Case Study : The Malay Society in Singapore
Assimilation of the Malay culture
Definition of races <<<
We start with an interesting conceptual ideology. The concept of Singaporean national identity requires every citizen have two overlapping social identities : his identity which is politically defined as Singaporean, and his identity culturally defined as a member of an ethnic group. There are however only four officially recognised groups - Chinese, Malay, Indian and ‘Others’ (this latter consists of Eurasians, Caucasian, Japanese and other minorities).
Malays and modernisation <<<
It is commonly said, or supposed, that overseas Chinese society is essentially urban in nature - hence the Chinese economic success in the cities of Southeast Asia, while Malay society is essentially rural and this not so well adapted to modern technological, secularized and town-centred living. While this thesis appears to have more surface validity in Malaysia, where the bulk of the Malay population is still living in rural areas, the Singapore case forces a revaluation of the argument. The Malays of course were the original inhabitants of the Singapore Island, although numbers were small in the early days. For some time after the founding of the colony Malays predominated numerically, but this position they rapidly lost as the influx of Chinese settlers began and accelerated. The Chinese on the other hand were mostly from very poor rural backgrounds, were largely illiterate. Their initial adaptation problem were thus at least as intense as that of the Malays, if not more so. What is of particular in this subject is the way that Malays tended to retain their traditional social forms and many of their occupational patterns despite urbanisation, while the Chinese have embraced the whole process more wholeheartedly. There is an ideological element here : many commentators have seen this as symptomatic of Malay unwillingness to modernise, whereas seen from a somewhat different perspective, the same factors can be interpreted as a very commendable cultural continuity and resilience, and unwillingness to sacrifice basic cultural vales for the ephemera of modern materialistic living.
Probably the most remarked upon feature of Malay family life in Singapore however has been the effects of relocation from traditional semi-rural village style settlements into government provided modern high rise housing units. It is widely said that of all the communities in Singapore it is the Malay community what has been the most seriously disrupted by the contemporary housing policy. It is not clear what kind of evidence can be provided in the support of this subjective claim, which appears to be based on the unstated premises that Malays are somehow more traditional than other ethnic groups, and are furthermore essentially a rural, village dwelling people who find it difficult to adapt to urban conditions. However, it is a fact that Malay lifestyles have undergone major changes as a result of urbanisation and resettlement into high-rise dwellings.
The perceived problems of Malays in Singapore usually fall in a number of closely related categories : economic disadvantage, relative lack of educational opportunities, lack of any major political influence and ethnic minority status in a predominantly Chinese society. At the same time the vast majority of Singapore Malays see themselves as Singaporeans, and few in practice have ever adopted the obvious alternative of moving to Malaysia or Indonesia. One reason for doing this is because if the sociologically interesting fact that whereas elsewhere in the immediate region Malays or peoples of related ethnicities constitute a majority, in Singapore this is reversed. What are the consequences of this on the Malay society in Singapore?
Assimilation of the Malay culture <<<
With the changing postwar physical and social ecology of the island, such lifestyles have become harder to sustain, except on the outer islands, where fishing and related economic activities still prevail. The gradual ‘leveling’ of lifestyles, housing and to some extent occupations does not mean that ethnic and cultural boundaries are being eroded. Integrated schools and ethnic mixing in the new housing estates may have promoted a higher degree of social intercourse and the lessening of social distances, but there has been no movement towards the assimilation of any one community into the others. One of the clearest indicators is that interethnic marriages hardly takes place between Malays and other races.
Yet it is possible that there is assimilation taking place. In practice there are two levels - cultural and political. It is important to note that Malays are not the only ethnic minority in the predominently Chinese Singapore : there are others, most notably the Indians, whose aspirations are perhaps even less well understood than those of the Malays many of whom are still Indian oriented, and who do not have the consolation of being geographically surrounded by extensive Malayan-Muslim cultures. Both for those Indians who are also Muslims, Malay culture offers strong attractions - membership of the majority Muslim community, wider social links and connections with pan-Southeast Asian Islamic movements and so on. The consequence of this has thus interestingly been not the westernisation of both Malays and Muslim Indians, but rather the Malayanisation of Indians, and their at least partial assimilation into the Singapore Malay community. This clearly indicates the vitality that still exists in the Singapore Malay culture, and the attractiveness of it as a cultural model, particularly by those other groups who already share some of its cultural premises, and in particular Islam and a knowledge of the Malay language. Far from being a dying culture, this suggests the ability of the Singapore Malay community to assimilate other minority cultures and to grow and expand in the process.
Malay dissatisfaction <<<
Though at the moment sources of Malay dissatisfaction are economic, a acceptance of general conditions of life in Singapore as overriding the majority of the disadvantages of relatively depressed minority status. The lack of special privileges for the Malay community (contrasted to Malaysians Malays who possessed special rights a privileges because the were natives) is itself symptomatic of government thinking : despite past problems and occasions when racial harmony has broken down, all communities in Singapore must operate within the same political framework.
Unease arises from the under-representation in many areas, widespread feeling amongst some other ethnic communities that if the Malays cannot compete on the terms laid down by Singapore’s aggressively capitalist and competitive economy, then they must fall by the wayside, and the resentful feeling among many Malays is that Singapore is a Malay island, but one that is now dominated by non-Malays. Clearly political relations are dynamic, and the posture of the Malay community vis-a-vis the government is not fixed but one that will evolve over time and is one that will prove to be a sensitive issue. As with the other continues in Singapore, one thing that Malays have shown is that individuals can be both loyal to their own cultural tradition and to the state. The two by no means contradict each other, as most Singapore Malays would recognise.