard times”, but in
Malay, its equivalent keras does not allow, like its English counterpart,
cognitive ambiguity:
keras hati (“hardness of heart”, “obstinate“, “stubborn”, “hard-hearted”)

keras lidah (“hardness of tongue”, “pronouncing badly”)
keras hidung (“hardness of the nose”, “acting on one’s whim”)
keras mulut (“hardness of the mouth”, “arguing stubbornly without
necessarily making sense”)
keras kepala (“hardness of the head”, “stubborn in a negative way”).
A Hindu identity
It is often the case when two cultures meet in a regular and mutually
beneficial fashion, they would be curiously attracted to each other and
this attraction would lead them to adopt each others’ ways, manners
and customs (Chew, 2009). As indicated by the deficit hypothesis,
when the animist met the textual Hindu religion for the first time, he
was impressed and mesmerized by its sophistication. Hence, in virtu-
ally every Malay language, one finds the inevitable Sanskrit word
(Gonda, 1973). Even bahasa, the Malay word for “language” and the
theme of our narrative, is of Sanskritic origin (bhasha), a term which
once meant courtesy, breeding, manners, and civility – qualities which

were observed in Indian visitors and which made an impression on its

animistic worshippers.4
Considering that Sanskrit and Austronesian were vastly different
languages, the impact of such a sophisticated language as Sanskrit on
the “simpler” Austronesia language would have been awesome. For
example, Sanskirt is a polysyllabic and highly inflected language, with
a complicated consonant system that is not averse to long word order,

yet it was adopted by Austronesian speakers whose words were relatively
short, often distinguished by tone and made up of simple syllables with
single consonants at the beginning and end (cf. Ostler, 2005).
The Sanskrit names that the Indians gave to Southeast Asia give us
important clues as to how the area around Singapore was perceived.
The land far beyond the eastern ocean was Suvarnadivipa and
Suvarnabhumi “The isle, or the land of gold.”5 Although geology did
not hold up to the hypothesis of much gold, the Indians quest for El
Dorado was part of the reason behind their ancient navigation.6 Place
names also give clues to the subsequent adoption of a Hindu identity.
The island of Sumatra is derived from the Sanskrit Yava-dvipa meaning
“Barley Island”, and Java is derived from Sanskrit samudra meaning
“sea.” Cambodia evokes Kambuja, a kingdom in the Khyber Pass area.
Champa shares its name with the kingdom of the lower Ganges, but is
probably the local ethnonym Cham in Sanskirt form. The Irrawaddy
River in Burma is named from the Iravati, “having drinking water”,
the old name of the Rivi River in Punjab (Ibid.: 204). Malaya is derived
from a Dravidian word, malai – a hill in South India near Malabar.
The cities the kings of Southeast Asia founded were given Sanskritic
names as a way of lending auspicious religious signification to their
conquest of a certain place. Sri Vijaya, the dominant kingdom in
southern Sumatra, is most likely to be named after a king called Vijaya
(“victorious”).
In animistic society, time was not such an important matter of
concern as the activities of its members were essentially non-urban,
noncommercial and nonliterary. However, continual encounters with
Indians from India meant they became conscious of the notion of time.
As a result, the Malay language, hitherto indifferent to tense and mood,
began to use auxiliary indices to give meaning to language (Zaba, 1965).
Sanskrit words denoting fixed allotments of time found themselves into
Malay: masa (“time”), kala (“period”), ketika (“while”), dewasa (“period
of maturity”, “adulthood”), kali (“once”), bila (“when”, “while”), sedia
(“ready”), sediakala (“as usual“), tatkala (“while”), senja (“evening”),
senjakala (“evening time”), tadi (“just now”, “earlier”), hari (“day”),

dinihari (“dawn“), sentiasa (“always”), pertama (“first”), mula (“start”),

purnama (“time of full moon”) and purba (“ancient”).
It used to be that an animistic river chief sat at the mouth of the port
to collect his dues; but now that chief, with help from the Brahmin
priests, began to take on Sanskritic titles which would give him a little
more prestige and make his power a little less prosaic.7 Hence, with
time, many small Indianized states with a Raja and a Raja Permaisuri

began to grow out of the old proto-Malay river chief (Sandhu, 1993).
The enthronement of a Malay Sultan today is essentially the Hindu cere-
mony of 1,500 years ago, with the royal procession, the use of Sanskrit
and the anointment. The hilts of the kris are fashioned after Garuda,
Vishnu’s sacred bird, so obvious in the relics at Angkor Wat – where the
ruler is elevated to the status of Dewaraja (“God-king”) through puri-
fication and deification rites. The Cambodian kings from Jayavarman
in the 6th century to Srindarajayavarman in the 14th century took
names that ended in –varman (Sanskrit bastion). The Majapahit kings of
Indonesia also took on Sanskrit names, for example, Rajasa in the 13th
century to Suhita in the 15th century.
An example of a Hindu kingdom on the Malay Peninsula is Langkasuka,
first mentioned in the Chinese text The History of the Liang (502–556) as
Lang-chia-shu.8 A Hindu identity was adopted as seen from the honor-
ifics that were assimilated into its language: maharaja (“lord/king”), raja,
permaisuri (“consort”), putera (“prince”), puteri (“princess”) and menteri
(“minister”) all of whom ruled over manusia (“mankind”). The ruler
wore a mahkota (“crown”), was seated on a singgahsana (“throne”) and
greeted with dirgahayu (“long life”) on his ascension. His domain was
termed negeri/Negara (“state”) and his capital puri/pura (“city/town”) in
the dunia (“world”). He had a pedigree bangsa (“race”). His attributes
were mulia (“nobility”), bijaksana (“wisdom”), kurnia (“kindness”), budi
(“knowledge”), and adikar (“majesty”). The ruler also had a bendahara
(“regent”) and laksamana (“navy”) to help him. Other Hindu titles such
as baginda (“his majesty”) and paduka (“excellency”) were also used.9
Traditional court dances and associated terminology were also intro-
duced. These included the asyik, a seated dance that depicts court
maidens grooming themselves or mimicking the stylized gestures of
birds in flight; the joget gamelan, a fast-paced dance accompanied by
gamelan, a musical ensemble of a variety of instruments, and the mak
yong, a theatre dance originally a shamanic dance ritual (revolving
around mythological themes and intrigues of royalty) (Koh and Ho,
2009)10. Also, the once popular wayang kulit is almost always about the
Ramayana and Mahabharata, the two great Indian epics. Here, stories are

told by a dalang (“puppet master”) who recites the stories taken from
Ramayana and who sings occasionally to accompany the puppetry.
Before Independence, the ronggeng, a performance of song and dance,
was frequently staged to celebrate successful harvests and important life
milestones such as weddings and births.
Because there were no original Malay words to denote the “complexity”
of spiritual life, these had to be directly borrowed from the Sanskrit, for

example, dosa (“sin/crime”), aniaya (“injustice/wrong”), dusta (“untrue”),
durjana (“evil/wicked”), surga (“heaven”) and neraka (“hell”). In family
life, swami (“husband”) and isteri (“wife”) were commonplace. Feelings
became more extended, refined and specific and were denoted by words
such as suka (“happiness”), sukachita (“glad/pleased”), duka (“sadness”),
dukachita (“sorry”), chinta (“love”), berahi (“love”), murka (“anger”),
asa (“hope”), asmara (“love”), loba (“greedy”), budi (“wisdom”), bodoh
(“stupid”), pandai (“clever”), malas (“lazy”), derma (“donate/donation”),
dermawan (“donor/generous”), setia (“loyal”), dosa (“sin”), dusta (“lie”),
pahala (“reward”), etc. (cf. Beg, 1977).
Through Hinduism, the stars and space and words related to astrology
became objects of interest, for example: udara (“air”), chakerawala
(“universe”), nusantara (“Malay Archipelago”), angkasa (“sky”), chahaya
(“light”), gempa (“quake/earthquake”) and so forth. The Malays also
began to be more conscious of a wider range of animals as denoted
by Sankritic words such as: gajah (“elephant”), singa (“lion”), seri-
gala (“wolf”), unta (“camel”), kuda (“horse”), naga (“dragon”), biri-biri
(“sheep”), and harimau (“tiger”).
A Buddhist identity
Third century Singhalese chronicles tell of King Asoka (of India 269–232
BC) sending two monks, Sona and Uttar, to Suvannabhumi (“Golden
Land”) in Southeast Asia.11 However, the Buddhism which came to
Southeast Asia was not very different from Hinduism since it was a
Buddhism mainly centred on ritualism, omens and charms. It placed a
lesser emphasis on reading and the recitation of texts relative to direct
communication with the supernatural and the visionary, and hence was
more akin to the animist tradition of the region.12 Essentially ritualistic
in nature, it therefore formed an “easy” natural overlay to Hinduism.
Its language was secret and symbolic, and known as saṃdhyā -bhāṣā,
(“Twilight Language”). In brief, it was not the identity of the Theravada
school which was adopted by the inhabitants of Southeast Asia but the
Vajrayana – an offshoot of the Mahayana and Chinese school.13

While languages such as Sanskrit in Hinduism (and Arabic in Islam)

are considered “holy”, that is, a language which God had especially
chosen to speak and which contains key words or concepts that cannot
be easily translated; there is a tradition in Buddhism that recounts the
Buddha urging his disciples to leave behind strict linguistic codes such
as Sanskrit and to work instead in any sakaya niruttiya (“vernacular”)
as a means of getting the Buddhist message across. In this, Buddha

made a radical departure from the ancient Indian custom of recording
the scriptures in a particular language (Gard, 1961: 67). However, this
injunction was not followed. If it were, we would have found many
Pali and other Indian vernacular in the Malay language, bearing in
mind from the linguistic point of view, that Pali is much simpler than
Sanskrit to master. Instead, existing Vajrayana texts exhibited a wide
range of literary characteristics – usually a mix of verse and prose, and
almost always in a Sanskrit that transgresses frequently against classical
norms of grammar and usage, although also occasionally in various
Middle Indic dialects. It was this variety of Sanskrit which was adopted
as the official language of the ancient Malay empire of Srivijaya (7th–
13th century), the royal house from which most of Singapore’s early
rulers originated (Winstedt, 1932).
This Buddhist identity did not conflict with the religious identity of
the Chinese who, like the Indians, had in as early as the 5th century
begun to trade with the Malays, judging from the number of Chinese
pottery vessels and bronze items dating from the Han Dynasty found
in southern Sumatra and eastern Java (Wolters, 1967). One recalls that
Vajrayana Buddhism had also spread to northern China via the Silk
Route sometime during the 7th century CE during the Tang Dynasty.
The Tang emperors (618–907 CE) supported well-known teachers from
India such as Subhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra, who
brought texts such as the Maha-Vairocana-Abhisambodhi Tantra, and
the Tattvasamgraha Tantra. These texts would eventually find their
way to Southeast Asia, reforming, as they arrived, the identity of the
region. For example, in the year 687, Yi Jing (義淨, 三藏法師義) (635–713
CE), a Tang Dynasty Buddhist who was responsible for the translation
of a large number of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Chinese,
stopped at the kingdom of Srivijaya on his way back to Tang (China).
He stayed in Palembang, its capital city (Munoz, 2006).14 In 689 CE, he
returned to Guangzhou to obtain ink and papers but returned again to
Srivijaya the same year.15 Yi Jing also reported that Srivijaya was home
to more than a thousand Buddhist scholars, most of who were foreign.
He praised the high level of Buddhist scholarship in Srivijaya, and

advised Chinese monks to study there prior to making the journey to

Nalanda, India (Takakusu, 1896). In the 13th century, Buddhist identity
received another fillip when the powerful Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty of
China (1271–1368) adopted it as the state religion.
Remnants of a Malayo-Buddhist identity still remain with us in the
present day. For example, the Majapahit Empire (c. 1293–1500)16 on
the island of Java and Bali absorbed the Hindu-Buddhist identity very

deeply and blended it with a stronger native culture. Another example
is the fact that Singapore derives its name from singa (“lion”), an auspi-
cious symbol in the 14th century Buddhist world of Southeast Asia.
The name Sinhapura –“Lion City” – also reminds us that there was most
likely a community of monks from the esoteric Bhairava-Buddhist sect
from the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit which settled in Temasek (the
old name for Singapore) in the late 13th century. In accordance with the
demonic and orgiastic sessions which characterize their religion, these
monks adopted the sobriquet of “lions” and several cities within the
Majapahit dominion, for example, Singharajya in Bali and Singhasari
in Java were designated “Lion” in a special sense (Professor C.C. Berg’s
Lecture, quoted in Wheatley, 1964: 103).17
Lexical items in Malay such as bomoh (“healer/doctor”18), dukun or the
pawang (“individuals who performs magical practices”), and the exist-
ence of the spirit, which lurks everywhere, and which is related to the
belief of semangat (“vital substance/soul”), points to the influence of the
Vajrayana identity. Old Malay inscriptions from early Srivijaya are also
heavy with references to special potions, curses and anxiety about the
afterlife. Apart from their use of Buddhist concepts and vocabulary, the
repeated use of key terms as a curse (the Malay sumpah) suggests a desire
to deploy supernatural powers that may go back well before the period
of Indianization and which therefore accounts for the easy overlay of a
Hindu-Buddhist identity over the earlier animistic one.
The adoption of new religious identities is better understood as an
“addition” rather than a “replacement” of spiritual resources and tech-
niques accumulated through centuries. In our history, one value system
does not give way to another but rather the later is overlaid on the
earlier with added value. It is a gradualism and a fusion and religions
are often looked upon as complementary rather than competitive.
For example, the Sejarah Melayu, written in the 17th century, already
very much the Muslim era, draws quite unabashedly from the Hindu
Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita as well as the cycle of Panji tales. The
Islamic idea of paradise fits easily into the Hindu-Buddhist dream of a
life without worldly entanglement and stress. Further, the Islamic idea of

an omnipotent God is also able to merge into the more mystical Hindu
concept of Vishnu (Manguin, 2004: 303). In addition, the continued
use of the Sanskrit Dewata Mulia Raja rather than Allah for “God” in
the Muslim state of Malaysia is an example of early Hindu-Buddhist
emotions (Milner, 2008: 41).
An Islamic identity

Like Hindu-Buddhism, Islam became a religion which struck deep into
the societies of insular Southeast Asia, profoundly modifying its identity.
As evidenced by the incorporation of Islamic loan words into Malay, the
mystical lure of Islam added yet another layer of identity. For example, a
Muslim lens overlaid the earlier adopted Hindu concept of time. Days of
the week were no longer, for example, hari satu or hari dua (“Tuesdays”)
but rather Hari Isnin (“Monday”), Hari Selasa (“Tuesday”), Hari Rabu
(“Wednesday”), Hari Khamis (“Thursday”), Hari Jumaat (“Friday”), Hari
Sabtu (“Saturday”) and Hari Ahad (“Sunday”). The names of the months
were now Muslim, being Muharram, Safar, Rabiulawal, Rabiulakhir,
Jamailawal, Jamadilakhir, Rejab, Syaban, Ramadan, Syawal, Zulkaedah,
and Zulhijah. The lunar year was kamariah (“lunar year”), the century
was abad or kurun (“century”) and the epoch was zaman. Islamic rites
related to prayers and fasting became commonplace: waktu (“time”),
suat (“second”), jam (“clock”, “with hour”), imsak (“time for fasting”),
zohor (“noon”) and maghrib (“sunset”).
In 1292, the famous Italian traveller Marco Polo, on his way home
from China, reported at least one Muslim town in Southeast Asia
(Taylor, 2003). In the 15th century, Ma Huan’s Ying-yai Sheng-lan: The
Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores (1433) recounted that the main states
of the northern part of Sumatra were Islamic. By then, there were
already Hindu rajas adopting a Muslim identity such as the rulers of the
Sultanate of Malacca and the coastal ruler of Pasai and Minangkabau.
Their conversion was no doubt influenced by the political, social, and
economic developments in the world at large. In the 13th century, the
Muslim-inspired Mongol and Turkic conquests on the Eurasian land-
mass had begun to impress many in the region of Southeast Asia.19 The
Muslim Mughal Empire was then ruling a large portion of the Indian
subcontinent from 1526, and by the late 17th century had invaded
most of South Asia. There was talk of the mighty Ottoman Empire
and their fabled courts. The impressive wealth of the Muslim traders
was doubtless another draw (Ricklefs, 1991). Most important of all, the
Islam which was to arrive in Southeast Asia, and once again through

India and China was a brand of Sufi mysticism, which fitted well with
the long-entrenched syncretic beliefs of the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist
courts or the simpler animistic inclinations of the villager. From then
on Islam replaced Hindu-Buddhism as the “official” identity of the
Malays (Milner, 2008; Koh and Ho, 2009).
Impressed by the intellectualism and scientific achievements of the
Arabs, scientific words were quickly absorbed into the Malay language.

For example, alam (“world”), arif (“wise”), akal (“ingenuity”), adat
(“custom”), dunia (“world”), fikir (“think”), kadar (“power/ability”), kuat
(“strong”), shak (“doubt”) and sebab (“cause”). An understanding of
human associations was enriched through words such as kaum (“race”),
umat (“race”), awam (“public”), nikah (“wedding”), ghaib (“mysterious”),
and sujud (“kneeling in prayer”). Islamic medical sciences replaced that
of shamanic knowledge, for example, haiwan (“animal”), wajah (“face”),
wujud (“exist”), nahas (“accident”), nur (“light”), roh (“spirit”) and halwa
(“preserves”) (cf. Beg, 1977).
A change of religious identity is manifested sociolinguistically and
vice versa. For one, rulers were no longer Hindu God-kings but rather
“God’s emissary on earth.” The title of Sultan was now used in place
of maharaja. While certain concepts from Hinduism already known to
the Malays such as that of “heaven” and “hell” did not change, many
other things did.20 Muslim maps reconfigured space and Perso-Arabic
scripts replaced Indic alphabets. Novel literary genres and rituals took
hold, and Muslim sciences gained a following (Lieberman, 2009). Titles
of coinage and Islamic law came into place. In the process, the Malay
language underwent change and enrichment, as denoted by its rich
borrowings of Arabic and Persian words.
The Islamic faith appears attractive viz. Buddhism, Hinduism and
animism in terms of its apparently more refined and scientific theology.
Tham (1990: 86–93) has grouped religious terminology in a cluster –
each associated with an area of religious belief, some of which are
displayed below:
Words pertaining to the central domain of the concept of God: Allah

(“God”); akaid (“dogma”); akhirat (“the hereafter”); akidah (“faith/
creed”); baka (“permanent”); berkat (“blessing”); bidaah (“heresy”);
bismillahi (“in the name of God”); firdaus (“paradise”); iblis (“devil”);
riadat (“God’s will”); jahanam (“hell”); kiamat (“resurrection”);
malaikat (“angel”); mukmin (“the faithful”); nabi (“prophet”); rukun
(“principles of Islamic faith”); syaitan (“Satan”); takdir (“predestin-
ation”); wahyu (“revelation”); etc.

Words pertaining to the performance of Muslim worship: akba

(“sublime”); asar (“hour of afternoon prayer”); din (“faith”); doa
(“prayer”); hafal (“memorizing of the Koran”); hidayat (“God’s guid-
ance”); ibadat (“acts of devotion”); kiblat (“direction of Mecca”);
maghrib (“hour of sunset prayer”); masjid (“mosque”); menara
(“minaret”); ratib (“recitation of religion”); syafaat (“intercession”);
takbir (“glorification of God”); wahyu (“revelation”); wuduk (“ritual

ablution”); etc.
Words relating to the observance of ritual: adat (“customs”); akikah
(“ritual shaving of newborn”); fatur (“meal that breaks the fast in
Ramadan”); haj (“pilgrimage to Mecca”); haji (“man who performs
the haj”); hajjah (“woman who performs the haj”); id (“festival”);
dulfitri (“festival following end of fasting”); sunat (“circumcision”);
umrah (“minor pilgrimage”); wuduk (“minor ablution”); etc.
Words pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence: ahkam (“laws
prescribed by religion”); akhlak (“morals”); akibat (“consequence”);
amal (“good deeds”); amanah (“trust/security”); dakwa (“accuse”);
fikh (“jurisprudence”); fatwa (“legal opinion”); halal (“permissible”);
haram (“illicit”); hokum (“law”); kadi (“Syariah judge”); mahkamah
(“court”); mufti (“consultant”); wali (“legal guardian”); zakat (“obliga-
tory alms”); etc.
Today, the number of Arabic loan words is about five times that of
Sanskrit loan words (Beg, 1977, 1981)21 and we may wonder at the seem-
ingly greater influence of Arabic relative to Sanskrit. The reasons are
many. One is that Arabic is more akin to Latin than it is to Sanskrit in
that it was a language used not just in the monastery but also in the
university. As the main purpose for the introduction of Arabic script
was to produce Islamic books, the earliest writings were religious books.
This contrasts with the fact that there was almost no secular literature in
Buddhism, even if we were to take into account the Jataka Tales (which
are rather like Aesop’s Fables or its Indian equivalent, the Pancatantra),
which nominally recounts the past lives of the Buddha. In contrast, the
Arabic script was also used not just for theology and philosophy but
also kitab and risalah (romantic and epic literature).
Therefore, Arabic was accessible to a wider circle of people, notably
Muslim intellectuals and the educated who used it as a lingua franca in
their travels. Like Latin but unlike Sanskrit, Arabic was used as a part
of worship by the masses, and not just by the priests. Panini’s grammar
of Sanskrit, written around the middle of the first millennium, was
basically a description of a variety of Sanskrit spoken only by Brahmin

males and not by the masses, such as the the lower castes or women (cf.
Despande, 2011). Also, knowledge of the Koran in Arabic is mandatory
for faithful Muslims, while knowledge of Sanskrit is not mandatory for
all Hindus. Hence, literacy spread rapidly among the Malays after the
coming of Islam to the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. In the case of
Hinduism, literacy was limited to the priests only.
In the period under study (1819–1959), Singapore may be regarded

as “the centre” of the Malay Muslim world comprising the Malay
Archipelago (Malaysia) and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). For one,
it was the staging post for pilgrims from the Archipelago sailing to and
from Mecca (Roff, 1967: 43).22 As early as the 19th century, eight out
of twelve Malay newspapers and magazines published in the Malay
world were published in Singapore. Mohamed Eunos bin Abdullah,
“the father of Malay journalism”, edited the well-known Utusan Melayu
and Lembaga Melayu from his base in Singapore.23 The concentration of
Malay publishers and newspapers made Singapore the “Malay heart.”24
It was only much later, in 1965, with Singapore’s political separation
from Malaysia that the “centre of Malay publishing” (along with a
number of prominent Malay writers) shifted to Kuala Lumpur (Koh and
Ho, 2009).25
Chinese-Malay fraternity
In the pre-colonial period, the Chinese and Malays were not exactly
separate entities as portrayed in colonial records. They actually got on
rather well. Indeed, a significant number of Chinese shared an Islamic
identity with the Malays. The chronicler for the voyage of Admiral Zheng
He, Ma Huan, noted the presence of three types of people found in the
polyglot ports of the Javanese seas: “Muslim traders from the West who
dressed and ate properly, Chinese from Guangdong and Fujian, many
of whom were also Muslim and proper, and the local people described
as non-Muslim eating improper foods, living with dogs and practising
pagan rituals” (Ma, Ying-yai Sheng-lan, p.93 quoted in Reid, 2010: 322).
By the 16th century, there were also tens of thousands of Chinese all
over Southeast Asia, a period Levathes (1994) describe as one “when
China ruled the seas”, a time when more than 3,000 “treasure ships”
made epic voyages through the China Seas and Indian Ocean bearing
costly cargo consisting of the Ming Empire’s finest silk, porcelain and
lacquer.26 In addition, the recent pioneering work of Claudine Salmon
(Gallop, 2009) in unearthing publications in Malay by the Chinese
of maritime Asia has meant that the role of Chinese authors in the

nascence of a modern literature in Malay and Indonesian cannot be

ignored. The evidence is slight – here a lotus motif, there a straight line
where sinuous curves might be expected – but causal connections are
certainly both possible and plausible. Indeed, over the past two decades,
the Islamic art market has witnessed an influx of a substantial number
of Chinese Qurans and other Islamic manuscripts dating from the 15th
to 19th centuries produced in locales such as Khanbaliq (Beijing) in

1401, Khanfu (Canton) in 1546 and Yannanfu (Kunming) in 1471.27
Also, early Arabic maps label Malaysia as barr chin, meaning “the land
of the Chinese.” The oldest mosques in Malacca are shaped like pagodas
such as in the region of Trengkara. Not surprisingly, historian Anthony
Milner (2008: 36) argues that it was China more than Java, Thailand or
India which was most instrumental in the development of the Muslim
identity in Southeast Asia.28
Reid (2000, 2010) points to a prominent Chinese presence by refer-
ring to Chinese nomenclature evident in the maritime code of the
15th and 16th century. For example, kiwi is borrowed from the Chinese
Amoy dialect kheh-ui (Kewi pinyin) meaning “passenger space.” The
kiwi (travelling merchant) travels in a ship belonging to someone else
but he has expert knowledge and has to be consulted on all maritime
matters. Other Chinese commercial concepts such as the pikul (Chinese
shih or tan), the kati (Chinese kin), daching (Cantonese toh-ching) were
also taken into Malay (and Javanese).29 There is, ostensibly then, strong
Chinese-Malay collaboration as evident in Malay-Indonesian commer-
cial methods in the heyday of Malayo-Javanese trade.
Another telling illustration of the earlier Chinese-Malay religio-cultural
fraternity is the fact that several of the Muslim “saints” (wali ) iden-
tified as having brought Islam to Java were Chinese or part-Chinese
(De Graaf and Pigeaud, 1984: 150–154). De Graff and Pigeaud (Ibid.)
also make a case for Chinese influence on the oldest mosque of Java in
Demak (1475–1568). A number of Javanese sources have emphasized
the Chinese lineage of the Demak Sultanate and the existence of many
Chinese Muslim communities in the polyglot ports along the northern
coastline of Java such as Cirebon, Lasem, Tuban, Gresik and Surabaya.
It is likely that the conversion of the Buddhist-Hindu refugee King
of Malacca, Parameswara, has much to do with Muslim influence from
China.30 First, Parameswara’s (1344–1414) reign is connected with the
voyages of the famous Chinese Admiral Zheng He (1371–1435) whose
Muslim name was ‫ و ج‬Haji Mahmud Shams. In his several
voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Africa, and in his periodic
visits to Malacca (Wheatley, 1964), Zheng He had established contact

with pepper merchants in southern Sumatra, became concerned about

security in the Straits and proceeded to destroy a nest of Chinese pirates
that had grown up in Muslim Palembang (Shaffer, 1996). He had offered
Malacca’s ruler, Parameswara, security in the form of a special relation-
ship with China. This was an offer not to be taken lightly if one consid-
ered the fact that until the year 1600 China was a world power which
surpassed the West in the field of technology and outstripped Europe

in both military strength and new inventions (i.e. paper, printing,
compasses and gunpowder) as well as in the breadth and depth of its
astronomical knowledge.31
Perlindungan accounts also depict a wide 15th century network of
Chinese Hanafi (Muslim) throughout Southeast Asia, tightly connected
to Ming agents such as Zheng He (Tagliacozzo and Chang, 2011).
These Hanafi communities were supposedly established in Palembang,
Sambas, Melaka, Java and the Philippines, as well as in ports such as
Ancol, Cirebon, Lasem, Semarang and Gresik, along the north coast of
Java. In keeping with the politics of the time, it would appear prudent for
Parameswara to relinquish his Buddhist-Hindu identity for an Islamic
one, if only to build up the fortunes of Malacca and to gain the favour
of the Chinese court. Indeed, Parasmeswara, together with his son and
successor, Mohammed Shah, were said to have met Emperor Yongle in
his capital at Nanking to cement their friendship.32
Concluding remarks
I have shown how the Malay language contains within itself past and
present religious identities such as animism, Hindu-Buddhism and
Islam. Contacts between the Malay and Indian/Chinese religions such
as Vajrayana Buddhism or Sufi Islam have been largely and voluntarily
unidirectional, understandably to the direction of the older more pres-
tigious culture (Periasamy, 2007). From the dawn of animistic worship,
the waters around the polyglot ports of Southeast Asia, whether at
Palembang, Malacca or Singapore, have never failed to be awed by new
and more sophisticated ideology, religious or otherwise, from elsewhere.
Multilingual ports along trade routes are like chameleons varying their
colours with the changing winds of time. They cannot help but be
susceptible to the latest fashion, the latest technology and the latest
ideology from their myriad influential visitors. As former Prime Minister
of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad (1981–2001), has noted: “The reason
why the animist Malays became Hindus is because their Rajas became
Hindus. Later when their Rajas became Muslim, the rakyat (‘masses’)

became Muslim” (Mahathir, 1970: 173). According to Karim (2009a: ix):

“To be a Malay is to be lost in translation – like a sponge, the definition
absorbs many sources of history, origin, identity and values.”
While religious identity has often been used by groups and indi-
viduals to define what counts as “us” and what counts as “them” in
nationalist politics, this was not traditionally the case as the waters
around Singapore were generally hospitable and open to trade. Borders

were flexible and food and spices available in abundance. Hospitality,
flexibility and openness are part of the Malay culture and the process
of assimilation considered natural and complementary. Collaboration
rather than competition is seen as part of the natural order of things.
Insular Southeast Asia, of which Singapore may be said to be its nexus,
did not allow it to be close-minded. New religions were adopted
whole-heartedly, filling the top layer of an already syncretic base.
It should be noted at this point that while we have only examined
the Malay language as an example of syncretic identities. Hokkien, the
language and lingua franca of the majority of Chinese in Singapore also
contains within itself its own fascinating story of assimilative identi-
ties. Chinese religious identities have been traditionally syncretic, as
seen in the religious practices of the Red Swasticka Society, the Sanyi
Jiao (“Three in one”), and the Xiantian Dadao (“Great way of the former
heaven”) (Clammer, 1991). In the Roman Catholic Church, Chinese
syncretism appears in the form of novena practice where many Chinese
offer prayers and candles to the Virgin Mary, whom they believe to be a
manifestation of Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, originally an Indian
deity called Avalokitesvara.
It was only in the colonial era that stratification was used as a means
of governance and separatist tendencies encouraged, a policy which has
been adopted by succeeding nationalist governments for their own polit-
ical agendas. In the nationalist era, the small Buddhist-Hindu temples,
wayside shrines, Keramats or holy grave sites were mostly replaced by
official mosques in housing estates – to become a post-colonial Islam
which was clearly differentiated from the early vestiges of Buddhism
or Hinduism. In Malaysia today, Malays are graduates of universities
and other religious institutions in the Middle East, such as Al-Azhar in
Cairo, King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah and, of course, Malaysia’s
own International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur. More and more
Arabic words and phrases have been incorporated into Malay vocabu-
lary causing Sankritic influence to gradually recede into the background
and go into disuse, leading to a “convenient” amnesia about the greater
past. Nevertheless, a sociolinguistic history has enabled us to recapture

the bottom-up syncretism and inclusivism of religious identities that

was a part of the region’s heritage, rather than the relatively more publi-
cized top-down distinctiveness and exclusivism of the different races.
The next chapter will expand on the discussion of religious identities
but this time on the orthographical scripts in which they are popularly
represented. We will see that while scripts gave each religion a distinct
identity, it was, once again, not necessarily an exclusive one.

5
Orthographical Identity: Change
and Ideology

Orthography is never entirely distinct from ideology (Errington, 2008).
Unseth (2008) frames his introduction on language communities and
their script choices in terms of representations of identity. For example,
the adoption of Roman script by a number of post-Soviet states for their
national languages not only signalled yet another major script change
in the space of 70 years but also represented a rejection of one global
orientation and the embracing of another (Hatcher, 2008). Another case
in point is Turkmenistan, which experienced its fourth national script
change in a century – from Perso-Arabic script (pre-Soviet) to Roman
script (early Soviet) to Cyrillic script (Stalinist Soviet) to Roman script
again (post-Soviet) (Clement, 2008). In Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and
Christianity, various languages are associated with religious worship,
for example, Devanagari with Sanskrit, Pali with Buddhism, Arabic with
Islam, and Latin with Christianity. Languages are embodied in scripts
and act as powerful symbols of identification and cultural association.
This is because the shapes and sizes of the written form is a mental
phenomenon and speaks to the mind in its own special titillating way
(Coulmas, 1989).
This chapter expands on the notion of evolving religious identity
discussed in Chapter 4 and examines the less known triangular rela-
tionship of orthography, identity and ideology. We will find that some-
times more than one writing system is used for a language, as in the
case of Sanskrit, Malay, Hindi and Chinese. In this chapter, I will focus
primarily on Kevi and Pallava as symbols of Hindu-Buddhist identity
and Jawi as a symbol of Muslim identity. In relation to these scripts,
I will discuss the three ethnic groups related to them: the Arabs and
Arab Peranakans, the Jawi Peranakans and the Malays. As with spoken
languages, scripts or orthography are also subject to change. A study of
70

Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology 71
past and present orthography informs us of a vibrant multicultural and

multiracial pre-colonial era, which was just as varied as the colonial or
nationalistic one. Also, while religious orthography has the potential to
unite people from disparate linguistic communities through the use of
one script, the manipulation of this script by top-down powers, be they
colonial or nationalist, have tended to escalate religious exclusivism or
distinctiveness rather than religious inclusiveness or syncretism.

Sanskrit scripts and the creation of a
Buddhist-Hindu identity
For the animist, religion was basically an oral activity, as there was no
reason for foragers and nomads to keep permanent records. People on
the move must keep their possessions to a bare minimum and even
when they later switch to farming and settlement, there was usually
nothing that needed to be written down. It is not surprising that
placed alongside the relatively simplistic functionality of Austronesian
languages, the sophistication of Sanskrit was impressive and overpow-
ering. Sanskrit was the proud parent of a group of languages known
as the Prakrits, from which major languages such as Bengali, Marathi,
Gujarati and Oriya, Hindi and Urdu evolved.1 Most of all, Sanskrit
was the prestigious language of the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and the
Upanishads, as well as the language of most Hindu rituals performed in
the temple.2
Devanagari (historically, Nagari), consisting of 48 letters, 13 vowels
and 35 consonants, which supposedly represent every sound of the
Sanskrit language, is the main script for Sanskrit today. It has been used
to write Indian languages such as Hindi, Nepali, Marwar, Kumaoni, and
was also the inspiration for the Gurmukhi script, which in the 16th
century was adapted for the writing of Punjabi, the language of the
Sikhs.3 However, in our history, it was not Devanagari that was used to
write Sanskrit, but rather a variety of Brahmi (Salomon, 1998).4 It was this
Brahmi that was used to write Sino-Tibetan, Thai, Malayo-Polynesian
and Austro-Asiatic languages. Although these may on the surface look
visually different, their differences are more external than real since
they all stem from the same parent – Brahmi – which, historically,
had to be flexible enough to suit the different social-cultural regional
needs of Southeast Asia (Gaur, 2000). Brahmi became useful not just
for turning the Malay riverine chief into a “king”, but also when taxes
had to be levied, laws introduced, kings, princes, armies and merchants
ordered and managed, and histories written.

A daughter of Brahmi, Pallava, has been found in archaeological pits

of Southeast Asia, and in particular, the Malay Peninsula. For example,
Pallava was used in Oc Eo, an important city of Funan from the 2nd to the
5th centuries (Ibid.).5 It was used to write the well-known Tarumanegara
Inscription of 450 CE (Miksic, 2007). In Kedah, a Buddhagupta inscrip-
tion in Pallava is found, which has been dated to the 5th century
(Winstedt, 1947). The earliest preserved manuscript using Pallava is that

of the Sukabumi Inscription, dated 804 CE, which is believed to be a
copy of the original dated 120 years earlier (Grünendahl, 2001).6
Since Pallava resembles Telugu, Oriya, Singhalese and Thai orthog-
raphy, we may then assume that the early Indian traders who came
to the polyglot ports of Southeast Asia were the subjects of the Pallava
Dynasty in southeastern India in about the 6th to the 9th centuries
(Salomon, 1998). The Dynasty pioneered a centralized form of govern-
ment, established a disciplined bureaucracy, encouraged economic
activities and trade, and were patrons of literature and architecture
(Keay, 2001). It was their subjects who first sailed to “Malai”, (from
which the word “Malaya” derives, meaning “mountainous place”), to
influence the founding of the Sri Majapahit and the Sri Vijaya Empires
of Indonesia, Riau Islands and Malaya (Krishnamurti, 2003).7
However, the famous legend of Badang, a mythological hero of
Singapore is recounted on a boulder on the Singapore River not in
Pallava but in Majapahit Kevi (also Kawi, from Sanskrit kavi meaning
“poet”).8 Unfortunately, before the inscription could be further
analysed, the rock was destroyed by an explosive detonated in 1843
by the British authorities to prepare the ground for building a colo-
nial government bungalow (Wheatley, 1964). Kevi is found in the
Pararaton (“Book of Kings”), which is a source used by historians and
developed from the Pallava around the 10th century. The alphabet
follows the basic Indic principle of vowel indication but in its Javanese
form has developed several peculiar subvarieties of its own. Among
them are capital letters for proper names and punctuation marks for
new paragraphs and for poetry. Between the 9th and 15th centuries,
Kevi was also directly responsible for the growth of modern Javanese
and stimulated the growth of much simpler scripts such as that of the
Batak, Redjang and Lampong of Sumatra through the reduction of
the number of orthographical signs. The Buginese and Macassarese
scripts of the Celebes as well as the now extinct Philippine scripts
also derived from Kawi/Kevi. It was this Sanskrit, written in Pallava
or Kevi, which entrenched a strong Hindu-Buddhist identity in
Southeast Asia.

Jawi and the creation of a Muslim identity
Just as Christianity introduced Latin script for writing local languages,

Islam did the same by introducing the variants of the Arabic script to
the territories it ruled (Ferguson, 1982). Arabic script can be used to
write languages other than Arabic in the same way that the Indian
Brahmi, the Roman alphabet and Chinese ideographs can be used to
write different languages. Just as Arabic writing replaced ways of writing

in Persian, so too it replaced ways of writing in Malay. Indeed, Jawi in
our history is highly influenced by Arabic literature introduced from
Persia.
It was the practice of Muslim countries to adapt versions of the Arabic
writing systems to their native languages.9 Hence, one finds in the 13th
to 15th centuries, in the Muslim kingdom of Pasair, an early form of
Malay written in Jawi, which soon spread to the other surrounding
ports such as Singapore, Johor, Malacca, Brunei, Sulu, Patani, Aceh and
Ternate.
The earliest Jawi inscription is the Batu Bersurat Trengganu (Trengganu
inscription stone) dated 1303 CE. Although the Jawi abjad is written in
Arabic letters,10 it differs from Arabic in two ways: it has five additional
letters to cater for Malay phonemes, and it has five vowels in contrast to
Arabic which has three short and three long vowels (see Figures 5.1 and
5.2).11 By the 15th century, Jawi became such a well-known term that
Arabic speakers used it to designate the entire region of Southeast Asia.12
A Jawi identity was promoted through the emergence of a large body
of Malay-translated literary texts in the 15th century. Islamic stories
of romance and heroism replaced the fables and supernatural inclina-
tions of the Hindu Ramayana. There were also translations or adapta-
tions from the original Arabic texts of Islam with the views of the local
ulamas (“religious leaders”) presented. These texts were extensively used
‫ ج‬jim ‫ ث‬tha ‫ ت‬ta ‫ ب‬ba ‫ ا‬alif

‫ ذ‬zal ‫ د‬dal ‫ خ‬kha ‫ ح‬ha ‫ چ‬ca
‫ ص‬sad ‫ ش‬shin ‫ س‬sin ‫ ز‬zai ‫ ر‬ra
‫ غ‬ghain ‫ ع‬ain ‫ ظ‬dzo ‫ ط‬tho ‫ ض‬dad
‫ آ‬kaf ‫ ق‬qaf ‫ ڤ‬pa ‫ ف‬fa ‫ ڠ‬nga
‫ و‬wau ‫ ن‬nun ‫ م‬mim ‫ ل‬lam ‫ ڬ‬ga
‫ ي‬ya ‫ ء‬hamzah ‫ ال‬lam-alif ) ha ‫ ۏ‬va
‫ ڽ‬nya
Figure 5.1 Malay-language alphabets, the Jawi script

Note: The six sounds not found in Arabic are indicated in red: ca, pa, nga, ga, va and nya.

٠ kosong ١ satu ٢ dua ٣ tiga ٤ empat

٥ lima ٦ enam ٧ tujuh ٨ lapan ٩ sembilan
١٠ sepuluh
Figure 5.2 Language alphabets, numerals in Jawi and Rumi
in religious classes as reading materials to explain religious concepts and

Arabic terminologies and contributed to the spread of the new identity

(Siti Hawa, 2010). Enthused with their new faith, translators began to
translate the hitherto Sanskritic text of their literature and history into
Jawi, and in their hands some words were changed or modified to make
them more “Muslim” and less “Hindu” (Sweeney, 1987). The change in
the titles of the following books reflected their new identity: Hikayat
Marakarma became Hikayat Si Miskin, Hikayat Serangga Bayu became
Hikayat Ahmad Muhammad, and Hikayat Inderajaya became Hikayat Shah
Mardan (Siti Hawa, 2010).
By the 18th century, Jawi became not just the language of religious
personages but also the language of the elite and the mercantile classes
(Milner, 2008). It was used in royal correspondences and literary works
and was widely understood by the merchants in the port of Malacca as
the main means of communication.13 One notes that the well-known
Sejarah Melayu first commissioned in 1612 by a Johor ruler14 was written
in Jawi. So too was the Hikayat Ganja Mara, the well-read Tuhfat al-Nafis
(“The Precious Gift” in Arabic) by Raja Ali Haji (1809–1870), as well as
many other seminal books of Malay literature in the 19th century.15
Last but not least, early legal digests such as the Malacca Code and its
derivatives, which included the legal codes of Johor, Kedah and Brunei,
were written in Jawi.
Many reasons may account for the spread of Jawi. First, Jawi helped
promote the change from a Hindu-Buddhist to a Muslim identity.
Adapted from the onset to suit Malay sounds, it was psychologically
more accessible than earlier Sanskritic consonants and vowels (Unseth,
2011) (Figure 5.2).16 Second, unlike Kevi and Pallava, which was mainly
used by kings, nobility and religious scholars, Jawi was a relatively
“democratic” script, taught in the pondoks in Malaya and the pesantren in
Indonesia and used by the common people. Compared to the preceding
Hindu-Buddhist era where the only community or people chronicled
were castes of royalty and nobility, Islam brought the concept of bangsa
(“common people”) independent of any organic connection to the
monarch. Third, Jawi came with a liberating technology, that of paper,
which although had long been used in the Middle East, the West and

China, became for the first time to be used popularly in Southeast Asia.
Literacy was now no longer associated merely with stone, metal or the
palm leaf and this fact was made evident by Arabic lexis incorporated
into Malay, for example, qirtas (“paper”), da’wat (“ink”), and qalam
(“pen”), huruf (“letter of the alphabet”), surat (“letter”).
Syncretic identities through Jawi: the Arabs

and Arab Peranakans
Two influential groups of Jawi-users in Singapore will be considered

in this history: the Arabs and Jawi Peranakans, as they represent the
under-researched multicultural minority who has assimilated with
Malay culture. Although represented as a separate “race” in the census
and traditionally regarded as part of the “plural society” (Furnivall,
1956), in reality they have coexisted peacefully with the indigenous
regional groups for centuries.
The Arabs
The Arabs may traditionally be divided into two groups – those who
have assimilated to Malay society and become quite indistinguishable;
and those who have not. The assimilative tendency of the Arabs with
the local Malay is consequent primarily upon the practice of a common
religion (Islam) and the possession of a common language (Malay). Some
Arabs have married into Bugis and Malay royalty. In fact, I was told that
all the local Arabs could speak Malay fluently, but not all could speak
English with the same facility. My Arab informant also pointed out
that Arabs can adapt easily to the countries they settle in – in short, be
“Indianized” in India, “Malayized” in Malaysia and “Singaporeanized”
in Singapore. Indeed, I found that a significant number of my Arab
informants were registered as Malays. This may be because Arabs are
able to oscillate freely from being an Arab to being Malay without being
involved in role conflict and marginality (cf. Lim, 1987).
Those who do not want to maintain their Arab identity have conse-
quently been absorbed into the “majority” Malay world. Many Arabs
have married local women; usually fellow Muslims from the Malay
community and may be referred to as “Arab Peranakans” (Kwa et al.
2009: 117).17 Here, I use the word “Peranakan” to denote the multi-
cultural, multilingual concept of the group, in the same way as one
may refer to the “Chinese Peranakans” or the “Indian Peranakans” (cf.
Holmberg, 2009). On the other hand, there were of course Arabs who
could not be called “Peranakans” since however “mixed” their bloodline

was, they still kept in close contact with Arabia, often sending their
sons to schools in Arabia, strictly observing Muslim customs, seeking
sons-in-laws of pure Arab blood, using the Arabic language, wearing
Arab dress, and adopting Arab titles such as Sayyid or Syeds.
The Arabs have long been engaged in a trading network that stretched
from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. While the Arabs wanted
Chinese luxury items for the rich in Baghdad, Cairo and Alexandria,

they realized that most of the commodities they desired originating in
China and India could also be obtained on shores nearer to home – that
is, in cosmopolitan cities such as Malacca and Singapore. The estab-
lishment of Malacca as a Muslim port in the 15th century encouraged
a large number of Muslim Arab (and Indian) merchants to its shores.
The Arabs were dedicated Muslims and very effective missionaries.
More fluent in Malay than English, and literate in both Arabic and Jawi,
they may be said to be the traditional guardians of the Muslim faith in
colonial Singapore. To this end, wealthy Singapore Arabs such as the
Alkaffs, Aljunieds, Talibs and Alsagoffs built several religious schools,
and financed religious feasts for the Muslim community in Singapore.18
The Alsagoffs also promoted a Malayan Islamic identity through their
sponsorship of Warta Melayu, a Jawi press, which functioned from
1930–1941.19 The Lembaga Melayu (1934–1941), which was founded by
Malay nationalist Oon Bin Jaafar, was also Arab-financed (Turnbull,
1989: 143).
The Arabs were directly involved in the pilgrim business to Mecca, and
were instrumental in encouraging many Malays to deepen their faith
through pilgrimage. As early as 1900, as many as 1,400 pilgrims left
Singapore for Mecca, a figure that would increase with each passing year
(Kwa et al., 2009: 118). According to Laffan (2003), the haj was crucial
in shaping the imagined notion of Southeast Asia and in preventing
the Balkanization of the region during the period of decolonialization
in the 20th century (cf. Laffan, 2003). The haj enabled pilgrims to gain
a heightened sense of communal experience and in that sacred realm,
their multifarious regional identities outlined in Chapter 3 was quickly
dissolved to form one united religious identity.
The Jawi Peranakans

Our second group, the Jawi Peranakans is also identified by their
affinity with Malay and the Jawi script, and refers to local-born Muslims
of South Asian and Malay ancestry.20 Like the Arab Peranakan, they
have adopted local manners, such as language, food and culture and
are literate in both Malay and Arabic (Turnbull, 1989: 37). Like the

Chinese Peranakans (also known as Babas), a greater participation in

inter-ethnic social exchanges provided the Jawi Peranakans with values
and an outlook that were more cosmopolitan in nature. English became
their working language, and Malay as seen through the Arabic eyes of
Jawi, became their home language by personal choice. Like the Babas,
the Jawi Peranakan began to adopt the European and Chinese prac-
tice of forming clubs and associations, such as the Persekutuan Islam

Singapura (Muslim Association of Singapore) founded in 1900. These
were mostly cultural rather than political clubs, concerned with educa-
tion, language and Muslim custom and cultural activities such as music
and dance (Ibid.: 99).
An examination of their language shows it to be a smorgasbord of
different identities. For our purpose, let us assume that the first genera-
tion spoke Tamil (or Urdu and Bengali as the case may be). This would
mean that after many years in Malaya and Singapore, their language
would combine the original Tamil and Arabic (the lingua franca of
other Muslim groups in Singapore), Malay (the lingua franca of the
region and other ethnic races), English (their language in school and
especially of their children), and last but not least, Hindustani (the
language of the media from India, which they were influenced by).
Hence, their identity, like their language, is what has been referred to
as a boria (“mixed flavour”). In a study of Jawi Peranakans in Penang,
Majid and Said (2004) found that many of them, especially in the family
or intra-group domain, still preferred to use the non-standard regional
variety of Malay (loghat Tanjong) as this promotes a “local” Malayan
sense of belonging. However, they found that the more conservative
Jawi Pernakans preferred intra-group communication in Tamil with a
mélange of English or Malay words interspersed in their lexical reper-
toire. Terms derived from the Tamil language are used within the
family, for example, achi, nana, mamak and mami. An older male of
the first ascending generation is addressed as mamak (“uncle”) and the
female as mami (“aunt”). An older male of the same kinship hierarchy is
called nana (“older brother”) and an older female is called achi (“sister”).
However, the second generation, by and large, have adopted Malay hier-
archy terms such as pak cik (“uncle”), mak cik (“aunt”), abang (brother)
and kakak (sister) Penang (Ibid.). The frequency and extent of Malay
depends on the degree of adaptation and assimilation to the larger
Malay society, the sociolinguistic environment and social exposure of
the living group.
Holding dear to their Islamic identity, the Jawi Peranakan were the first
to promote the first Jawi newspaper, aptly named The Jawi Peranakan in

1876 – a venture which lasted 19 years up to 1895 and which promoted

Islamic values.21 They were also behind the blossoming of many Malay
language journals such as the Sekolah Melayu Weekly Jawi (1888–1893).22
These journals provided local and foreign news and suggestions for the
improvement of the Malay language and also drew Muslims’ attention
to their economic and educational backwardness (Omar, 1983: 31).
Their pioneering efforts led the way in the 20th century for the rise of

other Jawi news dailies such as such as the well-known Utusan Melayu
(Lim, 1992).23
With independence, in Singapore as in Malaysia, and with a political
climate which designated “Malay” as a favoured race, Jawi Peranakans,
like the Arabs and Arab Peranakans, have registered themselves as
“Malay”, as it became no longer expedient to project an identity that
was once distinctive, elitist and syncretically tolerant.24
Jawi or Rumi? Competing identities
Written Jawi was remarkably uniform and allowed the many regional
Malays to be identified prominently as “Muslims.” As the “classical
Latin of Southeast Asia”, it was an important signifier of Muslim soli-
darity. Indeed, according to Laffan (2009), Jawi enabled the many
regional Malays from Boyanese to Acehnese to find an identity equal
to “Malay” itself. This is due primarily to the fact that the short vowels
are not usually written in Jawi, resulting in the deduction of differences
between dialectic pronunciation of Malay in Aceh, Minangkabau or
Johor and through this means, empowering and creating a wider read-
ership for the different regional identities (Laffan, 2003). In addition,
the Sejarah Melayu (“History of the Malays”) written by Tun Sri Lanang
in 1612 and set down in Jawi gave the Malays a unified vision (Ansaldo,
2009: 54) and enabled Malay to achieve the status of a high language
functioning as the language of governance and diplomacy.
While Jawi may have been a centripetal force for the regional Malays,
drawing them closer together as a “brotherhood”, it was totally alien-
ating for the British in Malaya and the Dutch in Indonesia who found
its Middle Eastern Islamic face not just intimidating but also linguisti-
cally cumbersome. The Europeans wanted to write Malay in what they
perceived as a more logical, familiar and scientific fashion. Hence, like
Swahili in Africa, a Romanized Malay was created as a print-literature
language to supersede Jawi. From the following example of everyday
greetings in Malay written in both the Rumi and Jawi script, one may
glean the contrasting indexical identities:

Good day
Selamat sejahtera: (‫)ﺴﻼﻤﺖ ﺴﺠﻬﺘﺮﺍ‬
What is your name?

Siapakah nama anda?: (‫)ﺴﻴﺎﭬﮑﮥ ﻨﺎﻢ ﺍﻨﺪﺍ‬
Do you speak Malay?

