No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2024
Dominant historiography in Singapore celebrates Sinnathamby Rajaratnam as one of the city-state’s founding national fathers, and the intellectual superintendent of state-sponsored multiculturalism in what has been characterized as an ‘illiberal democracy’. Little attention, however, has been paid to the extensive periods of Rajaratnam’s life in which he was not in governance with the People’s Action Party, and thus had considerable intellectual autonomy. This article examines the first of these periods—his sojourn in London from 1935 to 1947—marked by connections with overlapping communities of anti-colonial intellectuals drawn from Africa, the Caribbean, and East and South Asia. Close reading of Rajaratnam’s London lifeworld, his published fiction and journalism, and the many annotations he made in the books he read reveals a very different intellectual history than the one that we think we know, and allows us to better understand his lifelong uneasiness with capitalism and racial governmentality. Re-reading Rajaratnam as an autonomous intellectual disembeds his early intellectual life from the story of the developmental state, enabling a focus on the role of affect and form in his writing. The process also offers new insights into Singapore today, where the legacies of state-sponsored multiculturalism are increasingly challenged, and where citizens, residents, and migrants seek new forms of solidarity in and across difference.
1 Heng Chee, Chan, ‘The Role of Intellectuals in Singapore Politics’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 3, no. 2, 1975, pp. Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 63.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 64.
5 Ibid., p. 63.
6 As chair of the National Arts Council, for instance, Chan defended governmental censorship through arts funding in a speech at the Singapore International Film Festival, which operates a strict no-censorship policy. See Akshita Nanda, ‘Arts Funding and Censorship: Arts Circle Disappointed by Arts Council Chairman’s Remarks’, Straits Times, 28 November 2015, available at www.factiva.com, [accessed 29 October 2024].
7 Of the seven members of the Malayan Democratic Union Chan listed, four were exiled: John Eber, Eu Chooi Yip, Lim Hong Bee, and P. V. Sarma.
8 See Holden, Philip, ‘Spaces of Autonomy, Spaces of Hope: The Place of the University in Post-colonial Singapore’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 53, no. 2, 2019, pp. 451–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Souchou, Yao, ‘All Quiet on Jurong Road: Nanyang University and Radical Vision in Singapore’, in Paths not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-War Singapore, (eds) Barr, Michael D. and Trocki, Carl A. (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), pp. 170–187Google Scholar.
10 Cherian George, Chong Ja Ian and Shannon Ang, ‘The State of Academic Freedom in Singapore’s World-beating Universities’, pp. 69–70, available at https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/Chapter-Three-George-Chong-Ang.pdf, [accessed 29 October 2024].
11 See Kai Xiang, Teo, ‘Civil Society Responses to Singapore’s Online “Fake News” Law’, International Journal of Communication, vol. 15, 2021, pp. 4795–4815Google Scholar, available at https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/17910/3593, [accessed 30 October 2024]. Teo gives an account of how the legislation ‘raises the costs of participation for those whose processes of discourse-making are less deferential to the state’ (p. 4809).
12 Mutalib, Hussin, ‘Illiberal Democracy and the Future of Opposition in Singapore’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, April 2000, pp. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 In Rajaratnam’s case, for instance, it has proven difficult to disembed his life story from the national narrative. The two volumes of his biography written by former PAP MP Irene, Ng, The Singapore Lion: A Biography of S. Rajaratnam (Singapore: ISEAS, 2010)Google Scholar, and Irene, Ng, S. Rajaratnam, The Authorised Biography. Vol. 2: The Lion’s Roar (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 2024)Google Scholar are a definitive account of the life, yet make use of privileged access to government records and sources. Even the site Intellectuals.SG, curated by academics concerned to produce a critical intellectual history of Singapore, places his life and ideas within the unfolding of the Singaporean developmental state as a ‘leading protagonist in Singapore’s mainstream history’ and is largely reliant on the first volume of Ng’s biography. See Terence Chong and Darinee Alagirisamy, ‘Chasing Ideals, Accepting Practicalities, Banishing Ghosts: S. Rajaratnam’s Singapore’, Intellectuals.SG, published online on 2 July 2021, available at https://sgintellectuals.medium.com/chasing-ideals-accepting-practicalities-banishing-ghosts-f8840992aac1, [accessed 30 October 2024].
