AFTER eight years in office, though still a young man, Lee Kuan Yew in 1967 began to think a great deal about a continuing leadership in Singapore. Undoubtedly he was perturbed by the struggle for power in China and the military coups in Africa. He knew many of the African leaders personally. Unexpectedly, he accepted an invitation in April, 1967, to speak at a meeting on youth leadership training sponsored by the East Asia Christian Conference.
“I have been asked,” Lee Kuan Yew said, “to talk about the problems of leadership, particularly of youth leadership, in the context of the unfinished revolutions of South and Southeast Asia. First, there is no such thing as a finished revolution. Nobody really knows when a revolutionary era began, when it ended, when a non-revolutionary era then commenced. But it will make my task simpler if we define this problem in rather prosaic terms.
“So far as modern jargon is concerned, ‘revolution’ in South and Southeast Asia means the expulsion of foreign dominators, primarily European dominators. That is the beginning of revolution. Does the end of revolution come with the expulsion of these foreign dominators and the assumption of power by local digits? If so, then the revolutions are over, for there is no part of South and Southeast Asia in which non-indigenous or non-Asian powers are in authority.
“But I do know one thing: that whilst in colonial-ruled Asia there was no problem of leadership, whether of a political or a purely social nature, in the Asia that we see today there is a genuine problem of leadership and succession to leadership.
“In the old days, one governor came, served his term, impressed his superiors—in London in the case of the British territories, in Amsterdam in the case of the Dutch-controlled territories, in Paris for the French Indo-China territories, or in Washington in the case of the Philippines. So a constant stream of authority and leadership was provided.
“Now these societies have assumed the right to govern themselves. And, in many of these countries, people, because their glands worked more vigorously than others, or for a diversity of reasons, were dissatisfied with the existing situation, and they upset the system. Now they are saddled with the responsibility—having upset the old order—of establishing a new one that will provide a meaningful life to their own people.
“In South and Southeast Asia, there are societies which are confronted with the awesome problem—often, the very daunting task—of catching up with 200 to 300 years of somebody else’s progress. You have tilled the earth the way your ancestors have always done and eked out a living of some sort. The sun, the rain provided you with some kind of livelihood; some form of irrigation; some primitive instruments with which to get some kind of succour from the earth. And the world has, meanwhile, passed you by. Then, all of a sudden, you decide that you must also join this race to the moon—you believe it to be desirable. These are societies in a stage of transition.
“The first generation, the post-war generation of people who led these countries to independence, are passing away. In some places, they already have. In India, Pakistan and in other parts of South and Southeast Asia, the people who grew up, their whole being just wanting to displace an existing injustice, have exhausted their task. A new generation has grown up, for whom the British Raj, colonialism, and all the rest of it, are but a vague memory: stories from their fathers and grandfathers. Poverty, ignorance, ineptitude, corruption, ineffective administration are what they know. This is the problem of the second generation leadership.
“I came this evening, although I am not a Christian, because I believe that young people—whether they are Christians or otherwise—are always fired with that inexhaustible reserve called idealism, and they have it in greater store than most people. And it is a very necessary ingredient for any sustained human effort. You must believe that certain things are worth the effort. In large parts of the newly-independent countries the easy, soft way comes naturally. You have done your stint, fighting for independence. You are now in authority, and there is nothing to prevent you from putting yourself in a position where, for the rest of your life (at least theoretically), you can fulfil your heart’s desires. Acquisition of wealth and the pandering to one’s appetite for the good things of life become simple.
“So we are confronted, now, with this problem of succession. The first generation, whatever the reasons which motivated them, have got rid of the past and the people who ruled and ordered that society. But have they got it in them now to create a situation, a system, in which succeeding generations can build upon what they have? This is the problem. Any society needs leadership. The established ones have their system. I am most familiar with the British system because that is where I had most contacts. It had a ruling elite, with public schools, universities, designed to bring forth qualities of leadership. How do you create it, in this area, without tradition, without a past to fall back on? Can it be created? Can you talent-scout? Can you, in fact, prejudge twenty or thirty years before a man matures that he is likely to make a more-than-above-average contribution? My presence here this evening is, in part, a participation in that exercise.
“Somewhere in the church hierarchy or in the Young Men’s Christian Association some people are demonstrating more-than-above-average activity, intelligence, verve, drive, ambition, civic consciousness. The wastage rate is very high. No Rhodes Scholar—and they assess these people extremely carefully—has ever become a national leader of any distinction. These scholars are chosen at university level, very carefully. What are the qualities of leadership? Integrity, drive, verve, intelligence, physical and mental discipline. And yet, no Rhodes Scholar has ever become a prime minister or president of any of the English-speaking countries of the world. But a good number of them have become very good second-rank leaders—permanent secretaries, under-secretaries and so on.
“No president of the Oxford Union or Cambridge Union Debating Societies has in the past twenty years become the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Theirs were not the qualities that were required: wit and witticism have their uses, but not in looking after the destiny of a people. What is it then? This is the problem with Asia.