Bolehkah anda bertutur dalam Bahasa Melayu?: (‫)ﺒﻭﻠﻴﻬﻜﻪ ﺍﻨﺪﺍ ﺒﺮﺘﻭﺘﻭﺮ ﺪﺍﻠﻢ ﺒﻬﺎﺲ ﻤﻼﻴﻭ‬
Figure 5.3 Greetings in Rumi and Jawi

Figure 5.3 may be said to display a kind of “emblematic identity
display”, that is, language becomes objects – words – that indexes certain
competing ideologies. In writing, such displays become icons of various
identities: Roman letters indirectly came to symbolize the Christian
West and secularization, while Islamic letters came to symbolize the
East and religious theocracy. If Jawi portrays the Islamic face and
Romanization the Western or secular face, there was no questioning as
to which script the colonialists preferred their subjects to use. Hence,
from the early 15th century, there have been concerted efforts to write
Malay in scripts other than Jawi.
The creation of bilingual dictionaries by foreigners marked the
transition from Jawi to Rumi. The Chinese were probably the first to
compile a Malay dictionary in the 16th century – this was a word list in
Chinese characters containing 482 entries (Blagden, 1930: 32). Antonio
Pigafetta (1491–1534) in 1521 compiled a word list containing some 425
items – with the Italian word set out first, and then the Malay equiv-
alent, and written with his invented spelling in the Roman script.25
In the 17th century, Frederick de Houtman’s Spraek ende Woorde-boek
(“Speech and Word Book”) published in Amsterdam in 1603 described
the use of 2,000 Malay terms using the Roman script in a spelling
system he invented (Robson, 2002: 14). G.G. Werndly’s and clergyman
M. Leydekker’s Grammar of Malay in the 1730s was used by the Dutch
as the “standard” form of Malay in the domains of education and reli-
gion throughout the 18th century.26 Their seminal work was to influ-
ence later dictionaries such as the two-volume Malay-Dutch dictionary
Maleisch-Nederlandsch Woordenboak compiled by Dutchman Herman
von de Wall in 1877–1884.
The missionary Benjamin Frederick Matthes arrived in Makassar in
1848 keen to translate the Bible into the languages of the South Sulawesi.
He quickly discarded the old Bugis-Makassar script although he knew
how to read it. Instead, Matthes compiled two dictionaries consid-
ered masterpieces of 19th century European philology – the “Makasar

Dictionary” (1859) and the “Bugis Dictionary” using the Roman script
(1874) with a supplement in 1889 (Macknight, 2009: 304). In 1860,
a Leiden academic, J. Pijnappel (1822–1901), made the case for the
replacement of the Jawi script with Roman letters. He argued that this
replacement would ensure the ultimate replacement of “Arab-Islamic
influences” by their own “Western-Christian culture” (Mandal, 1994:
112–114). He also said that the Javanese should be supplied books in

Roman script rather than “hostile-looking” Arabic or “obsolete” Javanese
characters (Proudfoot, 1993).
By then, spelling reforms had become the order of the day. In the
publications of the late l9th century, later-generational Chinese such
as the Babas (see Chapter 6) chose to write Malay in Roman script but
since there was then no recognized system of spelling, each individual
spelled the words in consonance with his knowledge of the Malay
pronunciation and according to his idea of the phonetic value of the
Roman letters. Chia (1899b) gives a sample of two different spelling
systems as seen in Figure 5.4.
Both the Protestant missionary William Shellabear (1862–1947) and
the Catholic Church made several attempts to devise a new spelling
system for Malay (Proudfoot, 1993). Later, in 1904 in Malaya and
Singapore, efforts to create an acceptable Malay spelling system were
initiated by Richard Wilkinson, a colonial officer and scholar of the
Malay language. Later, Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad, a grammarian, made
Sample 1 English translation
Sapu tagan tape di rend The handkerchief and

hat is a little short
Kain puti tulong lepatkan Please fold the white

cloth
Kalu Kasian mayit kakanda We take pity on the

corpse of her sister
Dangan ayer mata tulong I’ll help you to

mandikau bathe/wash the corpse
Figure 5.4 Spelling samples from the Baba popular press

further changes to the Wilkinson system of spelling and produced ejaan

sekolah (“Malay school spelling”).
The decline of Jawi: reasons and implications
In 1910, van Ophuijsen’s influential “Malay Grammar” was published

in Holland to educate candidates for colonial officialdom. In his intro-

duction, he explained the reasons why the Malay of the Riau Islands (i.e.
Johor Malay, later to become the national language of both Malaysia,
Indonesia and Singapore) was the “best” even though it was spoken
only by a tiny fraction of the colonial population.27 As this influential
document was written in Rumi, this may be said to mark the beginning
of the demise of Jawi.
Three main reasons may explain why Jawi was too weak to hold
its own cultural hegemony in the competition with Rumi. The first
was the support of the Chinese Babas, then staunch supporters of
the British Raj, for a Romanized Malay as expressed in their prolific
literary ventures in Rumi. The Babas were influenced by 19th
century missionary efforts to Romanize the Chinese languages then
taking place in China and given completed form with the Herbert
Giles’ “Chinese-English Dictionary” of 1892 (Patterson, 1969).
The Wades-Giles system was then the most widely used method of
Chinese transcription in the English-speaking world and used in all
standard reference books about China before 1979. They believed
that a Romanized Malay, just like a Romanized Chinese, would take
their beloved adopted tongue into the modern and scientific era
(Proudfoot, 1993: 677, 681). Hence, the Babas printed their newspaper
Bintang Timor in Rumi (Roman letters), which was in contrast to the
Jawi Peranakans who printed their newspaper in Jawi. Rumi was also
their favoured choice for other bilingual publications of theirs, such
as the Straits Chinese Herald (or Surat Khabar Pernakan) founded in 1894
and the Chahya Matahari (Yang Ming Pao), founded in 1908. In brief,
the Babas printed hundreds of historical romances and other types of
Chinese classical literature in Rumi, inventing the spelling of Malay
words as they went along (Collins, 1980: 4), one notable endeavour
being the Cherita Dulukala books (“Tales of Long Ago”).
Secondly, missionaries were very influential where the choice of
script is concerned – the “best” script often being the one that they
were most familiar with and preferred to use (Spolsky, 2010). In the

first 40 years since the founding of Singapore, Malay printing was

the preserve of Christian missions, who alone had the technology
of the printing press. The London Missionary Society (LMS), which
brought printing to the Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca and
Singapore) and which was the government’s default printer for the
greater part of the 19th century, hastened the transition from Jawi
to Rumi. The spelling they invented for Malay words in Rumi also

eventually became the approved government spelling for school text-
books (Proudfoot, 1993). Like the Muslims, the Christians believed
that a certain amount of literacy was essential for conversion. Hence,
several efforts were made to create variations of alphabetic scripts
(Greek and Roman), which could be used more effectively with the
new converts. Romanized Malay was used to spread Christianity not
just to the Malays but also to the other races conversant in Malay, for
example, the first Christian document printed in Malay was the “Ten
Commandments” (Hill, 1969: 124). 28
Understandably, the LMS Press was also more adept in printing in
Rumi rather than Jawi (Proudfoot, 1993). In addition, early Islamic
journals suffered from commercially designed fonts that were neither
elegant nor easy to read and this was a key factor in the popularity of
an Arabic-based press. As a case in point, the Pelayaran Abdullah which
was printed in 1838 in both Jawi and Rumi on facing pages was tech-
nically interesting but it was plain to all that the Jawi typefaces were
clumsy and expressed the text in sometimes nonsensical Malay idiom
(Proudfoot, 1993). For the greater part of the 19th century, therefore,
while Romanized Malay was spread by the printing press, Jawi was
produced mostly by hand. Hence, for a long time, a Romanized Malay
manuscript became much more accessible and affordable than a Jawi
one (Laffan, 2003).29
Thirdly, the widespread belief then that a switch to Roman letters
might give the Malay language the ability to tackle modernity and other
challenges of science and technology also hastened the rise of Rumi
and the demise of Jawi. Many Malay intellectuals believed that Jawi,
which was mainly associated with religion rather than the wider scien-
tific world, would not be able to tackle modernity or any other chal-
lenges related to science and technology. This belief had the support of
well-known scholars such as A.N. Masuri and Muhd. Ariff Ahmad, who
on realizing that knowledge of Rumi under the British colonials more
than doubled a boy’s chances of employment, zealously spearheaded
the drive for a “reformed” Malay written in Rumi.

Colonial efforts to promote Rumi at the expense of Jawi are never

too far away from ideology. Jawi and Rumi are oppositional forces with
contrasting identities and affiliations. The switch to Rumi must not be
seen as merely orthographical reform but also ideological competition.
The introduction of Rumi separated Malay identity into those that may
be considered liberal or conservative. For example, today, Jawi is used
only for religious purposes and found in the more conservative Muslim

areas such as Sulu in the Philippines, Pattani in Thailand and Kelantan
in Malaysia.
Rumi Malay is not as neutral as it appears to be as it is overladen
with the rules of English grammar, and is entirely different from Jawi
which had at least attempted to describe Malay within the logic of its
own structural forms and patterns. For example, Marsden’s (1930, 1984)
“Dictionary of the Malayan Language” had superimposed traditional
Graeco-Latin in an effort to describe Malay Grammar. The word order
of Malay sentences became subject-verb-object, just as in English. The
pronunciation of the letters in the Rumi alphabet is similar to that in
English, for example, the Malay letter c is pronounced like the English
“ch.” Much later and influenced by Marsden’s earlier work, Winstedt
(1947) and Wilkinson (1952) also introduced these notions into the
Malay language grammar books they each produced. Thus Latin and
Greek cognitive overlay continued to obscure much of the important
features of Malay grammatical structure, which was linked closely to a
“politically dangerous” Islam.
However, Christian missionary efforts to convert the natives through
orthographical reforms did not turn out as successfully as they had
hoped. In attempting to convert the Muslims to Christianity, they faced
more difficulty than the Arabs in the latter’s prior efforts to convert the
Buddhist-Hindu identity to an Islamic one. Then, conversion was from
below, mostly through trade rather than colonialization. Also the Islam
that resulted was of the Sufi mystical variety and was easily overlaid on
the existing Buddhist-Hindu culture. Now, the Christians were encoun-
tering a religion of the book and one with a sacred language, which
not only provided their users with a powerful sense of the sacred, but
also endowed their professional priests with a powerful literacy (Gaur,
2000).
With the rise of the plural society in British Malaya and Singapore,
the Malays had also begun the practice of endowing their children with
Islamic names (cf. Suleiman, 2006).30 In the past, the naming of chil-
dren had recognized three positional categories sulong or long (referring

to the eldest child), tengah or ngah (referring to the middle child and
bongsu or su (referring to the youngest child). An elder prince is Raja
Besar, and a younger one is Raja Kecil. Another mode of giving names
was one based on the physical and behavioural characteristics of the
newly born; for example, complexion is hitam (“dark”) as opposed to
putih (“white”), ketot (“stunted”), bulat (“round”) and dogol (“bald”) (cf.
Edwards, 2009). Now, names associated with the Prophet’s family were

adopted, for example, Abdullah (and its variations, Abdul, Dolah, etc.),
Aminah (and its abbreviation, Maminah), Abdul Mutalib (or its abbrevia-
tion, Talib), Ali (Khadijah or simply Tijah), Hassan and Hussein. Names
of a pious nature such as Abvidiin (“pious”), Amin (“steadfast in faith”),
Amina (“reliable of women”), Firdaus/Perdaus (“paradise”), Fadil (“exem-
plary”), Ariffin (“wise”), Ridwan (“grace”), Rasyid (“righteous”), and
Wahid (“the only God”) became popular. Literate Malays also signal
their religious identity switch by adopting ever more consistently an
Arab practice of adding the father’s name with ibn or bin while resisting
any move towards inherited family names (Haque and Abedin, 2011).
Today, Rumi continues its relentless march to replace Jawi in most
contexts of everyday life, although Jawi still sees occasional use in
certain religious arenas. A champion of the Jawi script, the newspaper
Utusan Melayu shrank from being a daily to a weekly and finally ceased
publication in January 2006 due to declining readership. Not surpris-
ingly, the more conservative segment of the Islamic community in
Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia has found the lack of written Jawi
worrisome and efforts are currently underway to preserve the script
and to revive its use amongst Malays. In 1984, a Jawi script seminar
was organized by the Trengganu State Government and a consensus
arrived at to uniform Jawi spelling. Their campaign to revive Jawi is in
part a desire to separate Muslims from “decadent” Western influences.
Of course, another reason for the revival of Jawi is linked to the rising
demand in the learning of Arabic, which now commands the status of a
world language with significant economic potential, opening up oppor-
tunities in the Middle East. Another reason for a renewed interest in
Jawi is because Islam has recently become a critical influence in Malay
politics in the Malaysia Peninsula, as seen in the contest between the
United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Pan-Malaysian
Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS). The PAS is gradually becoming more
influential in its policy of complete Islamizisation. While there has
been pressure from conservative groups in Malaysia to enable Jawi to
make a comeback, whether this will succeed or not will depend not so

much on linguistic but rather social, economic and political factors, as

had been the case in the past.
Concluding remarks
While the Treaty that ceded Singapore to the British is in Jawi, the 1957
Constitution of Malaysia, which signals the birth of an independent

nation, is in Rumi. This fact may be said to symbolize the success of
Rumi over Jawi as well as a change of inclination from the “traditional”
to the “modern” and a change of identity from the “religious” to the
Western-secular.31
To summarize, orthography is not just a recording device but also a
tool of symbolic, psychological significance, which helps in the creating,
shaping and maintenance of an identity. The alphabetic conquest of
Southeast Asia has replaced indigenous and often more efficient forms
of writing, endangering, at times even destroying, many local languages
and traditions. Ideologically, Romanization has succeeded in not only
bringing greater accessibility to modernization and “Westernization” to
the region, but also in “softening” the face of Islam in Southeast Asia to
one which is less oppositional and theocratic.32
The scripts of an earlier Sanskrit were many but it was only various
varieties of Brahmi that found its way to Southeast Asia. Two of its daugh-
ters, Pallava and Kevi, stand out in our history due to their presence
in ancient stone carvings only recently uncovered by archaeologists.33
However, Pallava and Kevi were mainly the languages of the priestly
class and did not have a mass following. It was to be Jawi, a daughter
of Arabic, which would quickly empower the masses with a “Muslim
identity.” Jawi was supreme in Islamic theology, philosophy and mysti-
cism, commerce and trade, as well as in feudal governance and laws.
However, in the theatre of unceasing change, Jawi was soon replaced
by the script of the colonial power. Throughout the 20th century, the
Arabic script from which Jawi is derived has declined in use in several
countries such as the Soviet Union, Turkey, Malaysia and Singapore.
Usually, new scripts often render literary traditions inaccessible and not
surprisingly, many Malays today are unaware of the initricacies of their
religious past (Coulmas, 1989: 242).
Ironically, many post-colonial states have kept intact colonial infra-
structures by, for example, continuing boundary markings. One such
boundary is the creation of an “official language” or “national language”
to mark differences and which effectively keeps a part of their populace

“in” and a part of them “out.” This is no different from the colonizers’
use and manipulation of orthography to demarcate “colonizer” from
“colonized”, “civilized” from “primitive”, the “European” from the
“native” and the “core” from the “periphery” (Cooper, 2005). In later
Chapters (8 and 10), we shall see that such labels mute but do not erase
durable relationships of past dependency and collaboration.

6
Individual Identities: The Use of
Lingua Francas and Language
Choice

While the preceding chapters have focused on collective identities
which are basically top-down, such as racial, regional, religious and
orthographical, the next three chapters focus on individual identities –
a survey of “bottom-up” processes which argues that people are able
to intentionally choose their particular identities. Top-down forces are
often taken for granted, and people often continue with their passive
postures, thereby serving and perpetuating the interest of the existing
social order. In contrast, individual identities are linked more closely
to the “constructionist” paradigm. Here, people intentionally choose
the identites they wish to construct for themselves and use language
in communicative ways that reflect their own self-conceptions and
preoccupations. Hence, identities may not necessarily be entities into
which one is “raised”, rather one “assumes” an identity and then
works on it. In brief, individuals possess the ability to actually exploit
linguistic resources available to them to project the identity or identities
they specifically desire and to change their speech moment-by-moment
and place-by-place as an indication of that choice (Wolfram and
Schilling-Estes, 2006).
One way to participate in the “discourse” of a preferred group is to
enter the social world that the group has constructed. Here, residents
often have a proficiency of varying degrees in several languages – most
of which function as lingua francas for intra- and inter-group communi-
cation. The individual’s choice of lingua franca(s) becomes a means not
just to mark in-group or out-group affiliations but also their respective
racial, regional, religious, educational and political identities. In the eyes
of linguists, all languages are equal without an “H” (high) or “L” (low)
87

status, but in real life, somebody is always either above or below due
to differences in societal status. A sociolinguistic history of Singapore
reveals a complex range of language practices that encompasses several
languages, including different varieties of the same language, multiple
modalities and various social contexts. Some languages are also persist-
ently ranked higher than others because they are associated with
income level, occupation, education and symbolic behaviour (Baldauf

and Chua, 2012). Identities are in constant flux – there is often negotia-
tion, and interplay between different aspects of an individual’s diverse
social and personal identities in response to contextual influences.
In this chapter, the focus is on lingua francas – “bridging” languages –
or mutually understood languages, which afford a practical means of
communication between different linguistic groups in a multilingual
speech community (Chew, 2009). Their mastery provides the aspiring
migrant an opportunity to accommodate and assimilate quickly to
various business opportunities and friendships. Singhalese Resident
Monk of Mangala Vihara Temple M.M. Mahaweera Mahanayaka Thera
(1913–2002), whose mother tongue is Sinhala and who uses mainly
Pali and Sanskrit as his language of work, said that he learnt to speak
Chinese (Hokkien), Malay and English from the 1930s onwards “so
as to be able to communicate with his devotees.”1 This chapter uses
this confession as a springboard to explore the nature of Bazaar Malay
(BM), Singapore English (SE) and Singapore Hokkien (SH) – some lingua
francas which contain within themselves the seeds of hybridity and
cross-cultural influences and which have contributed to the “bridging”
of differing multicultural identities in Singapore. There follows exam-
ples of the context of use behind each lingua franca, each context a
manifestation of individual choice.
Bazaar Malay
Bazaar Malay (also called bahasa pasar or Pasar Malay) (hereafter BM)
is basically what is understood as colloquial Malay or “non-standard
Malay”.2 To speak BM is to assume an identity of fraternity, informality
and flexibility in line with the easy-going and dynamic nature of the
language.3 Like the so-called Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, BM
was used in international trade, politics and inter-ethnic communica-
tion and originated as a pidgin and subsequently as Creole (Omar, 1977,
1983). BM affords its users an easy familiarity in view of the fact that it
contains within itself the major lexis and sounds of the inhabitants of
Singapore.4

The Use of Lingua Francas and Language Choice 89
To the Europeans of the modern era, BM was “the lingua franca of the
East” (Thomson, 1864: 61). Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611),
a Dutch merchant, traveller and historian of Southeast Asia, recounted
that “without the assistance of that language, a person is hardly of any
account” (Boogaart, 2003, quoted in Tan, 2010: 30).5 This observation
is supported by J.T. Thomson (1864: 18–19), an English surveyor in
Southeast Asia from the 1830s to the 1850s. While aboard a vessel in the

1830s, Thomson observed that both the captain of the ship and his wife
were Dutch and Dutch-speaking. However, the captain’s entire crew
was Bengalese while the passengers on board his ship were merchants
from various parts of India conversing in different Indian languages.
The houseboys, on the other hand, were recruited from Java and could
only speak Javanese. This babel-like population on board ship meant
that a lingua franca – BM – was indispensable to their united enterprise,
which Thomson (Ibid.) described as a “ soft-flowing language”, which
once used will turn the “bloodthirsty, revengeful, perfidious Malay into
a good-humoured, respectful, unsophisticated, little copper-coloured
man, with a scanty light dress upon him” (Ibid.: 61).
BM has lexical influences from many traders’ languages but mainly
from Hokkien, the southern Min language spoken in the Zhangzhou
region of Fujian, from where the great majority of overseas Chinese
traders originated (Ansaldo and Stephen, 1999). Not surprisingly, the
personal pronouns of Hokkien have become very much a part of BM.
Hokkien’s first and second person gwa (“I”) and lu (“you”) is present in
BM instead of the Malay saya (“I/me”), and awak (“you”). Lang, a word
for “person”, is another Hokkien word found in Bazaar Malay. So too,
as in Hokkien, the demonstrative precedes the noun, for example, itu
orang (“that person”) and ini bulan (“this month”), which contrasts with
standard Malay where the noun precedes the demonstrative as in orang
itu and bulan ini.
BM is also akin to the uninflected Hokkien syntax in its tendency to
drop all affixes in Standard Malay such as prefixes and suffixes. This
caused an early linguist, Munshi Abdullah (Abdullah, 1843), to lament
that his British masters, who were his language students, “learnt only
the common language of the kitchen and the market. They did not
even wet their feet, still less immerse themselves, in the niceties of the
language. So they did not understand how prefixes and suffixes should
be used. It was good enough for them if they could use expressions like
lu (‘you’), goa (‘I’), bikin rumah (‘make house’), pergi dapat itu wang (‘go
get the money’), as long as people understood it would do” (quoted
in Hill, 1969: 228). Throughout his life, Munshi Abdullah, as an early

advocate of Standard Malay, would continue to emphasize the “proper”

use of appropriate Malay affixes such as ke, men, pem, pen, ter, kan, nya,
lah, di, tah, kah, pun, and sekalipu. Unfortunately, his teacherly exhorta-
tions fell mostly on deaf ears – his pupils mainly preferring the more
dynamic ubiquitous street talk.
Used frequently by the Chinese who made it their own, BM contains
Chinese measurement terms such as the following:

buah – things (in general), large things, abstract nouns such as
houses, cars, ships, mountains, books, rivers, chairs, some fruits,
thoughts, etc. For example: sebuah rumah (a “house”), buah fikiran
(“thoughts”).
ekor – animals (in general). For example: seekor harimau (a “tiger”).
orang – human beings (in general). For example: seorang guru (a
“teacher”).
biji – small rounded objects such as fruits and nuts. For example:
sebiji durian (a “durian”), sebiji bola (a “ball”).
batang – long stiff things such as trees, sticks, and pencils. For
example: sebatang pokok (a “tree”).
keping – flat objects such as pieces of wood, bread, coins, papers, and
slabs of stones. For example: sekeping kertas (a “piece of paper”).
Chinese topic structures are also found in BM (cf. Bao and Khin, 2010).
In the possessive syntax of Hokkien, a construction such as “his room”
is expressed by a “he” followed by a possessive particle plus “room”: dia
(“he”) + punya (“to own”; used as a possessive particle) + bilik (“room”).
Following Hokkien, punya then becomes the grammatical particle that
introduces pre-modification as seen in the following construction: Itu
tua punya orang dia cakap dia boleh jalan lekas (“That old person, he said
he can walk fast”). This construction is similar to the Hokkien particle e
(Mandarin de) as shown in: tiga bulan punya lama (“three months old”)
or sperti macham itu punya kreta (“a car like that”) or dia punya ak-bapa
udok makan di sbalah punya meja (“his father is seatedon the other side
of the table, eating”).
BM also portrays parallel syntactical structure to Hokkien as in the
following:
BM: Awak mau atau tak mau? (“You want eat or not?”)
Hokkien: Lu ai chiak mai? (“You want eat or not?”)

BM: Lu aye kasi mai (“You want give or not?”)

Hokkien: Lu ai hor mai? (“You want give or not?”)
Like Hokkien hor (Mandarin gei ), kasi is used in the causative sense:
Saya kasi dia tahu awak bayar (“I let him know you have paid”)
Comfortable with the Chinese, BM adapts Chinese references to the

days of the week: pai-it, pai-zi, pai-za (“weekday 1, 2, 3,” etc.), the use

of hari satus (instead of hari isnin), hari dua (instead of hari selasa), hari
tiga (instead of hari rabu), hari empat (instead of hari khamis), hari lima
(instead of hari jumaat), hari enam (instead of hari sabtu) and hari tujuh
(instead of hari ahad ).
Most lexical borrowings from Hokkien are nouns rather than verbs,
which indicate that the Malays were impressed by the Hokkien’s wider
exposure to the universe of things.6 These loan words were not literary
but everyday often-used mundane ones because the Chinese traders
whom Malays encountered were mainly traders with little exposure
to art, literature or philosophy in their vocabulary. Nearly all loan
words are monosyllabic or bisyllabic, as is typical in Chinese. However,
once Chinese words are incorporated into BM, their tonal qualities are
dropped.
In the following, the Hokkien words which have gone into Malay
vocabulary are divided into eight categories, that is, foodstuff, Chinese
vegetables, flowers, lottery, household utensils, clothing and personal
effects, words connected to women, words connected to opium and
vice, and miscellaneous words (cf. Png, 1967):
Foodstuff: mi, mihun (“noodles”); twa kua (“soya bean cake”); popia
(“spring roll”); taucio (fermented soya beans); tauge (“bean sprouts”);
tau yu (“soy sauce”); bacang (rice wrapped in bamboo leaf); bihu
(“vermicelli”); kongsi (“to share”); kucai (“leek”); kuetiao, juhi (“cuttle-
fish”); misoa (“vermicelli”); lomi (noodles with sauce); bepang (a
sweetmeat of parched rice); chapchai (“mixed vegetables”); kiamchai
(“salted vegetables”); kentang (“potato”); etc.
Chinese vegetables: kuchai (“leek”); lobak (“radish”); pechai
(“white cabbage”); tangkueh (“melon”); taugeh (“bean sprouts”); dohut
(“peach”); lai (“pear”); laichi (“Nephelium litchi”); etc.
Flowers: botan (“peony”); kekoa (“chrysanthemum”); kengwa
(“night flowering cactus”); etc.
Lottery and vice: chaphjiki (“lottery of 12 digits”); chngkeh (“dealer
at cards”); kapchio (“games of hands or tails”); pakau (“cards”); pi

(“counters“ serving as money for gambling); batau (“pimp/pander”);

chabo (“prostitute” or “woman”); loki (probably according to
Cantonese rather than Fujian pronunciation meaning “prostitute”);
etc.
Household utensils: anchong (“ginger-jar”); angloh (“brazier”); bo
(“a stone”); chawan (“teacup”); hap (“small box/tin”); locheng (“bell/
gong”); tahang (“tub/barrel”); tehko (“tea”, “kettle”); etc.

Clothing and personal effects: angkin (woman’s “cloth belt”); bakiak
(“wooden clogs”); chukin (“short bathing clothes” worn by Chinese
labourers); hopau (“purse” worn on the belt); jong (“velvet cloth”);
kuntuan (satin-like “silk”); pangju (“handkerchief/napkin”); etc.
Words connected with opium tobacco and smoking: jichui
(opium dross doctored a second time); osai (opium dross unprepared
for re-smoking); tengkoh (opium dross prepared for the first time);
etc.
Miscellaneous words: tauke (“boss”); gua (“I/me”); beca (“trishaw”);
guli (“marbles”); cincai (“anyhow”); singseh (“doctor”); cat (“paint”);
loteng (‘upstairs” in a two-storey house); bocheng (“ungrateful lack of
affection”); bohwat (“no way out”); kong chin (“mediator/mediate”);
lun (“leap year”); paitjia (pay New Year visit); yang hwee (“fireworks”);
yang-lik (“Western calendar”); engkong (“grandfather”); etc.7
BM was the most used lingua franca by both high and low in the port
of Singapore. The identity the speaker assumes here is one of flexibility,
fraternity, and informality in line with the easy-going and dynamic
nature of the language. For example in the phenomenon of topic
prominence:
angin dia gigit dia punya kai (“dog it bites its leg”);
and in its basic SVO word structure:
dia angkat ini besi (“he lifted this iron”);

saya ikut itu jantan (“I follow the man”).
BM is seen in the instructions issued to the hackney carriage driver

listed in the 19th century “Handbook of Singapore” (Reith, 1892)
such as: pusing kereta (“turn the carriage around”), pasang pelit (“light
the lamps”), banyak chukup (“too much”) and pulang (“off with you”).
Landmark buildings such as the Masonic Hall were better known by
their quaint BM references such as rumah hantu (“haunted house”). The

Methodist Episcopal Church that was built alongside it was referred

to as Greja dekat rumah hantu (“the church near the haunted house”)
(Ibid: 90). Similar to the “Handbook”, a manual entitled “Malay collo-
quial such as spoken by all nationalities in the Colonies of the Straits
Settlement as designed for domestic and business purposes”, was also
penned a decade later by Lim Hiong Seng (cf. Robson, 2002). According
to Davison (2010), the British learnt to sprinkle their conversation with

BM so as to quickly adopt a “local” identity. When someone is sick, they
would say a little sakit and would go to the doctor for ubat. When some-
thing was broken, it was pecah. Clothes were put into a dhoby basket
and the garden was tended by a kebun (Ibid.). Keaughran (1887), a jour-
nalist writing in the bilingual section of the first Chinese newspaper of
Singapore, Lat Pau, draws a graphic picture of a street scene where the
multi-ethnic street vendors, in spying a potential European customer,
would call out in BM:
In one spot, a number of Chinese and Kling cooks and servant boys
are overhauling the piles of vegetables and loudly contending with
the vendors; in another some Portuguese women are discussing the
quality of its roes ... Now and then and European may be seen, with
a firm step and commanding air, whose appearance immediately
calls forth loud appeals from the market people of ‘tuan, tuan, mari
tuan, apa tuan mau bili? ’ in the hope of inducing him to purchase ... .
(Keaughran, 1887: 39)
BM was also the language of the religious domain in churches such as

Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, Bethesda (Katong) Church and the
Roman Catholic Holy Family Church (Katong) (Jürgen, 1998). It was
also a “spirit language”, for example, in the Sam Poh Neo Keramat, a
Baba-Chinese temple, the spirit medium was reported to be conversant
in both BM and Baba Malay (Ng, 1976).8 So too it was the language of
sports as heard among Chinese, Malays and Eurasians in the hockey,
cricket and soccer fields (Tatsuki, 1943: 7). It was the language of the
English-medium classroom when teachers wanted to mark a particular
point they were making (Gupta, 1994: 43).9 Not surprisingly, when a
young Janet Lim (2004) arrived in Singapore in 1923, her father gave
her only two words from BM to enable her, in his opinion, to survive:
makan (“to eat”) and tangkap (“to catch”).10
Most of all, BM was heard along the streets and in the domestic
sphere. George Peet (1934: 32–35) in his autobiography Malayan Exile
was “amazed” that his domestic servants, such as the Hainanese cook,

the Indian gardener and the Malay amah (“maid”), were on unusually
good terms, always chatting with one another in BM “despite the fact
that they were of different races”. Ron Mitchell (2004), who was born
in Singapore and educated at Raffles Institution, writes of his child-
hood in Singapore in the 1930s: “Our Chinese amah had first started
looking after us when I was 7 years old. She still could not speak much
English and we used to speak to her in what we call ‘Market Malay’.

She addressed us by calling my elder brother, ‘Baba Besar’ (big boy), my
younger brother was called ‘Baba Kitchie’ (small boy) and I was called
‘Baba Nonnie’ (Boy Nonnie).” In another Singapore home, Singhalese
Rita Seneviratne recalled speaking Malay to her Chinese amah, who
she had employed to care for her infant son. She used BM to discuss the
things to be bought, the ways of cooking and general affairs connected
to the care of her son and the household (Arseculeratne, 1992: 119). BM
(like Singlish) conveyed the hybrid easy-going cosmopolitan character
of Singapore.
However, BM is rarely found in print since that is the domain reserved
for Standard Malay and English.11 When BM is “heard” in creative writ-
ings in English, it is usually “invisible”, as in the autographical novel
“Malayan Landscape” by Kathren Sim (1946). Here, Ah Seng is speaking
in Malay to the British colonials about supernatural phenomena but
as is typical in creative writing of the period, we are not allowed to
hear its sounds. Ah Seng’s emphatic utterances, in fact, are carefully
represented in Standard English, although we know that the dialogue
is taking place in BM:
Ah Seng complained that he had heard in the town that the house
was haunted: “A Tuan who lived here a long time ago saw people
no one could see. He used to throw glasses at these people. A lot of
glasses were broken, but no one ever saw what it was he hit. What
was it, Tuan?”
Stuart calmed him down and tried to explain as much as he could
in Malay.
A rare occasion when BM made its presence felt in print was during
the Maria Hertogh Riots of 1950 where the overtly English press made
a marked switch to Malay in its report of the incident.12 Here, a white
child (Maria) raised by native Malay-Muslims who had fled Indonesia
during the Japanese invasion was ordered by the court to be returned
to her white parents. Although Standard Malay is used (since the media
is conscious of using only the more politically correct “H” schooled

Malay), the readers are not unoblivious to the familiar sounds of BM

underlying Maria’s utterance:
Both Aminah and the girl – with their arms locked round each
other – declined to enter the car. Aminah clung to an iron gate near
the Supreme Court garage and refused to move. With tears streaming
down her face, Maria shouted in Malay (the only language she can

speak): Aminah adalah ibu saya. Dia telah menyayangi saya, menjagaga
saya, dan membersarkan saya. “Aminah is my mother. She has loved
me, cared for me and brought me up.” Then looking at Aminah, the
girl said: Apakah ibu menyayangi saya? Saya tidah mahu pergi bersame
dengan lelaki ini. “Do you love me mother? If you love me, don’t leave
me. I don’t want to go with this man” (a Dutch consular official).
(Straits Times, 20 May 1950)
No language is completely culture free and the evocative nature of

BM doubtless played a part in the ensuing racial-religious riots that
followed. Maria, as the Caucasian child speaking in BM, would evoke the
sympathy of the majority of the readers. If the newspaper had described
the situation entirely in English as it normally did for all other news
events, it would not have been able to express the underlying emotions
and feelings that BM had been able to suggest.
Singapore English (SE)13
While BM was the lingua franca of colonial Singapore, Singapore

English (SE) is its post-colonial counterpart. This is not surprising since
like its predecessor, SE bears semblance to the manifestation of pidgin-
and Creole-like features, such as a limited vocabulary, simplified
phonological system, and a reduced morphology and syntax. Moreover,
both have been shaped by the same linguistic resources in the contact
ecology. Just as BM is a Creolized variety of standard Malay, so too SE
is a Creolized variety of Standard English. Like BM, SE has levelled out
accents and intonational patterns surrounding it and formed its own
distinguishable voice. Like BM (and the Chinese languages), SE is also
topicalized:
SE: “Person die we cannot go”

BM: Orang mati memang kita tak boleh pergi
(“As the person had died, we are unable to go”)

SE: “Two wives I can marry”

BM: Dua bini boleh kahwin
(“I can marry two wives”)
SE: “Previously children mother father belonging speak”
BM: Dulu anak-anak mak bapa punya caka
(“Last time, the children, the father and the mother all spoke”)

The origin of Singapore English
There are many factors which have contributed to the beginning and
spread of SE; namely, the presence of the Eurasians, the Babas, the
Anglo-Indians, the later-generational populace and the fact that the
entire colonial administration (and their preferred schools) was run in
English.
At the point of the British colonialization of Singapore, there were
four groups of people who spoke English – the British themselves, the
Eurasians, the Babas and the Anglo-Indians. Of the Eurasians, a certain
Tomas Ferrao from Malacca had accompanied Sir Stamford Raffles to
meet with the Temenggong in 1819 to cede the island of Singapore
to the British. Like many Eurasians from Malacca who would journey to
Singapore from the British port, Ferrao could speak not just his mother
tongue, Kristang, but also BM and English. Then there were the Babas,
who were the desired trade intermediaries between the Europeans and
other races not least because, as Britisher, George Windsor Earl, remarked
in 1837, “they spoke English tolerably well” (quoted in Jurgen, 1998: 313),
and also came from the earlier British settlements of Penang and Malacca.
The British presence in Singapore also attracted many English-
speaking Indians from India – not least because Singapore was under
the jurisdiction of the Presidency of Bengal from 1826 to 1867.14
For example, the Parsis who followed the British to Singapore set
up the first private school for the teaching of English as a second
language in the early 19th century.15 So too, Singhalese and Tamils
from Jaffna in Sri Lanka were recruited by the British to occupy the
lower ranks of the administrative order. English-speaking Christian
Malayalees from Kerala worked mainly in the civil service while
English-speaking Punjabis and Sikhs were the backbone of the armed
forces and police force and worked as private security guards as they
were so familiar with English (Turnbull, 1989: 96). Under pressure
to communicate successfully, English-speakers from such different

linguistic backgrounds would accommodate each other’s accents and

intonations. Loan words and syntactical features began to be incor-
porated into a “Singapore English” that would be comprehensible to
the myriad races.
English-language schools were established to churn out employees
who could enter the civil service or become lawyers, doctors or teachers,
and to generally make themselves useful to their British masters.16 The

gradual growth of Singapore to become the “El Dorado” and “Gateway
to the East” called for a continual supply of English-speaking graduates
from such schools to oil the expanding administrative machinery of
the colony as well as its attendant communicative systems such as rail-
ways, airlines, etc. Beauvoir (1870) recalled several thousand Chinese
who worked as English-speaking clerks: “Every time I went to Guthrie
and Co. to use my letter of credit, I would find myself face to face with
twenty-five Chinese clerks in white jackets, their pens tucked behind
their ears. They spoke a very passable sort of English, processed my letter
through all the formalities and wrote out their interminable calcula-
tions in English, all without a mistake, with impeccable politeness and
excellent business sense.”17 Bloom’s (1986) research, however, found an
“imperfect” variety of English in official records around 1870.
As there was a shortage of native-speaking teachers, the teachers
in these early schools were mostly Eurasians, Babas and Anglicized
Indians, all of whom although, equipped with a Standard VII or Junior
Cambridge School Certificate, no doubt contributed to the growth of
SE.18 In teaching large classes of forty or fifty students, they would,
of necessity, modify their speech to make themselves comprehensible
to their pupils who were of different races and abilities (cf. Giles and
Powersland, 1991). One way of doing this was through code-switching,
which became the norm in schools such as the Chinese Girls’ School,
established in 1899. A pupil of the school from 1927 to 1936 and later
one of its teachers, Mrs Lim Long, recalled code-switching between
English and BM as a “normal everyday routine”. Through such prac-
tices, these teachers would be instrumental for the creation of a whole
continuum of possibilities with regard to the adaptation of syntactic
and lexical features. A second-generation Tamil from Ceylon who was
said to speak impeccable English “in a local way” was the well-known
H.M. Hosington. According to his student, Yap Pheng Geck (Yap, 1982:
19), an alumnus as well as teacher at the Anglo-Chinese School: “he
could switch to spice his English with local nuances in a manner that
his students could understand.” This model of English would ultimately
be absorbed by the student population who would eventually graduate

into the world outside the classroom carrying with them speech patterns
acquired in their classrooms:
We were never brought up to speak English like Englishmen. Our

spoken English lacked style and polish. We largely used English
words to express our thoughts, but our thought patterns were mostly
native. In fact, when we did not know the English word to convey

our ideas, we resorted to the use of words from our native language.
We lacked the vocabulary and we might be speaking “Singapore
English”, but I find such is “English as she is spoken” in most coun-
tries by non-English. (Ibid.)
In brief, English in the form of SE continued to develop because of the

desire of the local populace to “re-ethnify and re-linguify” (Fishman,
1982) to take advantage of the powerful rewards around them. This
is seen when a Chinese towkay sends his son to an English-medium
school rather than to a Chinese-medium school which he had founded
himself. In his autobiography, Singapore diplomat and politician Lee
Khoon Choy recalled such an anamoly in his childhood: that while his
migrant father was the “proud Founder-Chairman and principal of the
Yeok Keow Chinese-medium school, he ironically sent his own children
to be educated in English-medium schools for the simple reason that ‘all
the British were tuans’ (‘masters’)” (Lee 1988: 6).19
Singapore Hokkien (SH)
It was Hokkien rather than Hakka or Teochew which became the

default intra-group lingua franca in Singapore. This was because the
Chinese settlers then were Hokkien (福建) speakers from Quanzhou
and Zhangzhou in Fujian 20 and Hokkien was the lingua franca of
the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. 21 This regional group domi-
nated the more lucrative early businesses such as opium, rubber and
gambier. While the Chinese used BM and SE for inter-group commu-
nication such as in communicating with an Arab, Punjabi or Malay,
they were more likely to use Hokkien for intra-group communica-
tion, such as in communicating with a Cantonese or Khek. 22 Also,
while the Babas, Eurasians and Anglicized Indians were the first to
expound a Singaporean-Malayan identity through the use of SE, a
more Chinese ethnic identity was made possible through the use of
Hokkien, which was the mother tongue of the majority of Chinese
in Singapore. 23

One notes that just as there are different varieties of Malay (see Chapter
3), there are also different varieties of Hokkien. For example: kooli keng
or kooli fong (depending on whether one is from Singapore or Kuala
Lumpur). Those in Kuala Lumpur would use fong instead of keng because
fong is Cantonese for “room” and there are more Cantonese speakers than
Hokkien speakers in Kuala Lumpur. Similarly, while kongsi in Hokkien
means “pool together”, an infinitive, in Penang it means “clan asso-

ciation”, a compound noun.24 In addition, the Hokkien of the masses
should also not be assumed as identical to the one in Fujian. The many
years of absence from their villages in China has led to much variation
in pronunciation. The Chinese who left Fujian for Singapore were mainly
the disenfranchised and on arrival were not averse to levelling out their
accents. Hence, the Hokkien in Singapore took on a linguistic twist,
which was quite unlike its parent and may be said to be a variety in its
own right.
Just as English became nativized, so too Hokkien became nativized into
Singapore Hokkien (SH). As early as the 1870s, Vaughan (1985: 89) recorded
that “the Chinese spoke an adulterated Hokkien which was interlaid with
Malay words and sentences.” While new arrivals from Fujian helped
ensure a “pure” stream of Hokkien, they, in time, would also fall prey to
the inevitable process of language change and would begin to assimiliate
native sounds and rhythms in their speech, signalling through such proc-
esses, the gradual acquisition of a “Singapore” identity.
We may compare SH with that of its parent, Minnanhua, in today’s
Xiamen, China. For instance, when asking a question such as “Do you
want to?” SH typically uses the sentence structure “愛(ai) ... 莫(mài)?”,
whereas Minnanhua uses the structure “欲(beh) ... 無(bô)”. Also, unlike
Minnanhua, which typically uses the word “敢 (kám)” meaning
“whether or not (是否)” when asking a question, SH does not use the
word “敢 (kám)”; instead, it simply adds the word “無(bô)” at the back of
the sentence to indicate that it is a question. The following figure illus-
trates the difference between SH and Minnanhua a little more clearly:
SH Minanhua English
ឡ歮歾Ⳙ? (ai chiah-png mài?) ḧ歮歾↓? (beh chiah-png bô?) Do you want to eat?
㻬㦘䧞殌↓? (lé ū khùn-pá bô?) ⇯ᩒ㦘䧞殌? (lí kám ū khùn-pá?) Did you have enough
sleep?
Figure 6.1 Difference in sentence structure between SH and Minnanhua

Unlike its parent, Minnanhua, Singapore Hokkien has also been

influenced by loan words from other Chinese language speakers in
Singapore such as Teochew. In the following, we see the influence of
Teochew and Cantonese:
SH Definition Minnanhua Notes

ᒣ(phin) Cheap ؇(siok) Originated from Teochew
↫⡨(sî-bēh) ⵏ(chin) or 䏣 Originated from Teochew. The word ↫⡨(sí-

Very (chiok) bēh) in original Hokkien is a vulgar word that
means "to the extent that your/my father dies".
ኡ嗏(soān-ku) Country- ൏वԄ(thó-pau-á) Originated from Teochew, lit. "mountain

bumpkin tortoise"
ᰐ‫(ׯ‬bô- There is no way ᰐ⌅ᓖ(bô-

piàn) (nothing can be Originated from Teochew
hoat-tō)
done)
㍗ᕐ(gan Nervous ㍗ᕐ(kín-tiun) Originated from Cantonese

tiong)
Figure 6.2 The influence of Teochew and Cantonese on Minnanhua
Just as Malay has drawn from Hokkien, SH also draws from Malay:
adding yet another layer of complexity, which further distances it from
its parent. Figure 6.3 shows some of the common words used in SH
that have originated from Malay, English and other local languages and
which are absent in its Chinese parent:

Malay Hokkien English
kahwin Gkao-yin marry
suka Soeka (like)
Sabun sapbun soap
Kahwin Kau in marry

Kacau Kacau disturb
baru Balu recently
pasar Bpa-sadt market
Mata mata mata police
senang Si-nang easy
duit lui money
tolong To-long help
salah salah wrong
tetapi tapi but
Roti loti bread
Saman saman summons
agak agak guess
botak botak bald
pun Pun, for example, i also

pun-sî chin ho (she
is also very good)
Tahan Beh tahan Cannot tolerate
Mana boleh? Mana eh sai? How can this be?
Figure 6.3 Words from Malay in SH
SH is also influenced by the use of English in Singapore. It is for

example, common for Singaporeans to say:
Wah ai ki shopping (instead of Wah ai ki seh-koe) (seh-koe踅街）
In addition, there are some words used in SH which, while they may
be the same in Fujian, are pronounced differently in Singapore.

Hokkien Words Definition Singaporean Hokkien Minnanhua
咖啡 Coffee Ko-pi Ka-pi
按怎 How án-chóan án-nuá
啥物 What Sí-mih Sián-mih

Figure 6.4 SH and Minnanhua words with different pronunciations
Last but not least, even very commonly used words such as “like” and
“recently” have become estranged from their parent in the melting pot
of Singapore:
1. Like / Su-ka / Ka Ee ⚗㎞
2. Marry / Kah-win / Kiet Hoon 俟⳩
3. Clever / Pa-nai (Pandai) / K'iau ぶor Gau
5. Recently / Ba-Lu (Baru)/ Cui Kin 㦏扠or Tu Cia
6. Market / Pa-sak (Pasar)/ C'i Tio ゑ⫃
7. Police / Ma-ta (Mata Mata) / King C'aat 巵⹮
8. Quarrel / Ga-luh (Gaduh) / Uan Kay ⛄㩅
9. Easy / Si-nang (Senang) / Kan Tan 亰⠽
10. Money / Lui (Duit) / Ci(n) 斱
11. Help / To-long / Pai T'ok ソ┸
12. All / Sa-ma (Semua) / Cuan Poh ⏷捷or Long Cong 㞞僌
13. Offense / Sa-lah / Huan Huat 䔾㽤
14. But / Ta-pi (Tetapi) / Tan Si ⇕㢾or Mm Ko
15. Withstand / Ta-han / Tong 㕄㝚
16. Bread / Lo-ti (Roti) / Mi Pau 煄▔
Figure 6.5 A comparison of the lexis of English, SH and Minnanhua25

Like BM and SE, SH has been described by many as possessing a

dynamic, “raw”, market-like dynamism, which easily draws to itself
attention from all multicultural speakers. Alfred Benjamin Ponnuthurai
(National Archives, 1989), who was of Indian origin, recalled that his
children, whose playmates were mainly Chinese and Malays, were able
to hold fluent conversations in SH:

“They can talk back in Hokkien ... can curse one another in
Hokkien ... can say some nice loving words in Hokkien ... can even
scold them in Hokkien”.26
Language choice and identities in colonial Singapore
The lingua francas of colonial Singapore are displayed in the

following:
Lingua francas Usage
BM The main lingua franca: Indian to Indian, Chinese to Chinese

Malay to Malay, Malay to other races, Indian to other races,
Chinese to other races, the English to other races. Between later-
generational Chinese, BM may turn into Baba Malay with the
infusion of more Hokkien words.
SE The second most used lingua franca: Between different races

(Malay, Chinese, Indian, Eurasians, others).
Hokkien Intra-group communication of Chinese regional groups. Also

Indian to Chinese.
Tamil Intra-group communication within Indian regional groups.
Figure 6.6 Lingua Francas and their use in colonial Singapore27
The lingua franca of one’s choice depends not just on the identity
one wishes to portray, but also on a knowledge of the likely repertoire
of each ethnic group as outlined in Figure 6.7.

Chinese
It usually includes: It may include:
• Mother tongue (regional Chinese • SE and/or Std English

language)
• Std Malay/BM/Baba Malay
• Intra-group lingua franca (Hokkien) • Mandarin
• One or more additional Chinese • SH

language (Cantonese, Teochew,
Hakka, etc.)
• BM
Malay
• Mother tongue (regional Malay • Std Malay/BM/Baba Malay

language, e.g. Bugis or Boyanese)
• SE and/or Std. English
• Inter-group lingua franca – BM
• SH
Indian
• Mother tongue (regional Indian • Std Malay/BM/Baba Malay

language, e.g. Telegu, Punjabi)
• Std Eng and/or SE
• Intra-group lingua franca – Tamil • SH
• Inter-group lingua franca – BM and

SE
Eurasian
It usually includes: It may include
Mother tongue (BM or Kristang or English) • Std Malay/BM/Baba Malay
Inter-group lingua franca – BM and SE • Std English
• Tamil
• SH
Figure 6.7 Linguistic repertoires of the Chinese Malay and Indian communities
in colonial Singapore
In addition, one needs to bear in mind that different languages are

preferred in different domains. Some languages are also associated with
more prestige-type occasions and interactions. Table 6.1 below shows
the language of choice in public domains in colonial Singapore.

Table 6.1 Language of choice in public domains in colonial Singapore
Public domains Lingua francas in use
Transactional – this domain In domains such as Chinese religious

covers all situations in everyday goods store or funeral parlor or
communication – a very wide sphere. native medicine shop, it would be
Verbal exchanges occur in relation to SH, Baba Malay or any of the Chinese
shopping, the use of transport, languages.

banking and other similar At vehicle workshops, neighbourhood
transactions involving the exchange hair salons and/or godowns, it would
of money and commodities. be BM, SH, Baba Malay or any of the
Chinese or Indian languages.
At any fashionable or high-class store,
it would be Standard English, SE, BM
and/or Baba Malay.
At a British or multi-national firm, it
would be Standard English or SE.
In a kampong, rubber plantations or
agricultural settings, it would be BM,
SH, Tamil and/or Baba Malay.
At the government dispensaries, City
councils, any civil service ounter, it
would be Std English, SE, SH or BM.
Formal – this domain covers the Std English and all varieties of
court, legislative assembly, public Englishes (SE, Indian English etc.)
administration, banking and finance, Mandarin, Tamil, Std Malay.
newspapers etc.
Educational – this domain covers the Std English, Std Tamil, Std Mandarin,
different language-streamed schools Std Hokkien, Std Cantonese, Classical
Arabic, Std Malay-Jawi.
In reality, however, a lot of code-
switching between the Std (formal)
and non-Std (informal) will take
place.
As depicted in Table 6.1, Standard English (as well as the other

“Standards” taught in vernacular schools such as Malay and Mandarin)
appear in high prestige domains such as the courts, legislative assembly,
newspapers and educational institutions, and continues to be influenced
exornomatively based on an international criterion of intelligibility. In
contrast, languages such as BM, SH, Tamil and Telegu are associated
with low prestige jobs and illiteracy; Cantonese with the sing-song girls;
and Hainanese and Javanese with the domestic sphere. Only BM and SE
traverse the highest number of domains – it can be used in the widest
spectrum; in contrast to Arabic which is used in the narrowest domain –
the religious sphere, namely the madrasahs and the Arab quarters.

The process of choice is complex since a speaker of a particular

language (or variety) and belonging to any particular social back-
ground would not speak in the same way on every occasion that he or
she uses language to communicate. Always, the speaker has to recog-
nize a particular type of domain and sub-domain, the locality, and
the type of interlocutor and the topic(s) he/she is dealing with. He/
she has to be aware that in speaking, for example, with a high-status

person such as a principal of a school, only an “H” code of the respec-
tive medium of instruction would be appropriate. If the person does
not have this language in their repertoire, another language would
have to be chosen. By choosing this or that variant, the speaker indi-
cates where he places himself, and behind which boundary. The
ability to switch varieties and languages is a testimony to the flex-
ibility of multiple hybrid identities, in keeping with the genus of a
cosmopolitan city.
Code-mixing and code-switching: flexible identities
Long residency has enabled Singapore’s multilingual and multicultural

residents to code- and style-switch easily between languages and their
respective varieties. In such an environment, English, Malay, Tamil
and Hokkien become quickly nativized (cf. McLellan, 2010). Hence, it
is unfortunate that mixed codes have traditionally been viewed more
as “problematic” and “unmanageable” rather than as rich and valid
communicative choices especially as they are the normal unmarked
interaction, while the monolingual communication the marked choice
in crossroads such as Singapore. In a crossroad environment, mixed
code has become the normal marked interaction , while the monolin-
gual communication the marked choice.
Below is an example of code-switching between two later-generational
Chinese, “A” and “B”, who met at a kopi tiam (“coffee shop”) at the turn
of the 20th century. The code-switch is in BM and English:
A: “I say, apa, bahru balik deri office?”

