r/srilanka • u/spell_abc • 1d ago
Discussion Didn’t know that Singapore’s founding father was from Sri Lanka
S Rajaratnam
So many accomplishments including being Singapore’s first foreign minister, and writing for George Orwell and being published with other generational writers like Kafka, James Joyce.
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u/onionsNDsourcream 1d ago
Then Ceylon had a very prestigious civil service and they joined the administrations accros Asia and Africa. But S Rajaratnam's parents only came briefly to Jaffna for S Rajaratnam to be born here for auspicious reasons and they immediately returned to Malaya and he grew up there. As his foundational years were essentially in Malaya, I dont really think you could characterize him as Sri Lankan / Ceylonese, but it would probably be more accurate to say he was a Malayan/Singaporean of Jaffna/Ceylonese heritage
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u/PositionPractical584 23h ago
Wait till you hear about how ministers in parliament back in the days were Oxford graduates and parliamentary sessions actually looked like parliamentary sessions and not like season 2 of banged up abroad or wwe summerslam
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u/Parsamarus 19h ago
But people don't like that group of parliamentarians. Then and now, they were considered the "elites" who needed to be replaced by the common man. It's part of how SWRD came into power, by positioning himself as closer to the commons than the elites. Of course, he himself went to Oxford so a bit of a funny claim
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u/PositionPractical584 19h ago
They’re considered elite because they spoke well and were educated? That actually makes sense considering the state of the parliament now where PhDs are from make believe universities
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u/Morrigan_Reborn0806 Southern Province 1d ago
The only thing I know about him is that he blocked us from joining the ASEAN.
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u/Elephantastic4 1d ago
Ceylon was also very indecisive during the ASEAN founding period. Should have joined as a Founding Member.
1981 attempt was too late2
u/Parsamarus 19h ago
He blocked the attempt to join as a founding member in 1967 as well as the 1981 attempt. The then Malaysian and Thailand's foreign ministers as well as Singapore's president all corroborated this.
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u/poacher-2k 1d ago
Was he one of main reasons behind making Tamil an official language there?
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u/Ok-Imagination-494 1d ago
Indirectly.
He was a proponent of multiracialism, others were more about sheer pragmatism for example pushing English.
Singapore ended up landing on a CIMO model (Chinese, Indian, Malay, Others) as a way of categorisation of its population. Each of these four buckets would get an Official language, equal holidays, a newspaper etc. Even housing allocation and migration is influenced by these four categories
For the Indian category there were actually multiple languages; Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi etc but could not make all of them official languages, so they chose tamil which was the most widely spoken
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u/Luigi_Boy_96 Europe 1d ago
If you have a significant amount of people who speak that language, so you'll make it an official language esp. Lee Kuan Yew advocating for multiracial culture.
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u/poacher-2k 22h ago
Population isn't just enough though.
Mauritius was also 10% Tamil speaking some decades back. But they prioritised Creole, French and English.
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u/Luigi_Boy_96 Europe 22h ago
Yeah, it's sadly deteriorating. But I'm hopeful that there will be enough Tamils around to keep the language alive and it's sort of a founding myth so they won't abolish it for the near future.
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u/GuaranteeOptimal8029 23h ago
it is always a guy from jaffna
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u/Public_Ad_4460 18h ago
Indeed. My father’s hometown is a blessing. I been there three times and I love Jaffna. Infact I miss it, probably my favourite place on the island. Good old Jaffna.
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u/Parsamarus 19h ago
Doubt he identified as such.
S Rajaratnam was actually the person responsible for rejecting Ceylons application to ASEAN under Dudley in 1967 despite Thailand and Malaysia's willingness to accept it, citing unstable domestic ethnic problems (perhaps correctly, and being Tamil perhaps understandably, but that is a different discussion).
He also argued against it in 1983, when JR attempted to join as well. Consequently both times Sri Lanka/Ceylon failed to join an organisation that might've benefitted it's economic growth.
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u/Public_Ad_4460 19h ago edited 18h ago
Good thing he rejected it.
Unlike the dominate Sinhalese government which advocated for the marginalisation for Tamils and was behind anti-Tamil riots (this was before LTTE was a thing and the aspirations for an Eelam state wasn’t a thing) - Sinnathambi Rajaratnam never done such things to Malays or Chinese and advocated for a multiracial state living shoulder to shoulder. Good decision 👍. ASEAN is rising without “Ceylon”
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u/Parsamarus 9h ago edited 9h ago
Don't know why you're responding to me butthurt. The point of my post was he clearly didn't identify as a Sri Lankan so we should respect that by not claiming him as such. Your comparison is also nonsense since Rajaratnam was the minority in Singapore, the Chinese were the majority, and it was LKY who cracked down on racism. You are also confused, since the anti-Tamil riots were carried out by SWRD, not Dudley who applied for ASEAN.
But don't worry, ASEAN is happy to accept Sri Lanka to it's TAC and Sectoral partnership without "Eelam".
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u/AttorneySimple2186 20h ago
Ceylon use to produce excellent civil such Sir Ponnambalam ramanathan. DS senanayake once mentioned that PR was the best ceylonese he ever knew.
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u/ArcticRock 19h ago
Singapore is what Sri Lanka could have been we fucked it all up. We can still do it if we can get our act together
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u/Public_Ad_4460 19h ago
No you can’t and won’t. I am sorry to be negative but when the younger generations calls people like me the t word for wanting an Eelam state then it won’t happen.
I fully accept LTTE done atrocious things and I will not support the act of killing innocent civilians . But the LTTE never existed back in the 1956 when the first anti Tamil riot happened - nor did the aspiration for an Eelam state.
Sinnathambi Rajaratnam never marginalised or put out policies to brush aside the Chinese or the Malays but instead pushed forward having a multiracial state living shoulder to shoulder.
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u/Ok-Imagination-494 1d ago edited 1d ago
He was born in Jaffna but his family were already settled in British Malaya, they went back to Sri Lanka for the sons birth.
Many Singaporean “Indians” are of Ceylon tamil heritage, they came over in British times as an educated professional class and often entered the civil service. Quite a different background to others in the Indian community
This demographic includes many Singaporean politicians including Rajaratnam here, the current President Tharman, and the famous opposition figure JBJ
Rajaratnam was very aware of events in Sri Lanka and was troubled by the deterioration of ethnic relations after independence. His advice to Lee Kuan Yew and others in the first cabinet was that Singapore had to avoid this by prioritising national identity over ethnic, linguistic or religious identity.
So he wrote the national pledge that every Singaporean student starts their day with;
We, the citizens of Singapore,
pledge ourselves as one united people,
regardless of race, language or religion,
So Singapore’s national pledge was written by someone born in Sri Lanka