“At least these established societies, whatever their shortcomings, did contrive some system which, in a broad stream of talent, provided every now and again the more-than-average performer to give leadership. Being confronted with this problem myself, I have often asked, ‘How do we ensure succession?’—not on the basis of ‘I like A, therefore I groom A for leadership.’
“Unless you want long periods of anarchy and chaos, you have to create a self-continuing—not a self-perpetuating but a self-continuing—power structure. Human beings should be equal. But they never are. Some can do more; some can give more of themselves than others. How do we anticipate that? Why is it that often we can’t? The Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party is undergoing tribulation at the moment. Who is to succeed him? Hitler tried to designate his successor. It would have been interesting to have known whether his choice was the right one—if, in fact, a successor had become necessary. Churchill lingered on for years as Prime Minister. And it is said by many a diarist that he wasn’t quite sure of the qualities of his successor.
“The problem is that the human being is unable yet to assess this thing called ‘character’. You can assess a man’s intelligence: set him tests, then rate his I Q; and you can say, ‘Well, you are 141 as against 100.’ Of course, if you have a leader with a good I Q, that helps—because you don’t have to go through the memorandum or the minutes with him three times over and explain what it means. You just have to go through three-quarters of the way and he has seen the last one-quarter that you want to lead him to.
“It is amazing the number of highly intelligent persons in the world who make no contribution at all to the well-being of their fellowmen. And it is this as yet unascertainable or rather as yet unmeasurable quality called ‘character’ which, plus your mental capacity or knowledge or discipline, makes for leadership. . .
“Obviously people like Nehru and Gandhi must have believed passionately in what they wanted to do, to have gone through what they did and survived it and succeeded. How do they ensure that an unending stream of such people are brought forth?
“Hence, you go back all the time to youth. Because that is the age of idealism. You are then fired by what you think to be right and just. But many will fall by the wayside because of personal ambition, personal weaknesses, desire to compromise and to temporize. The problem of all countries in Asia is how to establish some system which will bring forth an unending stream of people with character.
“True, Khrushchev never went to a university; neither did Stalin. Mao, it seems, spent some time in the libraries of Peking University. But if you leave these things to chance, then you are taking chances with your own people’s lives and destinies. So it is that in the established societies—in Britain, the United States, large parts of Western Europe, even in Australia—all their leadership comes from a broad stratum of people who have gone to universities. It is so much better if, as well as being an enfant terrible like Khrushchev, a person also goes through a systematic course of discipline, learns all the basic norms, what history has to offer and human experience has to offer, and then takes over that leadership. But there are large parts of Asia where this is not the case. The idealism that fired a leader in his early stages, instead of staying with him to the end and making him want to pass the torch on to a younger generation, is corrupted and debased in the process, and leaders lose interest in the future beyond their lifetimes. And so, automatically, you go on to military leadership. When you pass from a leadership, endowed at least with some political motivations, to one which is there as of might, then the future becomes extremely problematical, unless there are other leavening influences which can counteract the corrupting tendencies of power.
“I would like to ask you to ponder on some of these problems. It is not that I have the answers to them. . . These are problems which will beset us for a long time to come. Without values, convictions. . . this was a point which a French Catholic who was kept in Buchenwald Camp made: the people who most contained themselves and survived the experiences of Buchenwald were either those with deep religious beliefs like himself, or those with deep political convictions and dogma, like the communist. . . If they were not communists or deeply religious, they were people with deep and abiding beliefs in certain tenets as to what the human being should and must be. For, in adversity, you fall back on your faith and what you think the human being should be and should do. If you haven’t that faith, then you succumb.
“This is the problem with many of the political leaderships in this area. You start off with idealism, you should end up in maturity with a great deal of sophistication giving a gloss to that idealism. But what usually happens is a great deal of erosion by the soft and baneful influence of power, leaving almost nothing of the idealism behind and only the professionalism of political leadership without its leavening values.
“For the Christians who are confronted with this milieu in South and Southeast Asia it is an extremely difficult task. First, they are a minority in a largely non-Christian region. Second, because Christianity is closely identified with the West and Europe, they are therefore—except for very special situations in certain parts of Southeast Asia—suspect. . .
“You may, therefore, ask me the final question: why is it I waste my time with my own Christians if, in fact, they are suspect? If, in fact, they can pose no challenge to the non-Christian leadership? My answer is: because I really do not know what is the ultimate answer. Man gropes forward towards progress. One thing I do know: that it is universal states and universal religions—as Toynbee has analyzed—that really bring the whole of mankind forward. It is only when you offer a man—without distinctions based on ethnic, cultural, linguistic and other differences—a chance of belonging to this great human community, that you offer him a peaceful way forward to progress and to a higher level of human life.
“And I think the Christians, if they understand the milieu in which they are working in South and Southeast Asia, can make their contribution, a ferment, without which it is very difficult, as Toynbee has said, to climb the sharp face of the cliff towards a higher ledge in human civilization. In your own way, you have brought together diverse peoples, diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic and social backgrounds. . .”