B: “Bukan, gua pergi si Chim Kay Chia. Manyak skali lang-khek diru-
mahnya; gua agak agak spuloh tok. tapi laoknya common skali.”
A: “Gua tau si Chim Kay ‘tu kala chitty, very stingy.”
B: “Tapi dia punya drinks. Champagne sahja tiga case, ini taun dia
put-chi ho khang, dan dia punya mak punya she-jit dia buat lau-jiat.”
(Chia, 1899b: 14)

A story published in the Straits Chinese Magazine (TBG, 1899: 157) in

English recounts how a group of later-generational Chinese attended the
President’s Ball, took a stengah (Malay word for an alcoholic beverage)
and made small talk.28 At the ball, they were all speaking in their best
English, since this was the most prestigious social event of the year.
However, two of the guests, Middy and Bachik, are in love – and this
is a situation not so much for SE but rather for a spontaneous pantun

(“rhyming poem”) in Baba Malay, a close relative of BM:
Kalau tidak panggany slangat, (If we don’t grill it for long,)

Panggang Kekek lada muda, (Perhaps we may grill it a little,)
Kalau tidak kenang banyak, (If you cannot remember much,)
Kenang sedikit ada juga. (I can remember a little.)
According to the anonymous writer, TBG, “that was delightful and the
words that had fallen from those pretty lips certainly invited a fitting
response” (Ibid. 157). Bachik was then moved to respond accordingly
in couplet form:
Deri Langkat pergi ka-klang, (From Langat to Klang,)

Orang bermain disawa padi, (People are playing in paddy fields,)
Tuan ingat, sahya pun kenang, (You remember, I remember,)
Sama tersebat di-dalam hati. (Together we remember in our hearts.)
The code-switch from SE to Malay during the love scene shows that
while English is used at the official function of the annual President’s
Ball, in matters of the heart, a pantun in Malay is more appropriate.
When the lovers left the ballroom, the author ended his tale with a
Victorian literary flourish: “There was an embrace which made them
feel that henceforth they would begin to love one another with a love
pure and holy, culminating in what they dared not at that moment
conjecture.” (Ibid.: 162)
In the following, code-mixing in both Malay and English may be said
to underscore the hybrid identities of their users:
Dia orang tak pake tu kuwe old fashioned

(They do not make these old fashioned cakes).
Sometimes the English equivalent is also used in this way “banyak

happy” instead of banyak hua hee (“very happy” where banyak is Malay

for “very” and hua hee is Hokkien for “happy”). (See Chapter 7 for an
account of Baba Malay.)
In the next example, the best man who is teasing the bride mixes
English and BM to create a camaraderie and rapport to the onlookers:
kiah sai mintak si neo satu kiss. Si neo kata “do as you please.”
(The bridegroom asked the bride for a kiss. The bride says, “Do as you

please.”). (Chia, 1983: 113)
The Free Press of 1847 contains a colourful account of a dinner hosted by

the who’s who of Singapore in honour of Whampoa (aka Ho Ah Kay), a
successful businessman, who had arrived in Singapore in 1830 to assist
his father in business. English, BM and Chinese are used with facility
at these functions, which are graced by the multicultural and multilin-
gual elites:
The health of their guest having been given, Whampoa returned

thanks in a most neat and feeling manner in English: and on the
health of Tan Kim Seng, one of our most respected Chinese merchants
who was also present, being drunk, Kim Seng replied in a clever
and humorous speech in Malay which delighted all present. (11th
February 1847, quoted in Song, 1923: 52)
The code-mixing and code-switching of BM, SE and Hokkien between

Tan Kim Seng and Whampoa, two well-known Chinese pioneers in
Singapore, reflects the accommodative tendencies and hybrid identi-
ties of the early Chinese. Today, the family of Tan Kim Seng still refers
to roast duck as itek sioh (itek is “duck” in Malay, and sioh is “roast” in
Hokkien).29 Another mixed code phrasing is seen in phrases such as:
rumah kia kay and kia kay chu (“house solely for residential purpose” –
“house” is rumah in Malay and chu in Hokkien).
Early British creative writers in English have attempted to project
these hybrid tendencies in their work. In “Malayan Turnovers”
(Howell, 1928: 41), Howell outlines his texts with coinages such as
amah (“Chinese nurse”), bechak (“rickshaw”), dhobi (“washerwoman”),
jaga (“watchman”), durzi (“washerman”), as well as ostensibly BM
phrases such as Pergi mana? (“Where are you going?”), tak boleh chakap
(“cannot speak”), and Apa macham? (“What’s up?”) so as to give
his text a “Malayan feel”. Charles Allen’s (1983: 67) “Tales from the

South China Seas” tells how “a junior comes to terms with living in
Singapore”:
He learned to sprinkle his conversation with Anglo-Malay argot;

to talk about makan for his food or meals, barang for his luggage or
property, gadji for pay, chop for his company’s trademark. He learned
to call out “Boy!” with authority and to talk about “coming around

for pahits” rather than cocktails.
In the short story entitled “Is Revenge Sweet” by Wee Tong Poh (1900:
100–101), we find that a later-generational Western-educated doctor
riding in his carriage was stopped along the way by a Chinese worker.
The dialogue is presented in Standard English but the exchange is dotted
with words from Hokkien (towkay), Tamil (tamby) and Hindi-Arabic (syce),
denoting that the conversation is actually taking place in BM:
My towkay’s wife is very ill, and I have been the last hour waiting for
your carriage to pass. Your tamby said that you were going to make a
call at a house in Swettenham Road, and I knew you would have to
pass this road ...
The narrator, that is the doctor himself, continues his story by telling
his reader his response to the unusual request:
I therefore directed my syce to House No ... . and, jumping out, was

shown to a bedroom on the first floor where I found a woman
stretched on her bed.
Concluding remarks
The presence of diverse lingua francas underpins the building of bridges

between disparate groups who would otherwise not have been able to
communicate or build a life together. It is the tool for the levelling of
linguistic and cultural differences over time and is a manifestation of
individual efforts in identity creation. This perspective contrasts with
the other view of lingua francas, that is as a tool which highlights the
presence of irreconcilable racial-cultural groups – a perspective favoured
by colonial and nationalist powers, as part of their efforts to govern the
masses.

The lingua francas discussed in our chapter are used with code-mixing
and code-switching, communicative strategies which allow hybrid
identities to be expressed and mixed messages to be conveyed. Le Page
and Tabouret-Keller (1985) have shown how multiple identities are
signalled simultaneously through their analysis of speaker utterances
as “acts of identity”. As individual’s needs and motivations change,
so too identities are constructed and reconstructed. Individuals are

seen as constantly engaging in a self-conscious, ongoing narrative in
the company of others through their language choices. At all times,
multiple positioning options are available; each of them positioned on
a hierarchy based on a degree of salience that they claim in a moment
of identification (Omoniyi, 2006).
Lingua francas come and go and this fact alerts us to the perpetual
dynamic that is language change. In the 16th to 19th centuries, people
who spoke Kristang and BM were often of high relative status. However,
with the establishment of Singapore as a British port, other languages
such as English, Hokkien and Tamil came into competitive play, and
with the gradual loss of de facto power by the Malay Sultans and the
corresponding rise of British power, BM began to decline relative to
English.
So too it may be noted that while there was very little difference
between Singapore and Malaysian English in our period of study, by the
1980s the two varieties had begun to grow increasingly apart, especially
after the 1979 Speak Mandarin Campaign in Singapore when SE began
to absorb more Mandarin words and sounds into itself. Conversely,
Malaysian English began to take on more Malay features in line with
the widespread establishment of Malay-medium schools in Malaysia.
While Singapore English and Malaysian English share common features
such as a colonial and pidginized past (Low, 2010), the separate educa-
tional and language policies of Singapore and Malaysia have contrib-
uted to the creation of distinct Malaysian and Singaporean identities.

7
Hybrid Identities: Three Case
Studies of Attraction and
Engagement

The desire of the populace to forge more enduring ties with one
another, in brief, to laugh, converse, entertain, make a living, fulfill
cross-cultural desires of curiosity, marry and have children is given
manifestation through the creation of mixed codes and their respective
hybrid identities.
In contrast with the Creoles of the West Indies and Latin America,
the nature of mixed codes and hybrid identities in Southeast Asia has
not given rise to significant analysis until recently. Yet, as early as
the 16th century, inhabitants in the waters around Singapore were
reported to be “mixed” and labels such as “Jawa”, “Malay”, “Luzon”
and “Jawi” likely to have been novel hybrid categories with substan-
tial Chinese admixture from the paternal line (Reid, 2010a),1 Reid
(Ibid.: 316) quotes 13th century Chinese explorer Zhou Daguan, who
described the Chinese residents in Southeast Asia as descending from
several generations: “since rice is easily had, women easily persuaded,
houses easily run, furniture easily come by, and trade easily carried
on, a great many (Chinese) sailors deserted to take up permanent resi-
dence.” This is confirmed by Miksic’s (2010) study of the 15th to 16th
centuries’ acculturation in multicultural communities in Sumatra.
Elsewhere, Mackie (1996) observed the Creole population of Malaya,
Banka, Borneo, Java and Philippines from the 16th to 18th centuries
to be “large.” Mixed marriages took place even at the highest level,
as it was customary for the ruler of a region or port to bond business
alliances by giving their daughters in marriage to successful traders
(Andaya, 1993: 243). Other studies of Chinese settlements in Southeast
111

Asia have also reported “a symbiosis with local people” (Heidhues,

1996: 170).
Such cross-cultural alliances are often paralleled by an accom-
panying linguistic phenomenon – the formation of pidgins and Creoles.
However, the presence of pidgins and Creoles has remained mostly
hidden because colonial rule was of the perception that the offsprings
of such racial interbreeding would result in a dilution of race “purity.”

Indeed, hybrid identities were seen as an aberration and were problem-
atic for the British census takers who were determined to fit subjects into
distinct and hierarchical racial categories such as “Malay” or “Chinese”
(see Chapter 2).
While there have been many dominant Creoles such as Betawian
(Jakarta) and Menado,2 this chapter will focus only on three cases of
attraction and engagement: Baba Malay, Chetty Malay and Kristang
owners as well as the “hybrid” identities of the members of their
community.
Pidgins and Creoles
Although no one’s mother tongue, pidgins are indispensable ingredi-

ents in polyglot ports.3 When an Indian or Chinese trader arrives in
a port, communication with the indigenous people would initially be
problematic. In such a situation, each visitor would be motivated to use
their mother tongue in a simplified way, together with hand gestures
or invented words as an aid to mutual understanding. As they try to
communicate, they will make guesses about each others’ utterances.
When they guess wrong, those particular words will be repeated often;
but right guesses will be part of the emerging pidgin (Thomason, 2001).
Prolonged and regular contact would often result in the mixing of the
two languages of communication, evident in the processes known as
pidginization and Creolization. In brief, a pidgin is a simplified dialect,
a “mixture” or hybrid (from the Latin hibrida) where commonly shared
features of the interlocutor’s language are retained and non-shared
features ignored. An unelaborated pidgin is a language with a tiny
vocabulary, just enough to permit everyday matters to be handled
adequately (Holm, 2004).
With prolonged contact, an unelaborated pidgin with a tiny vocabu-
lary will become an elaborated one with a larger vocabulary pool
capable of coping with expanded domains of use (Matras and Bakker,
2003). It becomes a deeply profound occasion when children from

Case Studies of Attraction and Engagement 113
these cross-cultural alliances begin to acquire pidgin as their mother

tongue, not least because mother tongues are by nature neither rudi-
mentary nor limited. Every mother tongue has a large and expressive
vocabulary and a rich and complex system of grammar. These children
of pidgin-speakers will introduce complexity into their language, thus
enabling the language to become not just longer strings of words but a
real full-fledged natural language, functionally unrestricted and used

for a wider purpose. Within one generation, they would have invented
all the vocabulary and grammar they need to make their mother tongue
able to express all their expanded needs and at a level of nuance agree-
able to them (Mufwene, 2008). In such a situation, a pidgin graduates
to Creole status.
One notes too that the study of pidginization and Creolization is not
as unique or marginal as is commonly presupposed, but rather comprises
a central part of our general understanding of language change:
Pidginization is that complex process of sociolinguistic change

comprising reduction in inner form, with convergence in the context
of restriction in use.
Creolization is that complex process of sociolinguistic change
comprising expansion in inner form, with convergence, in the context
of extension in use.
Pidginization is usually associated with simplification in outer form;
Creolization with complication in outer form. (Hymes, 1971: 65)
Baba Malay Creole
Baba Malay is the language of the Peranakans and may be considered

a subset of BM as evidenced from its phonemic, lexical, and syntactic
deviations (see Chapter 6).4 Most of the Peranakans originally came as
single males, married Malay-speaking women and developed a syncretic
Chinese religious culture whereby the males (called Babas) could marry
the Malay population but the females (called Nonyas) had to marry
Chinese men. Speakers of Baba Malay possess a hybrid or mixed identity
as can be seen in the descriptive labels such as Nonya or Nona, which are
traditional Malay forms of address for non-Malay women of high social
status. These terms can be traced to the Portuguese terms for grand-
mother. Baba itself is an honorific term from northern India and when
it is combined with Nonya it will be Baba-Nonya – reflecting their hybrid
identities.

Pakir (1986: 213) refers to Baba Malay as a “Malay dialect in its own
right” with native speakers for at least two centuries. Ansaldo (2009)
also terms it as a nativized variety of Malay but one with distinctive
Hokkien elements in syntax and lexis.5 This is because it shares many
similar features with BM, such as the common use of gua and lu as
personal pronouns:

1. Lu tahu artinya tu (“I know what it means”)
2. Gua pergi punya kedai (“I go to the shop”)
Both examples 1 and 2 reveal, too, a lack of inflections. As observable

in BM, 2 also makes use of the possessive punya. Like BM speakers,
Babas distinguish their sons through the use of Malay adjectives, for
example ba besar (“eldest”); ba tengah (“second”); bacik (“smallest”); nya
besar (“eldest”); nya tengah (“second”); and nya cik (“youngest”) (Shariff,
1981). BM-derived calques have also infiltrated the innermost domain
of Chinese cultural practices as evidenced in terms such as kretas perak
(“silver paper to be burned for the deceased”), bikin tuju ari (“rites on the
seventh day after death”) and turun datok (“a god descends and enters
into a human body” – from the Hokkien lok tang (“God come down”))
(Pakir, 1986: 119–120).
There are many reasons for the dominance of Baba Malay in the
multicultural ports of Southeast Asia. Operating in a Malay-speaking
environment, Chinese traders were forced by pragmatic consider-
ations to gradually abandon Hokkien and to speak the lingua franca,
Bazaar Malay, which with time morphed into Baba Malay. Next, a
significant percentage of early Chinese traders had intermarried with
Malay women, leading their children to develop a distinctive subva-
riety of the Malay language after one or two generations (Jürgen,
1998).6 Last but not least, the subsequent success and wealth of the
Babas viz. the masses of rural Malays and the more recent Chinese
migrants, whom they termed as sinkehs (with the negative connotation
of “country bumpkins”), kindled in them a desire to distinguish them-
selves through a modification of BM. As a result, there are semantic
differences, for example, while datok refers to “grandfather” in Bazaar
Malay, in Baba Malay it may refer to a “God” or “Goddesses.” So too,
many Malay words are mispronounced, often deliberately, by the Babas
(and other Chinese settlers) to mark their upper class identities, for
example, kopek for Malay kupas (“to peel”) and menjaylah for the Malay
jendela (“window”). Shariff (1981: 107) notes the /h/ deletion in initial
position if it is followed by a syllabic:

Std Malay Baba Malay English
hari ari day
harab arab hope
hijau ijau green

Figure 7.1 The /h/ deletion in initial position
Similarly /h/ in the final position is deleted when preceded by a syllable.

The following examples illustrate the change (Shariff, 1981: 108):
Std. Malay Baba Malay English
sebelah sebela side/half
jauh jau far
leyeh leye nuisance
rumah ruma house
Figure 7.2 The /h/ deletion in final position
By 1899, Chia (1899b) noticed that the Baba dropped the initial letter
/h/ in words such as hati, habis, harap, and hanchur; while the final sylla-
bles in words such as atas, sedar diluar is pronounced like ai in the English
word “air.” Then too, vowel sounds were reported as being constantly
modified with sahabat and perhiasan pronounced as sobat and prasan.
Consonants had also begun to be exchanged for one another as in piker
or pasal for fikir (“to think”) or fatsol and manyak for banyak (“many”).
In addition, Baba discourse is also punctuated with words such as puna,
kasi, and kena, which have no direct parallels in either Hokkien or Malay
(Pakir, 1986: 211). To inculcate a different identity from the masses who
spoke BM, there now appears in their speech more clearly distinguish-
able Chinese-Malay hybrid formations not found in BM, such as:
Noun-Noun order: baju hok-ciu (“dress of the Hockchiew”, a Chinese

dialect group); Cucu gua-kon (“grandchild”, mother’s father+maternal

grandchild); Cucu lai-kon (“grandchild”, father’s father+paternal

grandchild).
Verb-Noun order: Jadi kon-cin (“become a go-between”, i.e. be a medi-
ator); bekin toa-se-jit (“celebrate a big birthday”, e.g. 60th birthday);
main pak-kau (“play cards”). (Source: Pakir, 1986: 121–122)
Literature provided another avenue for the Babas to distinguish them-

selves from the Bazaar Malay-speaking masses. The following is an
extract from a rather grisly novel “Whan Tong” by Chia (1899c: 13),
which captured the popular imagination of that time:
Sid Kong suru dia punya orang di kanan kiri suru bukak dia punya pakay-en
dagan ikat di tiang. Sid kong amek piso klar di mung-ka-nya ka-dua kali
bla dia punya prot man tengok dia punya hati, dan kluar-kan dia punya
hati prot, katiga kali-nya potong dia punya kaki tangan kasi angin makan,
ka-ampat kali-nya dia punya isi chin-chang spati ‘bak-wan’ dengan
champor sama tapong gandong masak kasi anging makan, kalmia-nya
dia punya hati prot gantong diatas pokok kasi burong makan suda habis
di buat dia punya suka hati, tiga tiga tapok tangan daan basorak patut,
masti dia buat bagitu ...
(Sid Kong asked his people on the right and left to take off the
shift of the man, which he then tied to a pole. He then took a knife
to cut open the stomach, taking out the heart and liver. The hands
and legs of the men – he intended to make them into meat balls by
mixing it with wheat flour, so as to feed them to the dogs. The liver
and stomach he hung it on the tree for the birds to eat. The audience
clapped and cheered and agreed that he had done the right thing).
Tan (2009: 34) provides a colourful example of Baba Malay as found

in the introductory chapter of a book on John Bunyan: “Ttapi John
Bunyan ta’mau ikut its ong ke pkau punya smbahyang dan sbab itu bila dia
ajar dalam dia punya greja dia kna tangkap dan dia kna tutop dalam jel ... ”
(However, John Bunyan did not want to follow the religious practises
of the official church and so, when he taught at his own religious gath-
ering he was caught and placed in jail ... ) We see in this extract the use
of punya and kena used to convey the passive past as in dia kena tangkap.
Jel is a transliteration from the English “jail.” Ong ke kau is a Hokkien
idiomatic term, which is explained in the text as Kompani punya greja
(the company’s church) and found only in Baba Malay (Ibid.)
Through such linguistic efforts, Baba Malay became an in-group
vernacular spoken by a smaller number of the population, with
Bazaar Malay used more typically as the lingua franca for inter-ethnic

communication. The invention of Baba Malay may be seen as a reflection

of the “higher status” of the Babas, a linguistic phenomenon celebrated
by the British as it was in line with separatist values inherent in colonial
governance. For example, William Shellabear (1913), a missionary and
scholar in Singapore, was full of praise of Baba Malay, which he termed
as the “high” variety (and BM as the “low” variety), and was certain
that the former “had a bright future and would endure for a long time.”

Together with the British whom they admired, the Baba positioned them-
selves as part of the “upper echelons” and the sinkehs (“new arrivals”) at
the bottom of the social pyramid. The 1911 census helped to reinforce
this perception by distinguishing “Straits-born Chinese” and “Straits-
born Indian” from that of “Chinese and Indians born elsewhere.”
Chetty Malay Creole
Like Baba Malay which was used by the later-generational Chinese, Chetty
Malay (Chetty means “merchant” in Tamil; and is also spelled Chetin,
Chati, Chatin, Sitty, etc.) is also a subset of BM. The Chetties are another
Peranakan group (Peranakan means “speakers of a foreign tongue” in
Malay, although the more acceptable meaning is “indigenous person” or
“local-born”). This group has intermarried significantly with the Malays
and the Babas. Their hybrid identities evolved at around the same time
as the Chinese – they married indigenous women and are a product of
an Indian, Malay and Chinese admixture, with traces of Malay, Javanese,
Batak and Chinese influences in their distinctive culture.
We may also compare the Chetty Indians to the Jawi Peranakans
(see Chapter 5), since both are likely to have originated from
Indian-Malay-Javanese-Batak contact since the time of the Malacca
Sultanates in the 15th century. Like the Jawi Peranakans (as well as
the Babas and Eurasians), their children normally do not know their
paternal language be it Tamil or Bengali, having been brought up
predominantly by their Malay or nonya mother. Both groups use Malay
as their home language and have assimilated so well that their identi-
ties are best described as “hybrid.” Over time, both groups have gath-
ered physical features that are less Dravidian and more Malay-looking.
Both groups have migrated to Singapore in the 19th century, noticeably
from Malacca and Penang. The main identity difference is that of reli-
gion – Jawi Peranakans are Muslims and the Chetty Indians are Hindu.
While the Chetties retain their Hindu identity through the traditional
Hindu rituals and customs, the Jawi Peranakan pray five times a day
and are committed to activities around the mosque. Both groups use
Malay as their primary home language – but while the Chetties have

traditionally been influenced by Romanized Malay, the Jawi Peranakan

has made Jawi their traditional identifier.
Chetties also use the Baba and Bazaar Malay pronouns gua (“I”) and
lu (“you”) and have also adopted the Baba and Eurasian practice of
using nicknames such as botak (“bald”) and babi (“pig”) instead of offi-
cial native names for family members. Their pronunciation, like the
Babas, is reminiscent of Javanese Malay (Gwee, 1993), as discernible in

common words such as pakai (“wear”) and sampai (“reach”) for pakei and
sampei respectively. Like the Chinese Peranakans, the Chetties pre-date
the British occupation (Sandhu and Mani, 1993).7 Once concentrated
around Rowell Road, Kinta Road and Selegie Road in Singapore before
the onset of urban renewal in the 1960s, the now dispersed Singapore
Chetty community maintains close ties with relatives in Malacca, trav-
elling northwards occasionally to celebrate Hindu festivals.
Some distinguishing characteristics of Chetty Malay are as follows.
First, the phoneme /a/ is pronounced as/ₔ/that is, central vowel in word
final position. There is also a systematic deletion of rolled alveolar
phoneme /r/ in word final position. The following words/phrases list
the main differences between Chetty Creole and Malay; what is now
Bahasa Malaysia:
Chetty Malay Bahasa Malaysia English
ampat pulu empat puluh (forty)
suda pat sudah patah (broken)
dia punya anak anak dia (her child)
bernang berenang (swim)
kalu kalau (if)
buat apa bikin apa (what did you make?)
dia punya kakakmara kakaknya marah (her angry sister)
pande pandai (clever)
Figure 7.3 Differences between Chetty Malay and Bahasa Malaysia

Chetty speech has been observed by Noriah (2006) to contain iden-

tity features, such as the process of two vowel sounds shifting to one
vowel sound. Words with /ai/ in standard Malay are pronounced as /e/,
for example: serai is pronounced as sere; sampai as sampe; selesai as selese;
rantai as rante; and pandai as pande. Phoneme deletion in consonant clus-
ters of trisyllabic words, known as ellipsis, are also common: sembunyi
to semunyet; tembelang to temelang; sembilan to semilan; sembahyang to

semayang; and tembolok to temdok.8 In addition, phoneme insertion is
observable in the last word final position, for example, cari to carik; nasi
to nasik; garu to garok; bawa to bawak; and bapa to bapak. In contrast, in
word initial position, there is now abes instead of habis; itam instead of
hitam; and alus instead of halus. Last but not least, the phoneme /h/ is
dropped at word initial and word final positions, as seen in dara instead
of darah; bawa instead of bawah; suda instead of sudah; and bunu instead
of bunuh. It is interesting to note that all these characteristics are also
found in neighbouring Creoles which have the same parent – Bazaar
Malay – such as the Jakarta (Betawi) Malay Creole (Minde, 1987: 47),
Malayu Ambong Creole (Abdul Chaer, 1976: 49) and Sri Lankan Creole
(Saldin, 2001).
In Figure 7.4, Noriah (2006: 20) lists the following linguistic changes
from standard Malay to Chetty Malay.
Like the Peranakan Chinese, Chetty jewellery is in a “hybridized”
style with gold in a Malay, Chinese, Victorian, English or even Dutch
design. They have also adapted the Malay dress to identify themselves
from the Malay masses: Chetty women wear the Malay costume, that is
the sarong and kebaya differently from the Malays. The front part tapers
down the elbows from the hip and looks like an open V when pinned
together. The Malays on the other hand, end their kebaya uniformly at
the hip (Dhoraisingam, 2006).
In brief, like Baba Malay, Chetty Creole carries within itself the
signs of excessive intercultural mixing. For example, in a Chetty
wedding, one observes phrases such as: Kasi malai (“give the garland
away”), where Kasi is a Malay word (“giving”) and malai is a Tamil
word referring to the “garland.” At home, while Chetties may follow
the typical Malay style of addressing parents as in bapa and mak, they
also use Tamil terms such as anni (“sister-in-law”) and mama (“uncle”)
for other family members. Pots and pans are referred to with a hybrid
term – sati-belangga – a combination of Tamil and Malay (sati in Tamil
and belanga in Malay combined means the “collection of pots and
pans”).

No Type of change Examples
Unique additions Memulakan > mulaikan
Kebersihan > kbersehan
Membarharukan > bharukan
The change of the vowel Bagi > bagik

/i/ to /ik/ at word final Cari > carik
position
The change of the Sungai > sunge

diphthong /ai/ to the
vowel sound /e/ at word Sampai > sampe
final position
The change of the

Pulau > pulo
diphthong /au/ to the
vowel sound /o/ at word Kalau > kalo
final position
Realizing /a/ at word final

Bapa > bapak; bawa > bawak; pula > pulak
position as /ak/
Wrong pronunciation Ambil > ambek; atau >amek
Dropping of the /h/ at

Rumah > ruma; bodoh > bodo; boleh > bole
word final position
The frequent use of Emaknya > did punya emak;

“punya” Kereta macam itu > separeti itu macam punya kerta
Bapa duduk di sebelah meja > bapak ada duduk di
sebelah punya meja
Figure 7.4 Linguistic changes from standard Malay to Chetty Malay
Kristang Creole9
Kristang (“Christian”) is a lingua franca used across four continents,

including South America and East Indonesia (Waas, 2002). Although
almost extinct in Singapore and Southeast Asia, Kristang is still found
today in enclaves such as Cape Mozambique, Angola, Goa, Sri Lanka,
the Maldives, Malacca, Macau, Mindanao and Timor. It also exists in

topographical terms such as noticeable in the names of rivers and moun-

tains in the Moluccas, Tugu, Larantuke, Banda and Borneo. Kristang is
the offspring of the European (such as the Portuguese, the Dutch and
British) colonizers and the Malays in the polyglot ports of Southeast
Asia. It may also refer to the native tongue of the “Eurasians”, a term
first used by the British to refer to a person born of a British father and
Indian mother.

However, the term has expanded today to include anyone of mixed
origin, superseding British terms such as “Anglo-Indian”, “Burgher” or
“native Christians.”10 As very few women sailed with the Portuguese
fleet in the 15th and 16th centuries during their imperialist adventures,
Portuguese men were encouraged to marry Asian or Eurasian women
and to settle in the East.11 Hence, in 1511, when Afonso d’Albuquerque
departed from Southeast Asia after his conquest of Malacca, a signifi-
cant number of his men remained behind and settled in the region,
intermarrying with indigenous women, a practice which is part of the
wider strategy of Portuguese imperial consolidation of political power,
commercial interests and missionary efforts.
Kristang was spoken from the earliest days of British Singapore
thanks in part to a certain Tomas Ferrao from Malacca, whose mother
tongue was Kristang, and who accompanied Sir Stamford Raffles to
Singapore. Many other Eurasians followed in Ferrao’s footsteps from
Malacca to Singapore (Turnbull, 1989). In a way, they may be consid-
ered Singapore’s “first citizens” since the British census classified them
as “native Christians”, in opposition to the 98 per cent of Indians and
Chinese, whom they classified as “temporary residents”(Muzzi, 2002:
45). In the colonial hierarchy, they were ranked as a race just below the
whites and many of them were employed as clerks or teachers due to
their facility in English. Kristang surnames which still grace the streets
of Singapore are, for example, Aroozoo Road, D’Almeida Street, Da
Silva Lane, De Souza Street, Eber Road, Jalan Greja (Church Road) and
Jalan Pereir (Pear Road). Other Kristang names gracing the Republic of
Singapore today include The Esplanade, Marine Promenade, Miramar
Hotel, and the Novena.
The Eurasian population were not as homogenous as is often portrayed,
but was in reality a mixed community comprising Portuguese of Dutch
extraction from Malacca and growing numbers of Anglo-Indians
and Anglo-Chinese (Turnbull, 1989: 95). The fact that Kristang has
been influenced by many languages not just Malay, but also Bengali,
Japanese, Ceylonese, and Timorese is a testimony to this (Muzzi, 2002).
The Portuguese diaspora made it a favourite lingua franca along the

Luso-Malay spice trade coasts from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The
primary parent of Kristang is Portuguese as seen in the numbers one to
ten: ungua, dos, tres, kuatu, singku, sez, seti, oitu, novi, des (in Portuguese:
um, dois, três, quatro, cinco, seis, sete, oito, nove, dez). Other common words
which stem from Portuguese influence are noted in Figure 7.5:

Kristang words English translation From the Portuguese
Mutu merseh Thank you Muitas mercês
Teng Bong? How Are You? Estás bom?, lit. Têm bom?)
Bong Pamiang Good Morning Boa Manhã
Bong Midia Good Afternoon Bom Meio-dia)
Bong Atadi Good Evening Boa Tarde)
Bong Anuti Good Night Boa Noite
yo me eu
bos you vos
bolotudu you vós todos'
mai mother mãe
muleh wife mulher
maridu husband marido
Quenino, kenino Little one Pequenino
bela Old Woman velha
belu Old Man velho
Figure 7.5 Kristang words of Portuguese origin

Source: Teixeira (n.d.)
Besides comprising older varieties of Portuguese phonology and lexis,

Kristang also has considerable input from other languages such as
Malay, Hokkien, and Koncani.

Input from other languages
From Hokkien: chengsi “spatula” (chien si )

From Dutch: susi “elder sister” (soesje)
From English: paip “pipe”, “tap” ( pipe)
From Hakka: baruah “pimp” (barua)
From Koncani: chadu “clever” (chhad )

From Malaysian: champurah “to mix” (campur)
(Source: Baxter and de Silva, 2004: xvii)
Kristang users are susceptible to borrowing from other cultures:
Agu calado teng tanto lagarto (“There are crocodiles in stagnant

water”) from the Malay equivalent: Air yang tenang jangan disangka
tiada buaya (“Still waters may not be empty of crocodiles”).
Corta nariz, dana rosto from the English equivalent: “Cut off your
nose to spite your face.”
Albi grande, fruto quenino (“Great tree, tiny fruit”) from the
Chabacano equivalent Grande el arbol, nuay sombra (“Big tree, no
shade”).
While Kristang has borrowed words from Malay, this is also true the
other way round. For example, the Malaysian long blouse, the kabaya,
is from the Portuguese cabaia, and sekolah is from the Portuguese
escola (“school”). According to Muzzi (2002), if one has a small pocket
Malay dictionary of 10,000 words, about 10 per cent of them would be
Portuguese words. As in all cross-cultural encounters, the attraction is
two-way – Portuguese navigators also brought back to Portuguese shores
an enriched vocabulary from Malaya such as mangga, sago, mangosteen,
rambutan, longan, jaca (also spelled jaka), lanca (also spelled lancaran),
jong ( jung), gamelan and kakatua.
When the Dutch succeeded the Portuguese as the new colonial
masters of the region in the period 1641–1824, intermarriages with the
population continued. Senior merchants of the Verenigde Oostindische
Compagnie-Dutch East India Company (VOC) took local women and
imported slaves as wives and concubines, and this practice was imitated
down the line (Taylor, 1983). The belief in “race superiority” in the 19th
century meant that these mixed-Dutch children could not be sent back

to Europe and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) became the only home-
land that their children would ever know.12 As in colonial Singapore
and Malaysia, the Eurasian culture became more closely associated with
the middle and lower socioeconomic classes – their members became a
distinct subgroup within the European, marrying between themselves.
In view of the ingrained colonial practice of “white supremacy”, the
Eurasians naturally desired to identify themselves as “European” rather

than as Malay-Indian-Chinese, for the latter identity would mean rela-
tive poverty or a total separation from the European community with
its badge of status – that is, white skin. While the Eurasian man faced a
greater pull towards “downward” assimilation, the Eurasian women had
greater opportunities, their partners likely to be lower-ranking Caucasian
colonials or even members of the Eurasian community. This Eurocentric
ambition is also manifested in the community’s centuries-old unsuc-
cessful attempt to write Kristang using the Portuguese sound system,
despite the fact that the sound of Kristang was more Malayan/maternal
rather than Portuguese/paternal. It was only in the 1970s, with the
recognition of Kristang as a more “Asian” than “European” language,
that a successful orthography was founded, based solidly on Malay! (cf.
Scully and Zuzarte, 2004)
Like the Portuguese and Dutch, many British colonials lived
openly with Asian concubines. Taylor (1983) said that the William
Robinson who is recorded by the British Gazette feting Olivia Raffles
on her birthday, for instance, had fathered three children by Asian
women while in Penang.13 William Farquhar, the British Resident and
Commandant of Singapore from 1819 to 1923 who governed Singapore
on behalf of the British East India company, had also cohabited with a
Malaccan girl of Portuguese descent.14 In a story entitled “Three Golden
Sovereigns” (Sianu, 1938), a British civil servant took a Malay maiden
to be housekeeper (as well as sex partner) – her job was to mend his
clothes, play card games, supervise the boys to keep the bungalow
clean and keep him company during the night. The “official” reason
the author gave for this cross-liaison was that their “low salaries” made
it impossible for them to bring a white girl over; rather than the one
of “mutual attraction” of the different races. Nevertheless, there was
widespread resistance to the acceptance of mixed children, as mani-
fested in John Crawfurd’s (1820: 135) writings: “Many of the Chinese
return to their own country, and the first intention of every emigrant
is probably to do so, but circumstances detain a number of them in the
islands, who, intermarrying with the natives of the country, generate a
race inferior in energy and spirit to the original settler, but speaking the

language, wearing the garb, professing the religion, and affecting the
manners of the parent company.”15 (Crawfurd, 1820: 135). Remnants
of this mentality remain through the existence of derogatory labels
such as “Chinese blood”, “half-blooded Indian” or “mixed blood.” Joe
Conceicao (2007), a well-known Singapore Eurasian reported that when
Indian and Chinese marry, they would be nicknamed sarcastically
as kopi susus (i.e. coffee looking for milk to make “creamed coffee”)!

Maurice Baker (1995: 55), another distinguished Singapore Eurasian
recounted in his autobiography that in his youth he had been called
“Father horse, mother donkey.” Doubtless such attitudes found that a
significant number of these hybrid offsprings to be socially maladjusted
and suffering from psychological problems.
The Eurasians’ wish for a European identity in racially segregated colo-
nial Singapore was never fulfilled because British rule placed them not
with the Caucasians but in between the European and the other races
such as the Chinese and Indians.16 This caused them to assume a hybrid
identity, which is revealed in their attire, food and language. While
Eurasian women may take their husband’s nationality and European
names, they generally raised their children in the Asian way.17 Where
attire was concerned and much like the Babas, Eurasian boys dressed
like their fathers, who generally wore Western attire. At home, they
dressed like their mothers, often in the much more comfortable sarong.
Teatime for Eurasians was around 4.00 p.m., accompanied by elegant
bone china cups and saucers, embroided linen tablecloth and napkins
but as European as this tradition is, it is given an Asian flavour with
nonya kuehs and curry puffs, in place of the traditional scones and
shortbread (David and Noor, 1999).
Kristang speakers displayed a sisterly affinity with the Chinese Babas,
since the latter were ranked just below them on the racial hierarchy and
were as culturally “mixed” as themselves. For example, the Eurasians
enjoyed the Baba card game of cherki. This is a game played with mini-
ature playing cards with unique designs denoting various categories
and which is neither totally Chinese, nor Indian nor European but
one invented by the mix of cultures originating in the British ports
of Malacca, Penang and Singapore. Marbeck (2004: 27) narrated how
some “ gambling grandmothers” gathered for patui, a chikee game in the
home of one Chichi Nondoh:
Chichi Nondoh will pass around the busetadi betel, the all-important
wooden box that contains sireh leaves, betel nut, tobacco, gambier,
slaked lime, cloves and cardamoms to all the ladies. They would

chew on the mix and stain their mouth red. The card game begins.
The ladies sit in a circle on a mat. They draw their cards and curse or
praise what they have in their hands. This was the past-time of the
Kristang ladies after the housework was done.
Another pastime was sireh- chewing – a habit adopted by the Eurasians,

the Babas and the Chetties but not indulged by Europeans who distin-

guished themselves from this social practice. This pastime served many
functions: to show hospitality, to socialize, and to ward off exhaustion,
and to restore strength and courage.
Marbeck (2004: 66) recounts a “Kristang gourmet” eating in Kristang
fashion:
‘Let us wallop with our hands, it is more delicious.’ They mean

eating with fingers more than with their hands. Most Kristang eat
with their fingers and ate everything that was on their plate. They
then licked their fingers and plate clean. Only in recent times have
Kristangs made use of the knife, spoon and fork, the way and style of
the Europeans. But, for goodness sake, if you’re going to eat Kristang
food and going to like it, you have to eat with your fingers ... Don’t
say anymore. Go wash your hands and try the Ambilla Curry I have
prepared for you.
Like speakers of Baba Creole, Chetty Creole and Bazaar Malay, Kristang
speakers used nicknames for children, such as Juang prenyah kung medra
and Juarng kasang di feru or Juang keleh olu. Sometimes, surnames were
changed, for example, Krechek, totoh, nut, squirrel, Steiboon, Bakamoor
and Itam.18 This practice is not unlike that of the Babas who refer to
relatives through such names as Nya besar or Nya kechil (literally “big
auntie” and “small auntie”) and their children as hitam (“black”) or
putih (“white”).19
Eurasian, Eunice Khoo (born 1933), recalled, “When I was growing
up in the 1940s and 1950s, I lived with my mum and granny ... we spoke
a combination of Kristang and English. Kristang was often used during
jokes. You can also hear it when the oldies are emotional, especially
when they are discussing something scandalous. When the old folks
were here, my mum, my granny and aunts would converse in Kristang
but I don’t know why, young people like me were not encouraged
to speak it. So I would use English only with the people my age and
Kristang only with the elderly, who by the way are all dead now.”20

Concluding remarks
The Creoles examined in this chapter: Baba Malay, Chetty Malay and
Kristang remain manifestations of mixed identities in Singapore and
its surrounding waters. They are testimonies to the phenomenon of
language contact and most of all to hybrid identities, long concealed,
unspoken and uncelebrated.
There has been an attempt to deny the legacy of cultural borrowing

and cross-fertilization which took place among the Chinese, Indians,
Europeans and Eurasians in view of the scepticism that different races
could ever conceivably be attracted to each other. According to Charles
Allen (1983: 62), a British writer and historian: “any relationship with a
local native woman would have meant the sack”; hence many a white
man “succumbed to the brothels in Malay Street, or go down to Mary’s
where you could pay for a young lady of one’s choice, or to the Eastern
Hotel to buy a ticket to dance with a girl.” Here, an interesting theory
by Robert Young (1995) argues, rather convincingly, that the policy
of racial segregation and stratification was motivated by the desire to
hinder the “naturalness” of cross-racial desire, the appeal of the exotic
and the proverbial attraction of the opposite. Ironically, the Europeans
colonialists themselves also had a hybridized past, despite their efforts
to remain “pure.” For example, the Portuguese and Spanish had prior
to their sojourn in Southeast Asia intermarried with the Arabs. As for
the British, a significant number of them did not come directly from
England but via India and from an “Indianized” Anglo-Indian culture,
which had developed over two centuries (Noor, 2009).
In the light of the universal law of unceasing change, there is nothing
unusual or outstanding when “mixed” languages such as pidgins and
Creoles are formed. If we look far enough, every language contains some-
thing that betrays their hybrid past (Virinder et al., 2005). In English,
for example, there is an abundance of hybrid words combining Latin
and Greek etymological parts.21 Similarly, the Chinese term for “tea”,
that is cha, has been adopted into almost every other language along
with the movement of tea itself. Indeed, there are no languages today
without some signs of grammar admixture. For example, Yiddish has
grammatical features from Slavic languages, such as Polish and Hindi,
since they place their verbs at the end of sentences (cf. Weinreich, 1977).
In many instances, languages mix so intimately that they become new
ones such as Media Lengua in Ecuador, which uses Spanish words with
endings and word order from the local Indian language of Quechua

(Thomason and Kaufman, 1988). We have seen this too in Kristang,

the offspring of European and Malay parents; and in Bazaar Malay,
the child of many multiethnic and multilingual traders and itself the
parent of many children.
Like colonial enterprises, nationalist organizations have their own
top-down agenda. In Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, one notes that
many words of Hokkien origin are slowly being replaced or phased out

due to the latter’s desire to create a “standard” Malay language and a
more uniform “Malayan” identity. For example, along the streets, gua
and lu are gradually being replaced by more Malay-oriented words
such as aku or engkau. So too, Chetty Malay, like Baba Malay, is less
and less used by the younger generation and faces imminent extinc-
tion as a result of mass education and the support of the official media.
For example, the once distinctive phoneme /r/ at word final position, a
familiar structure, has been dropped by the younger generation Chetty,
not simply as part of the bottom-up process of levelling and accomoda-
tion but also because of top-down pressure (Noriah, 2006: 13).

8
Intergenerational Identities:
Negotiating Solidarity and Plurality

While one may inherit one’s “race”, language is not necessarily inher-
ited and nowhere is this more evident than migrant cities where the
second and third generations begin to use languages that are vastly
different from their parents and grandparents. This chapter proposes the
solidarity-plurality model as a way of understanding early identities. It
uses parameters such as dress, food, religious rites and literary endeav-
ours as a means to examine the processes of acculturation and assimila-
tion. The postulation of a cline or continuum rather than a more static
classificatory listing is useful for the study of intergenerational identi-
ties, for it suggests a gradual/fluid movement rather than a neat transi-
tion from one identity stage to the other.
A case study of the later-generational Chinese has been chosen not
least because a close-up view of their evolving identities has not yet been
studied. As early as the 1850s, Vaughan (1985, 1879) had noticed the
dialectal group distinctions between Hokkien and Teochew-speaking
Babas, and observed that the former viewed themselves as “purer” since
they had arrived earlier in the colony. Twenty years later, Vaughan (Ibid.)
observed that the distinctions between “Straits-born” and “China-born”
were no longer as meaningful as they were a generation earlier, because
many of the differences he had observed previously had been “ironed
out” with the passage of time. In the next twenty years, the then resi-
dent Catholic bishop in his annual report of 1889 noted three distinct
classes of Chinese – “those born in China, those born in Singapore and
converse in Chinese and the Straits-born Chinese.” (Liew, 2008: 11).
By the time of the 1911 census, the distinction of “Straits-born” and
“China-born” as a category of assimiliative tendencies was important
enough to be included in it (Hirschman, 1987).
129

An acculturation–assimilation cline
I believe that a cline is the best tool to describe the process of accultura-
tion and assimilation. This cline begins with a postulation of “plurality”
at one end and “solidarity” at the other. While plurality conjures images
of dissension and divisiveness, solidarity connotes qualities such as coop-
eration and peaceful exchanges. Such a cline will attempt to measure
the degree of acculturation and the exchange of cultural features that

result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into
continuous first-hand contact. It is a process that sees the alteration of
the cultural patterns and speech of both groups through their associa-
tion with each other. The extent of the alteration will depend on the
length and intensity of the contact as well as the sociopolitical variables
inherent in the context of the encounter. Acculturation proceeds in
tandem with assimilation. Both are degrees of the process of integration.
While acculturation sees both groups remaining distinct, assimilation is
a condition whereby the distinction begins to blur (Kottak, 2006: 209,
423). In other words, followed to its logical extreme, acculturation will
lead to assimilation, often to the majority or dominant culture. Such a
process would mean that the minority would have lost their traditional
culture and possibly their original language.1
To illustrate the use of the cline, we may place a first generation Chinese
rickshaw coolie (“labourer”) (cf. Warren, 1986) on one end of the cline and
the second or third generation migrant on the further end of the cline.
Where the coolie is concerned, he speaks only his mother tongue, eats only
the cheapest of meals, and wears his ethnic (Chinese) clothes. Somewhere
along the middle of the cline, we will place the second or third genera-
tion, probably speaking their nativized version of Malay, eating meals that
contain local ingredients such as tamarind and lemon grass and wearing
Malayan dress. Examples of such later-generational migrants in Singapore
include peoples from the previous chapters such as the Arabs, Jawi
Peranakans and the Baba Chinese, all of whom in respect to their socio-
cultural norms and linguistic habits have “assimilated” to a great degree.
Three principles
Three principles operate in our cline and these will be examined

sequentially: 1) meeting along the cline, both parties borrow (often
unconsciously) from each other; 2) travel along the cline is not
necessarily unidirectional but also bi- and multidirectional; and 3)
movement along the cline is not merely forwards but also backwards.

Negotiating Solidarity and Plurality 131
1. First, travel along the cline is not one-way but often two-way –
engaged by both the foreign and native-born. In meeting, both
cultures often borrow unconsciously from each other. In other
words, assimilation is less likely to be a zero-sum game where the
culture of the less powerful is replaced completely by that of the
more powerful but more likely to be a two-way process of bicul-
tural blending. The two groups meet; they exchange not just

goods but also intangibles such as ideas and belief systems. As a
case in point, with the first coming of the Chinese traders, we
see the Malay language moving forward to assimilate rather than
to resist Hokkien, a symbolic act of welcome and hospitality (see
Chapter 6).
2. Second, travel along the cline is not necessarily unidirectional but
also bi- and multidirectional. For example, at different periods
and changing political conditions, the Chinese may desire to
acculturalize not just to the Malays but also to the British as a
form of guanxi (“connections”). The Babas depicted this bi-/multi-
focus through their dress: the koon and sah of Chinese origin, the
Western suit and tie, as well as the baju kurong and batik of indig-
enous origin (Skinner, 1996: 78). We therefore see an acculturaliza-
tion process towards both the Malays and the British in colonial
Singapore. Builder-entrepreneur Wong Ah Fook, a migrant who
came to Singapore in 1854 at the age of seventeen, ensured that
his children spoke not just Malay but also Cantonese, Mandarin
and English (Lim, 2002). So too, in 1889, Chinese entrepreneur
Oei Tiong Ham whose family wore Chinese attire in the home,
petitioned the Dutch authorities for permission to wear Western
attire in public (Rush, 1990: 248–252). This multicultural orienta-
tion of the later generations can also be seen in their lexicon at
the turn of the 20th century which, according to Shellabear (1913),
was two-thirds Malay, one-fifth Hokkien and the remainder being
Dutch, Portuguese, English, Tamil and an assortment of Indonesian
languages. Last but not least, a sign of dual identities can be seen in
the hybrid names given to daughters of later-generational Chinese
in both Singapore and Malaysia. Baba families gave their children
English names as well as Chinese names so that they could operate
in two different symbolic worlds and assume the identity they
wished in different domains.2
3. Third, movement along the cline is not merely forwards but also back-
wards. Before 1859, the non-emigration policy of the Qing Dynasty
(1644–1912) made it difficult for women to come to Singapore

(Freedman, 1962). Hence, Chinese marriages to native (Malay)

women were rampant, a move which enabled speedy assimilation
to their Malayan surroundings. This was especially evident in the
upbringing of the next generation. However, when migratory laws
were relaxed migrants were able to bring their families from China
(or India as the case may be) to Singapore. This resulted in fewer
marriages with native women and hence slowed movement along

our cline of assimilation. The rise of Chinese nationalism in China
in the early 20th century would also mean that Chinese migrants
would hold back hitherto unquestioning assimilative tendencies to
Malay and look instead to being more “Chinese” (Morita, 2003). So
too the fact that in the 20th century when the Malays became not
just a numerical minority but also a socioeconomic minority, this
also resulted in less incentive to adopt Malay norms (Suwannathat-
Pian, 2011). One notes here that a forward or backward movement is
unpredictable, being dependent on many sociopolitical and cultural
factors.3
A three-generational model4
Following these three initial principles, I have devised a three-gener-

ational model from which we may better understand early Singapore
identities. At one extreme, the cline demonstrates total integration (soli-
darity) and at the other extreme, coexistence and competition (plurality).
In between, we have what Skinner (1996: 51) has called: “a wondrous
array of acculturative, adaptive and assimilative phenomena.”
Figure 8.1 rests on the assumption that both new arrivals and their
descendants follow a “straight-line” convergence to the “native” culture,
that is, in time, the new arrivals will become more similar in norms and
values, and will assume the behavioural characteristics of the people
around them. It also expects those residing the longest in the host
society to show greater similarities with the “majority” inhabitants than
those who have recently arrived. In other words, with each generation,
the culture of residence becomes more and more entrenched.
Plurality ______________________________ solidarity
(Generation 1--migrant) (Generation 2)
Figure 8.1 The three-generation model: the acculturation–assimilation cline

Where language is concerned, the first generation is likely to make

some progress in language assimilation but would remain dominant in
their mother tongue. The second generation is usually bilingual. By the
time of the third generation, they are likely to speak only the languages
of the majority – which in our time frame are the lingua francas of BM
and Baba Malay, SH and and SE.

First generation
While new arrivals almost always expressed a wish to return to their
country of origin, the majority of them stayed on (Tregonning, 1972).
This would be because after a long stay, would be returnees realized that
they would likely be “foreigners” in the land of their birth. Of those who
stayed, many married. Their offsprings are interesting for our study,
not least because they are likely to be influenced by the multicultur-
alism around them. There is a tendency for cultures to be levelled out
with each succeeding generation. Here, the role of the woman, often
the primary carer of the next generation, cannot be discounted. If, for
example, the singkeh marries a second or third generation local-born
woman, their children will acculturalize to the local context speedily.5
If he marries a girl from the entertainment world such as actresses or
singers, and the woman herself is also a migrant, the acculturalization
process is of course slower.6 Last but not least, if he sends for a woman
from China, the acculturation process is temporarily impeded since the
woman will tend to reproduce the culture from her village rather than
adapt to the local one.
Sometimes, the woman is from another race, in which case assimila-
tion to the local context is often accelerated. We have recounted how
cross-cultural marriages have been an active agent of social integra-
tion and are indicative of intimate and profound relations between
different groups. For example, in his study of small Creolized commu-
nities of Chinese origin in Banka and the Straits Settlements, Skinner
(1996: 51) shows how the offsprings of migrants and indigenous women
were quickly absorbed into the contextual community. In the 1850s,
Penang has also been described by Vaughan (1879: 6) as comprising
“half-caste Chinese, having Malay mothers”, the extent of their accul-
turation discerned superficially through “the amount of chillies, assam
and belachan that is in their food” (Ibid: 28)! Such offsprings have the
luxury to choose for example, either the competitive striving work ethic
of the Chinese or a more relaxed possibly agrarian native lifestyle by
marrying once again uxorilocally into an indigenous family. A more

common intermarriage is that of an Arab or Indian Muslim with one of

the Malay regional groups identified in Chapter 3. Here the similarity
of religious belief (Islam) and the role of the mother as the primary care
giver enables speedier acculturalization (Karim, 2009a, 2009b).
Second generation
In the second generation, two cultural forces – the traditional and the

emergent – are constantly co-present and either one of them may be
dominant at any given moment (cf. Harris, 2006). Usually, pronuncia-
tion patterns in naturally occurring speech will display clues as to the
struggle between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern.
Second generation children are known to scan the environment for
necessary elements of language in embedded domains and to build their
grammar cue by cue. They interpret what they hear as cues and their
grammar begins to converge accordingly (Lightfoot, 2006). Their level
of acculturation will also be marked by grammar, idiomatic phrases
and lexical choice. For example, at the turn of the century, Shellabear
(1913) observed that when a Chinese calls his father n-tia rather than
papa (Malay bapa quite different from Chinese lau-pe), they are prob-
ably members of an earlier generation. The extent of acculturation will
also be marked by multicultural practice. For example, in the Indian
community, it has been said that what differentiates a newcomer from
a later-generation is the extent of the use of belacan (shrimp paste mixed
with pounded chilli paste), the belimbing (a tiny acidic fruit) and chilli
pedas (tiny hot chillies) in their cuisine!7
In contrast to the first generation, subsequent generations are
often literate. Some would have been educated in mission schools, a
symbolic milestone that marked their entry into the English-speaking
world. While the first generation is often always “translating” and
“interpreting” the languages around them, the second generation are
often able to speak the host language since they have been nurtured
in it since their childhood. Most of all, second generation would have
more capacity to “read between the lines” where social interactions
are concerned, a skill which depends on close and continuous contact
with the community.
Third generation
By the time of the third generation, the initial creative mix, which
was hitherto random, would have cohered into a more stable tradi-
tion with its own integrity. The third generation would have adopted

a Malayan way of life as typified by their dress, food and language

and as displayed in hybrid communities such as the Babas, the Jawi
Peranakans, the Chetty Indians and Kristang Eurasians (see Chapter
7). This generation is likely to have had more time for socialization
despite the fact that a colonial colour bar attempted to keep the races
apart. Eyewitness accounts report that the races mingled together, most
notably during festive occasions or at the amusement or carnival parks,

known commonly as “the Worlds”, for example, the “New World” along
Serangoon Road, the “Happy World” in Geylang and the “Great World.”
Here were also the cinemas and cabarets and later, open-air enclosures
known as “joget modern” where people of all races, including Chinese,
Indians, Filipinos and Siamese were seen to participate (Arseculeratne,
1992: 119).8
In their research on kampong (“rural”) dwellers, Kong and Chang
(2001: 108; National Archives, 1993) found that life there was character-
ized by “a leisurely pace and intense ethnic and communal interaction.”
Life in the kampong was “the very essence of gotong royong and neigh-
bourly goodwill” (Ibid: 108), with ”strong interpersonal ties” (Wee Jong
Dit quoted in Kong and Chang, 2001: 140) and “a spirit of friendliness
and cooperation” (Foo Kee Seng quoted in Ibid.: 143). Rita Fernando
(quoted in Ibid., 2001: 108) remembers life growing up in Kampong
Hajijah in Siglap:
For us, I would say really there was no difference in race, whether
someone was Malay or Chinese or Indian or Eurasian or what-
ever. We lived as one kampong, we did not even think of ourselves
as Singaporeans then because we were just emerging from colonial
rule ... There was this very strong protective spirit, I think, where
everyone would keep an eye open for the other person. If we saw a
neighbour with very young children at the bus stop, we would walk
them home if it was dark. Somehow it was a big happy family. There
were no differences, as I said, no ‘oh, you’re of a different race and
we won’t talk to you’ mentality. Nothing of that nature existed. And
because the children intermingled so freely and the adults also did,
the kampong spirit was so much alive.9
Former Singapore Member of Parliament, Joe Conceicao (2004), grew

up in a kampong in Rangoon Road. Born in 1924, he recalled that fami-
lies who lived there belonged to a common educational and cultural
category, characterized by employment rather than ethnic affinities.

