Globalised identity: How did Singapore managed the situation

Within a nation or society where different ethnicity, race and religion co-exist, there always seems to be conflict. Shiite and Sunni Muslims of Iraq, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Muslims and Buddhists in Southern Thailand and Palestine’s and Jews at the West Bank area are classic examples of these conflicts. However, there exist successful co-existent examples, such as Singapore. So let us examine how did Singapore do it and is it really that successful.

Shiite Muslims

Since Singapore gained independence, besides the 1960 racial riots, Singapore has played the race and religion cards well. The post independent government recognizes the need to maintain racial and religious harmony within Singapore. One of the steps they took was to create opportunities for the different races and religions to mix and interact with each other. Example of these includes the HDB inter-racial policy. Each block of flats would have to have a ratio of different races stipulated by HDB.  This creates more chances for the different races to understand each other.  The government also uses the most powerful tool – education, to in build in young students the importance of racial and religious harmony. Mandatory National Education for students last all the way to tertiary educational level.

Another step taken by the government is not to marginalize any religions or race. When the September 11 attacks occurred, the government pinned the blame on extremists taking the wrong path, rather than blaming Islam as a religion. All these steps hopes to get the message across that all races, religions poses equal importance and stature in the society of Singapore.  So how successful are these measures?

Of course, as proven by history, all these have been rather successful. For the last 40 years, Singaporeans of different races and religious group co-existed peacefully. There have been little or virtually no riots, major disputes arising because of these differences. Leaders of each race and religions also encourage more understanding and do so by example, such as visiting each other’s religious institution.

However, there are still factors that I feel, will still create differences and more measures can be placed to overcome this issues. The government does try to segregate ethnic groups till today, which has been proven to be quite hard to determine. The ethnic groups are stated while in actual fact, it is difficult to determine. Inter ethnic group marriages would have produced a ‘combination’ of ethnic groups. And with the clear segregation of these ethnic groups, might it be a cause for ethnic unrest in the future?

Another measure of how successful is what Singaporeans really feel about other races and religions. On the surface, everyone seems to be tolerant and understanding of one another’s race and religions, but what about deep down within? An example would be me. My secondary school, which was a SAP school during my time, had little or virtually no members of the minorities group (Malays, Indians etc). The school was also a Chinese school. Hence, even though there was much National Education and the need to understand, all these were in theories. What was lacking was the practical aspect. How could we really understand other races when all we came in touch were theories and once-a-year visit to religious institution? Hence, this leads to many of my friends being racial intolerant (Not racist) since we do not have friends of other races. Theories are good, but when they cannot be put into practice, it is kind of useless. I felt that elitism might have played a role in this case.

In conclusion, Singapore has been successful in maintaining racial and religious harmony. With the changing ethnic and globalised identity, there is a need for new measures to be put in place to minimize conflict, such as terrorism.  What needs to be done is not on the surface, but rather deep down within each individual. In this case education could be a powerful tool, but there is also a need for the young of the nation to really experience diversity to understand the importance.

~ by Tan Seng Giap Jason on October 7, 2008.