CNA--We would always be lost: Prof Chan Heng Chee on the cost of Spore not knowing its history POSTED: 09 Oct 2014 22:48 SINGAPORE: Channel NewsAsia presenter Dawn Tan sat down with Ambassador-at-Large Professor Chan Heng Chee for an interview about the importance of being aware of Singapores history. Q. What were the stark realities faced by Singapore in the early days? Prof Chan: Singapore has always and will always be a city-state, island-state, nation-state. We have no natural resources and we are just an island on its own. It was the conventional political wisdom - nobody thought Singapore could survive on its own. When you talk of Singapores history, and we are discussing this in the context of the book The Battle For Merger, you are really talking of the history prior to merger, prior to independence in 1965. We were looking for independence and we knew the British authorities would not give independence to Singapore on its own. It was too precious; it was too strategic a location for it to fall into the wrong hands. And Singapore on its own sounded like that. And so the struggle was to try to forge this merger, to persuade the Malay leadership in UMNO why they should take in Singapore. Q: The Battle for Merger radio talks were intended to highlight to the Singapore public that merger with Malaya was crucial for Singapores survival as a fledgling state, and the inevitability of that merger. What was at stake at that time? Prof Chan: I think it was first, independence and second, what was going to happen to Singapore. Can you survive on your own? Singapores conventional political wisdom then was that you have to be part of a larger entity - Malaya was your hinterland. And you know this was the 1960s - where would you sell your goods to, where would goods come to you from? So the inevitability of Malaya - joining Malaya, becoming part of a larger entity to be called Malaysia, seemed as natural as the rising of the sun. Q. The radio talks also had another crucial objective - to expose the threat of the communists and their attempts to derail merger. How real was that threat? Prof Chan: I think the struggle against the communists was always one of the lead motives of the post-colonial period after the war. There were communist cells and groups that tried to bring about a communist revolution throughout all the different Southeastern countries - Vietnam, there was a Thai communist party, Malayan communist party, Indonesian communist party, Philippine communist party. And in Singapore, we are urban, the Malayan Communist Party really took on Malaya and Singapore, treating it as one entity. So dealing with the communists, pushing back the march of communism or the communist revolution, was something that all the political leaders did. I know that today there are some revisionists, historians, who said it was not so substantive. But in the 1960s, it was very substantive because you are in the thick of the action. Today, you look at the ISIS, is it a substantive threat or not? I am sure there are different evaluations, but you do not know. So in the 1960s, yes, it was a threat, everybody believed it was a threat. The British believed it was a threat. Later, when historians sat down and looked at the records, in the year 2000, or the year 2008, or 2012, they said looking at these, it does not seem as strong as we thought. Then I would conclude that like the Soviet Union, everybody thought the communist threat was stronger than it was. But it was there. Q. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently said many Singaporeans only have the vaguest idea of what the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation from 1963 to 1966 was about, and struggle to tell the difference between communists and communalists. Can the importance to understand ones history be overstated? Why is it critical that Singaporeans grasp that struggle? Prof Chan: History and our understanding of history can never be overstated for a nation. If you do not know who you are, how do you know where you want to go? We would always be lost, we would be unsure of ourselves and have anxieties. Countries that have strong histories and where people have strong histories and where people love their history, for instance the French, the British, the Thais. Ask the Thais, they always know they are Thai - Thailand is Buddhism, King, Country. You ask the Indonesians, they know their history. And the Chinese, they know their history. There is a confidence and a self-assurance. If you do not know your history, you do not know your reference point and that is the most important thing. And Singaporeans really should have a reference point. I have always lamented that we do not emphasise history enough. I am a political scientist that uses history a lot. So I have regretted that we did not have a strong emphasis on history. And I am glad we are beginning to come to the point now that history is important. Q. Singapores history, as it unfolds, is ours. It belongs to its makers. How far would you agree with that? Is reflecting on history then sufficient to energise the next 50 years? Prof Chan: There are people who make history. There are people who analyse history. History-makers are the activists, the leaders, the politicians. They shape events, and I would say history is always a winners history first. Winners write their history. Then as time goes on, other people revise history and they say, but this happened, but that happened and yes of course, history is a living thing. There is a body and there is a central narrative, body of facts and central narratives. And people do contest, once in a blue moon, you get really major changes, but that is history and someone else may come back later, and say I found another batch of documents that really counteracted what was written, but that is history. - CNA/xy channelnewsasia/news/singapore/we-would-always-be-lost/1406458.html
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 05:21:52 +0000
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