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375 The Man Who Nurtured Indians and Started the India Fever A. MANI The Goh Chok Tong years and the Indian Singaporean community are inexact boundaries for exact interpretations. Both were part of the Singapore nation building processes since the 1950s. Goh Chok Tong took 14 years from 1976 to rise from the ranks of Member of Parliament to become the prime minister of Singapore in 1990, a position that he held for 14 years. Thus, any discussion of the impact he made on Singaporean Indians should address his earlier years. Historically, the Singaporean Indian is an administrative term applied to individuals associated with South Asian countries. While an Indian community can be envisaged for political and administrative reasons, there are many communities within this one community. Certain trends were already discernible among Indian Singaporeans by the time Goh Chok Tong took over as prime minister. Indians had become both citizens and members of a community. As citizens, they, like other ethnic groups, were beneficiaries of all education, healthcare and public housing policies. Meritocracy allowed individual Indian Singaporeans to reach high positions in politics, the judiciary, trade unions, government and the economy. The Singaporean Indian community had gained a clear identity in the process of nation-making. Tamil language had been entrenched as an official language of Singapore since 1956, when it was still a British colony. The government honoured it in the constitutions of 1959 and 1965. Tamil also functioned as a language of education, media and government. As the government increased its patronage of Tamil in media and education, Indian community organisations began to play the watchdog role to critically evaluate the implementation of government policies on the Tamil language. Most of the demands were for equal treatment with other official languages and these demands were always met. Temples, mosques and churches as well as many religious groups were supported within the framework created by the government. Thus when Singapore celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1990, the government funded an Indian Cultural Month with a finearts exhibition, competitions and Tamil book publications. 32 376 A. MANI However,despite the efforts of the government to view Indian Singaporeans as a homogenous “racial”,“ethnic” or“community” group, they remain amorphous. Indian Singaporeans function as distinct communities defined by language, religion, kin-centred groups, castes, professions, businesses, age and multi-purpose social organisations. Indian Singaporeans often belong to many groups, some of them overlapping and others distinct. A Sikh, for instance, is an Indian Singaporean, promoting Punjabi and Sikhism, and participating in SINDA (Singapore Indian Development Association) while being a citizen of Singapore. A Tamil Muslim, on the other hand, is a member of the larger Tamil speaking community, a member of a kin-centred organisation, and a Muslim by religion, often participating both in SINDA and Mendaki (Majlis Pendidikan Anak-Anak Islam, or Council for the Education of Muslim Children) while being a citizen of Singapore. This is not to deny that there are cultural similarities shared among Indian Singaporeans. As the essay is centred on the Goh Chok Tong years,the first part details my impressions of the direct impact Goh had on the Indian Singaporean community.The second part details the projects that the community initiated during the Goh period, partly to seek government attention and partly to react to the changes under way in Singapore. The third part details the outcome of the interactions of the government policies and community projects. Memories of Goh in the Community Goh is remembered by the Indian Singaporean community for promoting specific policies that helped define and strengthen the community. These policies brought both political and social welfare-oriented outcomes for Indians in Singapore. The Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) Act, approved in Parliament in 1988, led to the formation of thirteen GRCs, guaranteeing minority community representation in Parliament. The assumption was that minority candidates would fail to get elected in Chinese-majority constituencies, which was the make-up of almost all constituencies. In fact, by the time Goh stepped down, there were 10 Indians in Parliament. One was a deputy prime minister, three others were in the Cabinet and another was a deputy speaker of Parliament. Among the five backbenchers, three were either chairmen or deputies of Parliamentary Committees. The GRC has been acclaimed as the instrument that put more Indian Singaporeans in Parliament, in a higher proportion to their representation in the population. The 14 years of Goh’s tenure narrowed the selection of Indians...

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