There were Eurasian, Indians, Malay and Chinese families, as well as a

home kept by an elderly Scots woman:
A family quarrel could not happen without the little neighbourhood

being aroused. But when an emergency occurred, sickness, accident
or death, there would be no lack of helping hands and sharing hearts.
(Ibid.: 8)10

Third generation communities would tend to look to the colonial culture,
that is English culture, as an index, adopt English language education,
male English dress and English trade goods to distinguish themselves
from recent Chinese immigrants. They would now become part of the
“mainstream” and like the mainstream would become susceptible to
intermarriages, in turn contributing to a larger “mixed” populace.
Later-generational interaction
The intersections of trade routes are often noisy and cooperative places.
The British penchant for race differentiation became almost always
immediately irrelevant if a mutual gain was imminent. In the early
years, Admiral Henry Keppel (1852) noted that the Malays and Chinese
hunted tigers together as a group in the jungle, taking advantage of each
other’s strengths and specializations. Arseculeratne (1992: 25) reminds
us that many Chinese preferred to purchase jewellries from Singhalese
jewellers rather than their own kin, as they believed the former had a
finer workmanship. When lawyer G.W. de Silva (1940), of Sri Lankan
origin, wrote a historical romance about Portuguese Malacca, he
engaged his “best friend”, Yan Kee Leong, of Chinese origin to do the
illustrations in his book.11 In rites of passage such as births, it did not
matter who one consulted as long as one’s goal was accomplished. For
example, both the Indian and Chinese community were not averse
to using the services of the Malay bomohs (“witch-doctor”) and the
Malay bidan (“midwife”) (Baker, 1995).12 According to Abisheganaden
(2005: 11), in 20th century colonial Singapore, Sikh bandsmen were
hired to provide funereal music. The Chinese were “more than happy
to get their money’s worth” (Ibid.) as the loud brassy tunes of the Sikh
contingent complemented, in their opinion, the wailing of the profes-
sional mourners.13 At the Bukit Brown Cemetery in Singapore, one may
still witness some ornate Chinese graves guarded by porcelain figures
of Sikh guards.14

Malay journalist, Zubaidah Ibrahim (2010), recalls her father’s multi-

cultural associates in colonial Singapore:
As a legal clerk, he had Chinese friends – both rich and poor. They
walked into our lives because they could hardly speak English and
they needed my father’s help to write letters and other documents
for various legal and official purposes – they avoid Shenton Way

prices. My father would type away on his Olivetti while the Chinese
men hung around drinking black coffee. Most conversed in Bazaar
Malay but a few could speak only dialect and so they had relatives or
friends in tow as translators.
Lim Yew Hock (1986), Chief Minister of Singapore from 1956 to 1959,
recounted that on the death of his father in 1931, he was deeply touched
when he saw his father’s friends, which were from all races (Chinese,
European, Eurasians, Malay and Indians) shedding tears unabashedly
when paying their last respects. Wong Ah Fook, who enjoyed a close
relationship with Sultan Abu Bakar, was able to help the latter develop
Johor Bahru; and in so doing rose quickly from penniless labourer to
towkay, banker and chief agriculturalist of pepper, gambier and rubber
(Lim, 2002). Such stories highlight the fact that the elites (the British,
the Malay rulers and the rich Chinese merchants) in colonial Singapore
had a shared social world and that they were, in reality, protagonists
and partners rather than “master-subject” or confrontational oppo-
nents (Holmberg, 2009).15
In his autobiography, Singapore diplomat Lee Khoon Choy (1988:
6) recounts how his once “penniless father from China had married
a Chinese local-born woman”, and how as a youth, he was part of a
boria (“multiracial musical group”) which moved from home to home
in their community singing both English and Malay songs on their
guitars and fiddles. His autobiography is a good example of how the
second generation acquired a fondness for wayang bangsawan (“musical
puppet theatre”) and the playing of Malay music such as keroncong,16
and the adaptation for its use in Chinese festivals such as Cap Goh Meh.
This is not uncommon bearing in mind that a century earlier, Vaughan
(1985,1879) had observed that “the local-born Chinese” were fond of
pantuns (Malay “poems”)17 and lagus (Malay “tunes”) and used them
with fiddles and tomtoms (Western and Indian musical instruments)
to entertain guests. Then, Dondang Sayang, a popular hybrid musical
form that demanded creativity and on-the-spot improvisation from the


Photo 4 The Sikhs in Singapore. Sikhs guarding Chinese cemetery since 1930’s,
China. Reproduced from author’s family photo album.
singers as they challenged each other in their spontaneous composition

and recitation of verses in the Malay language, was a major pastime.
One notes too that it was not simply the Chinese who were attracted
to Malay music but also the Indians. Singapore diplomat Maurice
Baker (1995: 9) recounts how his Indian mother used to love to attend
bangsawan performances in the evenings when a Malay drama group
happened to be in town.
Later generations began to adapt and create music from the environ-
ment around them. Tan (1986) shows how the Peranakan Chinese of
Penang has appropriated Malay lagus (“tunes/songs”) in the wayang
bangsawan,18 and the use of Malay music such as keroncong and musical
instruments for use in Chinese festivals such as the Cap Goh Meh festival
(15th day of the Chinese New Year). Associations such as the Kelab
Dondang Sayang were established by non-Malays and, despite a top-down
imposition of racial consciousness, veteran Singaporean musician Paul
Abisheganaden (2005) recalled that music-making in the years prior to
World War II usually comprised a multicultural gathering of instrumen-
talists with mandolins, violins, banjos, ukuleles and drums playing the
popular tunes of the day in three languages – Chinese, English and
Malay. Multiracial groups of musicians – Indians, Chinese, Eurasians,
would, for instance, offer their services free-of-charge just for the sheer
fun of performing on a float during the Chinese Chingay festival, as it
went along its selected routes.

Festivals were occasions of mutual visiting and benefit. During festive

occasions, such as the Chinese New Year, Malay journalist Zubaidah
Ibrahim recalled that it was the custom of Chinese families to give
hongbaos to children of different races alike:
I remember a Mr Lee, a small, bald man with a wide smile who ran
a concession store at Roxy cinema in Katong. This was in the early

1970s. He was grateful for my father’s help and visited our house
every New Year, bearing oranges and packets of nuts and snacks from
his store. He also gave us hongbao, causing an outburst of joy. Mr
Lee also gave us bags of firecrackers, which my brothers would set
of almost the minute he left. They were fun, but no match for the
bamboo poles of firecrackers that shopkeepers in my neighbourhood
showed off in the evening. (Ibrahim, 2010)
Then there was Baba Tan, a rich elderly Peranakan who bought
kueh from my grandmother’s stall on the street outside our home
and hung about with other patrons. He was the first person I heard
say ‘Tuan Allah’, except he said ‘Ala’, for his Hokkien-inflected Malay
could not wrestle with the double L in the Arabic word. He would
also give me hongbao – sometimes twice, because he was forgetful.
(Ibrahim, 2010)
In 1980, when asked to comment on race relations, Malay politician

Othman Wok, a former Cabinet Minister of Singapore (1963–1977)
recounted his childhood, as one that was intrinsically “multicultural”
despite the colonial insistence that “different races went to different
schools.”
The first four years of my life, I grew up in a Malay-dominated quar-

ter’s area, with long barracks with attap roofs. It was my uncle’s quar-
ters actually, where my grandparents and my parents lived too, and
we had to sleep all over the floor.
Next door to our kampong were Chinese farms, vegetables and pigs.
They knew that pigs were taboo to us Malays, so they kept them in
fenced compounds, and there was never any trouble. We kept goats.
Our Indian neighbours nearby kept cattle. People lived peacefully
next to each other.
As a little boy, I played with all the Chinese and Indian kids. We
communicated in Bahasa Malay. One day my father brought back a
three-wheeled bicycle, I remember we all climbed on top of it and
rode it around.

And it was like that as I grew up and moved to different quar-

ters when my father, a Malay teacher, was moved around. Malays,
Chinese, Indians, we all went to different schools, but the rest of the
day we played together on the football fields.19
Former Director of Libraries in Singapore, Hedwig Anuar of Eurasian

origin recollects:

We had friends of all races – my father was a school principal and
he always invited his teachers of all races to his home. We lived
in government quarters ... most of the Chinese we knew were
Peranakans or English-speaking – we entertained each other with
dances and songs. My best friends, even my father’s, were all mixed.
And since the Chinese were in the majority, my best friends were
mainly Chinese.20
In his memoirs, S.R. Nathan, past President of Singapore (1999–2011)

and an Indian by origin, reminisced:
We were localized – my mother was very Malay in her style of dress.

India did not figure at all in our lives. We did identify with the
Indian temple at Muar.
As a boy I lived in Haig Road ... at Chinese New Year, you would
see the whole of Joo Chiat decorated with red banners. They hardly
spoke any Chinese apart from a bit of patois, but mostly used Malay.
In that whole area people were much less conscious of racial identi-
ties than they are today (Nathan, 2011: 21).
Other later-generational identity symbols
The hybrid identities of later-generational inhabitants are revealed not

just through the language they spoke but also through other identity
markers such as dress, food, architecture, religious rites and literary
endeavours.
Dress
As fashion changes with time, modes of attire vary markedly from one
era to another. Dress may also give insights into regions of origin as
well as identity. For example, there were two Chinese brothers who
once met in Kampong Tjina, Palembang, in a low two-storey house in
one of the side streets. The 19th century Singapore short-story writer,

Chia Cheng Sit (1899a: 60) begins the encounter in the following way:
“The tight-fitting pantaloons and peculiar cut of the jacket at once
proclaimed one of them to be a Dutch Chinese, while the loose trousers
and a jacket over a European vest and collar worn by the other with
equal plainness showed that he had hailed from sunny Singapore.” Dress
is therefore a visible public marker declaring one’s allegiance, political
preference, or identity. Another example is seen in the dress code of

later-generational (Baba) Chinese in Singapore at the turn of the 20th
century. Here the men wore the Western dress (which shows assimila-
tion to the British Raj) while the women wore the Malay dress (which
shows assimilation to Malay society). The women adapted the native
kebaya (“fitted top”) by embroidering and trimming it with lace made
of translucent material showing off a camisole underneath (or a bra in
the 20th century) and holding it together with three golden brooches
embedded with diamonds, etc. (kerosang). Their batik sarong, inspired by
the native Malays, were not just tied into a knot but held with a silver
belt, marking them off as a distinctive cultural group (see Photo 6).
As the Malay and Javanese Sultans gradually lost their political
power to the British Raj, more and more the diverse races were encour-
aged by pragmatic inclinations to signal their assimilation to colonial
rather than Malay values.21 For example, Donald Wijasuriya, a second
generation Singhalese, recollects that while a “poorer” Tamil agricul-
tural woman might take to the sarong, his migrant grandmother always
wore the sari while his wife “almost never uses it”, preferring Western
dress (quoted in Arseculeratne, 1992: 93). So too towards the end of
our colonial period, the younger Nonya ladies, unlike their mothers
and grandmothers before them, discarded the sarong, kebayas and
kasut manek-manek (“beaded shoes”) for Western clothing and Western
shoes. If we look at the photograph of the Chinese Ladies’ Association
led by Mrs Lee Choon Guan in Singapore and Mrs S.Q. Wong as Vice
President, Mrs Lim Boon Keng as Treasurer and Miss Mabel Yin as
Secretary, we will find that the leading Chinese ladies were no longer
dressed in sarong and kebaya, as their mothers were, but in Chinese tops
and skirts, marking their “changed” affiliation to Chinese rather than
Malay, in keeping with 20th century sentiments (Song, 1923: 541).22
In 1940, Chasen (1940: 19) observed that unlike the older Nonyas
whose costumes were more Malayan, the younger Straits-born Chinese
“preferred modern Chinese styles of clothing from Shanghai”, then the
fashion centre of China (see Photo 5).
Photograph 5 shows the leading ladies of the time wearing the Chinese
samfoo (a “trouser suit” with the hip-length blouse having a mandarin


Photo 5 Dress styles. Founding members of the Chinese Women’s Association,
the leading women’s association of the day. We have the President, Mdm.
Tan Teck Neo (center), and her Vice-Presidents, Mdm. Wong Siew Qui ( Mrs.
S.Q.Wong) and Mdm Tan Chew Neo (Mrs Lay Lian Teck) wearing the Shanghai
dress, then in fashion. Photo reproduced from Song Ong Siang (1923), One
Hundred years of history of the Chinese in Singapore. London: John Murray.
Copyright owner unknown.
collar and cloth buttons) sometimes referred to in Baba Malay as baju

shanghai (“Shanghai dress”) from the 1930s to the 1950s. Then too,
nationalist tendencies encouraged the Chinese to stop regarding China
as the backwoods of Malaya but more as a country that they could be
proud of (Chew and Lee, 1991). Gone were the Malay dresses and hair-
styles. Where the later-generational men were concerned, they dressed
in a combination of panamas and pith hats, waistcoats and bow ties
with Chinese jackets and mandarin collars.
This gradual aspiration for British rather than Malay culture is also
evident in culinary etiquette. For example, eating with your hands was
fine if one wished to identify with Malay culture, which was gener-
ally the case in the 19th century; but if one wanted to identify with
the British colonials, then one may see many Chinese, Indians and
Eurasians at their meals with forks, spoons and knives, which was the
case in the 20th century (Clammer, 1979: 16).


Photo 6 Bi- and multi-orientation. A Chinese (Baba) family in 1914. The boys
and men are in western clothes while the women are in the Malay bajupanjang
with their hair made up in the Malay style (circa 1900). This family has four sons
and they are dressed like their father. Courtesy of author’s family photo album.
Food
In our study, food is an important cultural marker giving us insights
into not just hybrid identities and cultural symbolism but also an
understanding of social relations, family and kinship (Cheung and Tan,
2007). Baba food (better known as Nonya food – the feminine gender)
may be considered as basically “Creole”, derived from the interaction of
Chinese Portuguese, Malay and Indian influences. Chinese soya bean
products such as soya sauces, salted soya beans, and bean curds have all
been cleverly indigenized. The Nonya dish of babi pong tay, for example,
is similar to the Chinese dish tau yew bak (“pork belly slow-braised in
garlic and soy sauce”) but with a spicy Malay flavour of salted soybean,
cinnamon and pounded shallots. Pong is a mispronunciation of the
Hokkien word hong for stewing in soy sauce and the word is derived
from the Hokkien word de referring to “pig trotters.”23 Another example
is Nonya laksa, a dish in which the Babas combine Chinese coarse rice
noodle with a Malay style curry. Baba desserts, such as Nonya kueh, are

inspired by a liberal use of Malayan products such as coconut milk,

pandan leaf and shredded coconut (Koh and Ho, 2009). Baba cuisine is
influenced by the Malays, being spicy and rich, and makes use of ingre-
dients not usually found in dishes of traditional Chinese communities
(Lau, 1984).
A parallel example is seen in Chetty Malay households where
food, and not just language, has been Creolized. At their wedding

ceremonies, there is Malay-styled ikan bilis (“anchovies fried with
chilli paste”), sambal tumis (“fried chilli”) and acar (“pickles”), Indian
sambar (“lentil curry”), meat peruthals (stir-fried with Indian spices)
and Malay desserts such as pulot seraykaya, pulot hitam and kuih wajis
on the same table. Indian muruku, vadai and appam are also included
on special occasions (Thiyagaraj, 1998: 92). Their food differs from
traditional Indian cuisine because there is the belacan (shrimp paste
mixed with pounded chilli paste), the blimbing (a tiny acidic fruit) and
chilli pedas.
In turn, one notes that Malay identity has become similarly hybrid-
ized through the inclusion of Indian roti paratha, nasi biriyani, and
putu mayam as part of their normal menu of dishes.
Religious rites
Temple worship was supported by the urban landscape, which was on
the whole tolerant and one of mutual respect:
It is a common occurrence in coastal Southeast Asia that an old

Chinese temple is located adjacent to an ancient mosque within the
urban core, close to the waterfront, at the middle of a multiracial
cosmopolitan comity. Both of these areas were separated but intercon-
nected by a market place not far from the harbour. The market place
was the common urban centre, a meeting place for the locals to meet
and foreigners to exchange. It was a public place with strong cosmo-
politan characters. Unique identity, belief, and material culture of
each group were preserved and nurtured, and at the same time a new
communal hybrid identity would be created and developed, based on
mutual respect and the spirit of tolerance (Widodo, 2009: 84).
Widodo’s (2009) study of architecture and urban history in Southeast

Asia attests to how patrons, artists, and builders from different ethnic
and cultural groups coordinated their artistry and skill to construct a
new and unique architectural form. For example, after the fall of the


Photo 7 TheTanjong Kling mosque in Malacca. The architectural design of
the mosque is a cross between Chinese, Indian, and Malay architecture. There
are also English and Portuguese glazed tiles, a wooden pulpit with Hindu and
Chinese-style cravings and Corinthian columns in the main prayer hall Image
1. Courtesy of flicker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marufish/2495071246/
lightbox/
last Hindu-Buddhist kingdom in the 15th century and the spread of

Islam in the religious landscape of the Archipelago, Hindu-Buddhism
reappeared again in the 17th century with the influx of Chinese immi-
grants, who mixed it with Daoism and Confucianism (Suprajitno,
2012). Everywhere it seems, Chinese architectural elements blended
with local vernacular design features to create numerous variations of
fusion building styles such as the Kampong Kling Mosque in Melaka
(see photo 7).
This occurrence is still discernible in Singapore today. For example,
in Malay-dominated settlements such as Geylang Serai, the Chinese
presence was and still is visible and thriving (Ismail, 2009). There were
and still are ethnically diverse kampongs with Chinese and Malay
families and houses of worship coexisting just as there was the promi-
nent Chinese Leong Nam Temple in the heart of Malay Geylang Serai
until 2006, and currently other temples along Changi Road. Many
parts of Singapore such as Joo Chiat and Geylang had multi-religious

neighbourhoods. Ng (1976: 9) describes the neighbourhood of Joo Chiat

in the 1960s:
As one walks towards the temple from East Coast Road, some partic-
ularly notable features are the numerous temples and shrines of
different religions – a Hindu temple and a shrine, a Chinese temple
and a Roman Catholic church, second, the various ethnic communi-

ties – Chinese, Indian and Malay and third, the range of architec-
tural designs.
In religious life, later-generational Chinese, Indians and even Eurasians

were known to be influenced by Malay practices and to pay their tribute
to local objects such as a sacred stone, and an old tree. They adopted
the Malay datuks as their own Chinese Kong (“spirit God”) (Freedman,
1962). Datuk-Kong is a peculiar combination of the Malay honorific title
datuk and the Chinese Kong. The datuk-kong’s shrine is usually located at
the thresholds or entrances to the towns, neighbourhoods, temples and
houses and is manifested as an indigenous old man sitting on a throne
holding a walking stick or the traditional weapon of the region, the
Indian-derived keris. He has different names in different places, such
as Datuk Awang, Datuk Haji, Datuk Bakul and Datuk Puloh Besar across
coastal regions of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Kalimantan, Java
and Sumatra.
Ng’s (1976) ethnographic study in 1975 of the then 60-year-old Sam
Poh Neo keramat (“shrine”) along Crane Road, frequented by Chinese,
Indian and Malay clients, is a good example of religious hybridity.
Here, one may witness what Harper (2002: 8) has later termed “an
inclusive cosmopolitanism of the public sphere.” For example, it is
recounted that on the birthdays of Chinese deities which fall on the
15th day of the third lunar month and the 14th day of the ninth lunar
month, a Eurasian vegetable curry and Chinese bee hoon (“vermicelli”)
were normally cooked for clients. In turn, clients brought offerings of
Malay nasi kunyit (“yellow rice”)24 to offer to the Chinese deities. In the
evenings, a hired dance troupe of Malay women performed the ronggeng
and jogek for the Chinese devotees.25 In the ronggeng, pantuns (Malay
quatrains) were sung in repartee accompanied by a European violin, an
Arabic rebana and a Chinese gong.
The marriage ceremonies of later-generational Chinese, such as
the Babas, also became one which was Malay-matrilineal rather than

Chinese-patriarchal, as depicted in the Malay practice of uxorilocal

marriage where the groom moves as a son-in-law into the family of the
bride’s parents (Clammer, 1980: 111). 26 Weddings might just as easily
be held in the parental home of the bride as well as the groom. Female
heads of the household were allowed especially if an elderly widow was
involved. These practices are not of Chinese origin since traditionally,
the Chinese regarded women as inferior to men. During the wedding

day, willing relatives and friends of the family would rally around to
help as much of possible because of the work involved – reminiscent of
the Malay Hantar Sirih and berandam (the “presentation day”). 27
Like Baba marriage ceremonies, Chetty weddings had also been
acculturated with Indian (Hindu) and Malay characteristics. For
example, the Hindu rites and practices included the observance of the
“tray-gift” ceremony and “dip for the ring”, which entailed the newly-
weds plunging their hands into a pot three times to retrieve either a
knife, a shell or a ring, the “tying of the thalli” (“nuptial knot”) by the
bride and groom; and the exchanging of the mini-toe rings ceremony
between bride and groom. On the other hand, the Malay elements
include the Malay chongkak (a game set consisting of a wooden board
and ninety-eight pieces of cowry shells), a baju kebaya (Malay dress), the
bunga rampai (assorted flowers)28 on the tray-gifts ceremony and the
Malay desserts on the large trays together with the Indian spices and
sweets (Thiyagaraj, 1998: 86).
While assimilating to native religious practices, later-generational
Indian and Chinese migrants also kept to their traditional ethnic
customs, forming what DeBernadi (2002) has called “a culture of
cultures.” For example, the Babas adhered to ancient practices of
consulting the pek ji (“birth horoscopes”) of prospective spouses,
which was written in Chinese script and then sent to the sinseh pokkoa
(“diviners”) who consulted the traditional Book of Fate (Clammer,
1979). They commemorated the Dragon Boat Festival, the Devil
Month (7th lunar month), the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, the
Winter Solstice, as well as those connected with birth, marriage, birth-
days, deaths and ancestor worship. In the case of the Chetties, they
remained dogmatic followers of Saivitic Hinduism, giving their chil-
dren old-fashioned names of goddesses such as Ganesan, Saraswathi,
Lakshmi; and continued to engage Indian priests and diviners to calcu-
late dates for major events and perform prescribed rites and chants
(Thiyagaraj, 1998: 62,78).

The Chinese were also not immune to borrowing religious practices

from the Singhalese such as the recitation of texts, lectures, discussions,
religious classes, publications, and the observance of “full Moon (Poya)
days” of significance to the Buddhist (Arseculeratne, 1992: 150).29 For
example, the Babas were known to attend the Sri Lankaramaya Temple
to the extent that by the 20th century, the service, which was originally
conducted in Singhalese, had to be conducted in English. Another Sri

Lankan Buddhist temple, the Mangala Vihara, established in 1960, also
switched its working language to English so as to reach out to the influ-
ential strata of Chinese (Arseculeratne, 1992: 155). Indeed, the Chinese
have been known to contribute generously to the more “foreign”
Theravada temples.30
DeBernardi’s (2002: 207) research on temple life and secret society
rituals in the sister port of Penang has also revealed new forms of inter-
ethnic collaboration. In one chapter, the celebration of the Shi’ite
festival of Muharram (or boria) is recounted. Traditionally, in other
parts of the Muslim world, groups enacting the conflict between Sunni
and Shi’ite Muslims would often clash in what some have regarded as a
recreation of the fundamental schism of the Muslim faith.31 However,
what was unusual was that in Penang, the festival performances
included not only Shi’ites in masquerade, but also multi-ethnic groups
of dancers. Here, Malay and Tamil participants wearing mourning dress
commemorated the tragic death of the Shia founder, Hussein. In 1859,
the performance included sixty teams of dancers whom police regis-
tration records identified as Bengali, Malay, Hindu, Kling, Burmese,
Portuguese and Chinese. The Chinese contributed two lion dance
teams, while the Malay dancers performed the Hindu-inspired ronggeng
dance. In 1861, alarmed and discomforted by the ecstatic intermin-
gling of the races, all other festivals of a like nature were subsequently
banned by the British.
Literary endeavours
Creative stories by one Sianu (1938: 73–90) showed that friendly
everyday interactions were the norm rather than the exception and
that they did not take place only in the marketplace, as described by
Furnivall (1956).32 In a typical story entitled “The Best Laid Scheme”,
the wife of a Chinese merchant, one Mrs Cheong Ah Seng, sits on a
veranda of a small house along the main street. There, as the multira-
cial, multicultural (Indian, Chinese, and Eurasian) people passed by her
front porch, they would exchange neighbourly hellos or as the author

puts it: “pause to chaff.” The following is one such “chaff” between a
Malay passerby and Mrs Cheong:
One evening she sat idly watching the passer-by. Daud, son of the
Malay schoolmaster, came along:
“Ho, Ma! For whom dost thou wait?” he asked.
“Cheeky one”, answered Mrs Cheong Ah Seng. “For whom shall I

wait but for my man?”
“Ha, chuckled the Malay, “and perchance he’ll be late.”
“Maybe – he hath been late many nights – he hath work to do.”
“Work”, echoed the boy, smiling wickedly. “Such work is not
wearying.”
“Why say that?” asked Mrs Cheong Ah Seng sharply.
“For no reason”, replied the Malay.
“Silly boy”, said Mrs Cheong Ah Seng. “Begone scamp.”
And the Malay ran laughing down the street. (Ibid.: 76)
The above dialogue captures a daily, casual intermingling of multiracial

neighbours. Mrs Cheong is older and Chinese; Daud is younger and
Malay – and this takes place in the evening’s relaxed hour along the
main thoroughfare of a town. It is unfortunate in this dialogue that the
author did not represent the dialogue in Malay, as that is the language
of use. Instead, the author, who is anonymous, probably envisioning
his readership to be English-speaking and schooled, has written it in
English.
In another telling tale entitled Si Chantek (“Miss Beautiful”), a pretty
pre-teen Malay girl is forced by her family to marry a much older
man whom she dislikes. Strong-willed, she defies adat (“custom”) and
flees from the arranged marriage to the home of a nearby Chinese
immigrant-bachelor who has set up shop along the roadside and whom
she had previously struck up a casual acquaintanceship. He takes pity
on her plight and offers her shelter in his humble abode. She knows
that if she accepts his help her reputation will be ruined even though
the relationship is not sexual in nature. Indeed, as she accepts his offer
of shelter, he becomes her business mentor, teaching her how to make
a living. However, Chantek’s father and relatives are furious with this
development and plots to kill the Chinese (not because he is “Chinese”

but because he had dared to shelter his fugitive and defiant daughter), a
deadly mission, which they later succeeded in doing. However, although
“her kind protector” is dead, a still defiant Chantek refuses to return
home but instead takes over her protector’s small business. In a few
years she has enlarged it and become a rich lady. The story concludes
how, at the age of 20, she became wealthy enough to attract the hand
in marriage of the Penghulu’s (“village headman”) son.

Short stories published in the Straits Chinese Magazine from 1897–1907
were replete with the everyday intermingling of many races.33 One
story entitled “From my Father’s Diary” written by Chia (1903) tells the
story of a multicultural household where one Chan Ong Wee is married
to a Chinese woman, his first wife. However, he has a second wife, a
Javanese called Bunga (“flower”), this being a quite common practice
in those days. Another story by Chia Cheng Sit (1899a) entitled “Her
One Redeeming Feature” tells of two brothers of ethnic Chinese descent
from Palembang, struggling over a financial crisis. Although the story is
set in Palembang, the storyline has intimate connections to Singapore
since there was a lot of trade and travel between these neighbouring
ports. It also shows the Chinese protagonists’ close reliance on Malay
help with regard to the solving of financial problems. In the same
multicultural vein, another story entitled “The Story of the Framed
Passage Ticket” (Chia, 1898) tells of how the Chinese protagonist, Sam
Seng, went to consult a Malay bomoh (“clairvoyant”) with regard to his
marriage, a man whom he addresses familiarly as “Awang.”34
We may conclude that mutuality went on much as a matter of fact,
whether or not they were recounted in early creative literature. Indeed,
on the eve of the British defeat at the hands of the Japanese in Singapore,
the Japanese army invaded the Istana (“palace”) waving their swords
and shouting Cina, Cina (“Chinese, Chinese”) as they were targeting
the Chinese for massacre.35 They were not able to find them for the
Malay royals of Singapore had hidden some of their Chinese relatives
and friends on hearing of the surrender of British forces to the Japanese
(Pang, 1984).
Concluding remarks
Previous Chapters have shown not just hybrid identities and their
respective lingua francas but also how regional identities were distinct
but undivided, and religious identities syncretic and inclusive, at least
until the advent of the Europeans when racial categories began to take
over the popular imagination. This chapter has devised a cline for a

more differentiated understanding of intergenerational identities in

colonial Singapore (1819–1941). It has also demonstrated that while
language may be the best platform to use for an understanding of early
identities, it is often complemented by other variables such as dress,
cuisine, architecture, religious rites, and literary endeavours.
I have also argued that the traditional inclination to view colonial
society from a racially scripted viewpoint has impeded many from

realizing that many later-generational Chinese had in their own ways
celebrated the gifts of multiculturalism in their adopted homeland. For
example, Tan Tock Seng (Song, 1923), who built the first hospital in
1949, subjected the use of that hospital to the then novel clause that it
would be for all races in Singapore.36
Singapore and Malaysia have traditionally been multiracial and
multicultural societies. However, developments in China, India and the
Islamic world, as well as educational policies in British Malaya have
changed the society into a “plural” one. The next chapter elaborates
a little more on one major aspect of the divisive effects of the educa-
tional policy, that is, the creation of a Chinese-educated versus English-
educated identity within the Chinese population of Singapore on the
eve of the 1959 Singapore political elections.

9
Language, Power and Political
Identities: The 1959 Singapore
Political Elections

The focus of this chapter is on how plural identities, previously discussed
under the headings of racial, regional, religious and orthographical,
became progressively reordered in British Singapore into essentially
two main categories, that is, whether one was “English-educated” or
“Chinese-educated.” Here then was one aspect of the educational divide
on the eve of British withdrawal in 1959. This divide has political impli-
cations as the Chinese formed three-quarters of the Singapore popula-
tion and hence their votes were key to success in any political election.
More specifically, this chapter analyses how Lee Kuan Yew (hereafter,
Lee), rode “the linguistic tiger” (cf. Bloodworth, 1986) to win the first
political election in Singapore and become one of the world’s longest
serving Prime Minsters (cf. Leong, 2010). His party, the People’s Action
Party (PAP) has governed Singapore ever since, mostly without any
effective opposition party in Parliament. This chapter examines the
little known high risk Machiavellian linguistic strategies that took Lee
into office and in so doing, portray the exquisite relationship between
language, power and political identities in the Singapore general elec-
tions of May 1959 where, for the first time, all the seats in the legislature
were completely determined by the resident population.
The education divide
In Chapter 2, I have shown how the institutions of education and reli-

gion have been instrumental in perpetuating race and ethnic differ-
entiation so much so that on the eve of self-governance, the “plural
society”, as depicted by Furnivall (1956), had become a reality. Left
to their own devices, both the Chinese and Indian schools taught in
their many regional languages during the first century of British rule
152

Language, Power and Political Identities 153
with textbooks and teachers imported from their country of origin

(Doraisamy, 1969). However, from 1917, Chinese schools gradually
began to switch to Mandarin as the medium of instruction after the
success of the National Language Movement in China; and the regional
language textbooks, largely comprising of Chinese classics, were
replaced by textbooks written in vernacular Mandarin. Nevertheless,
classical texts such as “The Four Books” of Confucius were still part

of the core syllabus. On the other hand, the English schools taught
“modern” subjects such as science, history, geography, etc. with their
textbooks primarily imported from Britain and using English as the
medium of instruction. The masses of Chinese, especially those with
connections to China such as the more recently arrived migrants
sent their children to the Chinese-medium schools. In contrast,
the later-generational Chinese, particularly the Babas preferred the
English-medium schools for their children’s education. On gradu-
ation, however, the Chinese-educated tended to be unemployed, or in
low status positions, and naturally they were disaffected, bitter and
disillusioned.
It is not surprising then that through this language and economic
divide the more recent migrants had very little in common with the
later-generational English-educated and nothing could be more different
than their views on the mother tongue as a school subject. For example,
in the 1949 Advisory Council for Education Meeting, while the British
spoke up for a policy of building a foundation in the mother tongue
before having their children learn English, the English-educated spoke,
ironically, against the implementation of mother tongue education in
elementary schools (Tan et al., 2011).1 However, this British preference
for building a foundation in the mother tongue was quickly abandoned
following the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in China.
My interview with a Chinese-educated accountant, Sum Ping, evokes
the colonial world order in the 1950s, then strongly associated with a
British supermarket, by the name of Cold Storage:
There the Europeans could get their meats, vegetables, fruits, candies,
wines, liquor etc ... there was an air of snobbery in Cold Storage –
only the upper class and English-speaking people could rub shoul-
ders there ... so people like us would likely get a cold treatment from
Cold Storage. But the funny thing was that the sales people were all
Chinese and yet they look down on other Chinese. You just cannot
utter any Mandarin to these salespeople without being despised –
and you dare not do so.

Sum Ping recounted further how, as a schoolboy in the 1940s, he used

to fist fight with the children of a Chinese English-educated family
“who stayed in a large house situated at the main road, with a tall iron
gate, high walls and lots of durian trees inside the compound.” He later
identified this family as Baba. Espousing a typical Chinese-educated
viewpoint, Sum Ping expressed his scorn of the English-educated in the
following way: “some Chinese had become so addicted to the Western

culture and knowledge that they not only looked down on their own
kind but had also developed a superiority outlook to other Chinese who
could not speak English.”2
On the other hand, my interview with a later-generational English-
educated Baba, Ong Pang Hwee, an office worker, uncovers another
viewpoint:
... they speak terrible English the China Ah Pek – they spit everywhere
and their manners are rough and rude ... they work in manual jobs
and have filthy habits ... they are disorderly and have no sense of
patriotism to Malaya or things Malayan ... why should we identify
with people we would normally despise, without any manners or
civic consciousness ... 3
Generally, Ong felt that the China Ah Pek (i.e., the China-born Chinese)
were competitive, brusque and materialistic. He was speaking of
course from the visualscape of the English-educated in their starched
white-collared shirts viz. the Chinese-educated in their singlets and
reflected in their menial occupations such as market stall-holders,
plumbers and street vendors.
Both groups had differing centres of loyalty, which were enacted
not just in the nature of their attitudes, beliefs and nationalistic aspi-
rations but also in the corridors of the schools. The autobiography of
a Singaporean teacher, Leow (1996: 4), who attended both a Chinese-
medium Primary School and later, an English-medium Secondary
School in the 1940s and 1950s, gives us a further insight into this
educational divide:
As in the typical Chinese schools of colonial times, the Chinese

students could only speak Mandarin or the dialects. They could not
speak any English nor were they keen to use English. Those who
used a bit of English in their conversations would be strongly repri-
manded and criticized by their own peers and would be treated as
outcasts.4

Later, when Leow (1996: 37) went to an English-medium Secondary

School, the opposite happened. He was punished for speaking Mandarin
and Hokkien in the corridor! When caught for breaking the language
rule, the punishment was to stay back in school and write lines of
repentance for his wrongdoing: but in the school fields and canteens,
Leow noted that, “students chattered in Mandarin and Hokkien as they
wished with nobody to stop them.”

Leow (Ibid.: 11) also penned the differing aspirations of the Chinese-
and English-speaking schoolboys:
When I was teaching in 1958, this Chinese school student wrote in

his compo “My Ambition” and it was typical – they often wanted to
be businessmen, make plenty of money and be married with many
wives, have many sons, grandsons and offsprings and be elected as
chairman of the clan association. For an English schoolboy, writing
on “My Ambition” it would be to complete his school certificate
exam, apply for a government job as a clerk, then be happily married
with one wife, raise a small family of four children and be contented
as a family man.
Mrs Chia Tim See, a Chinese-educated Elementary School teacher

confirms Leow’s autobiographical recollections: “The Babas try to show
off their superior command of English and they will debate over things
such as which is the correct usage, for example, between ‘Can I help
you’ and ‘May I help you’ and they will tell you that it is wrong to
begin a sentence with a conjunctive word ‘and’ and so on and so forth
over the small and trivial things that even the native English speakers
cannot be bothered about.”5
The protagonist of our chapter, Lee himself, describes the English-
educated viz. the Chinese-educated in the following way:
... Their good points are, first, they are homogeneous. Next, they
have ceased to think of themselves primarily as Chinese, Malays or
Indians. They are loyal to the community, honest and well behaved,
if somewhat too obedient to authority. Their weak points are, in the
case of the Chinese and Indians that they are devitalized, almost
emasculated, as a result of deculturalization. The syllabus in the
English schools in pre-war Malaya had pumped in a completely
English set of values and ideas. They have not taken to those,
but they have lost their own sets of values and the ideals of their
own cultures ... When you see Chinese-educated product from the

Chinese schools, particularly when they speak on public platforms,

you will understand what I mean. The English-educated is somewhat
uncertain and hesitant, speaking and thinking in a language he has
learnt all his life, but which is not part of his own being. The other
is supremely confident, speaking and thinking in a language which
is part of his being and his cultural world. (Lee Kuan Yew at a dinner
in 1959 hosted by the University of Malaya Society, quoted in Josey,

1968: 101)
Naturally, the British were more disposed towards the graduates of the
English-medium rather than the Chinese-medium schools. Hence, it
was not surprising to find that while enrolments were higher in Chinese
schools than English schools in 1950 (Figure 9.1), the budget allotted
to the English schools was higher than that allotted to the Chinese
schools (Figure 9.2). Such differential policies doubtless succeeded in
increasing historical resentment and alienation between the two groups
(Gopinathan, 1974).
The Chinese-educated identity was displayed by their use of Mandarin
as the “High” language and BM and other Chinese dialects as the “Low”
languages. On the other hand, the English-educated used English and
SE as “H” and BM and Hokkien as “L” languages (see Chapter 6). Here
then was not merely a language divide but also an ideological one –
a struggle between the later-generational, more nativized section of
the population which has a history of collaboration with the colonial
Type of school Enrolment

figures
Chinese schools 38,000
English schools 37,000
Malay schools 5,800
Tamil schools 1,000
Figure 9.1 Type of school and enrolment figures

1949% 1950%
Administration 6.1 4.1
English education (secondary) 21.1 12.5

English education (primary) 55.2 67.3
Malay education 8.5 6.5

Chinese education 6.1 5.8
Indian education 0.3 0.8
Figure 9.2 Percentage of educational budget allotted to schools in 1949 and

1950 by the British administration
powers viz. a newly mobilized Chinese working-class identity who had

recently emerged from the struggle against the Japanese.
The emergent national elite and Lee Kuan Yew
A departing colonial power would of course prefer to hand over power

to someone more closely identified with their values, a quality reflected
in the protégé’s command of the colonial language. These were the
“Queen’s Chinese” (Song, 1923), that is, English-educated Chinese
who were pro-British. The Queen’s Chinese certainly did not include
the Chinese-educated, whom they regarded with suspicion because for
one, the Colonial Government had recently declared war against the
Malayan Liberation Army, the military arm of the Malayan Communist
Party (hereafter, MCP), most of whose members were Chinese-schooled
and Chinese speaking.6 Although much of the fighting was in
Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore became an important army base (Lee,
1995). For another, while many Malays, Eurasians, Europeans and
English-educated Chinese such as the Babas joined the Volunteer Forces
to fight the Communists, the Chinese-educated stayed away from such
groups in the 1950s, an action symbolic of an “alternative” centre of
loyalty. Finally, like the United States, Britain was in the grip of the Cold
War and highly suspicious of China’s close friendship with the Soviet
Union and their likely proxy wars in Southeast Asia.
While Britain was ready to return power to their subjects after the
Second World War (1939–1945), it would only do so provided the

transfer would not result in a Communist takeover or its consequent

deprivation of the use of Singapore as a military base. Someone with
the credentials of Lee was seen as highly favourable – he had been
educated mainly at the expense of the Crown, being the recipient of
a number of English scholarships.7 His powerful command of English
was unusual and he was a graduate of Cambridge University, similar
to other returned students, such as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (India),

Mohamed Liaquat Ali Khan (Pakistan), and Tengku Abdul Rahman
(Malaysia) all of whom would later become Prime Ministers of their
own countries. One notes that in all territories of the British Empire,
when independence was won from the British Raj, power was always
handed over to the English-educated local nationalists. Here, returned
students from Cambridge-Oxford, such as Lee, formed their “best bet”,
being of the “right” ideological mould.
Lee was born in 1923 in Singapore of fourth generation Hakka-
speaking migrants from Dabu in Guangdong, who, a hundred years
before, had left their impoverished county for the port of nearby Banka
(today’s Indonesia) to make their fortune. They subsequently set up
business in Singapore instead. His parents, Lee Chin Koon and Chua
Jim Neo, came from a relatively prosperous trading background. His
upbringing was distinctly Baba; his mother, Mrs Lee Chin Koon, is a
Nonya and well-known as a promoter of the Peranakan culinary arts.
Lee grew up speaking Baba-Bazaar Malay at home and in his neighbour-
hood (Yap et al., 2009: 35):
I often played with the children of the Chinese fisherman and of

the Malays living in a nearby kampong, a cluster of some 20 or 30
attap or zinc-roofed wooden huts in a lane opposite my grandfather’s
house. (Lee, 1998: 32)
Because I had many Malay friends from childhood, my spoken
Malay was fluent. (Lee, 1998: 41)
At home, I spoke English to my parents, Baba Malay to my grand-
parents and Malay mixed with Hokkien to my friends. Mandarin was
totally alien to me. (Lee, 1998: 35)
At the age of 7, Lee was enrolled in a neighbourhood Chinese-medium

streamed school, in line with pro-nationalist China sentiments at that
time. However, he found classes in Mandarin “tough-going” since
he spoke no Chinese at home. His family then transferred him to an
English-medium school and this remained his primary language up to

university.8 He was mostly known as “Harry Lee” for roughly the first
30 years of his life, and still is to his friends in the West and to many
close friends and family.
Lee’s wife, Kwa Geok Choo, is a fifth generation descendant of
Hokkien migrants from Tong’an district in Fujian province. She attended
the Methodist Girls’ School – an English-medium school supported by
Anglicized Babas and Indians and came from an even wealthier back-

ground. Lee (1998: 94) writes in his memoirs:
Her father, Kwa Siew Tee, is a banker at the Oversea-Chinese Banking

Corporation, was a Java-born Chinese like my father and my paternal
grandmother. Her mother was a Straits-born Chinese like my mother.
We had similar backgrounds, spoke the same language at home and
shared the same social norms.
Like Lee, Kwa also won a scholarship to study at Cambridge University

and like her husband, graduated as a barrister. These academic achieve-
ments placed both Lee and his wife solidly in the English-educated camp
and their ideological outlook upon graduation was in sharp contrast to
the Chinese-educated who had sent their children to Chinese-medium
schools and who spoke Chinese at home.
Riding the linguistic tiger9

As a young lawyer, Lee was acutely aware of the linguistic dimensions of
politics and identity. Then, J.M. Jumabhoy, the Minister for Commerce
and Industry in the Lim Yew Hock government (1956–1959) was a very
prominent member of the Legislative Assembly. However, Jumabhoy’s
speeches in the Assembly were made in English and could only be
understood by English-speaking Indian elites rather than the vernac-
ular-speaking laboring masses of Indian community (see Chapter 3).10
Noting the example of Jumabhoy who, in his opinon, was more of an
estranged elite rather than a leader of the masses (like Mahatma Gandhi),
Lee realized that those who used only English were often unqualified to
voice the genuine opinions of the people. Lee knew he could not give a
rousing speech in either Mandarin or the dialects and that that would
be his primary liability.11 However, if he could not speak the language
of the masses well, he could at least show that he was on their side. This
meant avoiding the incumbent English-speaking elite, aligning himself
with the Chinese-educated masses, forming a political party with the
Chinese-educated and using a host of other linguistic strategies.

Avoiding the English-educated incumbent

Most Singapore returned scholars from Britain had in the past walked
predictable paths, for example, by joining the civic or political parties of
the establishment.12 As a later-generational Chinese, there would be no
great difficulty for Lee to aspire for an executive committee seat in the
prestigious Straits Chinese British Association (hereafter, SCBA), which
in 1950, on Lee’s return to Singapore, had an enviable track record of

having several of its members in both the Legislative and Executive
Councils, the Municipal Commission, the Governor’s Straits Chinese
Consultative Committee and as leaders of emergent political parties
(Jürgen, 1998). Founded in 1900, the SCBA was “establishment” –
supported by the wealthy and the British colonial masters. A blatant
admirer of the British Crown, it espoused an ideology of modernization
and a certain cosmopolitanism, in which a facility with English plays
a central part. It had made a generous contribution to the Singapore
School of Medicine in 1905, which later became part of the University
of Singapore. When a conscription bill was passed in 1939, the SCBA
had dutifully urged Chinese British subjects to register.13 Indeed, a
Chinese company of Volunteers assisted in the defence of Singapore
under one of its Presidents.14 It was, thus, poised to lead the fight for
independence.
However, Lee felt that the SCBA’s pro-British identity had become a
liability more than an asset. He viewed this identity as one that was
deculturalized and accordingly, in his view, devitalized, especially
after the British surrender to the Japanese in 1942. Its name, the
“Straits Chinese British Association”, was also an anathema: “Straits”
denoting the “Straits of Malacca” and the ports of Penang, Malacca
and Singapore – a geographical concept no longer relevant in post-war
geography. Lee was also of the opinion that the relatively “gentle” and
accommodating assimilative measures exemplified by the SCBA, would
be likely swept aside by the vast majority of more recently arrived
non-English speaking migrants.15
Lee could also have joined political parties then securely estab-
lished and on a winning track. There was, for example, the Singapore
Progressive Party (hereafter, SPP) formed in August 1947 by three
colleagues, Tan Chye Ching, Nazir A. Mallal and John Laycock, all
members of the SCBA. His employers, John Laycock and T.W. Ong were
members of the party. In 1948, the SPP had won three out of the six
contested seats in the Legislative Assembly General Elections of 1948
and up to 1955 it never controlled less than 50 per cent of the elected

seats. In the 1951 elections, Lee obtained his first political experience
by volunteering as the election agent for John Laycock and personally
supervised the putting up of posters and captions for the SPP. However,
the SPP was heavily backed by and made up of English-speaking upper
class professionals whom Lee saw as a disadvantage rather than an
advantage (Lee, 1998: 195). Like the SCBA, the SPP advocated progres-
sive and gradual reforms, rather than sudden, quick, radical ones. Their

early wins in 1948 and 1951 had been genteel affairs for the electorate
then had been taken from a voluntary registration of voters and this
typically reflected the English-speaking population who were not in
the majority. Lee knew that in the upcoming 1955 and 1959 elections,
with the granting of universal suffrage, the game would tilt in favour of
the Chinese-speaking majority.
Lee could also have joined the Labour Front, formed in 1954 by David
Marshall. Although Marshall could only speak English to the crowd,
his right-hand man, Lim Yew Hock, the President of the Singapore
Trade Union Congress, was fluent in a mixture of English, Hokkien,
Cantonese and Malay. Their plan was more appealing to the masses – a
more aggressive anti-Communist campaign as a means of convincing
the British to make a definite plan for self-government.16 Marshall was
also vocally anti-British and anti-colonialist, more in tune with the
mood of the streets. However, membership of the Labour Front would
mean being under the shadow of a more senior legal mind, Marshall
being the most successful criminal lawyer of his day as well as a charis-
matic presence (Chan, 2001).17 In addition, both Marshall and Lim Yew
Hock were English-educated, which were, with the looming implemen-
tation of universal suffrage, “liabilities.”
Aligning with the Chinese-educated masses

On the other side of the divide were the Chinese-educated who were
vehemently anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. The general literacy rate
then stood at 52.3 per cent of total population – 26.7 per cent literate
in Chinese and 21 per cent literate in English, thanks to the British
system of segregated schools (Department of Statistics, 1957: 76–77).
While the figures showed that the Chinese-educated were not the mass
of the population, it was they, rather than the English-educated, who
could reach the Chinese masses. In 1955, the vote of the masses would
count, since automatic registration of voters would by then be imple-
mented; and for the 1959 election, the votes of the masses would count
even more because by then, compulsory voting would be operational

(Ong, 1975).18 This meant that the use of mother tongues such as Tamil
and Cantonese, and lingua francas such as Hokkien and BM would be
necessary as tools of mass communication – English and SE would only
reach the few, that is, the thin top layer of Singapore society. Lee real-
ized too that the masses were most unlike his privileged background
and that to win the elections he also would have to switch identitiy by
speaking in their tongue:

We understood that to win over Singapore we had got to win over the
Chinese-educated. The English-educated was a small fraction of the
population. So we got in touch with the left-wingers because we wanted
to get the Chinese-educated. (Lee, quoted in Han et al., 2011: 248)
This meant playing down a pro-English, pro-British stand and adopting

an anti-colonial one by attacking Western culture and the privileged
position of the pro-British English-educated middle class, to which he
himself belonged. While he already had friends from the crème de la
crème of the English-speaking society what he needed now was to culti-
vate the Chinese-educated, most of who were Communist sympathizers
(Bloodworth, 1986: 44). The Chinese-educated’s admiration for the
Communists was not surprising as the Malayan Communist Party had
formed a formidable organization to fight the Japanese in Malaya and
its leaders were then highly respected by the masses. In addition, the
Communist victory in China in October 1949 had also provided inspir-
ation and a sense of “mission” to the Chinese-educated (Barr, 2000).
Hence, on his return from Britain as a young lawyer in 1950, Lee
actively sought the support of Chinese-speaking labour unions by
volunteering to serve as their legal advisor. No union was too small
or humble for his help, whether their members were street vendors,
taxi-drivers, trishaw riders and/or bumboat operators (Yap et al., 2009:
29). Lee soon became legal advisor to no fewer than 50 unions and
associations. However, it was the Fajar sedition trial of 1954 where he
represented left-wing students at the University of Malaya located in
Singapore agitating against colonial rule that brought him to the atten-
tion of the Chinese-speaking public. Although he lost the case, the
well-publicized trial was a personal success because it strengthened his
credentials as a left-wing anti-colonialist.19
Forming a political party

Such activities enabled Lee to gain the trust of the more powerful
Chinese-educated pro-Communist trade union leaders and together

they formed the People’s Action Party (PAP) in November 1954, with
the immediate aim of contesting the upcoming 1955 elections. 20 Lee
became the PAP’s secretary-general and an executive committee was
formed with both Chinese- and English-educated radicals (Turnbull,
1989: 253). The Chinese-educated within his party were useful
as they could communicate with Chinese-speaking leftist trade
unions such as the Shop and Factory Workers’ Union and the Bus

Workers’ Union. Care was taken to represent all classes of people
from the Chinese-educated lower income groups such as barbers,
manual workers, farmers, clerks and teachers. A sizeable number were
trade unionists and student members (cf. Hill and Lian, 1995). The
branches catered to the interests of these “grassroots” groups with
songs, dances, cooking and literacy classes, radio programmes and
motor repairs conducted in Mandarin. According to Lee (1998: 242),
“the English-speaking members would attend, but there were no
social and cultural activities specifically organized for them ... ” This
linguistic-political alliance has been described by Dennis Bloodworth
as “The tiger and the Trojan horse” – the “tiger” being the Communists
and the “Trojan horse” the PAP, as they aspired to capture power from
within.
As Lee had predicted, the 1955 election saw mass support forthcoming
for parties aligned to the agenda of the Chinese-educated – that is, left-
wing, anti-colonial and socialist (cf. Yeo and Lau, 1991: 132). The results
of the elections showed that the masses of Chinese-speaking people
who had hitherto remained apathetic politically were now aroused by
the anti-colonial propaganda campaign. Accordingly, two left wing
parties – the Singapore Labour Front (SLF), led by David Marshall, and
the PAP, led by Lee Kuan Yew, made the biggest gains.21
On the other hand, the more conservative English-speaking SPP
suffered a shock defeat from which it never recovered.22 It advocated what
had long been anathema to the Chinese-educated, that is the promo-
tion of English as the official and working language of the nation. In
contrast, the PAP backed the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and their
political party, the Democratic Party’s, call for the introduction of a
more balanced multilingualism in the hitherto English-only Legislative
Assembly.23 This stark ideological-linguistic difference between Lee and
his politically ambitious bosses in the legal firm of Laycock and Ong
where he first began his legal career, led to the termination of their
partnership.24 Lee and his wife then left the firm and set up their own
firm, Lee and Lee in Malacca Street, ironically situated next to the office
of his former bosses.25

Other linguistic strategies

Names are perceived both by the bearer and the hearer, and one’s name
is also one’s symbolic capital. Names and naming narratives by which
we describe ourselves influence our perceptions of others – and all these
must consciously or unconsciously frame our personal and group iden-
tities (Reid and Macdonald, 2010). Later-generational (Baba) families
may give their children both English and Chinese names as a symbol of

their own hybrid identities and also to enable their children to operate
in two different symbolic worlds (see Chapter 8). On returning from
Britain, Lee was then popularly known as “Harry”, a name that not
only connoted an Anglicized Christian identity but also a privileged
Baba one. His political ambition in hand and like his anti-Communist,
English-schooled fellow later-generational PAP colleagues such as Toh
Chin Chye, Hon Sui Sen and Goh Keng Swee, Lee was careful not to
advertise his English-educated identity which was hardly a point of
favour with the Chinese-educated masses (cf. Hardwick, 2008). For a
long time, the Chinese-educated had looked down on the Babas for
their inability to speak Chinese.26 In addition, a significant number of
Babas were Christians 27 – and it was also not politically prudent to be
aligned with a minority linguistic and religious group. Indeed, when
queried about his identity, he would merely say he was only “techni-
cally” a Baba and nothing further (Jürgen, 1998).
Lee renounced his Baba background and its pro-assimilative tenden-
cies for a more pro-Chinese ethnic stance. One way to signal this was to
discard his English name and emphasize his Romanized one:
In 1950, I decided to try to have myself called to the Singapore bar

using only my Chinese name and I succeeded – and Lee Kuan Yew
became my public persona, what I stood for and saw myself as – a left-
wing nationalist – and that is how I appeared in newspaper reports
of my cases in court. I was mildly annoyed when I was reported as
Harry Lee – politically it was a minus. I did not name myself. I have
not given any of my children a Western name, nor have they in turn
given their children Western names. (Lee, 1998: 142)
By sending his children to Chinese public schools, Lee snubbed the