14 These accounts include, for example, Guo-quan, Seng, ‘“How I Wished That It Could Have Worked”: James Puthucheary’s Political-economic Thought and the Myth of Singapore’s Developmental Model’, in Living with Myths in Singapore, (eds) Seng, Loh Kah, Tjin, Thum Ping and Chia, Jack Meng-Tat (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2017), pp. 95–104Google Scholar; Charles Brophy, ‘James Puthucheary, Afro-Asianism and the National Question on the Malayan Left, 1950–1965ʹ, Master’s thesis, Leiden University, 2021; Kah Seng, Loh, Liao, Edgar, Cheng Tju Lim, Lim and Guo-quan, Seng, The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012)Google Scholar, as well as several of the articles in Barr and Trocki (eds), Paths Not Taken.
15 Auto/biographical work of this kind includes Soo Kai, Poh, Living in a Time of Deception (Singapore: Function 8, 2016)Google Scholar; Zahari, Said, Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir (Kuala Lumpur: INSAN, 2001)Google Scholar; and many of the essays in Jing Quee, Tan, Soo Kai, Poh and S., Jomo K. (eds), Comet in our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History (Kuala Lumpur: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2015; 2nd edn)Google Scholar.
16 Beng Huat, Chua, ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control’, Race and Class, vol. 44, no. 3, 2003, pp. .Google Scholar
17 George, Cherian, Freedom from the Press: Journalism and State Power in Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012), pp. 27–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kai Khiun, Liew, ‘The Anchor and the Voice of 10,000 Waterfront Workers: Jamit Singh in the Singapore Story (1954–63)’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 2004, pp. Google Scholar.
18 Hong, Lysa and Jianli, Huang, The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), p. .Google Scholar
19 Said, Edward, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (London: Vintage, 1994), p. .Google Scholar
20 Ibid., p.11.
21 The term ‘OB markers’, an abbreviation for ‘out-of-bounds markers’, is frequently used in Singapore to describe an ambiguous and shifting ‘range of things from topics which are off-limits for open discussion to rules of engagement between citizen and state, government and politicians’. See Tarn How, Tan and Mahizhnan, Arun, ‘Subverting Seriousness and Other Misdemeanours: Modes of Resistance Against OB Markers in the 2006 Singapore General Election’, Media Asia, vol. 35, no. 4, 2008, pp. CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Hong Bee, Lim, Born into War: Autobiography of a Barefoot Colonial Boy Who Grew Up to Face the Challenge of the Modern World (London: Excalibur Press, 1994), pp. 357–365Google Scholar. See also CO 537/4782, Political Developments: Lim Hong Bee and ‘The Malayan Monitor’, The National Archives of the UK (hereafter TNA).
23 Lim Chin Siong, ‘An Extract from Lim Chin Siong’s Posthumous Manuscripts’, (trans.) Lim Chin Joo, in A Comet in our Sky, (eds) Tan, Poh and Jomo, pp. 180–189, especially pp. 184–185.
24 Chan Heng Chee, ‘Verbatim: Singaporean Ambassador Heng Chee Chan’, Washington Life Magazine, published online December 2004, available at https://www.washingtonlife.com/issues/2004-12/verbatim/, [accessed 30 October 2024].
25 Hussein Alatas, Syed, Intellectuals in Developing Societies (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. .Google Scholar
26 Ibid.
27 Fakih, Farabi, Authoritarian Modernization in Indonesia’s Early Independence Period: The Foundation of the New Order State (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 See Beng Huat, Chua, Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 58–62.Google Scholar
29 Rajaratnam, ‘The Counter-attack Against Democracy’, Sunday Standard, 20 September 1953, p. 10.
30 Rajaratnam, ‘Is Rule By Minority Inevitable?’, Sunday Standard, 27 September 1953, p. 10.
31 Rajaratnam, ‘Economic Health Demands the Workers’ Appreciation of the Requirements of Industry’, Straits Times, 27 October 1955, p. 8.
32 Chua, Communitarian Ideology, p. 61.
33 Rajaratnam, ‘The Modernising Nationalism’, The Mirror: A Weekly Almanac of Current Affairs, vol. 6, no. 16, 20 April 1970, p. .Google Scholar
34 ‘Raja Warns of the Ugly Cult of Moneytheism’, Straits Times, 13 August 1973, p. 15.
35 ‘Raja Wants Revival of “Singaporean Singapore”’, Straits Times, 11 March 1990, p. 2.
