TBR: S. Rajaratnam: The Authorised Biography by Irene Ng
Can someone remind me to borrow both volumes of S. Rajaratnam: The Authorised Biography because it sounds fascinating. Here’s an excerpt (the whole article is worth reading) from the author’s introduction to the book:
“It might seem strange that such a person – a Jaffna Tamil born in Ceylon and raised in Seremban, a university dropout who spent 12 years in London mixing with progressive Afro-Asian writers and radical thinkers – should have come to embody this. I would argue the opposite: only by standing outside of the conventional concepts that made up Singapore then, could someone reimagine and remake Singapore, as Raja sought to do.
“As this book shows, only a man with his set of experiences, interests and ideas could have envisioned Singapore transforming into a “global city” at a time when Lee was talking about building a “metropolis”.
“If anyone deserved the mantle of “Singapore’s philosopher king”, it was Raja. He was a man of ideas and action who combined moral philosophy with political power. A deeply philosophical thinker, he was equally at ease pontificating about the ills of a wealth-driven culture, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, as he was about the cures to the diseases that plague dysfunctional democracies and the international order.”
If you’re unfamiliar with S. Rajaratnam’s works, I HIGHLY recommend the collection: The Short Stories and Radio Plays of S. Rajaratnam. This collection contains seven of Rajaratnam’s short stories, including one called The Tiger which has been translated into French. Honestly, I loved all these stories – the writing is vivid, the characters are arresting, and the stories are interesting. I thought that Rajaratnam’s stories straddled the sweet spot where if you thought about it, the story had lots of meaning but the point wasn’t so painfully obvious that you noticed it while reading.
As for the radio plays, which were staged in 1957, before Singapore gained independence, I have to admit that I approached them with some trepidation. Plays aren’t my forte and I didn’t have a very good experience watching one recently. But these plays read like an easily understood but still very erudite argument for a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation. I felt like I understood so much more about our why Singapore was/is run the way it is.
Here’s a quote from the book, when he talks about the dangers of race politics:
“We may find the most dangerous enemies of the Malayan nation are not the ignorant masses but the educated so-called leaders. These are politicians who deliberately exploit racial and religious prejudices to further their own ambitions.”
“Your communalist on the other hand was not interested in the problem of poverty as such. He was anxious only to exploit the poverty of the people to get more followers, more votes. He wants to be a leader. And one way of getting people to follow you is to rouse their anger, their fear of the enemy. And so you must give them an enemy.”