14 - Creating National Identity

Summary

Raja surveyed his changed world from an office of faded colonial grandeur in City Hall. His window looked over the Padang (field), the stage for many of the country's historic events. It was here that, in 1819, the Malay chiefs signed the treaty with Stamford Raffles, an official of the British East India Company, to cede Singapore to the British Empire. It was here that, in 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the British. And it was here that, just days before on 5 June 1959, Raja and the PAP cabinet were sworn in as the first fullyelected government of self-governing Singapore.

It ushered in a new phase of Singapore's history, an age of experiment, of self-determination. As the country's first culture minister, Raja epitomised that spirit as he imagined a nation united and free.

His office on the third storey of the City Hall, with its grand colonnade of Corinthian columns, was his workshop. It was strewn with books and notes and all the apparatus of a writer. He had easy access to the prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and the deputy prime minister, Toh Chin Chye, whose offices were on the second floor.

To a large degree, the prime minister left it up to Raja to define his job and its scope. Even the nomenclature of his ministry came from him. Before the cabinet was officially formed, Lee had initially proposed to Raja that his ministry be called the Ministry for Information. Raja had other ideas. As he told Lee, information was only one part of the job, but the more important part was to confront the communal divisions in the society and to establish a sense of national identity among the various races. Lee had initial misgivings. As he confessed later that year, there was the “natural English-educated reluctance” to talk of a Ministry of Culture “because of its association with ideas and ideals which are supposed to be intolerant and illiberal”, said Lee. But, in a move which reflected the weight he gave to Raja's views, Lee went along with his proposal.

Raja was to spend the better part of his six years as culture minister on a quest to define the country's national identity.