36 Rajaratnam, Notebook 3, Accession No. 166_2009, National Archives of Singapore (hereafter NAS). The notebooks are not accessible via the online catalogue, but can be consulted with the assistance of an archivist.
37 Rajaratnam, Notebook 17, Accession No. 181_2009, NAS.
38 Rajaratnam, Oral History of S. Rajaratnam, Politician Accession Number 000149, Oral History Centre, NAS, available at https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/interview/000149, [accessed 30 October 2024].
39 Ibid.
40 Rajaratnam’s connections with the China Campaign Committee are suggestive; he is mentioned as knowing ‘a few elite Kuomintang leaders’ in London. See Ang Swee Suan (ed.), Dialogues with S. Rajaratnam: Former Senior Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, (trans.) Lee Seng Giap (Singapore: Shin Min Daily News, 1991), p. 20. He also recalled attending a week-long seminar for Chinese students at Welwyn Garden City, and spending time at the China Institute (Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS).
41 See, for example, 1943 correspondence between the Ministry of Information, the Foreign Office, and private individuals about the representation of the Opium War in the CCC pamphlet Allies and Equals: The Story of Extraterritoriality in China, FO 371/35846, China Campaign Committee: activities of, Code 10 file 2450, TNA.
42 Evidence from King’s College Calendar and Registry Slip Books indicates Rajaratnam completed the three years of coursework required for the LLB degree in 1935–1936, 1936–1937, and 1937–1938, but ‘retired’ in 1938, and then sat and failed his final examinations in both 1939 and 1940. O. Snaith, Archives Assistant, King’s College London, email message to author, 14 July 2022.
43 Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS; ‘Interview No. 1, 30 November 1985’, in The Prophetic and the Political; Selected Speeches and Writing of S. Rajaratnam, (eds) Chan Heng Chee and Obaid ul Haq (Singapore: Graham Brash, 1987), pp. 479–502, especially pp. 472–473; Ang (ed.), Dialogues, p. 20.
44 See Duffield, I., ‘Black People in Britain: History and the Historians’, History Today, vol. 31, no. 9, September 1981, pp. 34–36Google Scholar, especially p. 35; Brant Moscovitch, ‘A “Seedbed” for Post-colonial Leaders: Empire, Internationalism and the Left at LSE, 1919–c.1950ʹ, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2017, p. 95. Accounts of anti-colonial activism and intellectual activity in London in the period from 1935 to 1947 also include Gopal, Priyamvada, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (London: Verso, 2019)Google Scholar; James, Leslie, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)Google Scholar; Matera, Marc, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Moscovitch, Brant, ‘“Against the Biggest Buccaneering Enterprise in Living History”: Krishna Menon and the Colonial Response to International Crisis’, South Asian Review, vol. 41, no. 3–4, 2020, pp. 243–254CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Williams, Theo, Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation (London: Verso, 2022)Google Scholar.
45 Subramaniam, Alagu, Closing Time (New York: Ohm Books, 2021 [1971]), p. .Google Scholar
46 Ramesh, Jairam, Intertwined Lives: P. N. Haksar and Indira Gandhi (New Delhi: Simon and Schuster India, 2018), p. .Google Scholar
47 ‘Extract from New Scotland Report, No. 190, Dated 2nd April, 1941ʹ, File 598/33—Sasadhar Sinha, Indian Progressive Writers’ Association: Activities in London, L/PJ/12/467, India Office Records and Private Papers, British Library (hereafter IOR, BL).
48 Rajaratnam, ‘Interview No. 1’, p. 473.
49 Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS; Certified copy of an entry of marriage on 2 January 1943 between Sinnathamby Rajaratnam and Piroska Feher, SR/113/50/1, S. Rajaratnam Private Papers, ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute (hereafter SRPP-ISEAS).
50 The information in this paragraph is derived from two sources: Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS, and the entry for 12 Steele’s Road in the General Register Office’s 1939 Register, available at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register, [accessed 30 October 2024]. Cheah is listed as resident at 12 Steele’s Rd on p. 71 of the 1936 Electoral Register for the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead as ‘Cheah Hing Sing’, available at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/, [accessed 30 October 2024].
51 Subramaniam, Closing Time, p. 28.
52 Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS.