Baba community who could not speak Mandarin and who would have
sent their children to English-medium schools instead. This move
endeared him to the Chinese-educated who would later give him the
political clout he badly needed. By this means he showed in his own

words that he was “ ... as keen and anxious as anyone to retain the best
features of Chinese education ... ” (Lee, 2000: 173). On his children’s
education, Lee recounts: “I make sure my three children will not suffer.
So they have Chinese as their first language, then English, then Malay”
(Han et al., 2011: 262). Following their father’s dictates, Lee’s children
(which include Singapore’s current Prime Minster Lee Hsien Loong)
were publicly schooled in Chinese but privately tutored at home in

English and Malay:
Therefore I could say, that I was convinced that Chinese schools were
good for them because they were able to master English at home.
However for their university education, I said I would not send them
to a Chinese-language university. Their future depended upon a
command of the language of the latest textbooks which would be in
English. (Lee, 2000: 177)
Later, this strategy would give him the political clout to change
Southeast Asia’s only Chinese-medium university, Nanyang University,
from a bastion of Chinese-educated radicals in the 1950s to an
English-medium one in the 1980s. The planning of Nanyang University
(established in 1956) had started in 1953 with a donation of 500 acres
by the Hokkien Huay Kuan and donations from the Chinese-educated.
Lee attributed his political survival after this remarkable change to the
fact that: “unlike many champions of the Chinese language who sent
their children to English schools, my three children were completely
educated in Chinese schools” (Lee, 2000: 177).
Lee recognized the use of Chinese, especially Mandarin and SH, as
the key to the hearts of the electorate:
They could wax eloquent, could quote proverbs, used metaphors and
allegories or traditional legends to illustrate contemporary situation.
They spoke with a passion that filled their listeners with emotion
and exhilaration at the prospect of Chinese greatness held out to
them ... I knew that even if I mastered it, it would not be enough.
(Lee, 1998: 186)
The use of SH and other Chinese-inspired regional tongues was then,

and still continued to be in the 2011 general elections, an important
signifier of quintessential Chinese identity by especially first generation
migrants who still retained fond memories of their ancestral homeland

(Koh, 2012). Mother tongues such as Teochew and Cantonese and

lingua francas such as SH served not just to “warm up” the crowds, but
also to tug at heartstrings since there remain nuances that cannot be
conveyed in English.28
The other language that could reach a big audience was BM,29 but
Lee’s dominant language was English. His mother tongue, BM, was the
lingua franca in the domain of domestic transactions, not the high

literary Malay. Like the colonialist, Lee looked down on its hybrid
nature, which he considered lowly and inadequate for political life:
However it was a pidgin ... it was limited, it was difficult to move

crowds with it. There could be no flight of rhetoric. (Lee, 1998: 187)
Thus, on several public occasions, he had to pretend he could speak

Chinese, when in reality he could not:
I suffered embarrassment when newspaper reported that Lam Tian,

my Chinese-educated rival in the Democratic Party said I could not
read or write the language and therefore not capable of representing
the Chinese voter ... I blithely claimed I could read, write and speak
Mandarin, Hakka and Hokkien and also spoke Malay – as I was
advised by Chinese reporters that it was best not to admit lack of
my command of mother tongue. Actually my spoken Hokkien and
Hakka were pathetic.30(Lee, 1998: 183)
Lam Tian challenged me to a debate in Cantonese-speaking Kreta
Ayer Street of Tanjong Pagar. I dodged it and counter-attacked by
saying I have to get things done in the Legislative Assembly and
there a candidate needs to have good English. But I made a supreme
effort to say a few words in Mandarin in my biggest rally in Banda
Street, another Cantonese area. A friendly Sin Pao reporter called Jek
Yuen Thong drafted two paragraphs for me, and then spent several
hours coaching me to read a speech that took only three minutes
to deliver. But the crowd was with me, and they cheered me for the
effort. (Lee, 1998: 184)
To arouse the crowd, Lee began to look around for a Chinese orator,
which he found in Lim Chin Siong (Harper, 2002). Schooled in the
Chinese classics and the Shui Hu Chua (“Water Margin”) rather than
Shakespeare and Dickens, Lim (and his other Chinese-educated
colleagues) built a mass base for what would have otherwise been a
caucus of English-educated elite. In the 1955 elections, Chin Siong
managed to captivate the masses of Chinese-educated, dialect-speaking

farmers, factory workers and hawkers who had turned up in huge

numbers to support the Union and the elections. In the April 1955 elec-
tion under the PAP, Lim was elected to his seat in the Bukit Timah
constituency31 and entered the Legislative Assembly at the age of 22
(Harper, 2002). Like a “comet in the sky” (Ibid.), Lim eclipsed Lee and
other English-educated leaders of the PAP with his passionate speeches
in Hokkien. However, Lim’s charisma led to his eventual arrest and

detention following street clashes between Chinese student bodies and
the police in 1956.32
Other Chinese speakers who were courted included Lee Khoon Choy
(1988: 52–54), “roped in” to participate in the 1959 election:
I was one of those roped in almost at the last minute, perhaps because
I was Chinese-educated but not a Communist. I had been told that
I had a role to play in the party because I was bilingual ... we were
particularly short of people who could speak effectively in Hokkien.33
(Lee Khoon Choy)
Lee Khoon Choy (Ibid.) contested the Bukit Panjang constituency where
most of the residents were lower income workers and farmers:
My knowledge of Malay came in handy in Kampong Chantek but I

switched to Hokkien in the predominantly dialect-speaking neigh-
bourhood of Yea Sua Buay (“the end of coconut hill”).
Meanwhile, Lee’s close identification with detained left-wingers such

as Lim Chin Siong, a founder member of the PAP, strengthened his
own popularity and public image as “champion of the dispossessed.”
Throughout this period, Lee used socialist, anti-colonial leftist
language to ensure his political-linguistic identity to Lim. He had
been, after all, the solicitor for most, if not all, the Chinese-educated
detained party leaders and cadres (Harper, 2002). He protested when-
ever the British Special Branch detained the Communists in his party,
but evidently relied upon such detentions to remove his more charis-
matic Chinese-educated opponents and enable him to retain control.
Evidently, Lee played a skillful linguistic hand between the unpopular
right and the anti-colonial left in the fight to be Singapore’s first Prime
Minister.
In the 1959 elections with the implementation of compulsory voting,
the PAP reaped the full voting force of the Chinese-educated and lower
income groups and won a landslide victory, winning 43 of the 51 seats
in the Legislative Assembly.34 However, it was the English-educated Lee,

rather than the Chinese-educated Lim who was elected Prime Minster
as Lim had been conveniently detained by the Lim Yew Hock govern-
ment and was unable to contest the 1959 elections because the consti-
tutional team to London led by Lim Yew Hock, with Lee as the sole PAP
representative, had “conveniently” agreed to the stipulation that pro-
Communist Chinese-speaking detainees (such as Lim Chin Siong) were
disqualified to run in the 1959 elections (Tan, 2002). Hence, with Lim

imprisoned by the British, Lee was assured of not being over-shadowed
by the charismatic Hokkien-Mandarin speaker, but yet was free to ride
on the wave of Lim’s popularity.
Conclusion: a linguistic sequel
In the 1950s, the PAP identified mainly with the needs and aspirations
of the masses of Chinese-educated. Lee recognized the importance of
language and identity as a means of strategy and tactic. While Lee main-
tained scrupulously the facade of unity with the leftist aspirations of his
Chinese-educated colleagues, he always knew that one day he would
have to break the alliance when it suited him (Barr, 2000). The inevi-
table happened in 1961 over the question of a merger with Malaysia –
the 13 PAP MPs who did not support Lee’s White Paper proposals on the
merger were expelled from the party.35 When Lim Chin Siong left the
PAP, he took with him close to 60 per cent of the PAP Chinese-educated
cadre to form the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front). During this time,
devoid of his “star” Chinese speakers such as Lim and Ong Eng Guan,
Lee decided to pick up Hokkien seriously “rather than groom another
man who might again give us trouble.”
I had two good tutors, both from our radio station, who first had
to teach me a whole new Romanized script to capture the Hokkien
pronunciation of Chinese characters. Hokkien is not like Mandarin;
it has seven ones instead of four, and uses different word combina-
tions of verbs, nouns and adjectives. (Lee, 1998: 354–355)
Recalling his first rally speech in Hokkien during a 1962 by-election,

he said that even his children laughed at his mistakes with the wrong
sounds, round tones and wrong sentence structure. He wrote:
I could not afford to be shy or embarrassed. It was a matter of life or

death. It was not just a question of fighting Ong. I was preparing for

the inevitable showdown with Lim Chin Siong and the Communists
(Ibid.).
Quoting a Chinese proverb, he said that his linguistic journey was as

“difficult as lifting the tripod brass urn in front of a temple” (Ibid.).
He would mumble to himself words and phrases in Hokkien while
travelling in the car. Every spare moment he had was spent revising

Chinese to the get the sounds right, memorizing new words to get them
embedded in his mind so that he could roll them off his tongue without
looking them up. However, although he was able to make his policies
understood in Hokkien, Lee would never be able in his lifetime to use
the language impassionately (Leong, 2010).
Lee attributes his political success to his linguistic efforts:
... because I learnt Chinese later, and they saw my intense efforts to
master both Mandarin and the Hokkien dialect, I was able to relate
to the Chinese-educated and have them accept me as a leader. (Lee,
2000: 173)
Lee and the PAP have won every election since independence. Hence,
both “Singapore” and the “PAP” are quite synonymous; and ideas and
speeches by the PAP, and especially by Lee himself, play an important
part in our history.36 The next chapter takes us to the PAP’s nationalistic
reordering of pluralities in an independent Singapore. It also brings us
to the present and the close of our sociolinguistic history.

10
National Identities: The Reordering
of Pluralities

Newly independent states are often distinguished by their
socio-engineering efforts to forge an identity from above. It is believed
that a strong collective identity is possible only if the governed share
an “imagined” language (Edwards, 2009). Hence, certain languages
are deemed “official” or “national” such as Hindi in India, Russian in
the USSR and Hebrew in Israel, and others relegated to “dialect” status
with no place in the national consciousness. In some countries such as
France and Japan, language has been considered not only as a vehicle
for daily communication or for reading and writing but also as a cult, a
national myth of great dimension (Schiffman, 1996).
This chapter discusses how identity is both a top-down, macro, group
process as well as a bottom-up, micro, individual one and shows how
these two are in a state of perpetual tension, negotiation and conver-
gence. Like colonial states, nationalist states have vested interest in
both change as well as continuity. Through their state policies, they
continue to retard or hinder cross-cultural liaisons while at the same
time support multicultural and transnational alliances in line with
a modern, “global” outlook. This chapter discusses how tendencies
towards cosmopolitanism and assimilation maintain their onward
march despite top-down pressures of detraction and detour, and how
the advent of globalization has enabled identities to be more construc-
tive than essentialist. It discusses how familiar impulses of attraction
and engagement, of solidarity and collaboration have continued their
evolutionary march in spawning new identities.
Top-down: the reordering of pluralities
The heyday of colonization has seen identities aligned with physical

characteristics. While the first Resident General of the Federated Malay
170

The Reordering of Pluralities 171
States (now Malaysia), Sir Frank Swettenham (1850–1946), confidently

described what he called “the real Malay” as “a brown man, rather short
of stature, thick set and strong, capable of great endurance” (quoted
in Milner, 2008: 5),1 it is no longer possible today for anyone to be so
confident or so clear.
Nevertheless, the legacy of divide et impera continues to be in place and
it is ironical that while many nationalist governments begin on an anti-

colonial footing, they usually find that they have to revert to a form of
neo-colonialism themselves. Often the basic structure of government
has been borrowed from the colonialists, and the succeeding national
elite, who has been nurtured by them, has tended to view multilin-
gualism as a symbol of “disruptiveness” rather than as a “unity in diver-
sity.” Often, these local elites retain the laws and security instruments
of the colonial era and the logic of race and language engineering as a
means of state management. “Ideological state apparatus” (Althusser,
1970) such as the media, schools and religious bodies then resume
their roles as disciplinary sites where discourses of identity formation
continue to take place. This section details four ways of governability
and identity construction that have been influenced deeply by the
British in post-colonial Singapore: racial compartmentalization, the
reordering of pluralities, race migration and the management of reli-
gious distinctiveness.
Racial compartmentalization
According to Hong and Huang (2008: 26), Lee Kuan Yew has been
engaged not so much with Communism, but with communal identities
since his election victory in 1959. An ardent believer of kin-selection,
Lee believes that at the group level, an individual is more willing to
make sacrifices for those they are most genetically related to. He has
often wondered publicly whether, in a famine, a Malay neighbour
would share her last few grains of rice with another neighbour or
her own family or fellow Muslims, a comment which once triggered
strong counter reactions on the Internet (Han et al., 2011: 220). Once,
when attending a constituency event featuring multicultural and
multiracial performances, he found the performances “contrived”, “a
target to aspire to, rather than a reflection of reality” (Ibid.: 19). In
2007, he dismissed a survey conducted by the S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies (RSIS) on race and religion, in which more
than 90 per cent of Chinese polled said they could accept an Indian or
Malay as Prime Minister, even though the Chinese comprised 75 per

cent of the Singapore population: “You believe these polls? They say
what is politically correct” (cited in Han et al., 2011: 19).2
For Lee, the need to maintain “walls” of ethnic and racial distinc-
tiveness is primary and any attempts to tear them down “will create
unnecessary problems”:
The Indians have their own method. So do the Malays. The Malays:

Islam and also the kinship ties ... I don’t think you can erase all that.
That’s for hundreds of years, or thousands of years. You can’t erase
that. Because I recognized it. I decided you cannot change it. Or if
you tried to change it, you’d change it for the worse ...
That’s why the Chinese meet on Chinese New Year’s Eve, to remind
themselves of their obligations to each other and to recognize new
entrants into the family circle. It’s a cultural technique or method, so
that in times of crisis you know who to call upon. And it has helped
survival.
That is an instinct of all human tribes or societies. In every culture,
there is a desire to preserve your distinctiveness. And I think if you
go against that, you will create unnecessary problems, whether it is
with the Indians and their caste or with the Chinese and their clans.
(Han, Fernandez and Tan, 1998: 163–165)
With independence in 1959, an overarching quadratomy known

popularly as the “CMIO” model, that is, “Chinese”, “Indian”, “Malay”
and “Others” (“Others” referring to the Eurasians, Jews, Armenians,
Sikhs and other minorities) was created as a means of governance. A
poster and postage stamp showing a drawing depicting four hands,
each reflecting a different skin tone clasped to one another, came to
symbolize the ideological image of the new nation. This model was
complemented by the creation of four “official” languages and four
language-medium schools.3 Separate language-medium newspapers,
television and radio channels and an equal distribution of public holi-
days for each racial community were implemented. State-sponsored
self-help and ethnic-based organizations such as the Council for the
Development of Muslims in Singapore (MENDAKI), the Association
of Malay Professionals (AMP), the Chinese Development Assistance
Council (CDAC) and the Singapore Indian Development Association
(SINDA) reflects the CMIO ideology.4 Academics, the media, political
elites and cultural brokers have been marshalled to promote the CMIO
ideology in their activities.

Education remains the chief interventionist tool and language.

Textbooks from the FEB (1968) to the NESPE (1982) to the PETS (CDIS,
1992) to the In Step Reader Series (Chew, 2004) faithfully reproduce the
four-race ideology in reading comprehension passages. John Edwards
(2011: 109) has noted how language professionals are, ironically, charged
with the task of setting up new barriers to interracial communica-
tion, rather than the facilitation of mutual intelligibility. In addi-

tion, teachers continue to be imported from China and India to teach
Mandarin and Tamil and to do their part in upholding the “standard”
of the mother tongue – as well as the CMIO policy. Mandarin is seen
as a means to forge stronger business ties with China, and to a similar
extent, the Malays and the Indians have been encouraged to engage the
Islamic and Indian world respectively. The equation is familiar: “Indian
corresponds to India”, “Chinese to China” while “Malay corresponds
to Islam.” Most Singaporeans continue to use “Chinese” “Malay” and
“Indian” as prominent ways by which they position themselves and/or
are positioned in social interaction, even if it is an oversimplification.
According to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority of Singapore,
there are 91 options in all for the “race” category on the Singapore
Identity Card (Chang, 2010). Thus, Singapore remains one of the few
modern societies where race remains the primary means of identifica-
tion (Clammer, 1991).
In line with Durkheiman logic, which sees society as inherently
unstable due to the lack of a common culture, national cohesion is
generated reactively through assertions of the imperatives of national
unity against a common threat or enemy (cf. Cotterrell, 2010). The culti-
vation of a national identity and pride in the nation is done primarily
by “understanding how Singapore battled the odds and emerged as a
nation”, and by “understanding Singapore’s challenges, constraints
and vulnerabilities”, multiculturalism and multilingualism being two
of them.5 Like other post-colonial states, the idea that new nations
have a “weak” national identity, that they are still very much “work-
in-progress” and that “the plural society” is a difficult one to govern, is
faithfully upheld (Hill and Lian, 1995; Lian, 2006).6
Language shifts: the reordering of pluralities
Generally, nationalist states do not eradicate pluralities; they reorder

them instead. At the dawn of independence, Malay was given the status
of “national language” in view of the proximity of Malay-speaking

Malaysia and Indonesia. This status, however, is more symbolic than

real for the percentage of speeches made in Malay in Parliament has
declined and is almost non-existent; and today Malay is hardly heard
on the streets (Chew, 2011).7 Malay has also lost its traditional role as
an inter-ethnic lingua franca in Singapore although it is still used in
intra-Malay circles. This has also been the fate of Baba Malay, a sister
lingua franca. While Shellabear (1980: 156) had confidently pronounced

in 1913 that “Baba Malay is ... the language of the man in the street ... it is
a strong and virile tongue, more easily acquired than the pure Malay ... a
remarkable capacity of borrowing and assimilating ... it is sure to live”,
less than half a century later, Baba Malay was dethroned, derailed and
betrayed – ironically – by one of its native sons.
A more powerful Mandarin has also overthrown Hokkien as the
intra-lingua franca of the Chinese. Lee’s promotion of the very successful
Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979, at a time when only 10 per cent of
Singapore’s population spoke the language at home, spelled the death
of all Chinese dialects, including Hokkien. The use of regional (dialect)
language in Chinese homes has declined from 76 per cent in 1980,
to 49 per cent in 1990, to 30 per cent in 2000 and to 19 per cent in
2010 (Department of Statistics, 1991, 2001, 2010). Hence, while close
to four out of five Singaporean Chinese spoke dialects at home thirty
years ago, only one in five do so today (Leong, 2010). One of the effects
of the Campaign was the elimination of dialect in the mass media,
which in effect meant that subsequent political elections would see less
political clout gained from the use of Hokkien or Cantonese since the
media would not be able to relay the speech.8 While Hokkien was still
used in the 2011 parliamentary elections, its use has become largely
symbolic and no longer politically decisive, since only the elderly would
be able to understand its allusions, due to the overwhelming success
of the three-decades long Speak Mandarin Campaign.9 Today, Hokkien
provides more entertainment and comic relief rather than any subtle
nuance of a political nature.
The following table shows the ascendancy of English and Mandarin
in the home at the expense of Chinese dialects in the last three
decades.10
Most academic accounts of the Speak Mandarin Campaign have read
it as an attempt to promote the social-cultural values of the Chinese as
a ballast against the influence of the English language, which was seen
as a medium of Westernization (cf. Birch, 1998; Teo, 2005).11 What has
not been adequately recognized, however, is the Campaign’s effect in
heightening racial boundaries. The aggressive promotion of Mandarin

Home 1990 2000 2010

language
English 19.3 23.9 32.6
Mandarin 30.1 45.1 47.7
Chinese dialects 50.3 30.7 19.2

Others 0.3 0.4 0.4
Figure 10.1 Home languages in Singapore 1990, 2000 and 2010
as well as the state-promoted adoption of hanyu pinyin names for all

Chinese in the 1980s, coupled with the continuing influx of Mandarin-
speaking migrants from China has resulted in the mass sinicization of
the Chinese race. This apparent sinicization has placed the Malays and
Indians on the defensive, since they naturally found Mandarin “foreign”
and alienating relative to the more “familiar” southern Hokkien sounds
whose lexis and syntax had long been assimilated to Malay.12
The ascendancy of English
The de facto “national” language of Singapore is English and all those

who are well versed in English remained as powerfully entrenched
as they were in the days of the British Raj. For example, once Lee’s
Chinese-educated opponents were defeated, Lee enabled English to
become the de facto national language and the gateway to all prestig-
ious and well-paid jobs, a situation that was what the Chinese-educated
had originally feared (see Chapter 9). Prior to 1950, the ratio of
Chinese-stream students to English-stream students was 2:1 but by 1954,
enrolment was almost equal. After independence, in 1962, the number
of Chinese children who entered English-medium schools at Primary
1 exceeded those in Chinese schools. By 1978, English-stream students
outnumbered Chinese-stream students 9:1 (Noss, 1984). By 1987, all
schools were converted to using English as the language medium. Today,
there is a dramatic shift to monolingualism in English – as may be seen
in the shift of all groups towards English as the predominant home
language: in 1980 – 10 per cent, 1990 – 19 per cent, 2000 – 24 per cent,
and in 2010 – 27 per cent (Department of Statistics, 2011). Since 1965,

Singapore has implemented a bilingual policy, which does not mean

any two languages in the CMIO but rather English and one other offi-
cial language (Hill and Lian, 1995; Lian, 1999).13 Pakir (1991) has termed
this the “English-knowing bilingualism” with the “first language”
referred categorically to as English, and the “second language” as one of
the other official languages such as Mandarin, Tamil and Malay.14
As early as 1959, Lee (2000: 170) had explained his choice for English

supremacy in the following manner:
We realized that English had to be the language of the workplace and

the common language. As an international trading community, we
would not make a living if we used Malay, Chinese or Tamil. With
English, no race would have an advantage. But it was too sensitive
an issue for us to make immediate changes. To announce that all
had to learn English when each race was intensely and passionately
committed to its own mother tongue would have been disastrous.
For English to remain in the ascendant, the identity-creation poten-

tial of Singlish (SE) remains an enigma to a management policy that
has long thrived on the colonial legacy of ethnic compartmentaliza-
tion. To nip this potential in the bud, a Speak Good English Movement
(SGEM) was launched in 2000. Then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
designated Singlish as an “enemy” since “investors will not come if
their supervisors and managers can only guess what our workers are
saying.” Colonel Wong, Chairman of the SGEM in 2000, reiterated:
“It is important that while we develop a brand of English which is
uniquely identifiable with Singapore, it should not be a Singlish type”
(Straits Times, 31 March, 2000).15 With this Campaign, the speaking
of SE, together with its sister lingua francas, BM and SH, now appears
inappropriate and subversive.
Race and migration
The questions from Chapter 3, such as “Where are you from?”

continues to be apt for Singapore as its story continues to be one of
arrival and departure. Once “thronged with junks, topes and prows that
used to arrive in larger numbers from China, Cochin China, Celebes,
Java, Bawean and other places in the archipelago” (Morris, 1878: 17),
Singapore retains its status as a key cosmopolitan port in the world.
However, there is yet another reason for this that has been under-
played, which is that these new migrants, who are mostly from India


Photo 8 A set of Singapore postage stamps issued in 1999 commemorating the
50th anniversary of the inter-religious organization in Singapore. The stamp
shows nine different religions in Singapore. Source: Author’s photo collection.
and China as in colonial times, not only fill job vacancies and grease
the wheels of the economy but also enable the “maintenance” of the
“original” racial composition. The low birth rates of the Chinese and
Indian population relative to the Malay community has long threat-
ened the carefully thought through ratio between the races, and inter-
ventionist measures have been taken to ensure that the “balance” be
maintained – preferably as close as possible to the census at the time
of independence – 77 per cent Chinese, 15 per cent Malay, 6 per cent
of Indian and 2 per cent of other ethnic definitions (Department of
Statistics, 1957). The adoption of Singapore citizenship by many ethnic
Chinese and Indian nationals in the last few decades has helped in
maintaining the racial balance; for example, in 2010, the racial balance
stood remarkably similar to that of 1957: Chinese 74.15 per cent,
Malays, 13.4 per cent, Indians 9.25 and others 3.35 (Department of
Statistics, 2011).
The management of religious distinctiveness
As did his predecessors, Lee believes that religion, like race, has “deep
fault lines” that will continue to divide and hence each religion must
be managed symbolically as it were, in distinct compartments, coming
together periodically for peaceful and symbolic cooperation in a body
known as the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, created for
“such matters affecting persons of any racial or religious community in
Singapore” (cf. Chua, 1998: 190). Hence, various state policies spell out
religious practices right up to matters of financial governance and reli-
gious space is apportioned precisely according to mathematical ratios
(Goh and Holden, 2009). The link between religion and race, and reli-
gious and racial harmony is also seen in the fact that the Chairman and
other members of the key Presidential Council for Religious Harmony
are appointed by the President, on the advice of the Presidential Council

for Minority Rights (Goh, 2009: 5). While this in principle protects
each racial or religious group in Singapore, it also reinforces the associa-
tion of race and religion and heightens the boundaries defining these
communities (see Photo 8). Another act – the Maintenance of Religious
Harmony Act was passed in 1990, ostensibly to enable restraining orders
on religious leaders who engage in politics.16
Like the British, who ensured that only the Malays were identified

with Islamic family law and not the other races even if they too were
Muslims, so too, Lee, in the book “Hard Truths to Keep Singapore
Going” (Han et al., 2011) reiterated: “Muslims socially do not cause
any trouble, but they are distinct and separate.”17 In addition, in the
last two decades, the double-affiliation “Malay-Muslim” used in offi-
cial Singapore discourse has become prominent and may be seen
as an indication of the resurgence of religion as an identity marker
(Tan, 2009). Moreover, the Malays have become more consciously
“Muslim” than before ever since the onset of independence and the
terrorist attack on the United States in September 2001.18 Not surpris-
ingly, later-generational interaction of the Malays with other races, as
narrated in Chapter 8, is much more rare today.19 Suffice to say that
at the present time, Malay is no longer perceived as a lingua franca or
the national language but rather as a metonym of race and a marker of
ethnic identity.
In 1987, a Religious Knowledge course was implemented in
secondary schools, as a means to resist the tide of Western individu-
alism with sound “Asian” moral values (Tan, 1997). However, what
was not so obvious was the underlying assumption of Confucian
ethics and Buddhist studies for the Chinese, Islamic religious knowl-
edge for Muslims, Sikh studies for the Sikhs and so forth. As it turns
out, this nationwide school project was soon scraped because of the
unexpected phenomenon of Chinese students attempting to “cross
over” from Confucianism and Buddhism (which they were supposed
to embrace) to Christianity (Aljunied, 2010). In other words, while a
Chinese is assumed to speak Mandarin, adhere to Buddhism and prac-
tice Chinese customs, in reality, the Chinese often speaks Hokkien and
may be attracted to Christianity or Islam. Lee need not have worried
about this potential boundary intrusion for in the 2010 census there
continues to be a strong correlation in ethnicity, home language and
religion among the Malays and Indians, as well as a reassurance from
the census that “almost all Malay-speaking residents were Muslims
while most Tamil-speaking residents were Hindus” (Department of
Statistics, 2011).

Bottom–up: individual identities in the 21st century
Acculturation and assimilation, collaboration and syncretism have long

been witnessed in the waters of Singapore, with the accent being more
a delight rather than dismay. Singapore continues as a site of hybridity,
diaspora, migrancy and globalization. When one value system takes
over another it has often been regarded as an “addition” rather than
as a “replacement.” For example, the Muslim Sejarah Melayu draws

unabashedly from the Hindu Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita as well
as the cycle of Panji tales, creating a multicultural fusion of identities.
So too, three main overlapping identities may be discerned in all major
migrant groups in my period of study. In the case of Chinese residents,
the first is regional identity linked to “dialect” speakers from different
geographical regions in China; the second is associated with “great”
tradition and with Mandarin; and the third with the “Malayan” face
associated with the past lingua francas such as Malay, Hokkien and
English (see Chapter 6). This overlay of multiple identities is evident
in later-generational Singaporean journalist Chua Mui Hoon’s (2004)
account of her visit to mainland China. She confesses a “repulsion”
of Beijing’s monumental grandiosity, a feeling she attributes to her
“peasant ancestry from a peripheral southern China.” She writes of
herself as: “I am a huaren (Chinese person with parents who do not
speak huayu – that is, Mandarin, only Chaozhou). I think and dream in
English, but add faster in Teochew.”
Like dress, food, rites of passage and literacy endeavours, language is
very responsive to external stimuli. Patois such as Baba and/or Bazaar
Malay and Singapore Hokkien are still alive in Singapore and, despite
their faded glories, continue to be poignant reminders of the histor-
ical combining and blending which took place for hundreds of years.
This intermingling may not as has been simply portrayed be a “multi-
racialism” but a deeper, more engaged “inter-culturalness”, currently
unimaginable. For example, almost a hundred years ago, Bleackley
(1928) described a play that he witnessed in Singapore performed
by later-generational migrants. It was a performance of Hamlet in a
well-equipped theatre with an orchestra of European instruments.
However, Hamlet was completely “nativized”, appearing on the stage
dressed as “a Malayan gentleman ... with a red fez, who was having
trouble in his Arabic harem.” In the first act, Hamlet was shown to
have trouble with his harem, being obliged for some reason or other
to command his favourite wife to commit suicide with a sword. In the
next act, Hamlet and his courtiers sang a song in another apartment of

the palace in praise of a rich cake, which one of the attendants carried
aloft on a platter. The third act saw Hamlet confronted with a cavern
full of demons from Chinese mythology. In the European orchestra
that accompanied the play, a Chinese gong is struck when the audience
is expected to laugh. As in a Chinese wayang (“street show”), food and
drinks were served and “sweat towels” were passed around to the audi-
ence throughout the performance in the then posh Western-designed

theatre.
Much later, when Singaporean Mandarin playwright Kuo Pao Kun
wrote his first English play entitled The Coffin is too Big for the Hole in
1983, it revealed the people’s underlying penchant for the crossing of
linguistic-cultural boundaries since theatrical productions before this
time were linguistically segregated, in line with the state ideology
(Quah, 2002). A later play by the same playwright, Mama Looking for Her
Cat (Kuo, 2000), saw several languages spoken during the performance,
including Mandarin, English, Tamil and the then disinherited Hokkien,
Cantonese and Teochew. Kuo’s creative efforts may be said to symbolize
the bottom-up search for a more integrative identity. In addition,
research by Vaish and Roslan (2011) has shown how Malay and Chinese
pre-teens “cross over” into each other’s languages in their demonstra-
tions of solidarity and how the crosser is nearly always accepted into
the group towards which he/she is crossing. The data shows a Malay girl
using Chinese and a Chinese girl using Malay in the ground floor of a
ubiquitous block of apartments. They seemed to use each other’s mother
tongues naturally to bridge the linguistic islands created by colonial and
national blinkers. Changes to personal names often suggest new identity
locations on the axis of ethnicity, religion and culture (see Chapters 5
and 7). A recent survey of official names of Chinese students graduating
from the National University of Singapore over the past 20 years reveal
that about 30 per cent adopted a “Western” name in addition to their
Chinese ones (Reid and Macdonald, 2010: 6), a carry over of a practice
first noticeable among the Babas in the colonial era.
The integrative nature of Singapore English (SE)
Perhaps the most telling evidence of a blended Singaporean identity

is the continued use of SE by all races despite persistent top-down
measures to stem this. SE has been exploited in local plays, poems and
Singaporean sitcoms (see Chapter 8). In 2009, a comprehension passage
for primary schools in Haresh Sharma’s (2010) “The Necessary Stage”
begins with a boy attending his first day of school in Primary 1 in his

new uniform and carrying a new set of textbooks with 20 cents in his
pocket for recess. Sadly, it rained. The bicycle he was riding slipped into
a puddle and he fell. His uniform was muddied, his books drenched and
his 20 cents lost. Then a “miracle” came about: an Indian boy living
nearby had a spare school uniform to lend him, a Chinese girl shared
her textbooks with him and a Malay student whose mother worked in
the canteen gave him food during recess. This is poignant and real-

istic because all the communication took place through the miracle of
Singlish!
Like BM, Kristang and SH before it, Singlish has extricated itself
from ethnicity, since it is difficult to tell a Chinese, a Malay and
Indian Singaporean apart from each other just by listening to them
speak Singlish. It may be said that its mastery affords its user the true
indigenous identity such that the people of that country have come
to accept it as their own, much as Spanish in South America is now
known more as Chilean or Argentinian. SE is well suited to play this
role, with an English lexical base and mainly Austronesian (Malay) and
Sinitic (Hokkien, Mandarin and Cantonese) substrata influences (Lim,
2004). As a lingua franca, SE has inherited the inter-ethnic commu-
nicative roles once dominated by Hokkien, Bazaar Malay and Baba
Malay and the intra-ethnic roles once occupied by Tamil, Cantonese
and English. SE is also an emblem of change – much like Kristang,
which became “more Portuguese”, then “more Dutch”, and eventually
“more English.” SE today is becoming more Mandarinized rather than
more Malayanized. In the last decade, in line with cosmopolitanism
and globalization, a hybridized SE has incorporated words such as
Japanese, Korean, Shanghainese and Mandarin as well as American and
Australian slang, which were previously non-existent in the previous
generation (Low, 2010).
SE is best understood in terms of Alsagoff’s (2010) Cultural Orientation
Model (COM), which comprises International Singapore English (ISE)
and Local Singapore English (LSE). International “I” Englishes such as
International Indian English, or International Filipino English and
so forth, are the Englishes used in the areas of public administration,
law legislation, banking and finance in their respective nations. They
are exornomatively defined by global forces – that is, they must be
intelligible enough to function in international economic and finan-
cial markets. On the other hand, the local “L” Englishes such as Local
Singapore English, Local Indian English or Local Filipino English are
the result of linguistic commonsense, which tells us that language is
always influenced by culture and expresses local identities.

International Singapore English (ISE) Local Singapore English ( LSE)
Economic capital Social-cultural capital

Authority Camaraderie
Formality Informality
Distance Closeness

Educational attainment Membership
Figure 10.2 The cultural orientation model (COM) (with International Singapore
English and Local Singapore English as examples)
Source: Alsagoff (2007: 31).
Devoid of effective competition, SE has grown so flexible that within

a single utterance, speakers can vary the type of “L” or “I” features in
their speech, resulting in a variety of different styles of saying the same
thing. For example, Alsagoff (2010) notes that “L” has a relatively expan-
sive range of grammaticality, allowing speakers to signal either globalist
or localist tendencies. “L” can represent ethnic voices, for example meh
and ma (Chinese) and lah (across ethnic groups) in Singapore English,
making it an inclusive linguistic resource for the expression of socio-
cultural meanings, identities and practice. Here, the mix of “I” and
“L” used by such speakers in daily interactions may therefore be more
fittingly described as style-shifting rather than code-switching.
Conclusion: new realities
The preceding chapters have examined various early identities in

Singapore such as racial, regional, religious, orthographical, intergen-
erational, hybrid, political and national through a sociolinguistic lens.
One theme unites the chapters, and that is the idea that all identities
are primarily constructed through language and that language in turn
is constructed through them. Another theme is that change is never
ceasing and, correspondingly, there is the inevitable waxing and waning
of identities in relation to time and place. For example, while Babas
once identified themselves as “the Creole Malays”, the decline of Malay
economic power under colonialism saw them identifying themselves as
more “Chinese” or “British.” So too, while the Indians identified them-
selves regionally such as Gujarati or Bengali or religiously such as Sikhs

and Muslims in the 19th century, the rise of post-colonial nationalism

in the 20th century induced them to ascribe to an “Indian” identity.
Both the colonial port and the nation state are linked in time through
corporate networks that control flows of capital and information (Frost,
2003; Tagliacosso and Chang, 2011). They are nodal points of people,
capital, technology and commerce. As gateways to the international
economy, they are places with high concentrations of money and

capital.20 The formula for their success is one which must be accessible
to change and perpetual adjustment so that they may remain nimbly
relevant to the world (cf. Khanna, 2011). The secret of their continued
dynamism is that they take advantage of nature’s genetic code, namely
the individual propensity to be fascinated by diversity, which is
portrayed not just in the profusion of languages, but also in the food,
music and architecture that is found within its compound.
In recent years, however, a familiar phenomenon called “globali-
zation” has continued to bring in its wake a general destabilization
affecting all societies, with vast population mobility, the emergence of
multicultural societies in many places and an exponential increase in
human interactions (Chew, 2009). Globalization continues to engender
flows that link localities, ideas, ideologies, people, images and messages
in such a way that local events continue to be shaped by circumstances
many miles away and vice versa. It has encouraged the making of iden-
tities that do not depend on national boundaries such as professions,
skills, activities, dress, interests, etc.
Also, what was a heterogeneous Singaporean population to begin
with looks set, in the context of late modernity, to become increas-
ingly varied in its sociolinguistic profiles, as new technologies such
as the World Wide Web encourage the adoption of flexible citizen-
ship (Ong, 1998). Increasingly, language practices among Singaporeans
have become transidiomatic as a significant number discuss among
themselves how citizenship should work in the contemporary world.
It is becoming apparent that while the nation continues to be of great
importance, unless personally inspiring, it will soon be an external force
which is in conflict with a wide variety of layered realities that collect
around personal life trajectories such as language, religion, family
history, occupation and politics, often in multiple national locations
(Holliday, 2010). Indeed, cosmopolitanist sociologists such as Beck and
Sznaider (2006) claim that a methodological nationalism, born from
19th-century European nationalism, has imposed false boundaries on
a cultural complexity which has become apparent in recent trends in

globalization. This is an orientation that may entail some sort of world

government or it may refer simply to more inclusive moral, economic
and/or political relationships between nations or individuals of different
nations.
While identities continue to be moulded by top-down measures
imposed by state institutions both in the past and present, it appears
that bottom-up identities are set to hold sway. People continue to find it

attractive to cross all kinds of man-made boundaries, national or other-
wise. Today, food and music, clothing, art and even cosmetic products
communicate a sense of a transnational nation due to the small size
of the island. A significant number of Singaporeans are now assuming
global citizenship and it appears that the “nation” seems to be an
external cultural reality that is in conflict with a personal cultural
one.
Cross-cultural liaisons have continued to the present. In 2009, 18.3
per cent out of 26,000 marriages were interracial, and the figure looks
set to increase.21 Not surprisingly, the CMIO division of ethnic iden-
tity may no longer be tenable, especially as foreigners from different
parts of the world make up over 30 per cent of Singapore’s citizens.
Also, while the racial and cultural identity of a child from cross-cultural
families is determined by the paternal line this has become grossly
inaccurate over time since more often than not, children “follow” the
mother not just culturally but also linguistically. Moreover, just as there
were respondents who referred to themselves as Bugis-Palembang or
of Bugis-Baweanese parentage (see Chapter 3), there are an increasing
number of people today who use double-barrelled race classification to
refer to themselves as Malay-Chinese or Indian-Chinese.22 It follows
then that while the nation state may do its best to keep essentialist iden-
tities operant, citizens have their own resources to thwart top-down
identities and to construct bottom-up identities of their choice (Goh
and Holden, 2009).
There is also increasing evidence of a transnational diasporic iden-
tity of consumerism where people choose their citizenship based on
economic reasons rather than on political rights or participation within
their residential nation state. A reconfiguration of identities in terms of
consumerist lifestyle choices has become apparent (Chua, 2003; Stroud
and Wee, 2010). This neo-colonial capitalist identity has doubtless been
encouraged by the ascendency of English over Malay as the main lingua
franca of modern Singapore (Pennycook, 2007). In our history, Malay
borrowings of Sanskrit and Islamic loan words has revealed a relatively
metaphysical inclination, while an analysis of European (Portuguese,

Dutch, British) loan words has revealed alignments of a more secular

and material nature.23 For example, while the incorporation of Arabic
and Sanskritic linguistic structures has enriched the realm of the spirit
in Malay, the incorporation of Western orthography, grammar and lexis
has propelled it primarily into the world of the material sciences. Some
English borrowings are petroleum –petroleum; diesel–diesel; zink–zinc;
elektronik–electronic; telekomunikasi –telecommunicaton; debit–debit;

and kredit–credit. Even Portuguese borrowings, which were historically
earlier, have more in common with technology and material consump-
tion than in literature and the imagination, for example: bendera (“flag”
via Portuguese bandeira), beludo (“fleet” via Portuguese armada), jangkar
(“anchor” via Portuguese ancora), kapitan (“captain” via capitao), bantal
(“pillow” via avental ), kandil (“lamp” via candil ), botol (“bottle” via
botelha), pena (“pen” via pena) and sabun (“soap” via sabao).
In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Wendy Brown (2010) considers
the recent spate of wall building in contrast to the erosion of nation-state
sovereignty. A question is asked as to the reasons behind the prolif-
eration of walls, racial, religious and otherwise, despite widespread
proclamation of global connectedness and an anticipation of a world
without borders. Drawing on classical and contemporary political theo-
ries of state sovereignty as a means to understanding how state power
and their attendant national identities persist amid its decline, Brown
considers both the need of the state for legitimacy and the popular
desires that incite the contemporary building of walls. She concludes
that contemporary acts of walling can be read as symptoms of “a theo-
logical anxiety” induced by the numerous forces that erode nation-state
boundaries. As state sovereignty is battered by global capital, walls are
built as prophylaxes against mobile labour, disease, terror, and the
innumerable other forces real and unreal that threaten to undermine
the myth of the sovereign state.
We have recounted the state’s imposition of top-down essentialist-type
identities as a means to keep the compact predictable and manageable.
On the other hand, we have also witnessed the bottom-up tendencies
of individuals to mix and mingle outside their top-down designations,
engaged in what Choo (2010) has termed an “everyday cosmopoli-
tanism.” One recounts here the anthropologist Frank Boas’ (1940)
observation that there have been no people who have not been influ-
enced by intercultural borrowings and who have not borrowed arts and
ideas that they have developed in their own ways. So too, in the 4th
century BCE, Plato wrote in his Laws, that one of the things human
beings love to do is to travel, see the world and meet new faces, a result

of this inclination being the penchant to directly or indirectly imitate

the cultures of strangers.
It is clear that while colonial and national governments have sought
to mould and indeed manufacture ethnicities for pragmatically driven
reasons, namely the maintenance of their own power bases, a new
world order is signalling a change of direction. Hybridity and syncre-
tism appears to be the terminus the train is coming from and heading

to, despite top-down efforts to obscure, divert and detour it. More than
ever before there appears a need to depart from the superficial cosmo-
politanism of the CMIO to a deeper, more engaged cosmopolitanism
which entails a tolerance for ambiguity so that individuals may choose
to live the unbounded and flexible identities they have always desired.
The fundamental historical genus of Singapore and its surrounding
regions was, after all, a catalyst for synthesis, a blending of differences
and the coexistence of alternatives within a dynamic crossroad. In our
broad canvas, it will be increasingly difficult to ignore the history of
Singapore’s perpetual varied cultural adaptations – the raison d’être of
its existence.

Notes
Preface
1. The name Singapura first appeared in Sejarah Melayu (“Malay Annals”),

which was written in AD 1535. (Singhain in Sanskrit means “lion” and pura
“town”.)
1 Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early

Identities in Singapore
1. Towards the end of the 18th century, scientific models of anatomy, such as
craniometry were used to show that Europeans were superior to Asians and
Africans.
2. Another reason for the re-emergence of religion is the fact that most Arab
countries are by definition Islamic, since the same clause in many of their
respective Constitutions commonly declares Islam the religion and Arabic
the national language.
3. So too, Chairman Mao of the People’s Republic of China wanted to phonetize
Chinese as a means of increasing literacy (De Francis, 1984). Then, existing
Western efforts such as the Wades-Giles notations were not acceptable to
the Chinese leaders for they were identified with Westerners who were more
familiar with the sounds of Southern Chinese dialects such as Hokkien and
Taiwanese.
4. The Unfederated Malay States is the term given to the five British protected
states of Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Trengganu. These states coexist
with the Federated Malay States such as Selangor, Perak, Pahang and Negri
Sembilan. PAS and UMNO are two major political parties in present-day
Malaysia with strong support in the Unfederated and Federated Malay States
respectively.
5. Not surprisingly, proposals for replacing one script with another in writing
a language are sometimes perceived as an attack on a group’s identity
(Suleiman, 2006).
6. Another example is the Sanskrit word punggawa which used to mean “bull,
hero, eminent person, chief of” in Sanskrit but which in 19th century
Maccassar had come to mean in the Javanese language: “leader of an army,
captain of a ship”(Macknight, 1985: 219–220).
7. The “lexical diffusion” (Labov, 1966) among elated words occurs because
of the tendency of the brain to use rules as much as possible in producing
language, resulting in considerable standardization.
8. During the 2,000 years of trade in Southeast Asia, at least thirty states and
their polyglot ports flourished, of which Singapore is only one example.
(Lieberman, 2009: 772).
187

188 Notes
9. For example, Singapore attracted Jewish businessman and philanthropist,

Manasseh Meyer, who was born in India in 1846 (Turnbull, 1989: 96). For
other examples, see the National Archives, Singapore of Felice Isaacs and
Frederick Isaacs Jacob Ballas (B 000378/10) and Savi Khafi (A 000389/06).
10. For example, in the 17th century, there are records that Portuguese and
Dutch naval fleets engaged each other in deadly warfare – with battles
fought either at the eastern entrance of the Straits of Singapore (near Pulau
Tekong) or off the Port of Melaka.
11. The census is likely to have been taken in a haphazard way. The first system-

atic one was only undertaken in 1871 (Hirschman, 1986, 1987).
12. Its multitude of population may be said to supersede that of Malacca, a
sister port where thousands of foreign traders were systematically grouped
around four major influential communities – the Gujaratis, Tamils, Javanese
and Chinese (Wade, 2010).
13. John Crawfurd (1783–1868) is best known for his work on Asian languages,
e.g. his History of the Indian Archipelago (Crawfurd, 1820) and his role in the
founding of Singapore.
14. The Europeans comprised not just the British but also the French, the
Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Italians. The 19th century
naval competition between the Dutch and British for the “East Indies” may
be seen in many English words damming the Dutch such as “Dutch treat”,
“Dutch uncle”, “Dutch courage”, “Dutch wife” and “go Dutch” (cf. Khieif,
1979).
15. Colonializers are often followed by their missionaries: for example, in the
case of Phoenician colonization, the language and religion survived in
Carthage for centuries long after both had died out in the homeland.
16. Seva Singh (National Archives, Singapore, 1989), who was born in 1920,
was a trainee medic in the Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He had an interesting
change of career during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. In 1942,
he had enrolled in the Hongwanji Nippongo Gakuen and was subsequently
offered a job to teach Japanese at the Teachers’ College in Johor during the
Japanese occupation. In his memories of the Sikh community in Singapore,
he recounts “no conflict with other races except in intermarriages.”
2 Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making

1. The Hokkiens later expanded to Hokkien Street and the vicinity of China
Street. The Teochews settled mainly along Circular Road and South Bridge
Road, mostly along the banks of the Singapore River (Savage and Yeoh,
2003).
2. Originally, Sago Street started out as a street specializing in the import
and export of sago. In the 20th century, it became specialized as a street of
funeral parlours. Today in its “third rebirth”, it is part of a quaint “tourist”
thoroughfare with small cafes and shops selling Chinese artifacts.
3. For example, the Hokkien piece goods traders formed the Singapore Textile
Dealers’ Friendly Association, while the Singapore-Malaya Chinese Textile
Merchant’s Association was predominantly Hakka (Yen, 2002). Another case
in point is the commercial banks, which were also organized according to

Notes 189
linguistic groups. The Overseas Chinese Bank founded in 1919 catered to the
Hokkiens; the Kwong Yik Bank founded in 1903 and the Lee Wah Bank in
1950 catered to the Cantonese; while the Sze Hai Tong Bank founded in 1907
catered to the Teochews and the Babas began the Chinese Commercial Bank.
4. The full title of the book is A Padre in Partibus: Being Notes and Impressions
of a Brief Holiday Tour Through Java, the Eastern Archipelago and Siam. Padre
is a priest who performs religious services in the armed forces, a kind of
modern day chaplain. Partibus is the plural of partus, meaning “a bearer” or
“bringing forth”.

5. Robson (1894: 19), a British observer, writes that: “a close friendship between
a Chinaman and European is uncommon.”
6. J.R. Logan was not just a lawyer but also a newspaper proprietor. He was
the editor of The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (1847–
1859), known popularly as Logan’s Journal. This was the first ever attempt to
promote a scientific periodical in the Straits Settlements.
7. In India, for instance, where communities of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs
have largely lived in harmony, the census conducted by the British colonial
authorities had led to a hardening of religious identities (Brass, 2005).
8. The policy of “divide and rule” (from the Latin divide et impera or “divide
and conquer”) has existed since the times of the Romans. It was a strategy
used by imperial powers to maintain power by breaking up larger concen-
trations of power into chunks that would individually have less power.
9. As a result, Malays in Singapore were outstripped demographically and
economically in 19th century Singapore, and never recovered from
being the “deprived minority” (Zoohri, 1990). It was only in the 1920s
that the first collective effort to improve their social status was initiated
through the efforts of Mohd. Eunos bin Abdullah, a member of the Straits
Settlements Legislative Council, who, realizing that Malay children lacked
a “bread-winning language,” urged the Department of Education to shorten
vernacular education by two years and to replace it with English.
10. One recalls Reginald Sanderson’s (1908: 124) account of the Malay popula-
tion: “ ... let us mark their rightful inhabitants. They are a kindly and likeable
people, but shunning most forms of work, they look on with utter noncha-
lance while the alien robs them of their birthright. They are however keen
sportsman, expert fisherman and boatmen.”
11. A supplementary textbook, in the Malayan Readers series entitled “We see
the World” by Cheeseman and Gillet (n.d.), shows how a Malay boy taken
out from his village was given an overseas scholarship and how amazed
and enchanted the boy was in seeing the world of London, Paris, Gibraltar,
Niagara Falls, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
12. Nagata (1975) argues that the low status and lack of social mobility of the
Indians in the plantations of Malaya is not so much a result of race but
rather of the vernacular school system.
13. This practice was confirmed by my interviews with Mrs Hedwig Anuar on
10 January 2010 and Mrs Lim Long on 19 January 2010. Both of them were
educated in English-medium schools before the Second World War.
14. Syed Hussain bin Abdul Gadir Aljunied (National Archives, Singapore
A000320/03) who married a Chinese Muslim convert, narrates episodes of
his education at Aljunied Islamic School in Singapore.

190 Notes
15. A close association between Christianity, English and colonial rule existed.
For example, Song Hoot Kiam (1830–1900) the father of Song Ong Siang,
the author of “One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore” was
displayed as “a Christian” and “reported to speak English perfectly” (79). In
writing of his father, Song (1923) wrote rather proudly that his father visited
England and was a part of the choir at the Strait Chinese Church (Song,
1923: 78–79).
16. Interviews with teachers from Singapore mission schools: Mrs Robert Eu
and Mrs Lim Long on 19 January 2010.

17. Founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1823, Raffles Institution provided an
English education for the sons of the British residents and the children of
local leaders.
18. The “Straits-born” refers to the inhabitants of the Straits Settlements of
which Singapore was a part (the other two being Malacca and Penang). One
Straits-born Chinese was Whampoa (also known as Hoo Ah Kay, 1816–1880),
a Singapore Chinese merchant known for entertaining guests with lavish
dinners: “ ... speaking English with the accent and idiom of a well-bred and
well-read English gentleman, he was well acquainted with the literature and
science of the West, and had a liking for its customs and manners ... ” (Straits
Times Orbituary, 29 March 1880).
19. For examples of English language textbooks replete with colonial ideology,
see Milne (1933) and Stowell (1933). See also Malayan Publishing House’s
dramatic readers (1946–1947) series by L. Milne and H.R. Cheeseman, the
Singapore and Johore Teachers’ Association.
20. This book was used in the Convent schools such as the Convent of the Holy
Infant Jesus (Sisters, 1936). Interview with Mrs Hedwig Anuar on 10 January
2010.
21. Source: Chinese Annual Conference: The Methodist Church in Singapore.
Retrieved from http://www.cac-singapore.org.sg/index.cfm?GPID=4 on 19
January 2010.
22. Source: National Archives (1989) Oral History, Accession No. 001211/20.
23. Where silent prayer is concerned, 57.1 per cent use Tamil and only 23.8 per
cent use English.
24. This idea was later internalized by Malay nationalists in Malaysia to claim
the “Malay race” as the “natives” of the country, and therefore entitled to
bumiputera (“first inhabitants”) rights (Milne et al, 2007; Shamsul, 2003).
3 Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided

1. My elderly Malay informants, for example, distinguished themselves
according to the categories orang laut (“sea people”), orang darat (“land
people”), and orang lama (“people who have resided long in the kampong”)
and orang baru (“newcomers”).
2. Frank Swettenham (cf. Burns and Cowan, 1975) made a comparative vocab-
ulary study sometime in the 19th century, and on that basis, listed the “wild
tribes “ of Malaya as follows: Dusun, Sulus, Nias Islanders, Kian Dayali, Punan
Dyak, Melano Dayak, Land Dayak, Tagbenia, Kinta Sakai, Semang of Ijoh, etc.
British officials knew there were many regional groups.

