He was a friend of Tamils in Sri Lanka. When C N Annadurai, a former chief minister of Tamilnadu who is widely known as Arignar Anna, visited Singapore in 1965, Lee apparently enjoyed the speech by him.
Lee had no qualms about criticising the Sinhalese domination of Tamils and said, on more than one occasion, that whatever the military might of the dominant race, the thirst of the Tamils for freedom and dignity from oppression cannot be stalled.
He went on to call upon the Sri Lankan Sinhalese community and leaders to respect the rights and contributions of Tamils in Sri Lanka.When there was a necessity, Lee did not mince his words. He openly criticised the leadership of Mahinda Rajapakse for masterminding the massacre of Tamils in north of Sri Lanka in May 2009.
Lee said, on many occasions, that the Sinhalese leadership must embrace the path of moderation to resolve the problems of the Tamils. He remarked that continued oppression by the majority would not extinguish the move towards secession!
Lee Kuan Yew walked his talk. In Singapore, he curbed all forms of chauvinism, whether it came from the Chinese, Malays or Indians. Instead, he put in policies and programmes to create a society that would be acceptable to all communities.
Three official languages for Singapore
It was in this context, although English was widely used and accepted as the lingua franca, of Singapore, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil were declared as the official languages of the nation.
Although vernacular schools were done away with, vernacular languages were introduced as compulsory subjects in national schools. In the end, no community or racial group felt left-out by the government that emphasised meritocracy and professionalism.
It is without question that Lee Kuan Yew laid the foundation for the development of a healthy, equitable and prosperous society in Singapore. Although Indians constitute about six percent of the total population, the Singaporean leaders ensured that Indians would be taken care of and their leaders recognised.In the past and present, these Indians occupied important government positions in Singapore:
- Devan Nair, a close buddy of Lee Kuan Yew and a trade unionist, was appointed the third president of Singapore, from 1981 to 1985;
- S R Nathan of the Internal Security Department was the sixth president, from 1999 to 2011;
- S Rajaratnam was a former foreign minister of Singapore;
- S Dhanabalan was the minister of trade and industry before he went into the private sector;
- Prof Shanmugam Jayakumar was the minister of national security;
- Tharman Shanmugaratnam is the deputy prime minister and finance minister;
- K Shanmugam is the Minister of Law;
- Dr Vivian Balakrishnan is minister of community development;
- S Iswaran was home minister II, while Dr Balaji Sadasivam was senior minister of foreign affairs.
In comparison with Singapore, Malaysia has a long way to go in terms of correcting the ethnic balances in government departments and the civil service.Due to the overemphasis on Malays, Indians and Chinese have been discriminated, not only in the country’s civil service but also in terms of the provision of contracts, licences and projects.
Invariably, with the onset of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and onwards, there has been steady marginalisation of the non-Malays in the country.
Future of non-Malays in Malaysia in doubt
It is because of this discrimination of non-Malays that many of them have migrated to countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and others, looking for green pastures.
And now, with with the onset of Islamisation, the future of non-Malays in Malaysia seems to be in doubt.
Malaysian leaders had a historic opportunity to correct the wrongs, but they blew them off because of the need to appease Malay nationalist and religious bigots.
It is still not too late to do this - but I doubt that the present generation of leaders will have the charisma, professionalism and conviction to steer the country from the present political, social and economic imbroglio. They need to learn things from none other than Lee Kuan Yew.Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad created the mess and it is being compounded by present Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
Perhaps Najib should now start paying some attention to what other leaders did in the past and how they were able to resolve some of the perplexing issues that confronted us, all the people of the nation.
If we don’t understand history, then we are bound to repeat the mistakes of history!
P RAMASAMY is Deputy Chief Minister II of Penang and the assemblyperson for Perai.
Source : http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/293148
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