Let’s interrogate where these people are coming from. Let’s first discount the fact that the colonial govt destroyed the indigenous settlement, dynamited the #Singapore Stone (surviving fragment features an undeciphered script) etc. If we ignore what they did...
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Last year there was so much talk about how groups other than the British contributed to the rise of “modern Singapore”. Yet here we are in 2020, our own govt having bulldozed 19th-20th century villages, cemeteries & monuments. And enforcing racial boundaries too.
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And there are still no archaeological surveys prior to beginning construction projects, land reclamation etc. So much cool stuff found in Fort Canning during its excavation, but hardly a ripple of change in policy that I know of regarding #archaeology and material culture.
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Yet we still pride ourselves on that Tang Dynasty shipwreck we have displayed in @acm_sg!? I don’t understand the inconsistency of talking about heritage yet watching in anticipation as the foundations for yet another mall are hastily pile-driven into the ground.
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So if you couldn’t care less about BOTH Raffles’s exploitative/destructive deeds, AND the post-colonial administration’s disregard of aspects of history that don’t fit a preconceived design for what Singapore’s landscape and Zeitgeist “should” be like...
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... then ur issue is not w decolonization per se. Rather, ur too much of a cultural ignoramus to have a stand on decolonization at all. Movements like it may not share exactly the same sociocultural “content” here, but the forces behind them are analogous at least in “form”.
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And I only say this because the people most likely to be attacking posts like @historyogi’s are the same people who will excuse almost anything and everything for the sake of “economic progress and security”—which is extremely dangerous. *coughcriticalspectatorcough*
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Engagement with history in Singapore needs to stop being treated as some kind of aspirational, airy thing for the rich, or the left-wing, or for people who don’t have to worry about “bread and butter” issues.
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For a country this tiny and young, and which talks so much about its reliance on human capital, we too often forget that history gives foresight, orients plans, and embeds and invests people in the sociopolitical fabric. Having a Sang Nila Utama float at NDP isn’t enough.
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