Lee is not a religious man in a formal sense. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Congregation of Buddhists from Asia early in 1967, at the Pho Kark See Temple, in Singapore, the Prime Minister said that in many respects “we in Singapore present a unique example of the new society which will manifest itself more and more as human transportation becomes easier and easier and communities of different races, creeds and languages begin to intermix.
“Throughout the history of human civilizations, there has always been a coincidence of the power of the church and the power of the state—from very ancient times, from very tribal conditions to the more sophisticated civilizations of the universal state and the universal church.
“There have always been parallel sets of authorities for the material and the spiritual needs of a society. And sometimes the church has wielded final authority and, sometimes, as in recent times, the state.
“In Southeast Asia, as power is transferred from alien European minorities back to the indigenous population, a problem of transition occurs in which temporal power has been handed to a group of elected representatives who depend upon the support of the majority opinion of the population, who, in turn, are open to influences of prevailing religions which had existed before the Europeans came. And so there is a dichotomy between the state and the church. And where this dichotomy becomes acute, then trials and tribulations are the lot of that society—whether it is prime ministers who get assassinated, or riots which take place in the precincts of the holy walls of a temple.
“In Singapore, we are trying to prevent any recrudescence of the assertion of the right of a majority religious group to dominate or coerce others into similar beliefs. It is true that our constitution means that temporal power is vested in those who are elected and who are, therefore, able to command the support of the majority of the population. It is true that there are one or two religions which would probably be able to command the allegiance of a majority of the population. But it is not true that if we were to allow this to happen the sum total of human happiness would be increased.
“We have seen what happens in other parts of the world where a majority seeks to coerce a minority—whether it is religious, racial, linguistic—into conforming, and seeks to use its influence over the majority of the population to invoke the administrative capacity of the modern state to bring about conformity. The end result then must be a retrogressive one, for I do not believe that we can increase the sum total of human happiness by pushing back the clock. The open society—open to all the influences of a world grown smaller through man’s means of rapid communication—must face up to these problems of multi-cultures, multi-religions and multi-languages.
“And, alone in Southeast Asia, we are a state without an established church. There are others, who officially proclaim this policy of the secular state being conducive to the happiness of their community, but who are now facing tremendous pressures from the majority sect to use the powers of the state to bring about conformity and compliance by minorities. Whether their secular societies will continue to progress and prosper and ensure the continuance of tolerance, goodwill and forbearance amongst different groups with different social and religious practices depends upon the capacity of the temporal power to resist these encroachments. But alas, there are other states that actively create and strengthen their religious support.
“We are unique in that all religions are free to flourish. And as with this temple, so it is with all the other churches and places of worship in Singapore. Obviously, to be able to flourish without the revenues of the state backing it, it must tend to the spiritual needs of some sections of the community—and to the good. But where the state exercises its supreme powers of extraction of revenue to solidly back one particular institution, it must mean, in the end, the gradual erosion of the freedoms of the other communities and the adherents of other religions to seek their own solace and their own spiritual salvation.
“It is not for us to prophesy what is to happen in the countries around us. But it is within our capacity to determine that in our society this shall not happen. And whether it is ten thousand Sikhs in Singapore following the practices of a Guru which established them into a separate religious group a few hundred years ago, or whether it is the persuasive, absorbing beliefs of the Buddhist, the Government holds the scales fairly and justly between all. Not because there is any virtue in this, or that there will be salvation from all sects for members of the government in after-life in all the various places for the repose of the soul, but because we are convinced that in this way we ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number whilst we are here on earth. . .”
In a speech at the third centenary birthday celebrations of Sri Guru Govind Singh (14 January, 1967) Lee Kuan Yew again revealed something of his practical approach to religion.
“I am an empiricist,” he said. “I start off with what I find I have got. And I know that I have ten thousand people of Sikh descent or Sikh immigrants in Singapore; and I would like all of Singapore to know that they are a valuable contribution to the life, the vitality, the success and the prosperity of our society. . .
“Like you, I am a migrant. I have left my past behind me. But, like you, I understand that man needs more than bread alone to live. And whilst we are trying to seek the largest number of common denominators amongst ourselves, we should not lightly throw out of the window the virtues, the doctrines which have held whole groups of people together in a righteous and goodly life.
“There are great advantages in rapid assimilation or integration. And all migrant communities must seek this eventual homogeneity—some common milieu which makes you and I—whether you are Sikh and I am Chinese or he is Tamil, or Malay, or Ceylonese—part of a separate society. The Americans did it. It took them some four hundred years.” He said that it was his abiding belief that “perhaps in matters of culture, values and moral standards it is best to make haste slowly”.
Lee added: “My friends may celebrate the birthday of Confucius. You may celebrate the 330th birthday of Guru Govind Singh. . . And eventually, that common milieu in which you and I live should give us a sufficiency of being and feeling together to want to continue to live and to be one people. Because, in the end, that is our only way out. I do not believe that these things can be legislated for. Finally, you must feel that this is worth building, this is worth belonging to. If you don’t, then it will be very sad because you must look for something else. But, if you do, then, like me, all the time you will be thinking how we can make our future more secure; how we can ensure that what we have built will not go to waste. . .”