53 Xiao Qian [Hsiao Chi’en], Traveller Without a Map, (trans.) Jeffrey C. Kinkley (London: Hutchinson, 1990), p. 96; Xiao Qian, Wu dai ditu de lüren, Xiao Qian de huiyilu (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, 1997), p. 149. Kinkley’s English translation is inaccurate here, in that it translates gongyu 公寓 as ‘flat’, when it should be ‘boarding house’: the dining table was communal, not placed in an individual apartment, as the translated text implies. Similarly, the phrase yi ceng lou 一层楼 indicates that the two men had rooms on the same floor (most likely, from Rajaratnam’s photographs compared to my own visit to the house in May 2022, to be the second floor in British terms), not that their shared flat was on the ‘ground floor’, as in Kinkley’s translation. I am indebted to Chan Cheow Thia for this second point. For photographs of the Steele’s Road house, its garden, and the road in front, see , Rajaratnam Private Passion: The Photographs of Pioneer Politician and Diplomat S. Rajaratnam (Singapore: ISEAS, 2011), pp. 14–16Google Scholar.
54 Burton, Antoinette, ‘Epilogue: The Sodalities of Bandung. Toward a Critical 21st-century History’, in Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, (ed.) Lee, Christopher (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), pp. Google Scholar.
55 Matera, Black London, Chapter 3, ‘Black Feminist Internationalists’, pp. 144–198. For a more extended discussion of the exclusion of women intellectuals and the possibilities of inclusion, see Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, ‘Introduction: Toward a History of Women’s International Thought’, in Women’s International Thought: A New History, (eds) P. Owens and K. Rietzler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 1–25. For rethinking intellectual labour with a particular focus on Garvey, see Robbie Shilliam, ‘Theorizing (with) Amy Ashwood Garvey’, in Women’s International Thought, (eds) Owens and Rietzler, pp. 158–178.
56 Ang (ed.), Dialogues, p. 21.
57 James, George Padmore, p. 52.
58 See, for example, Simonow, Joanna, ‘Sexing the History of Indian Anti‐colonial Internationalism: White Women, Indian Men and the Politics of the Personal’, Gender and History, vol. 36, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
59 Piroska Rajaratnam to Dorothy Padmore, 24 July 1950, KV 2/3833, Dorothy Padmore, alias Pizer: Security Service Personal (PF) Series Files, TNA.
60 See Makonnen, Ras, Pan-Africanism from Within (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. Google Scholar, for an account of discrimination against interracial couples.
61 Gandhi, Leela, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. .Google Scholar
62 Ibid., p. 179.
63 Cyzewski, Julie, ‘“Making Friends”: The Geopolitics of the Interview on the BBC’s Eastern Services’, Biography, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64 Rajaratnam, ‘Malayan Indian’s View of Hitler’, Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, 4 November 1939, p. 8.
65 Rajaratnam mentions K. S. Shelvankar, the co-editor of Indian Writing, as an important influence. See Rajaratnam, ‘Interview No. 1’, p. 473.
66 ‘S. Raja Ratnam’, Radio Scripts Index Card, BBC Written Archives Centre, Reading, UK.
67 Rajaratnam, ‘What Has to Be’, Life and Letters Today, vol. 32, no. 55, 1942, pp. 218–222, p. 221.
68 Rajaratnam, ‘The Terrorist’, in Modern International Short Stories, (ed.) Denys Val Baker (London: W. H. Allen, 1947), pp. 3–14, p. 6.
69 ‘Back in Malaya’, Straits Times, 2 March, 1947, p. 7.
70 Gui Weihsin, ‘Global Modernism in Colonial Malayan and Singaporean Literature: The Poetry and Prose of Teo Poh Leng and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam’, Postcolonial Text, vol. 12, no. 2, 2017 pp. 1–18, p. 11; available at https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/2167/2088, [accessed 30 October 2024].
71 Holden, Philip, ‘Rajaratnam’s Tiger: Race, Gender and the Beginnings of Singapore Nationalism’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 1, 2006, pp. 127–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
72 Examples of these include a letter to a European friend (Rajaratnam, ‘Europe over Asia’, Malaya Tribune 1947, 5 August 1947, p.4), a fictive account by a labourer of the broken promises made to him by competing politicians in the 1955 election campaign (Rajaratnam, ‘The Big Men Who Came to My Door: The Magic of the Sacred Tree’, Straits Times, 1 May, 1955, p. 4, p. 18), and a satirical article that posits what a Malayan Secretary of State for the Colonies would say if Britain were a colony of Malaya, emphasizing how social, religious, and national divisions make the United Kingdom unfit for self-rule (Rajaratnam, ‘When Malaya Ruled Britain’, Raayat, vol. 1. no. 7, February 1955, pp. 7–8).
