Across the Causeway: A Multi-dimensional Study of Malaysia-Singapore Relations

1. Introduction

Introduction   1 INTRODUCTION Takashi Shiraishi This book considers Malaysia-Singapore relations from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The chapters on history, politics, regional security, law, and economics collectively aim at a multidimensional study that seeks to convey the density and complexity of connections “across the Causeway”. But this book also demonstrates the fact that the challenges of undertaking such a project are not confined to soliciting and assembling contributions from scholars in the field. The fraught legacy of historical entanglement, political union, and subsequent separation not only continues to cast a shadow over ongoing transactions and negotiations between the two countries, it also imposes burdens on scholars of Malaysia-Singapore relations. Politics is in part a matter of language, or to be more precise, loaded language. The Singaporean leadership’s call for “meritocracy” was taken by the Malay leadership as an attack on the political entitlements of Malays. Lee Kuan Yew is often described as “assertive” and “temperamental”; economic success is said to have made Singaporeans “condescending” towards Malaysians. Accounts of what happened (or is happening) between Malaysia and Singapore — whether advanced by the political actors themselves or by witnesses or by those whose lives are affected by events and their consequences — thus encode standpoints and carry emotional overtones that may provoke positive or negative responses far in excess of their literal meanings. While scholarship strives to maintain critical distance from these accounts, it can only do so by working within, rather than outside of, language. If to write at all is to  Takashi Shiraishi necessarily write from a position, then writing cannot completely insulate itself from the politics of language that shapes politics. Indeed, scholars of Malaysia-Singapore relations have sometimes found themselves implicated, by their own use of language, in the very debates and controversies that they claim only to examine. In light of the contentiousness of some aspects of Malaysia-Singapore relations, Across the Causeway adopts a decidedly eclectic approach. Each section contains essays by Malaysian, Singaporean, and third-party scholars and highlights the heterogeneity of interpretations that underpin different disciplinary approaches to the issue. That the book is edited by a Japan-based Japanese Southeast Asianist who does not specialize in Malaysia or Singapore should alert readers to the book’s intention not to arrive at a grand synthesis or adjudication, but to lay out the views in such a way as to call attention to their points of convergence and divergence, and to the branching lines of inquiry that they suggest. Before summarizing the arguments in each chapter, let me then identify five salient points that stand out in this book. First, many of the chapters point out that geographical proximity, historical linkages, material flows, and movements have long connected the peoples and territories of what would eventually be called Malaysia and Singapore in various ways and with varying degrees of intensity. But instead of simply affirming the “natural” ties between the two, all of the chapters agree that Malaysia and Singapore, and the links between them, are eminently political creations. Even primarily economic issues have a way of being linked up with politics. While many of the chapters underscore the divisive effect of politics, they also seek to identify forces and initiatives that have helped or may help reshape the political terrain in which Malaysia-Singapore relations are played out. Relations between Malaysia and Singapore were shaped in part by the logic and vagaries of British colonial policy and practice, particularly by British “imperial disengagement” (in the words of Anthony Stockwell) after World War II. Perhaps more crucially, and this is the second point, the chapters in this book demonstrate the ways in which relations between the two countries have been shaped by competing visions of the nation and the different trajectories taken by these countries’ nation-building projects. Both Malaysia and Singapore are plural societies with multiethnic , multireligious, and multicultural communities. But Singapore and Malaysia have adopted two different working formulas for managing ethnic relations and achieving prosperity and stability. Malaysia’s communal politics established Malay hegemony on the basis of a bumiputra (children of Introduction  the soil) policy anchored in a communally-organized alliance/national front system. Singapore’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious People’s Action Party draws heavily on the discourse of meritocracy and citizenship. The success of these two competing models of politics is at once the point of divergence and the principal sore point of contention...