Notes 191
3. There are some scattered observations made by European residents,

for example, the surgeon, Dr Robert Little, wrote about a Kampong Java
(“Javanese village”) in the 1840s. Oral history accounts in the mid-20th
century also tell of active links in the world of the port through a wide
range of petty trading or cottage activities, such as the making of songkok,
capal (“sandals”) and haj (“dresses”), as well as palm leaf cigarettes, baskets,
copper tools, embroidery of tools and goldsmithery, undertaken by many
kampong dwellers.
4. Part of their historical distinctiveness stems from the use of the Lontara

script (stemming from the Malay word for the palmyra palm – lontor – the
leaves of which are the traditional writing materials for manuscripts in
India and Southeast Asia). Today, however, Bugis is often written with the
Roman alphabet.
5. The languages of these areas, with their relatively minor differences,
have been largely recognized by linguists as constituting dialects. Recent
linguistic research has identified eleven of them, most comprising two or
more sub-dialects. There are sub-dialects from Wajo, Sopeng, Sinjai, Wajoq,
Luwuq, and Siddenreng, as well as varieties from the areas of Pare-pare,
Sinjai and Suppa (Tol, 2001).
6. Maimunah bte Haji Mohd. Ali, (1913– HYPERLINK \l “CBML_BIB_000_364”
2001) whose ancestors came from Sulawesi through Java, Riau, Johor and
Singapore, has recounted the use of Bazaar Malay as a means of communi-
cation between the different Bugis subgroups. See National Archives (1993)
Accession No: A000457/14.
7. By 1973, it was estimated that there were 200 Minangkabau families in
Singapore and almost all of them had adopted Singaporean citizenship
(Alatas, Khoo and Kwa, 1997).
8. This migration came to a halt when immigration laws were tightened after
the achievement of independence from the British in 1957 for Malaya and
in 1959 for Singapore.
9. After the Second World War, the total number of Javanese coming to
Singapore continued to increase. The first wave consisted of conscripted
labour that was brought in by the Japanese Occupation (Turnbull, 1989).
The second wave comprised those who moved to Singapore through Malaya.
The 1970 Population Census showed that a total of 21,324 Malays who
were born in Malaya (later Malaysia) had moved to Singapore in the years
1946–1955; and as many as 29,679 moved to Singapore during the period
1956–1970 (Department of Statistics 1971: 262–3). Oral interview records
showed that the majority of them were young men of Javanese descent who
wanted to find a better life in Singapore.
10. The Melka Undang-Undang Laut (“Maritime Code”) was the key indigenous
guide to shipping at the height of the Malacca Sultanate and was the product
of the city’s Malay speaking population among whom Javanese were the
most numerous (Reid, 2001).
11. Fujian province borders Zhèjiāng to the north, Jiāngxī to the west, Guǎngdōng
to the south, and Táiwān to the east. In other accounts, Hokkien has also
been referred to as “Hoklo 河洛话” or “Hoklao 福佬话.”
12. An alternative classification by Hu (2008) and Lin (1998) are as
follows:Mǐndōng dialect (with Fúzhōuhuà as representative) Pǔtián dialect

192 Notes
in Pǔtián city Mǐnnán dialect, (with Xiàménhuà as representative) Mǐnběi

dialect, (with Jiàn’ōuhuà as representative) Minga dialect, (with Shàowǔhuà
as the representative) Mǐnzhōng dialect (with Yǒng’ānhuà as the representa-
tiveMike dialect (Hakka) (with Chángtīnghuà as the representative)
13. Teochews are the majority Chinese linguistic group in Thailand and on the
east coast of Sumatra in Riau and in Western Borneo. Notable Teochews
include opium and spirit tax-farmer and gunpowder magazine proprietor
Tan Seng Poh (1830–79), and businessman and plantation owner, Seah Liang
Seah (1850–1925), the son of well-known businessman Seah Eu Chin.

14. One group of Southern Mǐn speakers who fled to the neighbouring city
of Cháozhōu between the 9th and 15th centuries spoke what is today
known as Teochew or Cháozhōuhuà. According to Glossika, Teochew has an
overall 50.4 per cent mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, 44.3 per cent with
Mandarin and 43.5 per cent with Cantonese.
15. A well-known Singaporean Cantonese is Lee Dai Soh, who worked for
Rediffusion, a cable radio company introduced in 1949 in Singapore,
which broadcast many programmes in different Chinese languages before
the present-day compulsion both in Singapore and elsewhere to learn
Mandarin. Another well-known Cantonese speaker is Wong Ah Fook, a
native of Taishan in Kwantung province who made his fortune as a building
contractor, gambier planter, and banker.
16. The most famous Hakka in Malaysia was Yap Ah Loy, whose tin mines in
Malaysia and Thailand (Phuket) were exclusively worked by his Cantonese
Hakka clansmen.
17. Later, Cantonese women from the province of Canton joined these female
labourers and worked alongside them, also adopting the use of their distin-
guished headgear (Low, 2009).
18. Migration only resulted after Hankou was made a treaty port in 1870.
19. The Hainanese are also known for their ability to cook Western food, as
many of them had worked as cooks on European ships.
20. They are also known as “Hill country Tamils,” “Up-country Tamils” or
simply “Indian Tamils”, Many of them are descended from workers sent
from South India to Sri Lanka to work in the tea, coffee and rubber planta-
tions in the 19th and 20th centuries.
21. For example, the public cleansing services were reserved for the lower castes,
such as the untouchables, and this group suffered from several social disa-
bilities such as discrimination in the use of wells, temples and other public
places.
22. It is discernible in the speech of, for example, Ram Swaraj Dube (born 1927)
who came to Singapore at the age of 19 and assumed an orthodox Hindu
identity by wearing the dhoti, kola and heavy hair oil. He had lived in a
mud house before seeking his fortune in Singapore. Another Telegu speaker,
Ellam Govindasamy Naidu (born 1921) is monolingual in Telegu. See
National Archives (1989), Ram Swarath Dube, Accession No. A 000610/15,
Ellamh, Govindasamy Naidu, Accession No. A001169/06; and Mrs Soundara
Rajan Komalavalee, Accession No. A0001319/04.
23. Malayalee speaker Sheila Fernandez (National Archives, 1989, Accession No.
000569) recounted that Malayalees in Singapore usually married outside
their caste.

Notes 193
24. In recent years, Bollywood songs written totally in Punjabi may be observed.
Punjabi pop and folk songs are very popular both in India and Pakistan at the
national level. A number of television dramas based on Punjabi characters are
telecast daily by different television networks (Sridhar and Kachru, 2008).
25. The British intervened in Malaya in 1874 and subsequently administered
the states of Perak, Selangor, Sungei Ujong (Negeri Sembilan) and finally
Pahang in 1888.
26. See National Archives, Singapore, oral history tape of retired Sikh school-
teacher, Mohinder Singh (National Archives. Accession No: 000546/65). He

is a member of the Central Sikh Temple as well as the People’s Action Party
and speaks Punjabi, Urdu, English and Malay.
27. For example, Ceylonese Tamils tended to work as clerks, junior civil
servants and in the professions. Christian Malayalees from Kerala were
English-educated and worked mainly in the civil service. Punjabi Sikhs were
the backbone of the armed forces and the police force and worked as secu-
rity guards. Tamil Muslims, Sindhis and Gujaratis were often small traders
while the Tamil Chettiar caste from Tamil Nadu were moneylenders and
currency changers.
28. They built the Johor Causeway, Sembawang Dockyard and the Kallang
Airport (cf. Buckley, 1984: 364).
29. In 1941, Ibrahim Yaccob, a founding member of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda
(Young Malay Union), voiced the nationalist sentiment that there were still
too many who thought of themselves as Bugis or Boyanese instead of as
members of the Malay bangsa (“race”) pure and simple (Milner, 2002).
4 Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive

1. The language of the Orang Asli belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian or Oceanic
or Austronesia family, on par with other large language families such as the
Bantu, Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Uralic.
2. Wilkinson (1952) notes that the Jakuns spoke with an accent of their own,
for example, pronouncing the final / k / sound which contemporary Malay
suppresses.
3. Retrieved on 9 February 2010 from: http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/
austronesian/word.php?c=Verbs
4. Other languages that have been influenced by Sanskrit are Thai, Filipino, old
Javanese languages and, to a lesser extent, Cambodian and Vietnamese. The
Indonesian airline is described by the Sanskrit word garuda, which means
“the eagle of Vishnu.” So, too, Indonesia’s national ideology is described by
the Sanskrit loan words of Pantja Sila (“Five Principles”).
5. Translated by Greek explorers, this became Khryse Khersonesos or the
“Golden Peninsula.” It was once believed that the states of Pahang Malacca
and Muar had big quantities of gold – thereby accounting for Ptolomy’s
biblical “Mount Ophir.”
6. The Sanskrit equivalent of 1001 Arabian Nights, Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagaram
(“Ocean of the Streams of Story”) recounts the quest of a Brahmin setting
out for his lost loves in Kanakapuri “the City of Gold” situated somewhere
“beyond the islands.” One of the merchants he meets on his way has a father
who had returned rich from a long voyage to a faraway island, his ship

194 Notes
loaded specifically with gold. In reality, there was gold to be found. This
gold was metaphorical – the gold of trade and the potential for immense
profit either in exchanging Indian aromatic resins (including frankincense
(kundura) and myrrh (vola) for Chinese silk, or in obtaining local products
such as camphor (karpura) from Sumatra, sandalwood (candana) from Timor
or cloves (lavanga) from the Moluccas (cf. Ostler, 2005: 201).
7. On Borneo’s east coast, for example, 5th century inscriptions recorded
gifts to the Brahmin by a Maharaja, whose grandfather, without Sanskritic
dignity would have been a petty chief (Lieberman, 2009: 772).

8. Langkasuka was in North Malaya and had an ancient capital in Kedah where
there are traditions of a golden age.
9. So religious were they that a King of the region, Gangaraja (c.420) of
Champa, is said to have abdicated his throne so as to have the chance to
give up his ghost on the banks of the Ganges (Ostler, 2005).
10. Many traditional performing arts have been frowned on by the Pan
Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) as “un-Islamic” because they are based on
Hindu epics and “promote superstition.”
11. It is more likely that it was the Indian-Buddhist rather than the Indian-Hindu
who brought Sanskrit to Southeast Asia since the Brahmins have always
regarded the written transmission of language as less valuable than the oral
one (Coulmas, 1989). Like the Catholic Church, the Brahmins believe in the
essential role of the priests in mediating the written word of God, and in a
certain period of Indian history, only Brahmins were taught to read at all.
12. The first religious slabs were found at Bukit Meriam in Kedah, Malaya, and
have a Buddhist inscription allegedly from the 4th century (Wheatley, 1964:
35). There has not been as much archaeological attention and research in
Srivijaya (present-day Indonesia) mainly because Srivijaya fell under the
Dutch sphere of influence. The British archaeologists concentrated on the
archaeological finds in Kedah because it was part of the Malay Peninsula
and within their sphere of influence (Andaya, 2001).
13. Archeological discoveries of silver and gold Buddha images from the 8th
century CE found in a riverine environment in the interior of Western
Borneo confirms that Vajrayana Buddhism had been securely established in
the region by the 8th century (Collins, 1998).
14. The Chinese monk Yi Jing made several lengthy visits to Sumatra on his way
to study at the Nalanda University in India in 671 and 695 CE.
15. Srivijaya has been referred to as Yavadesh in Sanskrit, as Javadeh in Pali, as
Zabag in Arabic, as Sanfotsi or San Fo Qi by the Chinese and as Melayu by the
Khmer (Munoz, 2006). Founded in the 3rd century, it dominated the Malay
Peninsula and the islands around it, namely, Java, Borneo, the Philippines
and Sulawesi until the 13th century. The source of its wealth was the fact
that it controlled the two passages between India and China, namely the
Malacca Straits from Kedah and the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and
Java, a role which Singapore as well as other ports was later to supersede.
16. Majapahit was an archipelagic empire based on the island of Java from
1293 to around 1500. Its territories used to include present-day Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, southern Thailand, the Philippines and East
Timor. It is relevant to our history not least because Islamic Sultanates, such

Notes 195
as Demak, Pajang and Mataram, established their legitimacy in relation

to this ancestral line. The Nagarakretagama (also known as Desawarnana)
contains detailed descriptions of the Majapahit Kingdom and affirms the
importance of Hindu-Buddhism in the Empire by describing temples and
palaces and several ceremonial observances.
17. According to the Sejarah Melayu, the annals of the royal court of Melaka, a
Sumatran prince, Sri Tri Buana was cruising along Riau Archipelago when
he went hunting on Tanjong Bemian. From a summit, he looked across the
water and saw an island. Asking for the name, he was told it was called

“Temasek.” On reaching its shores, he beheld a strange animal. On being
told it was a lion, he gave Temasek a new name – Singhapura (“Lion City”),
today’s “Singapore”.
18. However, some have recently converted into Islam. In East Malaysia,
animism is also practiced by an ever decreasing number of tribal groups.
19. By the 13th century, the Turko-Afghan Muslim had begun to control most
of northern India. Three centuries later, the Muslim Mughal Dynasty was
to rule all of north India.
20. Malay speaking Muslims adopted Sanskrit swarga, the abode of Shiva, and
naraka for “heaven” and “hell” respectively (Malay surga and neraka).
21. There are some 2,750 Indonesian words derived from Arabic (Beg, 1977).
22. Usually, these pilgrims would work in Singapore for several months or years
before or after performing the haj to earn money or pay their debts to their
pilgrim brokers. Many of them stayed on in Singapore and became part of
the Muslim community in the city.
23. When James Brooke was the Raja of Sarawak (1841–1868), there was mention
that a Eurasian interpreter by the name of Williamson was brought over
from Singapore to unravel the languages which were heard in his court;
namely, Malay, English, Iban, Bidayuh, obscure tongues of the Baram river,
as well as different dialects of Chinese (Barley, 2002: 68).
24. The Netherland Indies obliged printers to deposit bonds with the govern-
ment, etc. By contrast, a haji or guru in Singapore need not have to do this
and could circulate in Malay lands as freely as an Englishman (Proudfoot,
1993).
25. One notes too that the first quasi-Malay nationalist organization, the
Kesatuan Melayu Singapura (Singapore Malay Union), formed in 1926, oper-
ated from Singapore.
26. This was a time when all the important trading throughout the Malay
Archipelago was at least nominally under Chinese authority (Levathes,
1994). In addition, when the Portuguese captured Malacca there was already
a significant Chinese settlement, a Chinese Shahbandar and a Kapitan China.
If these were connected with the arrival of Zheng He, they were very likely
Muslim settlements (Purcell, 1948).
27. Chinese Qurans have a very distinct style of narration, probably because of
its relative isolation from the Middle Eastern production centres.
28. In view of the trading ties between Palembang and China, the Sejarah
Melayu (Shellabear, 1961; original version, 1612) recounts that a Chinese
general was left behind in Palembang with his retinue to beget the subse-
quent kings of Palembang. In turn, Sang Sapurba, who Shellabear credits

196 Notes
with the founding of the Melaka and Minangkabau line of kings, was so
influential that the Chinese emperor requested a princess in marriage and
hence enshrined a Malay descent line for future Chinese emperors.
29. Linschoten (1885), the Itinrario showed that the Chinese were the principal
authorities of government. Hence, we may assume from this, that rulers
such as the Kings of Siam, the Yam Tuan Mudas of Riau, the Sultans of
Palembang and Pontianak and the Temenggong of Johor all had close rela-
tions with the Chinese.
30. Paremeswara, a descendant of the Srivijayan royal house, is also known as

Iskandar Shah or Sri Majara.
31. Yet beginning in the 14th century, it ceased advancing, and remained a
predominantly agricultural nation until the latter half of the 20th century.
32. Chapter 325 of The Ming Shi-lu (Chinese 明實錄) also known as the Veritable
Records of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) has a comprehensive 150 records or
more on Parameswara (Bai-li-mi-su-la) and Melaka. The massive translation
work was contributed by Dr Geoff Wade, a Senior Researcher in the Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
5 Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology

1. Sanskrit is the language of the descendants of Indo-Aryans (fairer skin, orig-
inally from Central Asia) who invaded India from the north-west around
1500, driving southwards the Dravidians (the dark-skinned Indians such as
the Tamils, Malayalees, Telugus and Kanadas), who previously had inhab-
ited all of the Indian sub-continent.
2. Some Hindu temples may prefer to use texts such as Sahasranama, Chamakam
and Rudram and these are also in Sanskrit.
3. However, despite its achievements, Devanagari never acquired the
pan-Indian status it deserved as the parent script of many major languages,
probably because of economic and chauvinistic reasons. Today, it coexists
with 10 other major scripts in India.
4. Brahmi has been used for Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi,
Bengali, Assamese, Rajastani, Punjabi and Sindhi, while Dravidian has been
used for languages such as Tamil, Telegu, Kanarese, Malayalam and Tulu.
5. One early Indianized state is Funan, situated on the coast of Vietnam. It was
so powerful that the small states of the Malay Peninsula paid tribute to it as
early as the 2nd century AD (Wales, 1976).
6. In the 7th century, the Pallava Dynasty created a new script for Tamil, which
was formed by simplifying the Grantha script, which in turn is derived
from Southern Brahmi.
7. Among the Indian traders were the people of Kalinga-Nadu (what is today
Andhra Pradesh) and they were called Kelings, once a term of high esteem
by the Chinese and Malays.
8. It recounts how a Malay warrior, Badang, hurled a huge rock from Fort
Canning Hill into the estuary of the Singapore River.
9. For example, in India, Muslims have modified the structure of Hindu
Devanagari by introducing a diacritic called the bindi to represent distinc-
tive Urdu phonemes (Rizvan, 2011).

Notes 197
10. An abjad is a type of writing system whereby each symbol always stands for
a consonant; the reader must then supply the appropriate vowel.
11. Jawi consists of all the 29 letters of the Arabic alphabet together with five
newly invented non-Arabic letters. It is written from right to left and has six
sounds not found in Arabic: ca, pa, nga, ga, va and nya.
12. There is some confusion as to the meaning of “Jawi.” Sir Stamford Raffles’
(Raffles, 1835) view was that Jawi originally had the meaning of Creole,
notably in anak Jawi, meaning the child of a Malay/Indian marriage. Raffles
also referred to bahasa Jawi, a term he translated as “a form of mixed

language.” According to Reid (2010: 310), Jawi is more likely to refer to the
traders of Jambi, Palembang and the east coast.
13. In the words of William Marsden (1930: iii), a British official in West
Sumatra in the 18th century, who had in his possession letters from all over
the Archipelago: “there is a striking consistency in the style of writing not
only in prose and verse but also epistolary correspondence.”
14. Sejarah Melayu (“Malay Annals”) is a Malay literary work that chronicles
the genealogies of rulers in the Malay Archipelago and spans a period of
over 600 years. It was listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme
International Register in 2001.
15. Raja Ali Haji who was from Pulau Penyengat in the Riau Archipelago was
the most prolific Riau-Lingga writer of his time and his stature equals that
of early Malay teacher, Munshi Abdullah.
16. Syllabaries rather than alphabets comprise of symbols, which represent
entire syllables and are arguably significantly easier to use in the process of
memorization and reading.
17. In Perlis, for example, the Malay royal family is descended from the
Sayyids of Haudramaut, Arabia. However, by the 1930s, many Arab
migrants had begun to bring their womenfolk with them (Kwa et al.
2009: 125).
18. Like the Arabs, the Indian Muslims built many mosques including the
Masjid Fatimah, Masjid Al-Abrar, Masjid Jamae, Masjid Sultan and Masjid
Abdul Gafoor, and one keramat (“shrine”), the Nagore Durgha, in Singapore
(Jayapal, 1992: 46).
19. Turnbull (1989: 98) observed that even at the height of British influence at
the beginning of the 20th century, only a few of them knew English. Only
those employed in the civil service, such as barrister Syed Esa Alenoar could
speak both Malay and English fluently (National Archives, 1989, Accession
No. A 000321/22).
20. This is quite similar to Vlieland’s (1932: 73–74) “Jawi-Pekan” – which
is frequently applied to “an Indian who has in fact no Malayan blood
in his veins, but is a Muhammadan who has settled and married in
Malaya.”
21. Its first editor was Munsyi Mohamed Said Bin Dada Mohiddin, a South
Indian Muslim who remained as editor for 12 years, from 1876 to 1888
(Majid and Said, 2004). It is ironic here that Malay literary activities were
first initiated not by the Malays themselves but by the Baba Chinese and the
Jawi Peranakans (Majid and Said, 2004).
22. There were seven Malay language journals in Singapore, five in Penang and
four in Perak.

198 Notes
23. It began as the Malay edition of the Singapore Free Press in 1907. Later, under
the editorship of Mohd. Eunos Abdullah (1939–1958), the paper was well
known for expressing Malay national aspiration.
24. Traditionally admired for their intelligence and linguistic ability, they were
frequently employed by the British administration as clerks, translators,
interpreters and munshi (“teachers of the Malay language”) to the Europeans
(Majid and Said, 2004).
25. The phenomenal rise of the Riau-Lingga variety (aka Johor Malay or Bazaar
Malay) is exemplified in, for example, two letters from the Sultan of the

Ternate in north Moluccas to the King of Portugal dated 1521 and 1522,
and a word list by Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian companion of the navi-
gator, Magelhaens from the same period. When Francis Xavier arrived in
Malacca in 1545, he spent his time preparing sermons and prayers in the
Riau-Lingga variety because he knew the language was commonly spoken
in Ambon and Makassar (Collins, 1980: 8).
26. In 1731–3, the Bible was issued in a Malay translation by Melchior Leydekker
and Georg Henrik Werndly.
27. One reason for the choice of the Johor-Riau variety as the “representative”
language of the Malays could be due to the fact that it was the language
of the Johor Empire of the 17th century, which was then one of the most
influential in the region.
28. Rev. Benjamin Peach Keasberry, who came to Singapore in 1837 as a
missionary of the American Board of Mission and who built the Straits
Chinese Church in Prinsep Street in 1843, had learnt Malay from Abdullah
Munshi (Song, 1923: 57); he realized that success depended on making the
Bible readily accessible to all and hence was a strong supporter of Rumi
(Makepeace et al., 1991).
29. Jawi was a relatively late entrant to the world of newspapers and the printing
press because, in the initial years, printing was rejected by Muslims due to
the perception that it removed the personal interaction between teacher
and student. It was only in the late 1880s that this initial resistance was
overcome (Laffan, 2003).
30. In a study of Muslim names in 100 families, Haque and Abiddin (2011)
found that their respondents were influenced greatly by religious ideology.
31. Only in Brunei, are the Rumi and Jawi scripts co-official. Even the Javanese
alphabet, which was once used to write Balinese and Sudanese, has been
Romanized.
32. A similar dilemma in the same period can be found in Turkey where the
Arab-based writing system in use was replaced by a Latin-based writing
system in 1928, signifying a “modern” rather than “traditional” Islam.
33. Most of the Hindu and Buddhist records were deciphered from stone but
these were few and rare. Also, even these could be destroyed once a new
religious ideology takes over.
6 Individual Identities: The Use of Lingua Francas

and Language Choice
1. Source: National Archives, 1989, Accession No. B000381/34.

Notes 199
2. BM comprises a majority of Malay words with a free flow of vocabulary

items from English, Chinese and Tamil. It originated as a form of traders’
Malay, used for centuries in the region; hence, the more polite phraseology
of literary accomplishments in Malay are not found and few would know
the meaning of words such as bonda, adinda, kakanda found only in private
correspondences among the literary classes.
3. Usually the Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, etc. would learn to speak Malay,
rather than the other way round. Nonetheless, there were some isolated
cases where the Malay may speak Chinese. Carsten (1980) reported that

on the fringe of an isolated Chinese settlement in Kelantan, a number of
nearby Malay villagers learned to speak Hakka, the language of their Chinese
neighbours.
4. Despite its humble origins, BM may be said to be the parent of Bahasa
Malaysia, Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia, the national languages
of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia respectively. This is because while
the Dutch could have promoted Javanese as the lingua franca, the rela-
tive simplicity and/or unpretentiousness of Bazaar Malay are the root
of its popularity. On the other hand, Javanese being a courtly language
possesses elaborate inflexions and distinct sub-languages marking different
levels of politeness. Hence, at the dawn of independence, BM rather than
Javanese was elevated to “national language” status. As a result, BM was
duly subjected to the processes of “standardization” (codification, elabora-
tion and implementation) so as to embellish its capability for literary and
scientific use.
5. In 1613, Emmanuel Godinho De Eredia, the Portuguese explorer, wrote a
book dedicated to the King of Spain, which mentioned the prevalent use of
Malay in the Archipelago. So too, François Valentyn in his description of
Malacca in 1726 AD observed that the Malay language was the lingua franca
of the region.
6. The Indonesian Etymology Project (Jones, 2009: 12–19) counted 1,050
entries, mostly in the semantic field of food and drink.
7. In return, Hokkien has adopted many Malay words into its vocabulary such
as agak (“guess”), botak (“bald”), chamur (“mix”), gadoh (“fight”), kachia
(“disturb”), longkau (“drain”), roti (“bread”), torlong (“help”), gu li (meaning
“marble”) and jamban (meaning “latrine”).
8. In a short story by Chia (1898) entitled “The Story of the Framed Passage Ticket,”
a Chinese by the name of Ng Sam Seng attempts an escape from an arranged
marriage with help from a Malay-speaking bomoh (native “spiritual healer”).
9. My sources were interviews with English-speaking teachers and principals
who were employed by the British in the 1950s, for example, Mrs Lim Long,
Mrs Robert Eu, Mrs S.K. Goh and Mrs K. Selvarajoo. Banker and scholar Yap
Pheng Geck (1982: 18) who attended the Anglo-Chinese School, an American
mission school in Singapore in the 1920s, recalled that his teachers were
mainly Eurasians, Tamils, American missionaries and Babas.
10. The fact that BM was essential for survival was confirmed by diplomat
Lee Khoon Choy’s (1988: 6) autobiographical account of his father, who
migrated to Malaya in the late 19th century. According to Lee, when his
father “picked up” BM, it was “the turning point” of his life for BM was
“a language which helped him find a job as a customs officer”, and which

200 Notes
ultimately contributed to his subsequent success as an importer of coolies

(“labourers”).
11. So too, in his novel entitled “The Nonya”, Chin (1962: 10) begins the first
paragraph in Malay (thereby signifying that the story takes place in Baba
Malay). “Ini chrita saya, Nona Tam Kim Lan. Saya latang dali Nengri china, itsu
jam saya blu umur duablas taun. Saya punya bapa dan mama di kampong Nengri
China manyak miskin ... ” However, Chin continued the rest of the novel in
Standard English, which was the convention at that time.
12. Carnage was sparked off by a custody battle over 13-year old Maria, between

her adoptive Malay family and her Dutch-Eurasian parents. During
the Japanese occupation of Java, Maria was handed over to Aminah bte.
Mohamed, an Indonesian woman who raised her as a Muslim named Nadra.
After the war, the Hertoghs’ learnt that their daughter was in Malaya and
launched a legal battle for her custody.
13. In the first 150 years of its existence, SE was taken very much for granted
and went generally unnoticed until Ray Tongue published “The English of
Singapore and Malaysia” in 1979.
14. From 1967, the administration of Singapore was transferred directly from
India to the British colonial office in London, and Singapore became a
Crown Colony in its own right.
15. See the Parsis collections at the National Archives (1989): Teacher Medora
Keki, Accession No. A000295/06; Rutton Patel, Accession No. A 000302/06;
and Vakil B.R., Accession No. A 000297/22.
16. One notes here that a form of English had already been present even before
the first English schools were established. In contrast, Platt and Weber
(1980) and Gupta (1994: 37) have argued that SE is likely to have developed
from the English used in schools, such as by children in the school play-
grounds of the 20th century.
17. Guthrie & Company was established in 1821 by Alexander Guthrie as a
trading branch of Thomas Talbot Harrington and Company. It rose to
become one of the leading agency houses in Singapore during the 19th and
20th centuries.
18. English-medium schools were of two types: government schools and the
mission schools (also called “grant-in-aid” schools). The Primary schools
provided seven years of education – Primary I and Primary II followed by
Standard I to V; the Secondary schools provided four years – Standard VI to
Standard IX, the final exam, and finally, the Senior School Certificate (Loh,
1975).
19. Ironically, later in life, Lee Khoon Choy (1988: 6) had to beg his father to let
him enrol in the Chinese school, which his father himself had founded. In
this way, Khoon Choy became the only child of his father who was bilin-
gual in both English and Mandarin. The rest of his siblings remained mono-
lingual in English.
20. Hokkien is the term used by the Chinese to refer to Min Nan. Singaporean
Hokkien (SH) generally holds Amoy dialect as its standard with its grammar
largely based on Minnan and its accent predominantly based on a mixture
of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech. SH is close to the Taipei accent so they
do not have many problems if they wish to communicate with Taiwanese

Notes 201
speakers. Similarly Taiwanese speakers can understand Hokkien except for

the Malay and English loan words (Zhou, 2003).
21. This organization is known today as the Singapore Chinese Chamber of
Commerce and Industry.
22. While Hokkien was the lingua franca for the Chinese in colonial Singapore,
in the neighbouring city of Kuala Lumpur, Cantonese became its lingua
franca, due to the latter’s economic dominance. Not surprisingly, Cantonese
remains the dominant intra-group lingua franca for the Chinese in Kuala
Lumpur today.

23. Indeed, Singapore’s taxi companies conducted their courses in Hokkien
right up to the late 1970s. See “Out with dialects, in with Mandarin”, Straits
Times, 11 December 2011, p.34.
24. Interview with former social worker, Dr Ann Wee, on 9 April 2001.
25. Minnanhua shares striking similarities with Taiwan Hokkien as seen from
the samples below.
26. See Alfred Benjamin Ponnuthurai, National Archives, 1989, Accession No. A
000350.
27. One notes too that two important languages are not mentioned in Figure
6.6: Standard English and Mandarin. This is because Standard English is
used only among a very small elite who were schooled either locally or
abroad. As for Mandarin, it is used among the Chinese who were schooled
in Mandarin-medium schools. Mandarin-medium schools became popular
in Singapore only from the turn of the 20th century with the rise of nation-
alism in China.
28. There was a time when “the tuan besar (‘big boss’) sipped their whiskey
stengahs or gin pahits from their personal crystal glasses or beer from mono-
grammed silver tankards ... ” (Modder, 1993: 30). A stengah is a term derived
from the Malay word for “half.” It was a popular drink in British Malaya and
is a combination of half whisky and half soda water and served over ice.
29. Interview with Edward Tan, a descendant of Tan Kim Seng.
7 Hybrid Identities: Three Case Studies

of Attraction and Engagement
1. Sailing technology up to the arrival of the steamships in the later 19th
century in Singapore meant that it would be many months, even years
before these visitors could return to their places of origin. As the Indian,
Arab and Chinese traders did not bring their women with them, they were
most susceptible to intermarriages with local inhabitants such as the Bugis,
the Javanese, the Orang Aslis, etc, (Jürgen, 1998).
2. Betawian Creole is influenced by Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Portuguese,
Dutch and the early Chinese traders. Menado Malay is based on Ternatean
Malay and highly influenced by the Ternatean, Dutch, Minahasa languages
and some Spanish and Portuguese words.
3. Croft’s (2000: 115–19) “theory of utterance selection” postulates that
language change results from people’s desire to convey an exact meaning.
This tempts them to practice stretching or breaking linguistic conventions.

202 Notes
When two different communities meet, levelling/simplification may occur

as in the case of pidgins and Creoles. Prolonged contact often results in
a convergence, a compromise, typically a simplification, of two or more
communities’ conventions.
4. Another variety derived from Bazaar Malay (cf. Grijns, 1991) is Jakarta Malay
(also known as Bahasa Betawi ).
5. One notes that Freedman (1962) argues that the primary parent of Baba
Malay is Hokkien. For example, the syllable ng, n, or m, which forms the first
part of kinship terms in Baba Malay, is a version of ng, the vocative particle

in the Zhangzhou sub-dialect of Hokkien.
6. The word Baba is given in Douglas’ Hokkien dictionary as meaning a
half-caste Chinese: “One can see in Malacca Babas who has claimed no
connection to China for centuries, clad in long jackets, loose drawers,
and black skull caps, the very counterparts of Chinese to be seen any
day at Amoy, Chusan, or under the walls of Nanking” (Vaughan, 1985
[1879], p.3).
7. The term Chetty may also refer to another migrant group of Indians who
specialized in moneylending, known as the Nagarathar or Nattukkottai
Chettiars.
8. This phenomenon is also found in the Kelantan dialect of Malay, for
example: serambi to serami and sembahyang to semaye; and in the Kedah
dialect, for example, kambing to kamin and lembu to lemu.
9. The language is also called Cristão or Cristan (“Christian”), Português de
Malaca (“Malacca Portuguese”), or simply Papiá.
10. The Eurasian community had a complex heritage of Portuguese, British
or Dutch mixed with Indian, Macanese, Malaccan, Burmese, and Siamese
and/or Singhalese origins. Spanish Eurasians are more commonly called
mestizos. “Burghers” usually refer to offsprings of Dutch-Javanese descent.
French-Vietnamese are called metises.
11. Some orphan girls of marriageable age were sent out in batches from Lisbon
at the expense of the Crown but the numbers were far too few in relation to
the men (Boxer, 1965).
12. Taylor (1983: 66) described the Indonesian ladies married to Dutch colonials
as “bent on the pursuit of pleasure and lavish consumption.” In the week-
days, they would wear the Indonesian sarong and kebaya that reached to their
knees. On Sundays when they went to church with their husbands, they
would wear European costumes but looked gauche and uncomfortable.
13. Olivia Raffles was the wife of the celebrated British “founder” of Singapore,
Sir Stamford Raffles (1781–1926).
14. White women were scarce in the tropics. Only a minority of bachelors
succeeded in finding brides – export of fiancées from England was consid-
ered risky because “she was almost bound to fall for somebody on the ship”
(Allen, 1983: 155).
15. John Crawfurd was the second British Resident of Singapore who held office
from 1823–1826.
16. In view of the “white supremacy” policy, it was natural for the Eurasians to
marry upwards rather than downwards. A Japanese traveller to Singapore,
Fujii (1943: 41), commented that the Eurasian ambition was “to marry a
European but they usually ended up by marrying one of their own kind.”

Notes 203
17. Interview with Mrs Hedwig Anuar, who spoke Kristang as a child, on 10th
January 2010; and Mr Joe Conceicao on 8th September 2009.
18. Such nicknames aptly describe the features, character or the superficial
characteristics of a person and bear no malice to the addressee (Marbeck,
2004: 28).
19. Interview with Mrs Rosie Tan (1915–2009) who remembers her aunties and
cousins referred to by such names, on 19 September 2007.
20. Interview with Eurasian-Chinese Eunice Khoo on 2 May 2002.
21. The most common example is that of the prefixes and suffixes which are of

Latin or Greek roots such as mono, from the Greek μόνπ (monos) meaning
“one”; and tele (from the Greek τῆλε (tēle) ) meaning “far” and which speaks
of past cross-cultural laisons.
8 Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating

Solidarity and Plurality
1. In contrast to accommodation and assimilation, the notion of transplan-
tation suggests the transference of a culture en masse from the original
sociocultural milieu, rebuilding it in other lands. An example of transplan-
tation (rather than assimilation) is seen in the settlement established by
the Yunnan Chinese community (comprising Chinese nationalist soldiers
who left Yunnan to enter this region) in the Golden Triangle in Thailand.
They transplanted their culture en masse from China and rebuilt an ideal-
ized Confucian moral order that is characterized by graded interpersonal
relationships (Huang, 2010).
2. Names such as Rosie, Mary, Bertie and Charlie were common. European
“Christian” names also proved fashionable – this pattern was encouraged
by missionary schools, especially convent schools where teachers preferred
names they could remember and pronounce, whether or not the bearers
were Christians (Reid and Macdonald, 2010).
3. The decline of the status of Malay in relation to English was observed as
early as 1937 when the annual report of the Straits Settlements (1937: 85)
reported categorically: “Malay is gradually being superseded by English as
the language of commerce.”
4. This model was conceived based on the quite conventional life story of a
Bawean migrant, Dzafir Abul Karim. Dzafir is poor but hardworking – he
drives a steamroller to flatten roads under construction in the morning
and makes traditional herbs to supplement this income in the evening.
After saving some money, he is able to marry, in this case a second
generation, local-born women. Not understanding Bawean and Madura,
they then converse using the lingua franca Bazaar Malay. Their chil-
dren absorb the regional cultures of both parents, are native speakers
of Bazaar Malay, and by studying in national schools, are further assim-
ilated to the values of Singapore society. In the third generation, the
income and occupational gap with other local-born Singaporeans are
lessened for among them is a civil servant, an educationist, a chemist
and an executive in a multinational company (recounted in the Straits
Times, 20 March 2010).

204 Notes
5. Skinner (1996: 73) has recalled how a sinkeh could become suddenly
wealthy if he was taken in as a son-in-law of one of the elite Peranakan
families.
6. The shortage of women also enabled prostitutes, who would usually be
regarded as suffering under a social stigma, to marry out of their low status,
and achieve a family role (Wee, 1996).
7. Interview with K.M. Ravendran, a fourth generation Malayalee from Kerala,
India.
8. While the local people went to cinemas and cabarets, the Europeans

frequented the nightclubs and dance restaurants.
9. The Chinese have a long history in Trengganu, bearing in mind that they
were once given the right to issue coins in return for service to the Sultan,
a role which was abolished by the British when they took over the state
coffers (Goneng, 2007: 75). In Trengganu, Chinese dressed in the Malay
batik sarong and baju kebaya and spoke fluent “Trengganu speak“ as in the
following:Guane mung di Teganung? (“How are you in Teganung?”)Ggitulah
sokmo! (“As always, for evermore!”) (Ibid.: 7).
10. Eurasian, Charles William Bennett (National Archives, 1989, Accession
No. A000426/14), recounts a similar experience. Charles’ friends were also
mostly Chinese.
11. “Lupe” is a dramatic literary account of Sultan Mahmud Shah and his love
affairs. Information obtained from an interview with Mrs Rose Ong, the
daughter of Yan Kee Leong on 11 May 2010.
12. Maurice Baker (1995), the son of an Indian mother and European father,
recounted that he was delivered not in hospital but rather by the bidan who
cut the umbilical cord with a sharp bamboo knife.
13. Abisheganaden (2005: 11) describes a typical funeral procession as follows:
“Playing ‘Happy Days’ on proceeding outwards from the residence of
the deceased, the Sikhs would end their repertoire with the strident and
pompous Elgar’s piece ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, originally written for the
aggrandizement of the British Raj and Empire but adapted to a multicultural
funereal context.”
14. The 213-acre Bukit Brown Cemetery (Kopi Hill) opened as a public burial
ground in 1919.
15. Like Holmberg (2009), I agree that a critique of the Furnivallian concept is
long overdue.
16. The keroncong itself is absorbed from the Portuguese. Indigenous Malay
music consists basically of bamboo wind instruments, which can be traced
back to aboriginal influence.
17. The pantun is a four-line verse or quatrain that consists of alternate rhyming
lines of an a-b-a-b scheme. The first two lines are called the pembayang
maksud (“foreshadower”) and the third is the maksud (“purpose”). Natural
imagery is used to suggest the meaning, and the form has been described as
crisp, colourful and passionate. The poems wrap up with a profound, witty or
emotionally true conclusion. There is an example of a pantun in Chapter 7.
18. In the bangsawan, there is no script and the performance is highly dependent
on the skill and talent of the actors.
19. Othman Wok on race relations. Source: http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/inde-
pendence/ref/race.html

Notes 205
20. Interview with Mrs Hedwig Anuar on 10 January 2010. See also Eurasian
Charles William Bennett (National Archives, 1989, Accession No.
A000426/14),
21. This is in contrast to Thailand and Cambodia, where their respective rulers
enjoyed undiminished prestige, as their political structures and stratification
systems were kept relatively intact in the colonial period of Southeast Asia.
22. Interview with Baba Mdm. Lee Poh Tin on 4 May 2008.
23. Pongteh is traditionally significant because it is a ritual dish, offered to
ancestors during the Hungry Ghost Festival each year (Tan, 2008).

24. A glutinous rice, dyed yellow with saffron is stuffed into chicken and
prawns; or chicken cooked with curry can be poured over the rice. The
chicken is either cut into pieces or left whole. Red ducks’ eggs are used as
decorative pieces as well as paper flowers.
25. This troupe is a parallel to the Chinese opera or wayangs (staged shows along
the streets) erected on the birthdays of Chinese deities.
26. Uxorilocal marital residences can be seen everywhere in Southeast Asia, but
mostly in Java and the Philippines.
27. Childless Malay couples also preferred adopting Chinese babies, as they
generally like children. On the other hand, Chinese and Indian families
preferred Malay adopters on the grounds that the Malays loved daughters
and they had no fear that these girls would end up for sale later in the pros-
titution market (Interview with 1950s social worker, Ann Wee).
28. Bunga rampai is used in many important occasions of the Malay: circumci-
sion, shaving a baby’s hair, funerals, weddings, etc.
29. Resident monk of Mangala Vihara (1913), M.M. Mahaweera Mahanayaka
Thera (National Archives, Singapore, 1989, No. B000381/34).
30. The Sri Lankan Mangala Vihara in Jalan Eunos, built in 1960, was, for
example, built on a piece of land donated by a Chinese woman, the late
Mdm. Chew Quee Neo.
31. Sunnis and Shi’ites are the two main sects of Islam (like the Catholics and
Protestants in Christianity). However, their differences run deep and intol-
erance and violence often shadow the two groups making coexistence diffi-
cult in places such as, for example, Iraq and Lebanon.
32. Literary endeavours continue to the present. Chinese film-maker, Eric Khoo,
made history for Singapore by his mostly Tamil-language feature entitled,
“My Magic” in 2008 (Straits Times Singapore, 2 June 2008).
33. The Straits Chinese Magazine flourished from 1897 to 1907 (Lim, 2004). It
was edited by later-generational Chinese who had the benefit of an English
education, such as Lim Boon Keng, Song Ong Siang, S.C. Yin and Gnoh
Lean Tuck. There were 11 volumes altogether (vol x 1906, vol xi 1907). The
hybrid identities of their editors are seen by their fondness of topics such as
“ Christian view of marriage,” “Mohammedan law of Shafee sect” and “The
status of women under the Confucian regime.”
34. In “Malayan Memories,” Winstedt (1916) depicts the three kinds of resources
that the populace could go to when they were in trouble – namely the Malay
pawang or bomoh or the English-educated tuan (“doctor”).
35. This was because the Chinese had, prior to the Second World War, finan-
cially supported the war efforts of the Kuomintang government in China
against Japanese imperialism.

206 Notes
36. Before this time, hospitals were built strictly for different racial groups.
9 Language, Power and Political Identities:

The 1959 Singapore Political Elections
1. This was an ironic situation, for while the British member was champi-
oning the right of children to be educated in their mother tongue, which
was in line with the “divide and conquer” policy, the Chinese members

asked instead for more free Primary English-medium education and schol-
arships in English-medium Secondary Schools. Chinese members included
later-generational elites such as Sir Han Hoe Lim, Tan Chin Tuan, C.C.
Tan and Methodist Church Elder Thio Chan Bee. Both Tan and Thio were
leaders of early Singapore, holding membership in the prestigious Legislative
Council (see Chapter 8). I am grateful to historian Dr Lysa Hong for her
insights regarding this period of Singapore history.
2. Interview with Sum Ping, on 14 December 2006.
3. Interview with Ong Pang Hwee, an English-speaking clerk in the City
Council, on 15 December 2006.
4. English was taught as a second language in the Chinese-medium school
curriculum. However, it was not taught effectively for, according to my
informant Mrs S.K. Goh, most if not all students could hardly speak beyond
two sentences perfectly. See also Leow (1996) who has the same view.
5. This is probably true as seen in Terry Tan’s (2008) social history of Singapore
in the 1950s to the 1970s. A Baba, Tan recounted that the “tipping point”
which propelled his migration to Britain with his entire family was when
he heard the teacher of his son speaking in Singlish:“You there, bring come
your book, and take go this ruler”!Tan added that this remark was from a
teacher who had previously classified his son as educationally subnormal!
Tan also admitted to being disenfranchised with a Singlish that has grown
bigger in its Chinese (rather than previously Malay) base such as kiasu, wah
leow, dam siong. He recounted how when he asked the receptionist how
frequently the airport bus departed, he was confronted with a correction
to his English: “Oh she says: ‘You mean, how many times one hour?’ ”(Tan,
2008: 247).
6. This war lasted from 1948–1960 and is known as the “Malayan
Emergency.”
7. Of course, there were always the few Oxbridge graduates who were not
pro-British. For example, Lim Kean Chye, John Eber and Lim Hong Bee who
were members of the Malayan Democratic Union and anti-colonial.
8. The Chinese-medium stream school Lee attended in his early years was
Choon Guan Primary School; the English-streamed school was Telok Kurau
Primary School.
9. The period after the Second World War saw Singapore become a Crown
Colony, with Penang and Malacca incorporated into the Malayan Union to
become the Federation of Malaya. Malaya gained independence within the
Commonwealth in 1957 and Singapore received internal self-government
in 1959. In 1963, Singapore was granted independence through its merger
with Malaya, Sabah (North Borneo) and Sarawak in the more extensive

Notes 207
nation of Malaysia. In 1965, Singapore left Malaysia and became a separate

independent state within the British Commonwealth.
10. Jumabhoy could not speak Tamil, the language of the majority of Indians in
Singapore, as he was a native speaker of Gujarati.
11. Yap et al. (2009) reports that Lee spoke in “halting Mandarin.”
12. This had been the case with “the King’s Chinese” (later-generational
English-educated who were loyal to the colonial power) such as Lim Boon
Keng, Song Ong Siang, T.W. Ong, etc.
13. However, Lee (1960) asserts that the SCBA was also not as pro-British as was

commonly thought. For example, it fought for political education measures
for Chinese reforms in the Legislative Council, the Malayan civil service,
university and technical education, employment matters as well as the
registration of Chinese marriages.
14. The President of the SCBA in question is Yap Pheng Geck. However, when
the British surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the SCBA, conscious of its
own pro-British stance, destroyed most of its records and documents that
might be considered dangerous or anti-Japanese (Lee, 1960).
15. Lee was not the only Baba who disassociated himself from the SCBA –
another was Tan Cheng Lock, who later formed the Malayan Chinese
Association (MCA). Tan was a member of the Legislative Council of the
Straits Settlements as well as a member of the SCBA. On leaving the SCBA,
he founded the MCA, which later worked with UMNO (United Malay
National Organization) towards the integration of the Chinese, Indian and
Malay communities in Malaysia.
16. Led by Lim Yew Hock, the Labour Front later became the Singapore People’s
Alliance, to contest the 1959 election. However, in the political election
of 1959, Lim’s party won only four seats, with a popular vote of 107,755,
making up 20.7 per cent of the total number of votes. The party was later
dissolved in 1965.
17. Marshall claimed to have secured 99 acquittals out of an estimated 100
cases he defended for murder during Singapore’s period of using trial by
jury. When Lee Kuan Yew (also Marshall’s political opponent) abolished
the jury system in 1969, he quoted Marshall’s reputation to illustrate its
inadequacy.
18. The electorate increased from 53 per cent in the 1955 elections to 90 per
cent in the 1959 elections (Ong, 1975).
19. In 1953, the University Socialist Club (USC) was formed by left-leaning
undergraduates at the University of Malaya located in Singapore. Their
organ, Fajar, came to the attention of the British colonial authorities and
they got into trouble for an editorial they wrote on “Aggression in Asia,”
which criticized the formation of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization.
The British deemed the article as seditious, arrested and charged the edito-
rial team of Fajar for sedition, but in a twist of events, the students were
acquitted in court. One of the lawyers for the students was the young Lee
Kuan Yew.
20. According to Barr (2000), the alliance was between Chinese-educated
Communists such as Fong Swee Suan and Chan Chiaw Thor; English-educated
Communists and left-wingers such as Devan Nair, Samad Ismail, Sandra
Woodhull, Jamit Singh and James Puthucheary; and English-educated

208 Notes
anti-Communists such as Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye, K. Byrne, S.

Rajaratnam, and Goh Keng Swee.
21. As the votes received by the SLF were more, it formed the minority coali-
tion government while the PAP became the opposition. David Marshall of
the SLF became Singapore’s first Chief Minister. Marshall, however, resigned
from this post a year later, following a pledge he had made earlier to either
achieve self-government or resign. Marshall failed to obtain self-government
for Singapore and Lim Yew Hock then took his place. Marshall stayed on the
backbenches before quitting the ruling Labour Front party in 1957. He lost his

seat in the 1959 general election, but won a by-election in Anson in 1961.
22. The SPP was badly defeated in the 1955 Legislative Assembly Elections and
C.C. Tan, its leader, withdrew from politics thereafter.
23. The Democratic Party won only two seats. However, the PAP won three
seats, having contested only four.
24. Interview with Mrs Amy Laycock, who was then working as a legal assistant
in Ong and Laycock, on 2 December 1992.
25. Ong, who was then President of the SCBA and who had first offered Lee a
job in his firm, felt it was not quite “gentlemanly” for Lee to use the unions
for his own ends and “to ride the Communist tiger” – indeed, he felt that
it was “an extremely dangerous strategy.” (Interview with Mrs Lim Long, a
sister of T.W. Ong).
26. An article in the Straits Times on “The China Man in the Straits” by F.W.
Eddy at the turn of the century described the Babas as having lost their
original mother tongues:“He has absolutely given up the speech of his fore-
fathers and that a very considerable proportion of China men in Singapore
and in the Straits generally are absolutely incapable of speaking Chinese or
of understanding it when it is spoke” (quoted in Song, 1923: 343).
27. There was also a church for them – the Straits Chinese Methodist Church,
which is today renamed the Kampong Kapor Church.
28. Watercolourist Ong Kim Seng remembers listening to fiery Hokkien-speaking
politicians with former PAP minister turned opposition leader Ong Eng
Guan in the early 1960s. It seems that Ong “never failed to rouse the crowd”
(Interview with Ong Kim Seng).
29. Up to 1957, in the majority age group of 15–54, as many as “two-thirds
declared that they could speak Malay” while only 31 per cent were able to
speak English (Department of Statistics, 1957: 76).
30. According to PAP veteran Lee Khoon Choy (1988: 53), Lee knew no Chinese
until he won the 1959 elections. He admitted he found it very difficult but
he persevered out of “self-respect” or zi zun xing as an ethnic Chinese.
31. Before Jurong, Bukit Timah was Singapore’s major industrial estate. Many
factories such as Hume Industries, General Electric, Yeo Hiap Seng, Malayan
Textiles and Nanyang Shoes were situated there. In the 1950s, this area was
often targeted for industrial strikes (Leong, 2010b).
32. In prison, Lim began to learn English and Malay. Later, he would speak in
standard Malay as a means of fraternizing with non-Chinese colleagues in
trade union movements, journalists, and so forth. After his release from
political detention in 1959, he switched to speaking in Mandarin and in so
doing, developed a softer tone, persuasive rather than inflammatory. This

Notes 209
may be because he wanted to make an impact on English-speaking workers

who would likely have been put off by his fiery use of Hokkien.
33. Lee Khoon Choy’s Chinese language ability also resulted in him being
placed as the PAP candidate against Ong Eng Guan’s stronghold in Hong
Lim in 1961. Lee won 6,398 votes against Ong’s 4,346 votes.
34. The former Chief Minister of Singapore, Mr Lim Yew Hock, was one of the
two former Ministers re-elected to the Assembly and became leader of the
opposition (Josey, 1968).
35. They, together with Lim Chin Siong, Poh Soo Kai, James Puthucheary, and

S. Woodhull left the PAP to form the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front), which
is less Chinese in terms of its Central Executive Committee than usually
thought (Tan et al., 2011).
36. As I write this, Lee has decided to retire from the Cabinet after an extraordinary
52 years in government either as Prime Minister, Senior Minister and Minister
Mentor. This announcement came after the May 2011 general election, which
the PAP won with its least impressive performance since independence, losing
six seats and 39.9 per cent of the popular vote to the opposition.
10 National Identities: The Reordering of Pluralities

1. Frank Swettenham (1850–1946) also created a dictionary Vocabulary of the
English and Malay languages, as well as publishing two books Malay Sketches
and Unaddressed Letters.
2. According to Joe Conceicao, PAP member and former Ambassador to
Indonesia, the race card has always been a critical factor in electioneering.
Conceicao recounts that Lee Kuan Yew was completely astounded as to why
a majority Chinese electorate would have elected the opposition Worker’s
Party member, J.B. Jayaratnam, who was of Indian origin, in the 1981 Anson
by-election (interview with Joe Conceicao on 9 January 2009).
3. “Official” status means that the language would be used in Parliament, the
courts and in the civil service as well as the mass media.
4. Where Singapore is concerned, there appears to be an unresolved tension
between the idealistic desire to unite disparate peoples into a nation and
the pragmatics of keeping them separate. Yet it cannot be said that the
government is racist since it follows a meritocratic system of “rewards and
punishment.”
5. Some key events in a Singapore school calendar include Total Defence Day
(15 February), Racial Harmony Day (21 July), International Friendship Day
and National Day – each of them with an entrenched historical meaning
and therefore didactic.
6. In 2009, Lee commented that Singapore was not “a nation”, but “a society
in transition” – a comment which provided the rationale that race and reli-
gion are “liabilities,” being potential fault lines, and that state policy must
necessarily “recognize” such differences and “manage” their potential for
disorder (Han et al., 2011).
7. In 2005, Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy, observed: “Many Singaporeans know no Malay even though

210 Notes
they are surrounded by more than 200 million speakers of the language. It’s
like going to live in Latin America and you don’t speak a word of Spanish”
(The Sunday Times Singapore, 20 February 2005: H2)
8. Ivan Yeo, 62, a member of the National Solidarity Party contesting in
Marine Parade in the 2011 Singapore General Elections gave this comment
on Hokkien: “One reason why we are speaking less dialect and keeping our
dialect speeches short is that they don’t usually get reported in the media,
especially on TV and radio.”
9. Most people believe that Mr Low Thia Khiang was able to wrest the Single

Member Constituency (SMC) from the then incumbent PAP Member of
Parliament, Tang Guan Seng, in 1991 because he is Teochew and speaks the
dialect fluently.
10. “Chinese dialects set to continue decline” Straits Times, 15 January 2011, p. 16.
11. A similar policy was applied to the Malay and Indian minorities, with Malay
and Tamil designated as their respective mother tongues.
12. Dr Abbas bin Shariff, Malay Studies, National Institute of Education,
Singapore, is of the opinion that the divide between the Malay and Chinese
in Singapore began with the Speak Mandarin Campaign (interview with Dr
Abbas bin Shariff on 10 March 2008).
13. See Clause 153a of the Singapore Constitution.
14. In the classroom, exposure to the “second language” in the primary curric-
ulum was increased to 25 per cent from 20 per cent in 1973 and to 40 per
cent in 1975 (Mirror Singapore, 1972: 7–8). A related policy gave priority
of admission to pre-university classes with those gaining distinctions in
the first and second languages and, where a student would otherwise fail
to qualify, greater weightage to good first and second language results.
Educational streaming began as early as primary school and much of the
streaming was based on the weightage of proficiency in two languages
(Goh, 1978).
15. Unlike Australia and Canada, which promoted their own national varieties
with their own dictionaries, grammar books and teaching materials, this is
not the case in Singapore.
16. Hence, no religious leader has publicly protested about the overt promotion
of a materialistic way of life even thought this is in variance with the basic
beliefs of major religions.
17. Quoted in “Malay integration: MM stands corrected”, Straits Times, 8 March
2011, p. 1.
18. Many more Muslims are making pilgrimages to Mecca, fasting during the
month of Ramadan and are praying five times a day, at dawn, early after-
noon, before sunset, and after sunset.
19. This is gleaned from general observations and in my interviews with several
people who have lived in both colonial and post-colonial periods: namely,
Mrs Theresa Chee, Mrs Rose Ong, Mrs Hedwig Anuar, Mrs Lim Long and
former parliamentarian Mr Joe Conceicao.
20. Today, post-colonial ports such as Singapore continue with geographical
concentrates of related economic activities such as petrochemical refineries
and specialized supplying of equipment such as machine tools.
21. According to the Pew Study on “Rise of Intermarriage”, about 15 per cent of
new marriages in 2010 crossed racial or ethnic lines, double the rate from

Notes 211
three decades ago (“Mixed marriages at all-time high in the US”, Straits
Times, pp. A 29).
22 . When asked to comment on the CMIO policy, current Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong affirms that “Race and religion are very sensitive matters and
they are never going to disappear from Singapore society or indeed from
human society” and that “We in Southeast Asia are never going to be able
to ignore them” (“Let parents decide ethnicity”, Straits Times, 16 January
2010, p. 1).
23. The incorporation of Portuguese and Dutch loan words came after the occu-

pation of Malacca in 1511 and 1641 respectively; and in Singapore after
1819.