73 George Padmore, ‘The Crisis in the British Empire’, New Leader, 27 June 1942, p. 4.
74 ‘Empire Collapse? A Critique of Colonial Administration’, Empire: A Bimonthly Record, vol. 4, no. 6, March 1942, p. 6.
75 Typescript Programme for ‘“Conference on Civil Liberty in the Colonial Empire” held on 15th and 16th February 1941ʹ, File U DCL/56/9, Conference on Civil Liberty in the Colonial Empire, Liberty Archive, Hull University Archives. Lim’s name is mis-spelled as ‘K. C. Liem’.
76 In his biography, Lim recalls leaving London to take the Blue Funnel Line ship Ulysses from Glasgow in April 1941, but the ship did not sail until 10 June (Lim, Born into War, pp. 265–277). Sardon is listed on the Shipping Departure Record, although Lim does not mention his presence on the tortuous voyage that involved an initial diversion to Newfoundland. For Rajaratnam’s friendship with Sardon, see Ang (ed.), Dialogues, p. 20.
77 ‘War’s Effect on Malayan Students in England’, Sunday Tribune (Singapore), 19 November 1939, p. 5.
78 Rajaratnam, ‘The Changing Malay People’, Asia and the Americas, vol. 42, no. 8, August 1942, pp. 449–453, p. 450.
79 Ibid., p. 449.
80 Rajaratnam, ‘Malaya’s Three Peoples’, Asia and the Americas, vol. 46, no. 10, October 1946, pp. 451–452, p. 452.
81 Rajaratnam, ‘Malaya in Transition’, Asia and the Americas, vol. 46, no. 9, September 1946, pp. 396–398, p. 398.
82 Rajaratnam, ‘Malaya’s Three Peoples’, p. 451.
83 George Padmore, ‘Subject Peoples of Different Empires Meet to Unify Nationalist Bodies: Aim at Immediate End to Colonialism’, West African Pilot, 2 July 1945, pp. 1–2, p. 2.
84 K. I. Muhiudeen, ‘Annual Report of the Swaraj House: from 7th November, 1944 till 7th November, 1945’, File 2572/42, Swaraj House, London: Activities of members and meetings, L/PJ/12/658, IOR, BL.
85 Fifield, Russell H., ‘Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept’, Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 11, no. 2, 1983, pp. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
86 Rajaratnam, ‘America’s New Banana Republic’, Tribune, 19 July 1946, pp. 9–10, p. 10.
87 Rajaratnam, ‘The Mikado: Myth and Reality’, Tribune, 20 July 1945, pp. 7–8, p. 7.
88 Ibid., p. 8.
89 Ibid.
90 Rajaratnam, ‘The New Storm over Asia’, Reynold’s News, 4 November 1945, p. 2.
91 Rajaratnam, ‘Asia on the Eve of Storm’, Asia and the Americas, vol. 45, no. 8, August 1945, pp. 378–381, p. 380.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., p. 381. For Ba Maw’s own account of his role as head of state in Burma during the Second World War, see Maw, Ba, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939–1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. For the context of Sukarno’s collaboration with the Japanese, see Ricklefs, M. C., A History of Modern Indonesia since c.1200 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008), pp. 235–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the contradictions of Sukarno’s relationship to fascism, see McIntyre, Angus, ‘Marx Versus Carlyle: Sukarno’s View of Hitler’s Role in History’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, vol. 43, no. 2, 2009, pp. 131–163Google Scholar.
94 Rajaratnam, ‘Japan’s Puppet Show’, transcript of broadcast on 13 April 1942, BBC Written Archives Centre; Rajaratnam, ‘The Fascist International’, transcript of broadcast on 10 December 1942, BBC Written Archives Centre.
95 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Wells, H. G., Mr. Belloc Objects to ‘The Outline of History’ (London: Watts, 1926), pp. 20–21Google Scholar; S. Rajaratnam Collection, ISEAS Library (hereafter RC-ISEAS).
96 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Chakotin, Serge, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda (London: Labour Book Service, 1940), p. Google Scholar, RC-ISEAS.
97 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Barnes, Leonard, The Duty of Empire (London: Victor Gollancz, 1935), p. Google Scholar, RC-ISEAS.
