IN 1956, Lee Kuan Yew was speaking strongly against the policy of the colonialist-dominated Singapore Government to encourage the use of the English language in education. In debate in the Assembly (on 12 April, 1956) Lee said he thought it fitting that someone who was English-educated should oppose this trend. He explained why. Every time he spoke the English language, he said, “there is a sense—I would not say of humiliation—but definitely of inadequacy, that I have not the same facility and control over my own language. That is something you must understand, or you will not understand what is happening in Asia.”
He continued: “May I put it, without apologies, in a very personal way? We all like to live our lives again through our children. We know that we should do what is best for them. But unconsciously we do for them what we wish our parents had done for us. When I was born the British Navy ruled the waves. My grandfather, who was a chin-chew on a steamship between Indonesia and Singapore, had the greatest respect for the British Navy. He made a great deal of money because, he said, there was no piracy in Malayan waters. He lived until he saw the Prince of Wales sunk by Japanese aeroplanes. Imagine it, aeroplanes, made in Japan, sank the Prince of Wales! He died shortly afterwards. I am sure that the sinking of the Prince of Wales had nothing to do with his death, but I think an age had passed with him. I was sent to an English school to equip me for an English university in order that I could then be an educated man—the equal of any Englishman—the model of perfection! I do not know how far they have succeeded in that. I grew up, and finally graduated. At the end of it, I felt—and it was long before I entered politics, in fact it is one of the reasons why I am here—that the whole set of values was wrong, fundamentally and radically wrong. When I read Nehru—and I read a lot of Nehru—I understood him when he said: ‘I cry when I think that I cannot speak my own mother tongue as well as I can speak the English language.’ I am a less emotional man. I do not usually cry, or tear my hair, or tear paper, or tear my shirt off, but that does not mean that I feel any the less strongly about it. My son is not going to an English school. He will not be a model Englishman. I hope, of course, that he will know enough English to converse with his father on matters other than the weather. I hope also that in time to come I will know enough Malay to converse with him on the problems of humidity and heat control in the tropics. But whatever the difficulties in family relationships, he is going to be part of Asia, part of Malaya.”
What Lee was seeking to emphasize then, in 1956, was that an age was passing, an age in Malaya and Singapore in which the English and the English-educated ruled the roost. Soon, he predicted, Malay would be accepted as the national language.
Lee was in opposition when he made the speech; he was a nationalist leader. The Bandung Conference had recently been held; Asian nationalism was on the march. He was partly right, in that the English soon did not rule the roost—they had no wish anyhow to continue—but it would have been difficult for Lee Kuan Yew then to have imagined that within ten years the vast majority of the people in Singapore would be sending their children to English schools in preference to Chinese or Malay schools. Malay is the national language of Malaysia and of the Republic of Singapore. In Malaysia it is the sole official language; in Singapore it is one of four official languages, but English is the language of government, the courts, commerce and the University. Lee’s PAP Government put an emphasis upon the English language because it is the language of commerce and industry.
This reason for using English was just as valid in 1956 as it is in 1970, but Singapore in 1956 was struggling to become independent of the British through merger with Malaya, and appropriate gestures, such as qualified condemnation of the colonialist’s language and an acceptance of Malay in those circumstances, were understandable. But Lee Kuan Yew never expected the Malaysian Government to try to make Malay the sole official language by 1967. He thought that Malayan self-interest would ensure a slow tolerant process spread over many years, because to do otherwise would threaten to disrupt the economy, in addition to causing social stresses among the different races. It is a difficult and, indeed, a profitless exercise to try to imagine what might have happened if the Malaysian Government had tried in 1967 to force the adoption of the Malay language in Singapore, had Singapore remained a part of Malaysia.
In 1956, Lee Kuan Yew held the view that “Nothing that anybody can do in or out of Malaya will alter the fact that there will be two dominant languages and cultures in Malaya. These are the facts in our population figures. The Malay language and the Malay culture will irresistibly become the predominant language and the predominant culture. The Chinese language and the Chinese culture, particularly in view of the tremendous renaissance that it has undergone in China, will occupy a very important place in Malaya. . . but Chinese culture as it will be in Malaya 200 years from now is not likely to be what Chinese culture will be 200 years from now in China. This is inevitable.”
In 1970 it could be argued that Singapore survived as a democracy because the English-educated, led by Lee Kuan Yew, defeated the more Left-wing Chinese-educated to produce an energetic, progressive government which was ready to work, as the government of an independent sovereign state, with Western technology, and with European nations, as well as with non-communist Asia, while maintaining a neutralist attitude towards states of all ideologies. In Malaya, on the other hand, the conservative English-educated Malay leadership, the dominant force in government, more eagerly seeks confirmation of its power from its own people; and the emphasis on the Malay language, Malay rights, and the building of mosques in village and towns is a manifestation of this deliberate policy.