References
Abdul Chaer, Mad’ ie (1976) Kamus Dialek Jakarta. Ende: Nusa Indah.
Abdullah, bin Abdul Kadir (1843) Hikayat Abdullah. Resources for Study by the
National University of Singapore. Retrieved on 12 December 2011 from: http://

courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellhpj/resources/abdullah1.HTM.
Abisheganaden, Paul (2005) Notes across the Years: Anecdotes From a Musical Life.
Singapore: Unipress.
Adelaar, Karl Alexander (2004) Where Does Malay Come From? Twenty Years of
Discussions About Homeland, Migrations and Classifications. Bijdragen tot de
Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 160, 1, 1–30.
Alatas, Syed Hussein, Khoo, Kay Kim and Kwa, Chong Guan (1997) Malays/
Muslims and the History of Singapore, Occasional Paper Series Paper No. 1–98,
Centre for Research on Islamic & Malay Affairs, Association of Muslim
Professionals Singapore.
Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin (2005) Rethinking Raffles: A Study of Stamford
Raffles’ Discouse on Religions among Malays. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish
Academic.
Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin (2009) Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in
Southeast Asia: The Maria Hertogh Controversy and its Aftermath. London and
New York: Routledge.
Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin (2010) Ethnic Resurgence, Minority
Communities, and State Policies in a Network Society: The Dynamics of
Malay Identity Formation in Postcolonial Singapore Identitites. Global Studies
in Culture and Power, 17, 304–325.
Albakry, Mohammed A . and Ofori, D. (2011) Ghanaian English and
Code-Switching in Catholic Churches. World Englishes, 30, 4, 515–532.
Allen, Charles (ed.) (1983) Tales from the South China Seas: Images of the British in
Southeast Asia in the Twentieth century. Great Britain: Andre Deutsch Ltd.
Alsagoff, L. (2007) Singlish: Negotiating Culture, Capital and Identity. In Vaish,
V., Gopinathan, S., and Liu, Y. (eds) Language, Capital, Culture: Critical Studies
of Language in Education in Singapore. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 25–46.
Alsagoff, Lubna (2010) Hybridity in the Ways of Speaking: The Globalization of
English in Singapore. In Lim, Lisa, Pakir, Anne and Wee, Lionel (eds) English
in Singapore: Modernity and Management. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, pp. 109–130.
Althusser, Louis (1970) Ideology and Ideology State Apparatuses: Lenin and Philosophy
and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press,
pp. 127–86.
Andaya, Barbara (1993) To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
Andaya, Leonard ( 2001) Aceh’s Contribution to the Standardness of Malayness.
Archipel, 61, 32–33.
Andaya, Barbara (2006) The Flaming Womb. Hawaii: University of Hawaii.
212

References 213
Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism, Revised edition. London: Verso.
Ansaldo, Umberto and Matthews, Stephen (1999) The Minnan Substrate and
Creolization of Baba Malay. Journal of Chinese linguistics, 27, 38–68.
Ansaldo, Umberto (2009) Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arseculeratne, S. N. (1992) Sinhalese Immigrants in Malaysia and Singapore
1860–1990: History Through Recollections. Colombo: KV. G. de Silva and Sons
(Colombo) Ltd.

Asis, Maruja M. B. (2004) Borders, Globalization and Irregular Migration in
Southeast Asia. In Ananta, Aris and Arifin, Evi Nurvidya. International Migration
in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 199–227.
Azizah, Hashim and Leitner, Gerhard (2011) Contact Expressions in
Contemporary Malaysian, World Englishes, 30, 4, 551–568.
Baker, Maurice (1995) A Time of Fireflies and Wild Guavas. Singapore: Federal
Publications.
Baldauf, B. R. Jr. and Chua, S. K. C. (2012) Language Planning and Multilingualism.
In C. A. Chapelle (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics. Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–11.
Bao, Zhiming and Aye, Khin Khin (2010) Bazaar Malay Topics. Journal of Pidgin
and Creole Languages, 25, 1, 155–171.
Barr, Michael (2000) Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs Behind the Man. Georgetown:
Georgetown University Press.
Barley, Nigel (2002) White Rajah. London: Abacus.
Baxter, Alan N. and de Silva, Patrick (2004) A Dictionary of Kristang. Canberra:
Australian National University.
Beauvoir, Le Comte de (1870) Java, Siam, Canton: Voyage Autour du monde. Paris:
Henri Plon (Translated by Jill Easthope).
Beck, U. and Sznaider, N. (2006) Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social
Sciences: A Research Agenda. British Journal of Sociology, 57, 1, 1–23.
Bellwood, Peter (2004) The Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Communities
in Southeast Asia. In Glover, Ian and Bellwood, Peter (ed.) Southeast Asia: From
Prehistory to History. London and New York: Routledge.
Beg, M. A. J. (1977) Arabic Loan Words in Malay. Kuala Lumpur: Sally Printing
Service.
Bhattacharya, Jayati (2011) Beyond the Myth: Indian Business Communities in
Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Birch, D. (1998) Introduction: Asian Values: Public Cultures. Social Semiotics,
165–167.
Blagden, C. O. (1930) Reviews on Indonesian and Other Subjects. Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 62, 3, 1–52.
Bleackley, Horace (1928) A Tour in Southern Asia (Indo-China, Malaya, Java Sumatra
and Ceylon 1925–1926). London: John Lane the Bodley Head.
Block, David (2006a) Identity in Applied Linguistitics. In Omoniyi, Tope and
White, Goodith (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Identity. London: Continuum, pp.
35–50.
Block, David (2006b) Multilingual Identities in a Global City: London Stories.
London: Palgrave.

214 References
Bloodworth, Dennis (1986) The Tiger and the Trojan Horse. Singapore: Times
Books International.
Bloodworth, Dennis and Liang, Ching Ping (2000) I Married a Barbarian: The
Heart-Warming, True Story of a British Lad and a Chinese Lass. Singapore:
Marshall Cavendish.
Bloom, David (1986) The English Language and Singapore: A Critical Survey. In
Kapur, Basant K. (ed.) Singapore Studies: Critical Surveys of the Humanities and
Social Sciences. Singapore: Singapore University Press, pp. 337–452.
Boas, Franz (1940) Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan.

Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul (2007) Language, Racism and Ethnicity. In Hellinger,
Marlis and Pauwels, Anne (eds) Handbook of Language and Communication:
Diversity and Change. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Boxer, C.R . (1965) The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800. London: Hutchinson.
Boogaart, E. van den (2003) Civil and Corrupt Asia: Image and Text in the Itinerio
and the Icons of Jan Huygen Van Linschoten. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Brass, Paul R . (2005) Body as Symbol in the Production of Hindu-Muslim
Violence. In Ravinder, Kaur (ed.) Religion, Violence, and Political Mobilisation in
South Asia. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 46–68.
Brocheux, Pierre and Hemery, Daniel (2010) Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization,
1858–1954 California: University of California Press.
Brown, C.C. (Translated) (1970) Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annal. This is a transla-
tion of Raffles MS 17, JMBRAS xxv, 2 and 3, (1953) reprinted as Sejarah Melayu:
Malay Annals. Kuala Lumpur.
Brown, Wendy (2010) Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books.
Buckley, Charles Burton (1984) An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore
1819–1867. First Published 1902. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bucholtz, Mary and Hall, Kira (2010) Locating Identity in Language. In
Llamas, Carmen and Watt, Dominic (eds) Language and Identities. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Burns, P. L . and Cowen, C. D. (eds) (1975) Sir Frank Swettenham’s Malayan Journals
(1874 –1876). Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London
and New York: Routledge.
Cardona, G. and Jain, D. (2003) The Indo-Aryan Languages. London: Routledge
Curzon.
Carstens, Sharon (1980) Pulai: Memories of a Gold Mining Settlement in Ulu
Kelantan. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 53, 1,
50–67.
Chua, S. C. (1957) Report on the Census of Population 1957. Singapore: Government
Printing Press.
CDIS (Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore) (1992) Primary English
Thematic Series (PETS). Singapore: EPB Publishers.
Chan, Heng Chee (2001) A Sensation of Independence David Marshall, A Political
Biography. Singapore: Times Book International.
Chang, Rachel (2010) Ignoring Racial Differences Won’t Make Them Go Away.
Straits Times, 6 March 2010, p. 35.
Chasen, Kathleen M. (1940) Who Are They Singapore. Singapore: Straits Times
Press, p. 19.

References 215
Cheeseman, H. R . and Gillet, Eric (n.d. probably 1932) Introduction: Nelson’s

Malayan Reader, Book VI. Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, pp. v–vi.
Cheung, Sidney C. H. and Tan, Chee Beng (2007) Food and Foodways in Asia:
Resource, Traditional and Cooking. London and New York: Routledge.
Chew, Ernest and Lee, Edwin (ed.) (1991) A History of Singapore. Singapore:
Oxford University Press.
Chew, Phyllis G. L . (1998) The Admission Interview: Strategies of Alignment. In
Gopinathan, S. et al. (ed.) Language, Society and Education in Singapore: Issues
and Trends. Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 191–203.

Chew, Phyllis G. L . (2006 ) Language Use and Religious Practice: The Case
of Singapore. In Omoniyi, Tope and Fishman, Joshua (eds) Explorations in
the Sociology of Language and Religion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.
40–63.
Chew, Phyllis G. L . (2004) (Project Advisor) In Step: A Course in English for Primary
Schools 2A, Singapore: Pan Pacific Publications (S) Pte. Ltd.
Chew, Phyllis G. L . (2009) Emergent Lingua Frances and World Orders: The Politics
and Place of English as a World Language. New York: Routledge.
Chew, Phyllis G. L . (2011) The Emergence, Role and Future of the National
Language in Singapore. In Fishman, Joshua A. and Ofelia, Garcia (eds)
Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. New York: Oxford University Press,
pp. 233–256.
Chia, Cheng-sit (1898) The Story of the Framed Passage Ticket. Straits Chinese
Magazine, 2, 8, 166–169.
Chia, Cheng-sit (1899a) Her One Redeeming Feature. Straits Chinese Magazine, 3,
10, 59–61 (microfilm NL 267).
Chia, Cheng-sit (1899b) The Language of the Babas. The Straits Chinese Magazine,
3, 11–15.
Chia, Cheng Sit (1903) From My Father’s Diary: The Story of Bunga, The Suicide.
Straits Chinese Magazine, 7, 130–133.
Chia, Felix (1983) Ala Sayang. Singapore: Eastern University Press.
Chia, Jeannette Hwee Hwee (1993) A History of Javanese and Baweanese of Singapore,
Department of History, Thesis for the BA of Arts and Social Sciences.
Chin, John M. (1962) The Nonya. Kuching: Borneo Literature Bureau.
Chinchinjoss, Joss (1900) Friend Tommy and Other Topics. Singapore: Kelly and
Walsh Ltd.
Choo, F. S. (2009) Children of the Monkey God: The Story of a Chinese Hakka Family
in Sarawak, Borneo 1850–1965. Tempe: Third Millennium Printing.
Choo, Suzanne S. (2010) Cultivating Moral Sensibilities through Aesthetic
Education: The Power of Everyday Cosmopolitanism, Internatinal Journal of
the Humanities, 8, 2, 108–119.
Chua, Beng Huat ( 1998) Racial Singaporeans: Absence after the Hypen. In Joel
S. Kahn (ed.) Southeast Asian Identities. Singapore: ISEAS.
Chua, Beng Huat (2003) Life Is Not Complete Without Shoping: Consumption Culture
in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore Univeristy Press.
Clammer, John (1979) The Ambiguity of Identity: Ethnicity Maintenance and
Change among the Straits Chinese community of Malaysia and Singapore.
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore Occasional Papers No. 54.
Clammer, John R. (1980) Straits Chinese Society. Singapore: Singapore University
Press, pp. 153–165.

216 References
Clammer, John R . (1991) The Sociology of Sinapore Religions. Singapore: Chopmen

Publications.
Clement, V. (2008) Emblems of Independence: Script Choice in Post-Soviet
Turkmenistan. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 192, 171–186.
Clifford, Hugh (1897) In Court and Kampong. London: Grant Richards.
Cohen, Yehuda (2003) Why Religion? Jerusalem: Priests Publishing.
Collins, J. T. (1980) Ambonese Malay and Creolization Theory. Kuala Lumpur:
Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka.
Collins, J. T. (1998) Malay, World Langauge: A Short Hhistory. Kuala Lumpur:

Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka.
Collins, J. T. (2001) Contesting Straits-Malayness: The Fact of Borneo. Journal of
Southeast Asian Studies, 32, 3, 385–395.
Collins, James T. (2004) Contesting Straits-Malayness: The Fact of Borneo. In
Barnard, Timothy P. (ed.) Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity across Boundaries.
Singapore: NUS, pp. 168–180.
Conceicao, Joe (2007) Singapore and the Many-Headed Monster: A New Perspective
on the Riots of 1950, 1964 and 1969. Singapore: Horizon Books.
Conceicao, J. F. (2004) Flavours of Change. Singapore: Horizon Books.
Coppel, Charles (1997) Revisiting Furnivall’s Plural Society: Colonial Java as a
Mestizo Society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20, 3, 563–579.
Cooper, F. ( 2005) Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley:
Unversity of California Press.
Cotterrell, Roger (ed.) (2010) Emile Durkheim: Justice, Morality and Politics. London:
Ashgate.
Coulmas, Florian (1989) The Writing Systems of the World. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Coupland, N. (2001) Introduction: Sociolinguistic Theory and Social Theory.
In Coupland, N., Sarangi, Srikant and Candlin, C. N. (eds) Sociolinguistics and
Social Theory. Harlow: Pearson Education Books, pp. 1–26.
Crawfurd, John (1820) History of the Indian Archipelago. London: A. Constable
and Co.
Croft, William (2000) Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach.
Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd.
Cuenot, Claude (1967) Science and Faith in Teihard De Chardin. London: Garstone
Press Ltd.
Cust, Robert Needham (1878) A Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East Indies.
London: Trubner.
David, Maya Khemiani and Noor, Faridah Mohd Noor (1999) Language
Maintenance or Language Shift in the Portuguese Settlement of Malacca in
Malaysia. Migracijske teme, 15, 4, 465–481.
Davison, Julian (2010) A Fourth-Generation Local. Biblioasia, 5, 4, 37–38.
De Graaf, H. J. and Pigeaud, Th. G. Th. (1984) Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th
and 16th Centuries. Melbourne: Monash University.
De Francis, John (1984) The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Hawaii: University
of Hawaii Press.
De Silva. G. W. (1940) Lupe: A Historical Romance of Portuguese Malacca. Kuala
Lumpur: International Printers.
DeBernardi, Jean (2002) Malaysian Chinese Religious Culture: Past and Present.
In Suryadinata, Leo (ed.) Ethic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore:
Times Academic Press, pp. 301–323.

References 217
Department of Statistics (1957) Report on the Census of Population 1957 b y S. C.

Chua. Singapore: Government Printing Press.
Department of Statistics (1991) Census of Population 1990: Advance Data Release.
Singapore: Department of Statistics.
Heng, Derek & Syed, M. Khairudin Aljunied (2009) (eds) Reframing Singapore:

Memory, Identity and Trans-Regionalism: International Convention of Asian
Scholars Series no. 6. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Despande, Madhav M. (2011) Efforts to Vernacularize Sanskrit: Degree of
Success and Failure. In Fishman, Joshua A. and Garcia, Ofelia (eds) (2010)
The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Effects: Handbook
of Language and Ethnic Identity, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.
218–229.
Despande, Madhav M. (2011) Sanskrit and Prakrit: v. 6: Sociolinguistic Issues: v. 6
(MLBD series in linguistics). New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Deterding, D. (2005) Listening to Estuary English in Singapore. TESOL Quarterly,
39, 3, 425–440.
Deutscher, Guy (2005) The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of
Mankind’s Greatest Invention. New York: Metropolitan Books
Dhoraisingam, Samuel S (2006) Peranakan Indians of Singapore and Melaka.
Singapore: Instiute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Doraisamy, T. R. (ed.) (1969) 150 Years of Education in Singapore. Singapore:
Teachers’ Training College.
Dorian, N. C. (1999) Lingusitic and Ethnographic Fieldwork. In Fishman, J. A.
(ed) Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 25–41.
Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992) Think Practically and Look
Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice. Annual Review
of Anthropology, 21, 461–490.
Edwards, John (2009) Language and Identity: An Introduction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, John (2011) Challenges in the Social Life of Language. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Erikson, Erik (1968) Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton.
Errington, Joseph (2008) Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language,
Meaning and Power. UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Fairclough, N. (2006) Language and Globalization. London: Routledge.
FEB (Far Eastern Publishers) (1968) Singapore Reader. Singapore: Far Eastern
Publishers.
Ferguson, Charles A. (1982) Religious Factors in Language Spread. In Cooper,
Robert L. (ed.) Language Spread: Studies in Diffusion and Social Change.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fill, Alwin (2007) Language Contact, Culture and Ecology. In Hellinger, Marlis
and Pauwels, Anne (2007) Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity
and Change. Berlin: Mouton de gruyter, pp. 177–207.

218 References
Finlay, M. H. (1964) (1864–1964) The Story of 100 Years of the Lord’s Blessings:
Centennial Brochure of Bethseda Gospel Hall. Singapore: Bethseda Gospel
Hall.
Fishman, Joshua A. and Ofelia, Garcia (eds) (2010) Handbook of Language and
Ethnic Identity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fishman, Joshua A. (1995) On the Limits of Ethnolinguistic Democracy.
In Skuttnabb, Kangas T. and Phillipson, R. (eds) Linguistic Human rights:
Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Freedman, Maurice (1962) Chinese Kinship and Marriage in Early Singapore.

Journal of Southeast Asian History, 3, p. 68. Reprinted in Skinner, William G.
(ed.) (1962) The Study of Chinese Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
pp. 87–88.
Frost, Mark Ravinder (2003) Tran Cultural Diaspora: The Straits Chinese in
Singapore, 1819–1918. ARI Working Paper Series No. 10.
Fujii, Tatsuki (1943) Singapore Assignment. Tokyo: the Nippon Times.
Furnivall, J. S. (1956) Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma
and Netherlands India. New York: New York University Press (Original work
published 1948).
Gair, James and Lust, Barbara (1998) Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Gallop, Annabel Teh (2009) Was the Mousedeer Peranakan? In Search of
Chinese Islamic Influences on Malay Manuscript Art. In Putteen, Jan van der
and Cody, Mary Kilcline (eds) Lost Times and Untold Tales from the Malay World.
Singapore: National University Press, pp. 319–338.
Gard, Richard (ed.) (1961) Buddhism. New York: George Braziller Inc.
Gaur, Albertine (2000) Literacy and the Politics of Writing. Bristol, UK: Intellect
Books.
Gibson-Hill, C. A. (1952) The Orang Laut of the Singapore River and the Sampan
Panjang. Singapore: Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society.
Giles, H. and Powesland, P. F. (1975) Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London:
Academic Press.
Gioia, D. A. and Thomas, J. B. (1996) Identity, Image and Issue Interpretation:
Sensemaking During Strategic Change in Academia. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 41, 370–403.
Goh, Daniel P. S. (2009) Chinese Religion and the Challenge of Modernity in
Malaysia and Singapore: Syncretism, Hybridization and Transfiguration, Asian
Journal of Social Science, 37, 1, 107–137.
Goh, Daniel P. S. and Holden, Philip (2009) Introduction: Postcoloniality, Race
and Multiculturalism. In Goh, Daniel P. S, Gabrielpillei, Mathilda, Holden,
Philip and Khoo, Gaik Cheng (eds) Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and
Singapore. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16.
Gonda, J. (1973) Sanskrit in Indonesia. Second ed. New Delhi: International
Academy of Indian Culture.
Goneng, Awang (2007) Growing Up in Terengganu. Singapore: Monsoon.
Gopinathan, S. (1974) Towards a National System of Education in Singapore, 1945–
1973. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Grijns, C. D. (1991) Jakarta Malay. Leiden: KITLV Press.
Grünendahl, R. (2001) South Indian Scripts in Sanskrit Manuscripts and Prints.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

References 219
Gulliver, K. ( 2009) European Perceptions of Malacca in the Early Modern Period.

Biblioasia. 5, 3, Oct 2009, 8–11.
Gumperz, John (ed.) (1982) Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gupta, A. F. (1994) The Step Tongue: Children’s English in Singapore. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Gwee, Thian Hock (1993) Mas Sepuloh: Baba Conversational Gems. Singapore:
Armour Publishing.
Han, Fook Kwang, Fernandez, Warren and Tan Sumiko (1998) Lee Kuan Yew: The

Man and his Ideas. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings.
Han, Fook Kwang, Zubaidah, Ibrahim, Chua, Mui Hoong, Lydia, Lim, Ignatius,
Low, Rachel, Lin and Robin, Chan (2011) Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep
Singapore Going. Singapore: Straits Times Press.
Hardwick, Patrick Ann (2008) Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Constructing Peranakan
Identity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Singapore. Folklore: Forum, 38, 1,
36–55.
Harper, T. N. (2002) Lim Chin Siong and the “Singapore Story”. In Tan, Qing
Quee and Jomo, K. S. (eds) Comet in our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History. Kuala
Lumpur: She hui fen xi xue hui.
Hatcher, Lynley (2008) Script Change in Azerbaijan: Acts of Identity. International
Journal of the Sociology of Language, 192, 105–116.
Haque, Muhammed Sahriar and Abedin, Zainul (2011) The Discursive
Construction of (a)Moral Names:Religion Versus Language, Multilingua, 30,
377–390.
Harris, Roxy (2006) New Ethnicities and Language Use. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hashim, Azizah (2009) Languages in Multicultural Malaysia. In Rofli, Norliza
and Khoo, Eddin (eds) Malaysian Culture: An Introduction. Kuala Lumpur:
National Department for Culture and Arts, pp. 69–80.
Hefner, Robert W. (2001) Introduction. In Hefner, Robert W. (ed.) The Politics of
Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 1–56.
Heidhues, Mary Somers (1996) Chinese Settlements in Rural Southeast Asia:
Unwritten Histories. In Reid, Anthony (ed.) Sojourners and Settlers: Histories
of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp.
164–182.
Hill, A. H. (ed.) (1969) Hikayat Abdullah: The Autobiography of Abdullah Bin Kadir
(1798 to 1854), Singapore: Oxford Univeristy Press. Originally published 1955.
Hill, Michael and Lian, Kwen Fee (1995) The Politics of Nation Building and
Citizenship in Singapore. London and New York: Routledge.
Hirschman, Charles (1986) The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political
Economy and Racial Ideology. Sociological Forum, 1, 2, 330–361.
Hirschman, Charles (1987) The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in
Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications. The Journal of Asian Studies,
46, 3, 555–582.
Ho, Mien Lian and Platt, John (1993) Dynamics of a Contact Continuum:
Singaporean English. Oxford: Clarenden Press.
Holmberg, Erik (2009) A Community of Prestige: A Social History of the Cosmopolitan
Elite Class in Colonial Singapore. A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy, Department of History, and National University of Singapore.

220 References
Hoon, Chang-Yau (2008) Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Culture, Politics

and Media. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press.
Howell, E. F. (1928) Malayan Turnovers. Singapore: Kelly and Walsh Ltd.
Holliday, Adrian (2010) Complexity in Cultural Identity. Language and
Intercultural Communication, 10, 2, 165–177.
Holm, John (2004) Language in Contact: The Partial Restructuring of Vernaculars.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Holmes, Janet and Meyerhoff, Miriam (eds) (2003) Handbook of Language and
Gender. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.

Holmes, Janet and Stubbe, Maria (2003) Power and Politeness in the Workplace: A
Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Pearson.
Hong, Lysa and Huang Jianli (2008) The Scripting of a National History. Singapore
and its pasts. Singapore: NUS press.
Hsiau, Ai-Chin (1997) Language Identity in Taiwan: The KMT’s Language Policy,
The Taiyu Language Movement and Ethnic Politics. Journal of Multicultural and
Multilingual Development, 18, 4, 302–315.
Huang, Shu-min (2010) Reproducing Chinese Culture in Diaspora: Sustainable
Agriculture and Petrified Culture in Northern Thailand. New York: Lexington
Books.
Hymes, Dell (1971) Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Cambridge:
Ibrahim, Zubaidah (2010) What Chinese New Year Means to Me. Straits Times,
18 February 2010, p. A20.
Ismail, Rahil (2009) Di Waktu Petang di Geylang Serai: Maintaining Identity
in a Globalised World. In Ismail, Rahil, Shaw, Brian and Ooi, Giok Ling (eds)
Southeast Asian Culture and Heritage in a Globalising World: Diverging Identities in
a Dynamic Region. London: Ashgate, pp. 19–42.
Jayapal, Maya (1992) Old Singapore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Russell (2009) Chinese Loan Words in Malaya and Indonesia. Kuala Lumpur:
University of Malaya Press.
Joseph, John (2004) Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Basington
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Josey, Alex (1968) Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years. Singapore: Times Books
International.
Jurgen, Rudolph (1998) Reconstructing Identities: A Social History of Babas in
Singapore. Singapore: Ashgate Aldershot.
Kachru, B. B. (1994) Englishization and Contact Linguistics. World Englishes, 13,
135–151.
Karim, Wazir Jahan (ed.) (2009a) Straits Muslims: Diasporas of the Northern Passage
of the Straits of Malacca. Georgetown, Penang: Sinaran Bros. Sdn. Bhd. Penang,
pp. 15–66.
Karim, Wazir Jahan (2009b) The Hadrami Diaspora in the Straits of Malacca:
Economic and Political Empowerment at the Ocean’s Edge. In Karim, Wazir
Jahan (ed.) (2009) Straits Muslims: Diasporas of the Northern Passage of the
Straits of Malacca. Georgetown, Penang: Sinaran Bros. Sdn. Bhd. Penang, pp.
121–140.
Keay, John (2001) India: A History. India: Grove Press.
Keaughran, T. J. (1887) Picturesque and Busy Singapore. Singapore: The Lat Pau
Press.

References 221
Khanna, Parag (2011) How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the New
Renaissance. New York: Random House.
Khieif, B. B. (1979) Insiders, Outsiders and Renegades: Towards a Classification
of Ethnolingusitic Labels. In Giles, Howard and Saint-Jacques, Bernard (eds)
Language and Ethnic Relations. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 159–177.
Kiang, Clyde (1991) The Hakka Search for a Homeland. Elgin, PA: Allegheny Press.
Koh, Adeline (2007) Educating Malayan Gentleman, Biblioasia, 3, 1, 10–15.
Koh, Jaime and Ho, Stephenie (2009) Cultures and Customs of Singapore and
Malaysia. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press.

Koh, Maueen (2012) Dialects Disappearing Act. The New paper, 17 April 2012.
Kong, L . and Chang, T. C. (2001) Joo Chiat: A Living Legacy. Singapore: Editions
Didier Millet.
Kong, Lily and Tong, Chee Kiong ( 2003). Believing and Belonging: Religion in
Singapore. In Chan, Kwok Bun and Tong, Chee Kiong (eds) Past time: a social
history of Singapore. Singapore: Times edition.
Kottak, C. P. (2006) Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity. New York:
McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Kramsch, C. (1993) Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003) The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge Language
Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press.
Kuo, Pau Kun (2000) Mama Looking for her Cat. Retrieved on 20 October 2010
from http://www.inkpot.com/theatre/06reviews/1207,mamalookcat,ny.html.
Kwa, Chong Guan, Heng Derek and Tan, Tai Yong (2009) Singapore: A 700 Year
History – From Early Emporium to World City. Singapore: National Archives of
Singapore.
Labov, William (1966) The Social Stratification of Enlgish in New York city .
Washington, DC: Center for applied linguistics.
Laffan, Michael Francis (2003) Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia. The
Umna Below the Winds. London and NY: Routledge.
Laffan, Michael (2009) When is a Jawi Jawi? A Short Note on Pieter Sourij’s
“Maldin” and his Minang Student “Sayf al-Rijal”. In Putteen, Jan van der and
Cody, Mary Kilcline (eds) Lost Times and Untold Tales from the Malay World.
Singapore: National University Press, pp. 139–147.
Lau, Aileen Guek Lin (1984) Language Death with Particular Reference to Baba
Malay of Singapore. Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for a
MA Degree in Linguistics and English Language Teaching to the Department
of Language. UK: University of York.
Le Page, R. and Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985) Acts of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
Unvieristy Press.
Lee, Geok Boi (1995) What If? Post War Choices in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore
Heritage Society.
Lee, Edwin (2008) Singapore: The Unexpected Nation. Singapore: ISEAS.
Lee, Hock Guan (2009) Furnivall’s Plural Society and Leech’s Political Systems of
Highland Burma. Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 24, 1, 32–46.
Lee, Khoon Choy (1988) On the Beat to the Hustings. Singapore: Times
International.
Lee, Kuan Yew (1998) The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore:
Times International.

222 References
Lee, Kuan Yew (2000) From Third World to First: The Singapore Story (1965–2000).
New York: Harper Collins.
Lee, Yong Hock (1960) A History of the Straits Chinese British Association: An
Academic Exercise Submitted to the Department of History, University of
Malaya at Singapore, in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of B.A. (Hons).
Leon, Madeline and Leon, William (1977) The Utility of Pluralism: M. G. Smith
and Plural Theory. American Ethnologist, 4, 3, 559–575.
Leong, Weng Kam (2010a) Radical Bukit Timah remembered. Straits Times, 21
June, p. A17.

Leong, Weng Kam (2010b) The Other 13 May that Changed History. Straits
Times, 14 May 2010, p. A28.
Leow, Ngee fui (1996) Catching the Glimpses of a Nation Singapore. Singapore:
Mandarin Art Printing Pte. Ltd.
Levathes, Louise (1994) When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon
Throne 1405–1433. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lian, Kwen Fen (1999) The Nation-State and the Sociology of Singapore:
Managing Modernization and Modernity. In Chew, P. and Kramer-Dahl, A.
(eds) Reading Culture: Textual Practices in Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic
Press, pp. 37–54.
Lian, Kwee Fee (2006) Race and Racilalization in Malaysia and Singapore. In
Lian, Kwee Fee (ed.) Race, Ethnicity, and the State in Malaysia and Singapore.
Leideon: Brill, pp. 219–234.
Lieberman, Victor (2009) Strange Parallels. Southeast Asia in Global Context c.
800–1830, Vol. 2. Mainland mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia and
the islands.
Liew, Clement (2008) A Survey of the Development of the Singapore Chinese
Catholic Mission in the 19th Century. Biblioasia, 3, 4, 8–11.
Lightfoot, David (2006) How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge
University.
Lim, Yew Hock (1986) Reflections. Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara.
Lim, Lu Sia (1987) The Arabs of Singapore: A Sociographic Study of their Place in the
Muslim and Malay World of Singapore. An AE submitted in Partial Fulfillment
for the Degree of B. Soc Sci (Hons) to the Department of Sociology, National
University of Singapore.
Lim, Pui Huen (1992) Singapore, Malaysian and Brunei Newspapers. Singapore: ISEAS.
Lim, Pui Huen, P. (2002) Wong ah Fook: Immigrant, Builder and Entrepreneur.
Singapore: Times Edition.
Lim, Janet (2004) Sold for Silver. London and New York: Routledge (First Published
1958).
Lim, Lisa (ed.) (2004) Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lim, Rosemary (2008) An Irish Tour of Singapore. Singapore: Two Trees.
Lind, Andrew (1974) Nanyang Perspective: Chinese Students in Multiracial Singapore.
Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
Linschoten, J. H. van (1885) The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East
Indies: From the Old English Translation of 1598 (Dutch Version Published 1596).
London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society.

References 223
Loh, P. F. S. (1975) Seeds of Separation: Educational Policy in Malaya (1874–1940).

Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Low, Kelvin E. Y. (2009) Interpreting Media Construction of Samsui Women in
Singapore. Biblioasia, 5, 3, 18–22.
Low, Ee Ling (2010) English in Singapore and Malaysia: Similarities and
Differences. In Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) Routledge Handbook for World Englishes.
London: Routledge, pp. 224–246.
Mackie, Jamie (1996) Introduction. In Reid, Anthony (ed.) Sojourners and Settlers:
Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii

Press, pp. i–xxx.
Macknight, C. C. (1985) Changing Perspective in Island Southeast Asia. In Marr,
David H. and Milner, A. C. (eds) Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries.
Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, the Research School of Pacific
Studies, and the Australian National University, pp. 215–225.
Macknight, Campbell (2009) To Rescue a Breached Whale: The Translation of
Matthes’Bugis Dictionary. In Putteen, Jan van der and Cody, Mary Kilcline
(eds) Lost Times and Untold Tales Form the Malay World. Singapore: National
University Press, pp. 304–318.
Mahathir, Mohamad (1970) The Malay Dilemma. Singapore: Donald Moore
Publishers.
Majid, Zainab Abdul and Said, Halimah Mohd (2004) Images of the Jawi Peranakan
of Penang. Malaysia: Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris.
Makepeace, W. , Brooke, G. , and Braddell, R. St. J. (eds) (1921) One Hundred Years
of Singapore. London: J. Murray.
Makepeace, W., Brooke, G. E. and Braddell, R. St. J. (eds) (1991) One Hundred Years
of Singapore (Vol. I, pp. v–viii, 155, 399; Vol. II, pp. 316–317). Singapore: Oxford
University Press. (First Published in 1921).
Mandal, Sumit Kumar (1994) Finding their Place: A History of the Arabs in Java
under Dutch Rule (1800–1924). Ph.D dissertation, Columbia University.
Manguin, Pierre-Yves (2004) The Archaeology of Early Maritime Polities of
Southeast Asia. In Glover, Ian and Bellwood, Peter (eds) Southeast Asia: From
Prehistory to History. Abinigdon: Routledge: Curzon, pp. 282–313.
Mantra, Ida Bagoes( 1998) Indonesian Labour Mobilit to Malaysia (A case study:
East Flores, West Lombok, and the Island of Bawean). Downloaded on 8
December 2009 fromwww.unesco.org/most/apmrlabo6.doc
Marbeck, Joan Margaret (2004) Lingggu Mai. Lisbon, Portugual: Calouste
Gulbenkian foundation.
Marsden, William (1930) A Grammar of the Malayan Language. Tokyo: Mitake
Torie (Originally Published 1812).
Marsden, William (1984) A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language.
Singapore: Oxford University Press, Vols. 1 and 2.
Matheson, Virginia and Andaya, Barbara (eds) (1982) The Precious Gift (Tuhfat
al-nafis). Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Matthew, G (2000) Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for a Home in the
Cultural Supermarket. London: Routledge.
Matras, Yaron and Bakker, Peter (ed.) (2003) The Mixed Language Debate:
Theoretical and Empirical Advances. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

224 References
McLellan, James (2010) Mixed Codes or Varieties of English. In Kirpatrick,

Andy (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London and New York:
Routledge, pp. 245–441.
Miksic, John N. and Low, Cheryl-Ann Mei Gek (eds) (2004) Early Singapore
1300s–1879: Evidences in Maps, Texts and Artifacts. Singapore: Singapore History
Museum.
Miksic, John N. (2007) The A to Z of Ancient Southeast Asian History. Lanham:
Scarecrow.
Miksic, John N. (2010) Before and After Zheng He: Comparing Some Southeast

Asian Archaeological Sites of the 14th and 15th century. In Wade, Geoff and
Sun, Laichen (eds) Southeast Asia in the 15th Century. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, pp. 384–412.
Mills, R. F. (1975) Proto South Sulawesi and Proto Austronesian Phonology. Ph. D
thesis, University of Michigan.
Milne, Lumsden (1933) Who am I? Singapore: MPH.
Milne, Lu, Migge, Bettina and Leglise, Isabelle (2007) Language and Colonialism:
Asia. In Hellinger, Marlis and Pauwels, Anne (2007) Handbook of Language
and Communication: Diversity and Change. Berlin: Mouton de gruyter. pp.
299–332.
Milner, Anthony (2002) The Invention of Politics: Expanding the Public Sphere in
Colonial Malaya, Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University
Press. First published, 1995.
Milner, Anthony (2008) The Malays. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
Minde, D. van (1987) The Sound System of Malayu Ambong (MA): Preliminary
Analysis [Unpublished report].
Mitchell, Ron (2004) Baba Nonnie goes to War: The Memoirs of a Singapore Volunteer
on the Thai-Burma Railway. Coventry, UK: Coombe Publications.
Modder, Ralph (1993) Lions and Tigers: A Story about Singapore. Singapore: Rose
Apple books.
Mohamed Shahrom bin Mohamed Taha (2003) The Orang Laut: 19th Century
British Perceptions of a Changing Community. A thesis submitted to the
Department of History, National University of Singapore for the degree of B.A.
(Hons.).
Morita, Liang Chua (2003) Language Shift in the Thai Chinese Community.
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 24, 6, 485–495.
Morris, George (1878) Singapore: 30 Years Ago. Singapore: Straits Times Press.
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2008) Language Evolution. Contact, Competition and Change.
London: Continuum.
Muhleisen, Suzanne (2007) Language and Religion. In Marlis, Hellinger and
Anne, Pauwells (eds) Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and
Change. Berlin: Mouteon de Gruyter, pp. 459–493.
Munoz, Paul Michel (2006) Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the
Malay Peninsula. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, p. 171.
Muzzi, Geraldo Affonso (2002) The Portuguese in Malay Land. Malaysia: Printmate
Sdn. Bhd.
Mydin, Iskandar (2008) The Ethnic Cauldron. BeMuse Magazine, October 2008,
pp. 48–53.
Nagata, Judith (1975) Pluralism in Malaysia: Myth and Reality: Symposium on
Malaysia and Singapore. Contribution to Asian Studies, vii, 1–17.

References 225
Nathan, S. R. (2011) An Unexpected Journey: Pathway to the Presidency. Singapore:

www. edubooks.com.
National Archives (1989) Collection of Oral History Recording Databases (CORD).
Singapore: National Archives.
National Archives (1993) Kampong Days: Village Life and Times in Singapore
Revisited. Singapore: National Archives.
NESPE (1982) English Reader Series, 1A. Singapore: Education Publications
Bureau.
Ng, Siew and Hua, Cecilia (1976) The Sam Poh Neo Neo Keramat: A Study of a Baba

Chinese Temple. An Academic Exercise Singapore in Partial Fulfillment for the
Degree of B.A.(Hons.) Submitted to the Department of Sociology, University
of Singapore.
Noor, Farish A. (2009) What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You: The Annex Lectures, Vol
1. Petaling Jaya: Academe Art and printing services Sdn. Bhd.
Noriah, Mohamed (2006) Chetty Creole Language of Malacca: A Historical and
Linguistic Perspective. Working Paper, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains
Malaysia.
Noss, Richard B. (1984) An Overview of Language Issues in Southeast Asia 1950–
1980. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Center.
Omar, Asmah Haji (1977) The Phonological Diversity of the Malay Dialects. Agian
Pebinaan Dan Pengembangan Bahasa. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
Omar, Asmah Haji (1983) The Malay Peoples of Malaysia and their Languages. Kuala
Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa Dan pustaka.
Omoniyi, Tope (2006) Hierachy of Identities. In Omoniyi, Tope and White (eds)
The Sociolinguistics of Identity. London: Continuum, pp. 11–31.
Omoniyi, Tope and White, Goodith (2006) The Sociolinguistics of Identity.
London: Continuum.
Ong, Aihwa (1998) Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Cosmopolitans. In
Cheah, Pheng and Robbins, Bruce (eds) Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling
beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, pp. 134–162.
Ong, Chit Chung (1975) The 1959 Singapore General Election. Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies, 6, 1, 61–86.
Ostler, Nicholas (2005) Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World.
London: Harper Collins.
Pakir, Ann Geok-In (1986) A Linguistic Investigation of Baba Malay. A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Division of the University of Hawaii in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in
Linguistics.
Pakir, Anne (1991) The Range and Depth of English-Knowing Bilingualism in
Singapore. World Englishes, 10, 2, 167–179.
Pan, Lynn (1998) The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Landmark
Books.
Pang, Keng Fong (1984) The Malay Royals of Singapore. An Academic Exercise
Submitted to the Department of Sociology, National Univeristy of Singapore
for the B.A.(Hons.).
Patterson, George N. (1969) Christianity in Communist China. Waco, Texas: N.
Patterson Word Books.
Peet, George Lamb (1934) Malayan Exile. Singapore: Straits Times Press NL 10058,
pp. 32–35.

226 References
Pennycook, Alastair (1998) English and the Discourses of Colonialism: The Politics
of Language. London: Routledge.
Pennycook, Alastair D. (2007) Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London
and New York: Routledge.
Pereira, Alexius (2003) Triads and Riots: Threats to Singapore’s Social Stability.
In Chan, Kwek Bun and Tong, Chee Kiong (eds) Past Times: A Social History of
Singapore. Singapore: Times Edition.
Periasamy, Makeswary (2007) Indian Migration into Malay and Singapore
during the British Period. Biblioasia, 3, 3, 4–11.

PETS (1993) A Series for English Teaching in Primary Schools. Singapore: Curriculum
Development Institute of Singapore.
Pillai, Shanthini (2008) Integrating Patterns of a Coolie Past: Literature and the
Figuring of Contemporary Malaysian Indian Identity. In Lee, Su Kim, thang,
siew Ming and Lee, King Siong (eds) Border Crossings: Moving between Langauges
and Cultural Frameworks. Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk Publications (M) Sdn. Bhd.
Platt, John and Weber, Heidi (1980) English in Singapore and Malaysia. Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Png, Poh-seng (1967) A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Loan-Words in the Malay
Language. Journal of the Island Society, 1, 1, 1–24.
Proudfoot, Ian (1993) Early Malay Printed Books: A Provisional Account of
Materials Published in Singapore-Malaysia Area up to 1920 Noting Holdings
in Major Public Collections. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Library.
Purcell, Victor (1948) The Chinese in Malaya. London: Oxford University Press
(Chinese translation), Singapore 1950.
Purushotam, Nirmala (1997) Negotiating Language, Constructing Race. Disciplining
Difference in Singapore. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Quah, Sy Ren (2002) Evolving Multilingual Theatre in Singapore: The Case of
Kuo Pao Kun. In Suryadinata, Leo (ed.) Ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia.
Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 377–399.
Raffles, Sophia (ed.) (1835) Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles. London: Duncan 1835, vol. 1, pp. 40–41.
Rajah-Carrim (2010) Mauritian Muslims: Negotiating Changing Identities
through Language. In Omoniyi, Tope (ed.) The Sociology of Language and
Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. London: Palgrave Macmillan,
pp. 29–44.
Rappa, Antonio L. and Wee, Lionel (2006) Language Policy and Modernity in
Southeast Asia. New York: Springer.
Reid, Anthony (1993) Islamization and Christianization in Southeast Asia: the
Critical Phase, 1550–1650. In Reid, Anthony (ed.) Southeast Asia in the Early
Modern Era: Trade, Power, Belief. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Reid, Anthony (2000) Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia. Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Reid, Anthony (2001) Understanding Melayu: Malay as a Source of Diverse
Modern Identities. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32, 3, 295–313.
Reid, Anthony 2010) Hybrid Identities in the 15th Century Straits. In Wade,
Geoff and Sun, Laichen (eds) Southeast Asia in the 15th Century. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, pp. 307–358.

References 227
Reid, Anthony and Macdonald, Charles J. H. (2010) Introduction. In Zheng,

Yangwen and Macdonald, Chales J-H. (eds) Personal Names in Asia: History,
Culture and Identity. Singapore: NUS Press, pp. 1–20.
Reith, George Murray (1892) Handbook to Singapore: With Map and A Plan of the
Botanic Gardens. Singapore: Singapore and Straits Printing Office.
Reith, George Murray (1899) A Padre in Partibus: Java, the Eastern Archipelago and
Siam. Singapore: Straits Printing Office.
Ricklefs, M. C. (1991) A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1300, Second edition.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rizvan, Ahmad (2011) Urdu Indevanagari: Shifting Orthographic Practices and
Muslim Identity in Delhi. Language in Society, 40, 259–284.
Robson, John Henry Matthews (1894) People in a Native State. Singapore: W.
Makepeace.
Robson, Stuart (2002) From Malay to Indonesian: The Genesis of a National
Language. Australia: Monash Asia Institute Press. Working Paper 18.
Roff, W. R . (1967) The Origins of Malay Nationalism. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Roff, William R. (1972) Bibliography of Malay and Arabic Periodicals Published
in the Straits Settlements and Peninsular Malay States 1876–1941, with an
Annotated Union List of Holdings in Malaysia, Singapore and the UK. London:
Oxford University Press.
Ross, John Dill (1898) The Capital of a Little Empire: A Descriptive Study of a British
Crown Colony in the Far East. Singapore: Kelly and Walsh Ltd. Reprinted from
the Free Press.
Rush, James R . (1990) Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in
Colonial Indonesia 1860–1910. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Safran, William (2008) Language, Ethnicity and Religion: A Complex and
Persistent Linkage. Nations and Nationalism, 14, 171–190.
Sanderson, Reginald (1908) The Population of Singapore. In Wright, Arnold (ed.)
20th Century Singapore: Impressions of British Malaya. London: Lloyds Greater
Britain Publication Co.
Saldin, B. D. K. (2001) The Srilankan Malays and their Language (Dehiwala: Sridevi),
Second edition. Colombo: N.P.
Salomon, Richard (1998) Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions
in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages. New York: Oxford
Univeristy Press.
Sandhu, K. S. and Mani, A (eds) (1993) Indian Communities in SEA. Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asia Studies.
Said, Edward (1979) Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books.
Sapir, Edward (1949) Culture, Genuine and Spurious. In Mandelbaum D. G. (ed.)
Selected Writings of Edward Sapir. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.
308–331.
Savage, Victor R . and Yeoh, Brenda S. A. (2003) Toponymics: A Study of Singapore
Street Names. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press.
Saxena, Mukul (2007) Multilingual and Multicultural Identities in Brunei
Darussalam. In Tsui, A. B. M and Tollefson, J. (eds) Language, Culture and
Identity in Asian contexts. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 262–303.

228 References
Schiffman, Harold F. (1996) Linguistics Culture and Language Policy. London and
New York: Routledge.
Scully, Valerie and Zuzarte, Catherine (2004) Eurasian Heritage Dictionary:
Kristang-English/English-Kristang. Singapore: SNP International.
Shaffer, Lynda Norene (1996) Maritime Southeast Asia to 1500. London: M. E.
Sharpe.
Shamsul, A. B. (2003) Islam Embedded: Religion and Plurality in Southeast Asia
as a Mirror for Europe. Asia Europe Journal, 2, 3, 159–178.
Sharma, Haresh (2010) Trilogy. Singapore: The Necessary Stage.

Shariff, Abdul Aziz Mohd (1981) The Baba Language. Submitted to the University
of New York, UK in Accordance with the Requirement for a MA Degree in
Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching (Xeroxed materials).
Shellabear, W. G. (1913) Baba Malay: An Introduction to the Language of the
Straits Chinese. Journal of the Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, 65, 49–63.
Reproduced in Clammer, John (1980), pp. 156–165.
Shellabear, W. G. (ed.) (1961, 1612) Sejarah Melayu (The Malay Annals), pp. 23–31.
Sianu (pseudonym) (1938) Under the Attaps: Stories of Malayan People. Singapore:
Kelly and Walsh.
Siddique, S. and Purushotam, Nirmala (1990) Singapore’s Little India; Past, Present
and Future. Singapore: Institute of Southest Asian Studies.
Sim, Kathrens (1946) Malayan Landcape. London: M. Joseph.
Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (1936) Happy Days Supplementary
Readers, Series 3, No. 1, Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.
Siti Hawa, Haji Salleh (2010) Malay Literature of the 19th Century. Kuala Lumpur:
Institute Terjemahan Negara.
Smith, M. G. (1960) Social and Cultural Pluralism. In Rubin, V. (ed.) Social
and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 83, pp. 763–779.
Song, Ong Siang (1923) One Hundred Years History of the Chinese in Singapore.
London: John Murray, pp. 305–306.
Sopher, D. E. (1977) The Sea Nomads, Second edition. Singapore: National
museum. First Published 1965.
Spear, Thomas and Waller, Richard (ed.) (1990) Being Maasai: Ethnicity and
Identity in East Africa. London: James Currey.
Spolsky, Bernard (2010) Jewish Religious Multilingualism. In Omoniyi, Tope (ed.)
The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 14–28.
Stockwell, A. J. (1998) Conceptions of Community in Colonial Southeast Asia.
Transaction of the Royal Historical Society, Series 16, 8, 337–355.
Sreedran, Sasidaran (1997) The Malayalees of Singapore: Language, Religion and
Social Organization. Academic Exercise Submitted for the Degree of BA Hons.
Department of Sociology. National University of Singapore.
Sridhar, S. N. and Kachru, Yamuna (2008) Language in South Asia. Cambridge:
Stoud, Christopher and Wee, Lionel (2010) Langauge Policy and Planning in
Singaporean Late Modernity. In Lim, Lisa, Pakir, Anne and Wee, Lionel (eds)
English in Singapore: Modernity and Management. Singapore: NUS Press, pp.
181–204.