98 Barr, Michael D., ‘Lee Kuan Yew’s Fabian Phase’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 46, no. 1, 2000, pp. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
99 ‘Capitalism and Slavery’, Empire, vol. 8, no. 3, September–October 1945, p. 11.
100 Moscovitch, ‘A “Seedbed” for Post-colonial Leaders’, pp. 127–128. In his Oral History, Rajaratnam notes that he attended classes on three campuses in London: King’s, LSE, and UCL.
101 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Benedict, Ruth, Race and Racism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1943), p. Google Scholar, RC-ISEAS.
102 Ibid., 6.
103 Herskovits, Melville J., Acculturation: The Study of Culture Contact (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938), p. .Google Scholar
104 ‘Fax to Straits Times, SBC News, Business Times, Lianhe Zaobao, Shin Min Daily News, Berita Harian, Tamil Murasu: A Copy of Speech Given at the Launch of the Book “Singapore Eurasians—Memories and Hopes”’, 18 July 1992, SR/055/040, SRPP-ISEAS. In the speech Rajaratnam notes that he still has a ‘somewhat battered copy’ of the book.
105 Dover, Cedric, Half-Caste (London: Secker and Warburg, 1937), p. .Google Scholar
106 Ibid., p. 14.
107 Ibid., p. 80.
108 Ibid., p. 83.
109 Ibid., p. 167.
110 Ibid., p. 188.
111 Ibid., p. 274.
112 Ibid., p. 277.
113 Ibid., p. 285.
114 Rajaratnam, ‘Malayan Indian’s View of Hitler’, p. 8.
115 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses, p. 33, RC-ISEAS.
116 Le Bon, Gustave, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Benn, 1947) p. .Google Scholar
117 Nomad, Max, Apostles of Revolution (London: Secker and Warburg, 1939), p. .Google Scholar
118 Ibid., p. 112.
119 Ibid., p. 394.
120 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Nomad, Apostles of Revolution, p. 394, RC-ISEAS.
121 A reporter from the Malaya Tribune interviewed Khoo Kay Chuan, a student at London University, on his return to Singapore in January 1941. Khoo estimated that there were ‘about twenty’ Malayan students still in Britain, listing predominately ethnic Chinese students’ names but including Rajaratnam, , Emily Sadka, and Athisayam Appajee (‘Malayan Students in Britain “Carry On”’, Malaya Tribune, 16 January, 1941, p. )Google Scholar. The estimate seems low, even allowing for departures from late 1939 onwards, but perhaps gives a sense of a core community that spanned London and Cambridge.
122 Rajaratnam, Oral History, NAS.
123 Herring, Robert, ‘Editorial’, Life and Letters Today, vol. 32, no. 55, March 1942, pp. Google Scholar
124 ‘The Contributors’, in Modern International Short Stories, (ed.) Baker, n.p.
125 ‘Asia’, Asia and the Americas, vol. 41, no. 4, April 1941 [p. 153].
126 Rajaratnam, ‘Asia on the Eve of Storm’, p. 378.
127 Rajaratnam, ‘The New Storm over Asia’, p. 2.
128 Stonequist, Everett V., The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict (New York: Scribner’s, 1937), pp. .Google Scholar
129 Robert Park, ‘Introduction’, in Stonequist, The Marginal Man, pp. xii–xviii, xxx, xvii–xviii.
130 Rajaratnam’s annotations to Stonequist, The Marginal Man, p. 54, RC-ISEAS.
131 ‘Fax to Straits Times’, SR/055/041, SSRP-ISEAS.
132 Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses, pp. 116–117.
133 Rajaratnam, Singapore, Global City; Text of Address by Mr. S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Singapore Press Club on February 6, 1972 (Singapore: Ministry of Information, 1972), NAS, available at https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/PressR19720206a.pdf, [accessed 30 October 2024].
134 See Rajaratnam, ‘Fataltheism and the Lure of Moneytheism’, New Nation, 22 August 1972, p. 5.
135 See, for example, ‘Raja Wants Revival of “Singaporean Singapore”’, Straits Times, 11 March 1990, p. 2; Rajaratnam, ‘2B or Not 2B, That is the ?’, Trends, Straits Times, 27 October 1991, p. 30.