References 229
Stowell, E. (1933) We See the World. Singapore: MPH (a supplementary text to be

used with the intensive readers in the Malayan Readers Series).
Steinhauer, Hein (2001a) Javanese. In Garry, Jane and Rubino, Carol (eds) Facts
about the World’s Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World’s Major Languages, Past
and Present. Dublin: H. W. Wilson Company, pp. 350–355.
Steinhauer, Hein (2001b) Malay/Indonesian. In Garry, Jane and Rubino, Carol
(eds) Facts about the World’s Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World’s Major
Languages, Past and Present. Dublin: H. W. Wilson Company, pp. 452–458.
Straits Times 29 March 1880; 20 May 1950; 31 March 2000; 24 June 2004; 22

December 2004; 2 June 2008; 16 January 2010; 18 Febraury 2010; 6 March
2010; 14 May 2010; 20 March 2010; 21 June 2010; 15 January 2011; 8 March
2011; 11 December 2011.
Straits Times, 20 May 1950; 29 March 1880; March 31, 2000; 20 March 2010; 11
December 2011.
Stretton, Gordon, Daniels, Jeff and Rye, Howard 2010. A Study in Multiple
Identities. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Company.
Suleiman, Yasir (2006) Constructing Languages, Constructing National Identity.
In Omoniyi, Tope and White, Goodith (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Identity.
London: Continuum, pp. 50–71.
Suprajitno, Setefanus (2011) Negotiating the Cultural and the Religious: The
Recasting of the Chiense Indonesian Buddhist. Biblioasia, 7, 3, 24–30.
Suryadinata Leo (2002) Peranakan Chinese Identities in Singapore and Malaysia:
A Re-examination. In Suryadinata, Leo (ed.) Ethnic Chinese in Singapore and
Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 69–84.
Suwannathat-Pian, Kobkua (2011) Palace, Political Party and Power: A Story of the
Socio-Political Development of Malay Kingship. Singapore: NUS Press.
Sweeney, Amin (1987) A Full Hearing, Orality and Literacy in the Malay World.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Swettenham, Frank (n.d.) British Empire in Asia: The Polyglot Life of the Straits
Settlements. London: Edward Stanford.
Swettenham, Frank (1880) Comparative Vocabulary of the Dialects of Some of
the Wild Tribes’ Inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula, Borneo, etc. Journal of
the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 125–128. Papers available on
microfilm from the National Library NL 5876 (MR 959.5 SWE).
Tagliacosso, Eric and Chang, Wen-chin (eds) (2011) Chinese Circulations:
Capital, Commodities and Networks in Southeast Asia. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Takakusu, J. (Translated) (1896) I-Tsing. A Record of the Buddhist Religion: As
Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago (A.D. 671–695). Reprint New Delhi,
AES, 2005, i–xiv, 240 p.
Tan, Chee-Beng (1986) MuzikMelayudan orang Cina di Pulau Pinang (Malay
music and the Chinese in Penang), DewanBudaya, 8, 4, 48–51.
Tan, Jason (1997) The Rise and Fall of Religious Knowledge in Singapore
Secondary Schools. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29, 5, 603–624.
Tan, Eugene (2002) Reconceptualizing Chinese Identity: The Politics of
Chineseness in Singapore. In Suryadinata, Leo (ed.) Ethnic Chinese in Singapore
and Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 109–136.
Tan, Terry (2008) Stir-Fried and Not Shaken. Singapore: Monsoon Books.

230 References
Tan, Bonnie ( 2010) The Itinerario: The Key to the Southeast East. Biblioasia, 5,
4, 27–31.
Tan, Jing Quee, Tan, Kok Chiang and Hong, Lysa (eds) (2011) The May 13
Generation: Singapore Chinese Middle School Students and Politics in the 1950s.
Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.
Tatsuki, Fujii (1943) Singapore Assignment. Tokyo: The Nippon Times.
Taylor, Jean Gelman (1983) The Social World of Batavia European and Eurasian in
Dutch Asia. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Taylor, Jean Gelman (2003) Indonesia: Peoples and Histories. New Haven and

London: Yale University Press.
TBG (1899) The President’s Ball. Straits Chinese Magazine, p. 157.
Teixeira, Manuel (n.d.) The Influence of the Portuguese on the Malay Language.
Manuscript. Available from Regional Language Center, SEAMEO, Singapore.
Teo, Peter (2005) Mandarinizing Singapore: A Critical Analysis of Slogans
in Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign, Critical Discourse Studies, 2, 2,
121–142.
Teo, Jaclyn (2010) Chinese Dialect Groups and their Occupations in 19th and
Early 20th Centuries Singapore. Biblioasia, 6, 1, 19–26.
Tham, Seong Chee (1990) A Study of the Evolution of the Malay Language. Social
Change and Cognitive Development. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Thiyagaraj, Sarah (1998) The Chetty Melaka Community: Its Origin and Its Cultural
Identity. A thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts of the University of New
South Wales in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of B.A.
(Hon.) in History.
Thomason, Sarah G. (2001) Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Thomason, Sarah G. and Kaufman, Terence (1988) Language Contact, Creolization,
and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Thomson, J. T. (1864, 1985) Some Glimpses into Life in the Far East (London:
1864) Reprinted as Hall, Jones, John (eds) Glimpses into Life in Malayan Lands
(KL: 1985).
Tol, Roger (2001) Bugis. In Garry, Jane and Rubino, Carol (eds) Facts about the
World’s Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World’s Major Languages, Past and
Present. Dublin: H. W. Wilson Company, pp. 96–99.
Tregonning, K. G. (1972) A History of Modern Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore:
Eastern Unviersities Press Sdn. Bhd.
Trocki, Carl (1979) Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor
and Singapore 1784–1885. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Turnbull, C. M. (1989) A History of Singapore 1819–1988, Second edition.
Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Turnbull, C. M. (1996) Singapore in the 1920’s. Manuscript available from author.
Unseth, Peter (2008) The Sociolinguistics of Script Choice: An Introduction.
International Journal of Sociology of Language, 192, 1–4.
Unseth, Peter (2011) Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization.
In Fishman, Joshua A. and Garcia, Ofelia (eds) The Success-Failure Continuum in
Language and Ethnic Identity Effects. Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity,
Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–32.
UtusanMelayu, several issues. A Malay Newspaper Published in Kuala Lumpur:
Utusan Melayu Press.

References 231
Vaish, Viniti (2008) Mother Tongues, English and Religion in Singapore, World
Englishes, 27, 3/4, 450–464.
Vaish, Viniti and Roslan, Mardiana (2011) Crossings in Singapore. World
Englishes, 30, 3, 317–331.
Vanden, Harry E . and Prevost, Gary (eds) (2002) Chapter Ten: Guatemala. Politics
of Latin America: The Power Game. USA: Oxford University Press.
Vaughan, J. D. (1985, 1879) The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits
Settlements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. First Published 1879.
Virinder, S., Kaur, Ramider and Hutnyk, John (2005) Hybridity and Diaspora.

London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Vlieland, C. A. (1932) A Report on the 1931 Census and on Certain Problems of Vital
Statistics. London: Crown Agents for the Colonies.
Waas, M. (2002) Language Reclamation. In Chew P. G. L. and Hwee Q. S.
(eds) Globalization. Singapore: The National University of Singapore Society,
Commentary, 18, 103–113.
Wade, Geoff (2010) Southeast Asia in the 15th century. In Wade, Geoff and
Sun, Laichen (eds) Southeast Asia in the 15th Century. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press.
Wales, H. G. Quaritch (1976) The Malay Peninsula in Hindu Times. London:
Bernard Quaritch Ltd.
Wallace, Alfred Russel (1869) The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan
and the Bird of Paradise. London: Macmillan and Co.
Warnford-Lock, Charles George (1907) Mining in Malaya for Gold and Tin. London:
Crowther and Goodman.
Wee, Tong Poh (1900) Is Revenge Sweet? (The Story of a Confession). Straits
Chinese Magazine, iv, 100–10.
Wee, Ann (1996) The Fellow Villager Dormitory and the Single Chinese Immigrant:
Some Historical Aspect of this Residence Pattern in Singapore. Department of Social
Work and Psychology. National University of Singapore. Xiamen: Xiamen
University Press.
Wee, Desmond (2009) Singapore Language Enhancer: Identity Included.
Language and Intercultural Communication, 9, 1, 15–23.
Weinreich, Uriel (1977) Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary. New
York: Schoken Books. (First Published 1968)
Wheatley, P. (1964) Impressions of the Malay Peninsula in Ancient Times. Singapore:
Eastern Universities Press Ltd.
Wheeler, L. R. (1929) The Modern Malay. London: Eran Brothers.
Widodo, Johannes (2009) Morphogenesis and Hybridity of Southeast Asian
Coastal Cities. In Ismail, Rahil, Shaw, Brian and Ooi, Giok Ling (eds) Southeast
Asian Culture and Heritage in a Globalising World: Diverging Identities in a Dynamic
Region. Surrey: London, pp. 79–92.
Wilkinson, R. J. (1952) An Abridged Malay-English Dictionary. London: Macmillan.
Winstedt, R. O. (1916) Malayan Memories. Singapore: Kelly and Walsh.
Winstedt, R . (1932, 1992) A History of Johore (1365 –1941). Previously published
in Vol. X, Part III, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Winstedt, Richard (1947, Reprinted 1981) The Malays: A Cultural History.
Singapore: Graham Brash Pte. Ltd. (Revised and Updated by Tham Seong Chee
in 1981).
Winstedt, Richard (1962) A History of Malaya, Revised edition, p. 40.

232 References
Winstedt, Richard (1969) A History of Classical Malay Literature. Singapore: Oxford

Universtiy Press.
Wodak, Ruth and Meyer, Michael (eds) (2009) Methods of Critical Discourse
Analysis, Second revised edition. London: Sage.
Wolfram, W. and Schilling-Estes, N. (2006) American English: Dialects and
Variations. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Wolters, O. W. (1967) Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Srivijaya.
Ithaca, NY: American Council of Learned Societies.
Woods, R. (1958) St. Andrew’s Cathedral Singapore: A Short History for Members and

Visitors. Singapore: Straits Times Press.
Wright, Clifton (1972) Cameos of the old Federated Malay Statess and Straits
Settlements. Devon: Arthur H. Stockwell Ltd.
Yap, Pheng Geck (1982) Scholar, Banker, Gentleman Soldier: The Reminiscences of
Dr. Yap Pheng Geck. Singapore: Times Book International.
Yen, Ching-hwang (2002) Traditional Ethnic Chinese Business Organizations in
Singapore and Malaysia. In Suryadinata, Leo (ed.) Ethic Chinese in Singapore and
Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 195–217.
Yeo K. W. and Lau A. (1991) From Colonialism to Independence 1945–1965. In
Chew, E. and Lee, E. (eds) A History of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University
Press.
Young, Robert J. C. (1995) Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race.
London and New York: Routedge.
Zaba, Pendita (1965) Mengarang Melayu. Kuala Lumpur: Kuala Lumpur Penerbit
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
Zhou, Changji (2003) Xinjiapo Min Nan Hua Su Yu Ge Yao Xuan. Xiamen: Xiamen
da xue chu ban she.
Zoohri, Wan Hussin (1990) The Singapore Malays: The Dilemma of Development.
Singapore: Kesatuan Guru-guru Melayu Singapura.

Index
Abdul Chaer, Mad’ ie, 119 Asis, Maruja M. B., 11

Abdullah, bin Abdul Kadir, 89 assimilation, xvi, 29, 35, 38, 39, 40,
Abedin, Zainul, 84 46, 68, 77, 124, 129, 130, 131,

Abisheganaden, Paul, 136, 138, 204 132, 133, 141, 170, 179, 203
Abu Bakar, 137 Association of Malay Professionals,
Abyssinian, 26 172
accent, 26, 40, 95, 97, 99, 179, 190, attraction, 111, 112, 170, 201
193, 201 Austronesian, 55, 56, 57, 71, 181
acculturation, xvi, 111, 129, 130, 132, Aye, Khin Khin, 90
133, 134, 179 Azizah, Hashim, 54, 55
acculturation-assimilation cline, Azlan Shah, 17
130–2
Achenese, 5, 9 Baba, ix, 11, 30, 32, 35, 47, 77, 80, 81,
Adelaar, Karl Alexander, 55 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 114, 115, 116,
Alatas, Syed Hussein, 191 117, 118, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131,
Albakry, Mohammed A., 33 135, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 153,
Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin, 52 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 164, 180,
Allah, 62, 63 182, 189, 198, 199, 202, 207, 208
Allen, Charles, 22, 108, 127, 202 see also Straits-born
alliteration, 56 Baba Malay, 7, 93, 104, 113–15, 117,
Alsagoff, Lubna, 182 127, 128, 133, 142, 158, 174, 200,
Althusser, Louis, 20, 171 202, 213
Amoy, see Hokkien Baba Malay Creole, 113–17
Andaya, Barbara, 11, 111 Bahasa Malay, 139
Andaya, Leonard, 194 Bahasa Malaysia, ix, 1, 5, 118, 199
Anderson, Benedict, 5 Baker, Maurice, 29, 125, 136,
Anglicanism, 34 138, 204
Anglo-Chinese School, 97, 199 Bakker, Peter, 112
Anglo-Indian, 15, 96, 121, 127 Baldauf, B. R. Jr., 88
animistic identity, 55–6 Balinese, 23, 38, 198, 201
Ansaldo, Umberto, 78, 89, 114 Banda, 11, 121, 166
Anuar, Hedwig, 140, 189, 203 Bao, Zhiming, 90
Arab, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 25, 26, 35, 36, Barley, Nigel, 195
41, 42, 63, 78, 80, 83, 84, 98, 127, Barr, Michael, 162, 168, 208
130, 134, 187, 198, 201 Basa Ugi, see Bugis
Arabic, 4, 15, 29, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, Batavia, 11, 25
68, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 82, Baweanese, 37, 39, 42, 184
84, 85, 105, 109, 139, 146, 179, Baxter, Alan N., 123
185, 187, 194, 195, 197 Bazaar Malay, 7, 37, 39, 40, 44, 47, 49,
architecture, 18, 72, 140, 141, 145, 53, 88–95, 114, 116, 118, 119, 126,
151, 183 128, 137, 158, 179, 181, 191, 198,
Arseculeratne, S. N., 11, 30, 94, 135, 199, 202, 203, 204, 213
136, 141, 148 Beauvoir, Le Comte de, 97
233

234 Index
Beck, U., 183 Bugis, 5, 12, 13, 15, 20, 37, 38, 39, 40,
Beg, M. A. J., 51, 59, 63, 64, 195 41, 42, 75, 79, 80, 104, 184, 191,
Bellwood, Peter, 37 193, 201
Bengali, 38, 48, 50–1, 71, 77, 117, 121, see also Malay identity
148, 182, 196 Burgher, 15, 121, 202
see also Indian identity Burns, P. L., 190
Bhattacharya, Jayati, 20 Butler, J., 6
Birch, D., 174
Bird, Isabella, 16, 21 Cantonese, ix, 7, 20, 21, 22, 29, 31, 33,

Blagden, C. O., 79 34, 38, 43, 45, 46, 51, 66, 92, 98,
Bleackley, Horace, 179 99, 100, 104, 105, 131, 161, 162,
Block, David, 6 166, 174, 180, 181, 189, 192, 201
Bloodworth, Dennis, 32, 152, see also Chinese identity
162, 163 Cardona, G., 50
Bloom, David, 97 Catholic, 30, 33, 49, 68, 80, 93, 129,
Boas, Franz, 185 146, 194, 205
Bollywood, 50, 193 Catholicism, 35
see also Indian identity Caucasians, 19, 20, 22, 95, 124, 125
Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul, 5 settlement areas of, 20
Boogaart, E. van den, 89 census, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 25, 26, 34,
Borneo, 11, 38, 111, 121, 192, 194, 36, 37, 48, 75, 112, 117, 121, 129,
207, 215, 216, 229 177, 178, 188, 189, 191
borrowing, 1, 48, 49, 54, 55, 63, 91, Ceylon, 15, 48, 97
123, 127, 148, 174, 184, 185 Ceylonese, 13, 22, 121, 193
Boxer, C.R., 202 Chan, Heng Chee, 161
Boyanese, 13, 37, 38, 42, 78, 104, 193 Chan, Robin, 219
see also Baweanese; Malay identity Chang, Rachel, 173
Braddell, R. St. J., 223 Chang, T. C., 135
Brahmi, 7, 58, 64, 71, 72, 73, 85, Chang, Wen-chin, 67, 183
194, 196 Chaozhou, 43, 45, 51, 179
Brass, Paul R., 189 see also Chinese identity
Brethren, the, 34, 49 Chaozhouhua, see Teochew
British Empire, 158, 229 Chasen, Kathleen M., 141
British Malaya, 12, 83, 151, 201 Cheeseman, H. R., 189, 190
British Raj, 51, 81, 141, 158, 175, 204 Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, the, 16
Brocheux, Pierre, 25 Chetty Malay, ix, 112, 117, 118, 119,
Brooke, G. E., 223 120, 127, 128, 144
Brooke, James, 195 Chetty Malay Creoles, 7,
Brown, C. C., 13 117–20, 126
Brown, Wendy, 185 Cheung, Sidney C. H., 143
Bucholtz, Mary, 1, 6 Chew, Ernest, 142
Buckley, Charles Burton, 21, 193 Chew, Phyllis G. L., 8, 33, 35, 44, 56,
Buddhism, 4, 26, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 88, 174, 183
67, 68, 70, 145, 178, 194, 195 Chia, Cheng Sit, 141, 150
Mahayana, 4, 59 Chia, Cheng-sit, 80, 106, 115, 116, 150
Theravada, 4, 54, 59, 149 Chia, Felix, 103
Buddhist identity, 59–62 Chia, Jeannette Hwee Hwee, 39
Buginese, see Bugis Chin, John M., 200

Index 235
China, 21, 29, 33, 37, 45, 46, 60, 61, Collins, James T., 40, 55, 81, 194, 198
62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 75, 81, 99, 132, colonialism, 35, 171, 182
133, 137, 138, 141, 142, 151, 153, colonialization, 4, 37, 76, 83, 96
158, 162, 173, 175, 176, 177, 179, Conceicao, J. F., 20, 22, 135
187, 194, 196, 201, 202, 203, 206 Conceicao, Joe, 125, 135, 203,
Chinatown, 17, 20, 45 209, 211
Chinchinjoss, Joss, 23 Confucianism, 8, 26, 145, 178
Chinese, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, consonant, 57, 71, 74, 119, 197
17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 31, 34, Constitution of Malaysia, the, 85

36, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 59, constructionist paradigm, the, 2, 87
60, 65, 73, 79, 80, 90, 91, 92, 95, Cooper, F., 86
97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 107, 111, Coppel, Charles, 17
117, 121, 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, cosmopolitanism, 146, 160, 170, 181,
134, 135, 142, 143, 148, 152, 159, 185, 186
160, 163, 165, 166, 172, 173, 174, Cotterrell, Roger, 173
175, 177, 180 Coulmas, Florian, 70, 85, 194
Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 98, Council for the Development of
163, 201 Muslims in Singapore, 172
Chinese Development Assistance Coupland, N., 1
Council, 172 Cowen, C. D., 190
Chinese Girls’ School, 97 Crawfurd, John, 15, 125, 188, 203
Chinese identity, 43–8 Creole, xv, 3, 7, 15, 38, 88, 95, 111,
Chinese Leong Nam Temple, 145 112–13, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126,
Chinese-Malay fraternity, 65–7 127, 143, 182, 197, 201, 202
Choo, F. S., 46 Creolization, 112, 113
Choo, Suzanne S., 185 Croft, William, 202
Christianity, 4, 26, 30, 34, 35, 70, 73, Cuenot, Claude, 216
82, 83, 178, 190, 205 Cultural Orientation Model, ix, 181–2
Chua, Beng Huat, 184 culture, 1, 8, 9, 15, 17, 19, 28, 36, 39,
Chua, Jim Neo, 158 55, 56, 61, 67, 68, 75, 76, 80, 83,
Chua, Mui Hoon, 179 95, 113, 117, 123, 124, 125, 127,
Chua, Mui Hoong, 179 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 142, 143,
Chua, S. C., 214 144, 147, 154, 155, 162, 172, 173,
Chua, S. K. C., 88 180, 181, 203, 204
church, 4, 30, 33, 34, 48, 54, 93, 116, Cust, Robert Needham, 15
146, 202, 208 custom, 3, 21, 22, 36, 37, 39, 43, 52,
civilization, 16, 34, 54 56, 60, 63, 64, 76, 77, 117, 139,
Clammer, John R., 142, 147 147, 149, 178, 190, 200
Clement, V., 70
Clifford, Hugh, 34 d’Albuquerque, Afonso, 121
CMIO model, the, 172, 173, 176, 184, Daniels, Jeff, 229
186, 211 Daoism, 8, 145
code-choice, 14 David, Maya Khemiani, 125
code-mixing, 14, 106–9, 110 Davison, Julian, 93
code-switching, 6, 14, 29, 97, 106–9, d’Avity, Pierre, 23
110, 182 De Francis, John, 187
Cohen, Yehuda, 35 De Graaf, H. J., 66
collective identity, 19, 37, 170 de Houtman, Frederick, 79

236 Index
de Silva, G. W., 136 ellipsis, 119

de Silva, Patrick, 123 engagement, 111, 112, 170
DeBernardi, Jean, 148 English, 11, 13, 15, 22, 23, 24, 25,
deficit and dominance hypothesis, 55 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 44,
see also Kachru, B. B. 46, 49, 52, 53, 56, 75, 76, 77, 80,
deletion, ix, 114–15, 118, 119 81, 83, 88, 89, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97,
Democratic Party, the, 163, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104,
166, 208 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 115,
Department of Statistics, 49, 161, 174, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 126,

177, 178, 191, 208 127, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 140,
Despande, Madhav M., 7, 65 145, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155,
Deterding, D., 217 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162,
Deutscher, Guy, 217 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 174, 175,
Devanagari, 4, 70, 71, 196, 197 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185,
see also Sanskrit 188, 189, 190, 193, 195, 197, 199,
Dhoraisingam, Samuel S, 119 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207,
dialect, 2, 6, 29, 39, 40, 42, 45, 48, 49, 208, 209
66, 112, 114, 115, 137, 166, 167, ascendancy of, 175–6
169, 170, 174, 179, 191, 192, 201, English-knowing bilingualism, 176
202, 210 Erikson, Erik, 2
diglossia, 41 Errington, Joseph, 3, 20, 26, 70
discourse, 3, 6, 28, 39, 42, 47, 87, ethnic-racial identification, 20
115, 178 Eunos bin Abdullah, 65, 189
Doraisamy, T. R., 29, 153 Eurasian, 10, 13, 24, 62, 104, 118, 121,
Dorian, N. C., 18 124, 125, 126, 135, 136, 140, 146,
Dravidian language family, the, 48 148, 195, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205
see also Indian identity European, 3, 8, 10, 11, 13, 19, 24, 25,
dress, x, 8, 18, 39, 76, 89, 115, 119, 28, 30, 34, 36, 38, 44, 50, 77, 79,
129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 140, 141, 86, 93, 121, 124, 125, 128, 137,
142, 147, 148, 151, 179, 183 141, 146, 179, 180, 183, 184, 189,
Dube, Ram Swaraji, 192 191, 192, 193, 196, 202, 203, 204
duplication, 56
Durkheiman logic, 173 Fairclough, N., 9
Dutch, 15, 25, 26, 41, 42, 65, 78, 79, Farquhar, William, 124
89, 95, 119, 121, 123, 124, 131, Ferguson, Charles A., 73
141, 181, 185, 188, 194, 199, 200, Fernandez, Sheila, 193
201, 202, 211 Ferrao, Tomas, 121
Fill, Alwin, 14
Eckert, Penelope, 6 Finlay, M. H., 34
education, 6, 20, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, Fishman, Joshua A., 3, 7, 98
77, 79, 88, 128, 136, 152, 153, 157, food, 8, 18, 46, 68, 76, 109, 125, 126,
165, 189, 190, 200, 205, 206, 207 129, 133, 135, 140, 143–4, 179,
Chinese-medium schools, 28–9 180, 181, 183, 184, 192, 199
English-medium schools, 30–2 Four Books, The, 153
and identity, 27–32 Freedman, Maurice, 132, 146, 202
Indian-medium schools, 29 Frost, Mark Ravinder, 16, 183
Malay-medium schools, 27–8 Fujianese
education divide, 152–7 Fujianese linguistic groups, 44
Edwards, John, 2, 9, 84, 170, 173 see also Hokkien

Index 237
Fujii, Tatsuki, 22, 203 Harris, Roxy, 134

Furnivall, J. S., 17, 75, 148, 152 Hashim, Azizah, 55
Hatcher, Lynley, 70
Gair, James, 48 HDB (Singapore Housing and
Gallop, Annabel The, 65 Development Board), 45
Gard, Richard, 60 Hefner, Robert W., 17, 36
Gaur, Albertine, 71, 83 Heidhues, Mary Somers, 112
Geylang, 20, 41, 135, 145 Hemery, Daniel, 25
Gibson-Hill, C. A., 40 Heng, Derek, 12

Giles, Herbert, 81 Hierarchy of Identities (HOI), 8
Gillet, Eric, 214 Hill, A. H., 82, 89
Gioia, D. A., 6 Hill, Michael, 163, 173, 176
globalization, 4, 7, 38, 170, 179, 181, Hindi, 4, 48, 50, 70, 71, 109, 127,
183, 184 170, 196
Goh, Chok Tong, 176 Hindu identity, 56–9, 67, 71, 83,
Goh, Daniel P. S., 177, 178, 184 117, 192
Goh, Keng Swee, 164 Hindu-Buddhism, 62, 63, 67, 145, 195
Gonda, J., 56 Hindu-Buddhist identity, 61, 70,
Goneng, Awang Gopinathan, S., 204 71, 72
Gopinathan, S., 30, 156 Hinduism, 4, 26, 59, 60, 63, 65, 68,
grammatical structure, 46, 83 70, 147
Greek, 4, 82, 83, 127, 193, 203 Hirschman, Charles, 19, 26, 35, 38,
Grijns, C. D., 202 129, 188
Grünendahl, R., 72 Ho, Mien Lian, 219
Guangdong, 45, 46, 65, 158, 191 Ho, Stephenie, 58, 63, 65, 144
see also Chinese identity Hokkien, ix, 7, 10, 15, 21, 22, 29, 31,
Guangdonghua, see Cantonese 33, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 53,
Gujarati, 48, 71, 182, 207 68, 88, 89, 90, 91, 98, 99, 100,
Gumperz, John, 2 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 109,
Gupta, A. F., 93, 200 110, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123, 128,
Gwee, Thian Hock, 118 129, 131, 139, 143, 155, 156, 158,
159, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168,
H (High) variety, 6, 9, 87, 117, 156 169, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181,
Haikou, 43, 46 187, 188, 191, 192, 199, 201, 202,
see also Chinese identity 208, 209, 210
Hainanese, 7, 20, 31, 38, 43, 46–7, 51, see also Chinese identity
93, 105, 192 Hokkien Huay Kuan, 165
Hainanhua, see Hainanese Holden, Philip, 177, 184
Hakka, 33, 34, 38, 43, 44, 46, 98, 104, Holliday, Adrian, 183
123, 166, 188, 192, 199 Holm, John, 112
see also Chinese identity Holmberg, Erik, 75, 137, 204
Hall, Kira, 214 Holmes, Janet, 6
Han, Fook Kwang, 162, 165, 171, 172, Hon, Sui Seng, 164
178, 210 Hong, Lysa, 229
Han Dynasty, the, 60 Hoo, Ah Kay, 190
Haque, Muhammed Sahriar, 84, 198 Hoon, Chang-Yau, 26
Hardwick, Patrick Ann, 164 Howell, E. F., 108
Haresh Sharma, 180 Hsiau, Ai-Chin, 5
Harper, T. N., 146, 166, 167 Hua, Cecilia, 224

238 Index
Huang, Shu-min, 203 Indian identity, 48–51

Hundred Family Surnames (Bai Jia individual identities, xv, 2, 5, 87
Xing), 31 Indo-Aryan language, 50
Hutnyk, John, 230 see also Indian identity
hybrid identities, xv, 8, 106, 107, 108, Indo-Iranian family, the, 48
110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 127, 140, see also Indian identity
143, 150, 164, 205 Indonesia, 5, 8, 11, 15, 26, 40, 42, 54,
Hymes, Dell, 113 58, 65, 72, 74, 78, 81, 84, 94, 120,
124, 128, 158, 174, 194, 195, 199,

Ibrahim Yaccob, 193 209
Ibrahim Zubaidah, 137, 139 intelligibility, 38, 44, 46, 105,
identity, xi, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18, 19, 173, 192
27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 38, 43, 45, intergenerational identities, xv,
47, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 129, 151
59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, intermarriage, 38, 211
69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, intonation, 2
78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 93, Ipoh, 45
98, 99, 103, 109, 110, 113, 115, Irish, 15
117, 119, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, Islam, 4, 8, 34, 35, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66,
140, 141, 144, 151, 156, 157, 159, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 83, 84,
160, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 85, 134, 145, 172, 173, 178, 187,
173, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 195, 198, 205
184, 187, 192 Islamic identity, 62–5
construction of, 4 Ismail, Rahil, 145
see also under individual identities
identity marker, 5, 54, 178 Jain, D., 50
ideology, 10, 19, 35, 67, 70, 83, 160, Jambi, 11, 197
172, 173, 180, 190, 193, 198 Java, 11, 12, 17, 35, 37, 42, 57, 60, 61,
idiolect, 2 66, 67, 89, 111, 146, 159, 176, 189,
independence, 5, 10, 32, 42, 43, 48, 55, 191, 194, 195, 200, 205
78, 158, 160, 169, 172, 173, 175, Java Sea, the, 12, 42
177, 178, 191, 199, 205, 207, 209 Javanese, 9, 12, 13, 15, 21, 37, 38, 39,
India, 4, 11, 13, 15, 25, 26, 29, 32, 37, 41–2, 61, 63, 65, 66, 72, 80, 89,
48, 49, 51, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 105, 117, 118, 141, 150, 187, 188,
72, 75, 76,77, 89, 96, 113, 123, 191, 193, 198, 199, 201, 202
124, 127, 132, 140, 151, 158, 170, see also Malay identity
173, 176, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, Jawi, 4, 5, 7, 11, 26, 70, 73–85, 105,
194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 204 111, 117, 118, 130, 135, 197, 198
Indian, 7, 13, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26, 28, see also Muslim identity
29, 34, 35, 37, 38, 48, 50, 51, 52, Jayapal, Maya, 21, 197
54, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, Jew, 4, 11, 12, 13, 21, 26, 172
71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 89, 94, 103, Jieyang, 43, 45
104, 105, 112, 117, 121, 124, 125, see also Chinese identity
127, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, Johor, 1, 11, 38, 39, 40, 45, 73, 74,
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 78, 81, 137, 187, 188, 191, 193,
152, 157, 159, 171, 172, 173, 177, 196, 198
181, 183, 184, 188, 189, 192, 194, Johor Bahru, 137
196, 197, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207, Jones, Russell, 199
209, 210 Joo Chiat, 140, 145, 146

Index 239
Joseph, John, 1, 3, 4 Latin, 4, 33, 64, 70, 73, 78, 83,

Josey, Alex, 156, 209 88, 111, 112, 127, 189, 198,
Jumabhoy, J. M., 159 203, 210
Jurgen, Rudolph, 93, 96, 114, 160, Lau, A., 163
164, 201 Lau, Aileen Guek Lin, 144
Lay, Lian Teck, 142
Kachru, B. B., 55, 193, 220 Laycock, John, 160
Kachru, Yamuna, 193 Le Page, R., 2, 6, 110
Kampong Kling Mosque, 145 Lee, Chin Koon, 158

Karim, Wazir Jahan, 68, 134 Lee, Chun Chu, xi
Kaufman, Terence, 128 Lee, Dai Soh, 192
Kaur, Ramider, 214 Lee, Edwin, 29
Keasberry, Benjamin Peach, 198 Lee, Geok Boi, 157
Keaughran, T. J., 93 Lee, Hock Guan, 17
Keay, John, 72 Lee, Khoon Choy, 98, 137
Kedahese, 38 Lee, Kuan Yew, xvi, 12, 158–69
Kejia, see Hakka Lee, Yong Hock, 207
Kelantanese, 38 Leglise, Isabelle, 224
Keppel, Henry, 136 Leitner, Gerhard, 54
Kevi, 70, 72, 74, 85 Leon, Madeline, 17
see also Hindu-Buddhist identity Leon, William, 17
Khanna, Parag, 183 Leong, Weng Kam, 152, 169,
Khieif, B. B., 188 174, 209
Khoo, Kay Kim, 191 Leow, Ngee Fui, 29, 154, 155, 206
Kiang, Clyde, 46 Levathes, Louise, 65, 195
Koh, Adeline, 28, 31 lexical borrowing, 1, 91
Koh, Jaime, 58, 63, 65, 144 lexical diffusion, 187
Koh, Maueen, 166 lexis, 75, 88, 102, 114, 122,
Kong, L., 135 175, 185
Kota Cina, 11 Leydekker, M., 79
Kottak, C. P., 130 Li, Chung Chu, xi
Kramsch, C., 7 Lian, Kwen Fee, 163, 173, 176
Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju, 72 Lian, Kwen Fen, 176
Kristang, ix, 7, 10, 15, 33, 96, 104, Liang, Ching Ping, 32
110, 112, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, Lieberman, Victor, 63, 187, 194
125, 126, 127, 128, 135, 181, 203 Liew, Clement, 33, 129
Kristang Creole, 120–2 Light, Francis, 10
Kuala Lumpur, 45, 65, 68, 99, 201 Lightfoot, David, 134
Kuo, Pau Kun, 180 Lim, Boon Keng, 141
Kwa, Chong Guan, 11, 75, 76, 159, Lim, Chin Siong, 166
191, 197 Lim, Hiong Seng, 93
Kwa, Geok Choo, 159 Lim, Janet, 34, 93, 181, 205
Lim, Lisa, 228
L (Low) variety, 6, 7, 87, 117, 156, 181 Lim, Lu Sia, 75
Labour Front, 161, 163, 207, 208 Lim, Pui Huen, P., 21, 131, 137
Laffan, Michael Francis, 76, 78, Lim, Rosemary, 15, 222
82, 198 Lim, Yew Hock, 137, 159, 161, 168,
language choice, 87 207, 208, 209
language shift, 173–5 Lind, Andrew, 29

240 Index
lingua franca, ix, 3, 7, 28, 37, 38, 39, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111,
43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 64, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118,
77, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 98, 103, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126,
104, 109, 110, 114, 116, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134,
133, 150, 162, 166, 174, 176, 178, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141,
179, 181, 184, 199, 201, 203 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148,
linguistic diversity, 43, 52 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157,
Linschoten, J. H. van, 89, 196 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168,
Lion City, xi 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176,

see also Singapore 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184,
literary endeavours, 129, 140, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
148–50, 151 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199,
literature, 9, 27, 30, 64, 66, 72, 73, 74, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205,
78, 81, 91, 150, 185, 190 206, 207, 208, 209, 210
loan words, 51, 54, 62, 64, 91, 97, 100, see also under individual Malay
184, 185, 193, 201, 211 varieties
Loh, P. F. S., 28, 200 Malay Archipelago, the, 11, 59, 65,
London Missionary Society, 83 195, 197
Longan, J. R., 23 Malay identity, 38–43
Lontara script, 191 Malay Peninsula, 10, 12, 15, 28, 38,
Low, Cheryl-Ann Mei Gek, 72 55, 58, 72, 146, 194, 196
Low, Ee Ling, 110, 181 Malayalam, 38, 48, 49, 196
Low, Kelvin E. Y., 192 see also Indian identity
Lust, Barbara, 48 Malayalee, see Malayalam
Malayo-Polynesian branch, the, 51
Ma, Huan, 65 see also Indian identity
Macdonald, Charles J. H., 164, Malaysia, 5, 11, 17, 21, 28, 38, 41,
180, 203 42, 45, 54, 55, 62, 65, 66, 67,
Mackie, Jamie, 111 68, 75, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85, 110,
Macknight, Campbell, 80, 187 118, 123, 124, 128, 131, 151,
Mahathir, Mohamad, 67, 68 157, 168, 174, 187, 190, 192,
Maimunah bte Haji Mohd. Ali, 191 194, 195, 199, 200, 207
Majid, Zainab Abdul, 77, 197, 198 Mandal, Sumit Kumar, 80
Makepeace, W., 15, 20, 34, 40, 198 Mandarin, 5, 44, 46, 48, 90, 91, 104,
Malacca, x, 10, 11, 12, 16, 41, 51, 62, 105, 110, 131, 153, 154, 155, 156,
66, 67, 73, 74, 76, 82, 96, 117, 118, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168,
120, 121, 124, 125, 136, 145, 160, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179,
163, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195, 180, 181, 192, 201, 207, 209, 210
198, 199, 202, 207, 211 Manguin, Pierre-Yves, 62
Malay, ix, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, Mani, A, 12, 29, 118
13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, Mantra, Ida Bagoes, 42, 55
23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35, Marathi, 48, 71
36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, Marbeck, Joan Margaret, 125,
45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 126, 203
54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, Maria Hertogh Riots, the, 17, 94
63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, Marsden, William, 197
74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, Marshall, David, 161
83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, Masuri, A. N., 82
95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, Matheson, Virginia, 1

Index 241
Matras, Yaron, 112 Muslim, 17, 27, 34, 35, 48, 61, 62, 63,
Matthes, Benjamin Frederick, 79 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 75,
Matthew, G., 6 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 94, 117,
Matthews, Stephen, 89 134, 148, 171, 172, 178, 179, 183,
Maxwell, George, 27 189, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 210
McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 6 Muslim identify, 70
McLellan, James, 8, 106 Muzzi, Geraldo Affonso, 121, 123
media, the, 18, 20, 22, 25, 32, 36, Mydin, Iskandar, 39, 42
50, 77, 94, 128, 171, 172, 174,

209, 210 Nagata, Judith, 29, 189
Meegasdeniya, Arty, 30 Naidu, Ellam Govindasamy, 192
Methodist, 30, 33, 93, 159, 190, Nanking, 21, 67, 202
206, 208 Nanyang University, 165
Meyer, Manasseh, 188 Nathan, S. R., 140
Meyer, Michael, 9 National Archives, 33, 47, 103, 135,
Meyerhoff, Miriam, 6 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197,
Migge, Bettina, 224 199, 200, 201, 204, 205
migration, 43, 171, 176, 191, 206 national identities, xvi, 2, 3, 13, 185
Miksic, John N., 72 national language, 5, 54, 70, 81, 85,
Millenary Classics (Qian Zi Wen), 31 173, 175, 178, 187, 199
Mills, R. F., 40 National University of Singapore,
Milne, Lu 2007, 26, 190 180, 196
Milne, Lumsden 31, 32, 190 Nationalist Party, 5
Milner, Anthony, 11, 38, 62, 63, 66, Natives, 17, 20
74, 171 settlement areas of, 20
Minangkabau, 37, 41, 42, 62, 78, Nazir, A. Mallal, 160
191, 196 Ng, Siew, 93, 146
see also Malay identity Noor, Faridah Mohd Noor, 125
Minde, D. van, 119 Noor, Farish A., 127
Minnanhua, see Hokkien Noriah, Mohamed, 119, 128
Mitchell, Ron, 94 Noss, Richard B., 175
Modder, Ralph, 201
modernization, 85, 160 Ofelia, Garcia, 215, 217, 230
Mohamed Shahrom bin Mohamed official language, 60, 85, 172, 176
Taha, 39 Ofori, D., 33
Morita, Liang Chua, 132 Omar, Asmah Haji, 38, 78, 88
morphology, 95 Omoniyi, Tope, 2, 8, 110
Morris, George, 176 Ong, Aihwa, 183
mother tongue, 29, 37, 40, 46, 48, 49, Ong, Chit Chung, 162, 207
88, 96, 98, 112, 113, 121, 130, Ong, Eng Guan, 168
133, 153, 162, 166, 173, 176, 180, onomatopoeia, 56
206, 208, 210 Oon Bin Jaafar, 76
Mufwene, Salikoko S., 113 Orang Laut, 37, 38, 39–40, 41, 42
Muhd, Ariff Ahmad, 82 see also Malay identity
Muhleisen, Suzanne, 4 Orientals
multiculturalism, 17, 47, 133, 151, 173 settlement areas of, 20
multilingualism, 4, 38, 163, 171, 173 Oriya, 71, 72
Munoz, Paul Michel, 60, 194 orthographical identity, xv, 70, 71,
Munshi Abdullah, 89 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 196

242 Index
orthography, 4, 5, 70, 71, 72, 85, 86, 148, 181, 184, 185, 188, 195, 199,
124, 185 201, 202, 204, 211
Ostler, Nicholas, 57, 194 Prakrit, 7, 50, 71
Othman Wok, 139 Presbyterians, the, 34
Prevost, Gary, 13
Pakir, Anne, 114, 115, 116, 176 pronunciation, 49, 78, 80, 83, 92, 99,
Palembang, 11, 60, 67, 140, 150, 184, 102, 118–19, 120, 134, 168
196, 197 Proudfoot, Ian., 80, 81, 82, 195
Pallava, 70, 72, 74, 85, 196 Punjabi, 13, 29, 48, 50, 51, 71, 98,

see also Hindu-Buddhist identity 104, 193, 196
Pan, Lynn, 43 see also Indian identity
Pang, Keng Fong, 150 Purcell, Victor, 195
Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party of Purushotam, Nirmala, 36, 51
Malaysia, the, 84
PAP, see People’s Action Party Qing Dynasty, the, 131, 138
partialness principle, the, 6 Quah, Sy Ren, 180
Patani, 11, 73 Quanzhou, 43, 44, 98, 201
patois, see dialect see also Chinese identity
Patterson, George N., 81 Quran, 66
Peet, George, 93
Penang, 10, 11, 16, 51, 77, 82, 96, 99, race, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22,
117, 124, 125, 133, 138, 148, 160, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 51,
190, 198, 207 58, 63, 75, 78, 112, 121, 123, 124,
Guanyin Temple, the, 16 129, 133, 135, 136, 139, 152, 171,
Pennycook, Alastair, 29, 184 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 184, 189,
People’s Action Party, 152, 163, 193 190, 193, 205, 209, 210
Peranakan, 35, 75, 76, 77, 117, 118, racial compartmentalization, 171
119, 138, 139, 158, 204 racial identities, xiv, 25, 140
Pereira, Alexius, 17 Raffles, Sophia, 197
Periasamy, Makeswary, 51, 67 Raffles, Stamford, 10, 20, 21, 34, 52,
Persia, 73 96, 121, 190, 197, 202
Philippines, the, 11, 35, 54, 67, 83, Raffles Institution, 30, 94, 190
111, 194, 195, 205 Raja Ali Haji, 74
phoneme, 118, 119, 128 Rajah-Carrim, 10
phonetic symbolism, 56 Rappa, Antonio L., 226
phonology, 122 regional identities, xiv, 37, 47, 51, 52,
pidgin, xv, 37, 88, 112–22 53, 76, 78, 150
pidginization, 112, 113 Reid, Anthony, 7, 37, 54, 65, 66, 111,
Pigafetta, Antonio, 79 164, 180, 191, 197, 203
Pigeaud, Th. G. Th., 66 Reith, George Murray, 22, 23, 25, 92
Pijnappel, J., 80 religion, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 16, 17, 20, 25,
Pillai, Shanthini, 7 34, 35, 36, 39, 42, 49, 50, 55, 56,
Plato, 185 61, 62, 64, 69, 71, 75, 79, 82, 83,
Platt, John, 200 117, 125, 152, 171, 177, 178, 180,
plurality, xiv, 19, 48, 129, 130, 132 183, 187, 188, 210, 211
Png, Poh-seng, 91 and identity, 32–5
political identities, xvi, 5, 7, 87, 152 religious identities, xv, 54, 61, 67, 68,
Portuguese, 1, 7, 23, 93, 113, 121, 122, 69, 150, 189
123, 124, 127, 131, 136, 143, 145, religious rites, 144–8

Index 243
Riau-Lingga Malay, 4, 5, 198 Shariff, Abdul Aziz Mohd, 114,

Ricklefs, M. C., 62 115, 210
Rizvan, Ahmad, 197 Sharma, Haresh, 227
Robinson, William, 124 Shellabear, W. G., 117, 131, 134
Robson, John Henry Matthews, Shellabear, William, 80
24, 189 Sianu (pseudonym), 124, 148
Robson, John, 24 Siddique, S., 51
Robson, Stuart, 79, 93 Sikh, x, 50, 136, 138, 178, 188, 193
Roff, William R., 27, 28, 42, 65 see also Punjabi

Romanization, 4, 79, 85 Sim, Kathren, 94
Roslan, Mardiana, 180 simplification, 113, 202
Ross, John Dill, 12, 23 Singapore
Rumi, 74, 78–81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 198 National Heritage Board, the, 14
Rush, James R., 131 Thian Hock Kheng, the, 16, 21
Rye, Howard, 229 Singapore English (SE), 88, 95–8, 110,
180, 181, 182
Safran, William, 4 International Singapore English,
Said, Edward, 19 181; see also Alsagoff, Lubna;
Said, Halimah Mohd, 77, 197, 198 Cultural Orientation Model
Saldin, B. D. K., 119 Local Singapore English, 181; see
Salomon, Richard, 71, 72 also Alsagoff, Lubna; Cultural
Samsui, 46, 47 Orientation Model
see also Chinese identity origin of, 96–8
Sanderson, Reginald, 189 Singapore Hokkien, ix, 10, 15, 44, 88,
Sandhu, K. S., 12, 29, 48, 58, 118 98–103, 179
Sanskrit, 4, 6, 7, 9, 16, 49, 50, 51, 56, vs Minnanhua, 99
57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 70, vs Teochew, 100
71–2, 85, 88, 184, 187, 193, 194, Singapore Indian Development
195, 196 Association, 172
Sapir, Edward, 1 Singapore Progressive Party, 160
Sarawakian, 38 Singapore Trade Union Congress, 161
Savage, Victor R., 188 Singapura, xi
Saxena, Mukul, 227 see also Singapore
Schiffman, Harold F., 170 Singh, Mohinder, 193
Schilling-Estes, N., 87 Singhalese, 15, 26, 29, 30, 59, 72, 88,
Scottish, 15 94, 96, 136, 141, 148, 202
script, 4, 5, 50, 64, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, Singlish, 94, 176, 181, 206
78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 147, 168, Sinhala, 4, 88
187, 191, 196, 205 Siti Hawa, Haji Salleh, 74
Scully, Valerie, 124 Skinner, G. William, 89, 131, 132,
Semarang, 11, 67 133, 204
SGEM, see Speak Good English Smith, M. G., 17
Movement solidarity, xv, 78, 129, 130, 132,
Shaffer, Lynda Norene, 67 170, 180
Shamanism, 26 solidarity-plurality model, xv, 129
Shamsul, A. B., 190 see also intergenerational identities
Shanghai, 21, 142, 189 Song, Hoot Kiam, 190
Shantou, 43, 45 Song, Ong Siang, 108, 141, 142, 157,
see also Chinese identity 190, 198, 208

244 Index
Sopher, D. E., 40 Sweeney, Amin, 74

South China Sea, the, 12, 42, 76 Swettenham, Frank, 23, 24, 28, 109,
Southeast Asia, 4, 11, 16, 19, 22, 37, 171, 190, 209
41, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, Syed, M. Khairudin Aljunied, 12
67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 85, Syed Hussain bin Abdul Gadir
89, 111, 114, 120, 121, 127, 144, Aljunied, 189
157, 187, 191, 194, 205, 211 symbolic behaviour, 6, 88
Southern Chinese dialects, 187 syntax, 89, 90, 95, 114, 175
Speak Good English Movement, 176 Sznaider, N., 183

Speak Mandarin Campaign, 110,
174, 210 Tabouret-Keller, A., 2, 6, 110
Spear, Thomas, 6 Tagalog, 9
speech community, 88 Tagliacosso, Eric, 183
Spolsky, Bernard, 1, 4 Takakusu, J., 61
Sreedran, Sasidaran, 49 Talalle, Frederick, 30
Sri Lanka, 4, 48, 96, 120, 192 Tamiang, 11
Sri Mariamman Temple, the, 33 Tamil, 4, 13, 21, 27, 29, 30, 33, 35, 38,
Sridhar, S. N., 193 48, 49, 50, 53, 77, 97, 103, 104,
St Andrew’s Cathedral, 34 105, 106, 109, 110, 117, 119, 131,
stamp, x, 172, 177 141, 148, 156, 162, 173, 176, 178,
Standard English, 94, 95, 105, 109, 180, 181, 190, 193, 196, 199, 205,
200, 201 207, 210
Standard Malay, ix, 40, 89, 90, 94 see also Indian identity
standardization, 187, 199 Tan, Bonnie, 89
Steinhauer, Hein, 5, 41 Tan, Chee Beng, 138, 143
Stockwell, A. J., 20, 228 Tan, Chew Neo, 142
Stoud, Christopher, 228 Tan, Chye Ching, 160
Stowell, E., 190 Tan, Eugene, 168
Straits Chinese British Association, Tan, Jason, 178
160 Tan, Jing Quee, 153
Straits of Malaca, the, 12 Tan, Kok Chiang, 229
Straits Times, The, 13, 95, 176, 190, Tan, Tai Yong, 221
201, 204, 205, 208, 210, 211 Tan, Terry, 205
Straits-born, 30, 32, 117, 129, 141, Tan, Tock Seng, 151
159, 190 Tan, Teck Neo, 142
see also Baba Tang Dynasty, the, 44, 60
stress, 2 Tanjong Pinang, 11
Stretton, Gordon, 229 Taoism, 26
Stubbe, Maria, 6 see also Daoism
style-shifting, 182 Tatsuki, Fujii, 93, 218
Su, Dong Po, 46 Taylor, Jean Gelman, 62, 123, 124, 202
Suleiman, Yasir, 83, 187 Teixeira, Manuel, 122
Sumatra, 11, 37, 41, 52, 57, 60, 62, 67, Telegu, 29, 38, 48, 49, 50, 104, 105,
72, 111, 146, 192, 194, 197 192, 196
Sumatran, 13, 16, 38, 40, 195 see also Indian identity
Sunda, 11, 194 Temasek, xi, 61, 195
Suprajitno, Setefanus, 8, 145 Teo, Jaclyn, 16
Suryadinata Leo, 130, 216, 226, Teo, Peter, 174
229, 232 Teochew, ix, 44–5
Suwannathat-Pian, Kobkua, 132 see also Chinese identity

Index 245
Tham, Seong Chee, 56, 63 Wee, Lionel, 184

Thiyagaraj, Sarah, 144, 147 Wee, Tong Poh, 109
Thomas, J. B., 6 Weinreich, Uriel, 127
Thomason, Sarah G., 9, 112, 128 Welsh, 15
Thomson, J. T., 42, 89 Wenchang, 43, 46
three Rs, the, 30 see also Chinese identity
three-generation model, ix, 132–6 Werndly, G. G., 79
Tibetan, 4, 71 Westernization, 85, 174
Tol, Roger, 191 Wheatley, P., 61, 66, 72, 194

town planning, 18, 19, 20 Wheeler, L. R., 27
treaty port, 192 White, Goodith, 2
Tregonning, K. G., 11, 12, 17, 133 Widodo, Johannes, 12, 20, 144
Trimetrical Classics (San Zi Jing), Wilkinson, R. J., 80, 83, 193
30–1 Winstedt, Richard, 13, 41, 55, 60, 72,
Trocki, Carl, 12 83, 206
Turnbull, C. M., 13, 17, 52, 76, 96, Wodak, Ruth, 9
121, 163, 188, 191, 197 Wolffram, W., 231
Wolters, O. W., 60
Unfederated Malay States, the, 5, 187 Wong, Ah Fook, 137
United Malays National Organization, Wong, Siew Qui, 141, 142
the, 84 Woods, R., 34
Unseth, Peter, 70, 74 World Wide Web, 183
Urdu, 4, 29, 48, 71, 77, 193, 197 Wright, Clifton, 50
Vaish, Viniti, 35, 180 Xiamen, 21, 43, 44, 99

van Linschoten, Jan Huyghen, 89 see also Chinese identity
van Ophuijsen, 81
Vanden, Harry E., 13 Yan, Kee Leong, 136
Vaughan, J. D., 99, 129, 133, 202 Yap, Ah Loy, 192
vernacular, 29, 30, 31, 49, 60, 105, Yap, Pheng Geck, 30, 97
116, 145, 153, 159, 189 Yen, Ching-hwang, 47, 188
Vickery, G. J., 34 Yeo, K. W., 163
Vietnamese, 9, 25, 193, 202 Yeoh, Brenda S. A., 188
Virinder, S.,127 Yin, Mabel, 141
Vlieland, C. A., 34 Young, Robert, 127
vocabulary, 41, 46, 50, 55, 61, 68, 91, Young, Robert J. C., 127
95, 98, 112, 113, 123, 190, 199 Yue, 45
von de Wall, Herman, 69 see also Chinese identity
vowel, 72, 115, 118, 119, 120, 197
Zaba, Pendita, 57
Waas, M., 120 Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad, 80
Wade, Geoff, 188, 196 Zhangzhou, 43, 44, 89, 98,
Wades-Giles notations, 81, 187 201, 202
Wales, H. G. Quaritch, 196 see also Chinese identity
Wallace, Alfred Russell, 13 Zheng, He, 65, 66, 67, 195
Waller, Richard, 6 Zhou, Changji, 201
Warnford-Lock, Charles George, 23 Zhou, Daguan, 111
Weber, Heidi, 200 Zoohri, Wan Hussin, 189
Wee, Ann, 204 Zubaidah Ibrahim, 137, 139
Wee, Desmond, 29 Zuzarte, Catherine, 124


History of Identities in Singapore

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

History of Identities in Singapore

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

History of Identities in Singapore

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore

From Colonialism to Nationalism

Please respect intellectual property rights

From Colonialism to Nationalism

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

1 Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early

2 Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making 19

3 Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided 37

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

The Teochews (Chaozhouhua) 44

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

4 Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive 54

5 Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology 70

6 Individual Identities: The Use of Lingua Francas

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

7 Hybrid Identities: Three Case Studies of Attraction

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

8 Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating Solidarity

9 Language, Power and Political Identities:

10 National Identities: The Reordering of Pluralities 170

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Bottom-up: individual identities in the 21st century 179

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

6.1 Language of choice in public domains in colonial Singapore 105

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

1 Singapore as a sociolinguistic paradise 14

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

If names are a part of identity, then the many historical names of

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

A study of identity remains perpetually relevant because all of us are,

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

A long-term view has been chosen because I am interested in the history

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

by their mother tongues. Each designated racial group, such as the

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Chapter 8, ‘Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating Solidarity and

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06

10.1057/9781137012340 - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

The research for Chapters 2 to 5 was supported by the National Institute

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Sydney - PalgraveConnect - 2016-06-06