136 The following represent some of the many contributions to the discussion: Adeline Koh and Sangeetha Thanapal, ‘Chinese Privilege, Gender and Intersectionality in Singapore: A Conversation between Adeline Koh and Sangeetha Thanapal’, b2o: the online community of the boundary 2 editorial collective, available at https://www.boundary2.org/2015/03/chinese-privilege-gender-and-intersectionality-in-singapore-a-conversation-between-adeline-koh-and-sangeetha-thanapal/, [accessed 30 October 2024]; Zainal, Humairah and Jumblatt Abdullah, Walid, ‘Chinese Privilege in Politics: A Case Study of Singapore’s Ruling Elites’, Asian Ethnicity, vol. 22, no. 3, 2021, pp. 481–497CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sai Siew Min, ‘Why There is Chinese Privilege in Singapore but It’s Not Analogous to White Privilege’, Academia.sg, 17 June 2021, available at https://www.academia.sg/academic-views/why-there-is-chinese-privilege-in-singapore-but-its-not-analogous-to-white-privilege/, [accessed 30 October 2024]; Goh, Daniel P. S. and Chong, Terence, ‘“Chinese Privilege” as Shortcut in Singapore: A Rejoinder’, Asian Ethnicity, vol. 23, no. 3. 2022, pp. 630–635CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
137 Kristian-Marc James Paul and Mysara Aljaru, ‘Brown is Redacted: Introduction’, in Brown is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore, (eds) Kristian-Marc James Paul, Mysara Aljaru and Myle Yan Tay (Singapore: Ethos, 2022), pp. 11–17, p. 12. See also Farah Banawy, ‘Multiethnicity in Multicultural Singapore: Critical Autoethnography to Understand Racism in Singapore’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2021, pp. 118–126; and the online Instagram forum Minority Voices, facilitated by Sharvesh Leatchmanan, available at https://www.instagram.com/minorityvoices/, [last accessed 18 August 2024].
138 Paul and Aljaru, ‘Brown is Redacted’, p. 17; Hazirah Mohamed, ‘Kita dah cukup manis? (We are Sweet Enough?): Resisting the Bitter Pill of Racialised Health Framing on the Malay Community’, in Brown is Redacted, (eds) Paul, Aljaru and Tay, pp. 185–198, p. 194.
139 Chua, Communitarian Ideology, pp. 65–66.
140 Lawrence Wong, ‘Speech on Multiracialism and Faultlines by Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Finance, at the IPS-RSIS Forum on Race and Racism in Singapore on 25 June 2021ʹ, Ministry of Finance, Singapore, available at https://www.mof.gov.sg/news-publications/speeches/speech-on-multiracialism-and-faultlines-by-mr-lawrence-wong-minister-for-finance-at-the-ips-rsis-forum-on-race-and-racism-in-singapore-on-25-june-2021, [accessed 30 October 2024].
141 The literature on this topic is voluminous. While earlier scholarship, such as Rose, Nikolas, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, often focused on the role of psychological institutions in the creation of subjectivities, more recent work has focused on how individuals themselves internalize and mobilize psychological categories as identities. See Timo Beeker, China Mills, Dinesh Bhugra, Sanne te Meerman, Samuel Thoma, Martin Heinze and Sebastian von Peter, ‘Psychiatrization of Society: A Conceptual Framework and Call for Transdisciplinary Research’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, no. 12, 2021, article 645556, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.645556. For a recent critique of the role of trauma, in particular, see Catherine Liu, ‘The Problem with Trauma Culture’, Noema Magazine, 16 February 2023, available at https://www.noemamag.com/the-problem-with-trauma-culture/, [accessed 30 October 2024].
142 Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks, (trans.) Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2008), p. 91.
143 Henry Louis Gates, ‘Critical Fanonism’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 3, Spring 1991, pp. 457–470, p. 459.
144 Ibid., p. 458.
145 Fanon, Black Skins, p. 91.
146 Rajaratnam, ‘Europe over Asia’, p. 4.
147 Mulk Raj Anand, ‘A Letter to an Englishman’, Tribune, 21 August 1942, p. 10.
148 George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair], ‘Letter to an Indian’, Tribune, 19 March 1943, p. 15.
149 ‘Open Letter to an Indian Quisling’, transcript of broadcast on 27 August 1942, BBC Written Archives Centre.
150 ‘Sinnathamby Rajaratnam’, in Leaders of Singapore, (ed.) Melanie Chew (Singapore: Resource Press, 1996), pp. 151–157, p. 155.