Pre-colonial period , inscribed with an
Indic script, c 10th to 13th century. Ancient
India exerted a profound influence over Southeast Asia through
trade,
religious missions,
wars and other forms of contact.
Pre-colonial Singapore was part of 'Indianised Kingdoms' like
Srivijaya and the
Majapahit, which formed part of a cultural region known as
Greater India. Prior to the spread of
Islam, Singapore and the rest of the
Malay world were Hindu-Buddhist. One of the most extensive and enduring Indian influences on
Malay culture is the vast number of
Indian loan words in the
Malay language. Indian influence is also seen in symbols and mythology associated with ancient Singapore. The
Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals describe the Indian prince who founded Singapore –
Sang Nila Utama – as being a descendant of
Alexander the Great and an Indian Princess. Meanwhile, the royal and sacred associations of
Fort Canning Hill, the seat of ancient rulers, are related to the Hindu
Mount Meru concept. Archaeological digs have unearthed Hindu-Buddhist artefacts from the pre-colonial period. In 1822,
John Crawfurd documented the ruins of a Hindu or Buddhist temple on
Fort Canning Hill. Singapore's two most important pre-colonial artefacts are the
Singapore Stone, which is inscribed with an
Indic script and a gold armlet bearing the motif of a Hindu 'kala' head.
Colonial period: 1820s–1950s is Singapore's oldest
Hindu temple.
Migration and settlement Following the Portuguese colonisation of
Malacca (
Malaysia) in 1511, the Portuguese government encouraged their explorers to bring their married Indian women who were converted already to Roman Catholic Christianity, under a policy set by
Afonso de Albuquerque, then
Viceroy of
India. These people were
Goan Catholics (
Konkani Catholics) and
Bombay East Indians (Catholics of
Marathi descent). Kuparis, who were of mixed Samvedic Brahmin, Goan and Portuguese descent also arrived.
Sinhalese and their children from Portuguese that include
Portuguese Burghers from
Portuguese Ceylon also came later. Their children are already intermarried with the Malay population, losing their ethnic identities. Indian contact was rekindled from 1819 to
World War II, when both
India and Singapore were under
British colonial rule. Unlike earlier forms of contact, this led to mass migration and, eventually, the formation of a large, settled and distinct population. By 1824, Singapore's first census counted 756 Indian residents, or about 7% of the total population. In 1826, official figures give a total population of 13,750, of which 1,021 are Indians – 244 from
Bengal and 777 from the
Coromandel Coast, most of whom were males. Initially, Indian immigrants were predominantly adult men who came from India to find work, serve military duties or serve prison sentences for several years before returning home. There was a constant flow of Indians in and out of the city, keeping the local community fairly transient. A minority of Indians were also wealthy merchants who settled in Singapore and built local commercial and social institutions. Best known amongst them was
Naraina Pillai, the earliest Indian community leader and the island's first building contractor. In 1827, he also founded the
Sri Mariamman Temple, Singapore's oldest Hindu place of worship. The influx of Indians in the half century after 1819 led to a brief period when Indians, for the only time, overtook the Malays to become the second largest ethnic group. In 1860, they formed 16% of the population. However, their number then fell from 13,000 that year to 12,000 in 1880, or 8.7% of the population. Following this, Indians slowly began to settle permanently in greater numbers and the relative size of the community in colonial Singapore became stable, fluctuating between 7.7% and 9.4%.
Social characteristics Scholars have characterised the Indian community in colonial times as being diverse and highly stratified along class lines. According to Dr Rajesh Rai, the social hierarchy comprised four main groups: the educated professional elite (over 0.5% of the Indian community), mercantile groups (under 10%), the white collar middle class (5–7%) and the uneducated labourers (over 80%). Economic class and job functions were also aligned with the ethnic origins of immigrants. For example,
Sri Lankan Tamils and
Malayalees formed the core of the English educated upper middle class. Mercantile families tended to be
Sindhi,
Gujarati, and Tamil Muslim. South Indian upper caste Hindus tended to perform traditional skilled jobs, such as moneylenders (
Chettiars) and priests (
Brahmins).
Sikhs were often policemen or private security guards. Most of these migrants were voluntary migrants who entered and left Singapore freely on their own resources. Unskilled
coolies tended to be landless Tamil peasants from the
Shudra caste as well as
Adi Dravidas or '
Untouchables'. These were often indentured labourers who were brought through various labour recruitment systems to work on rubber plantations in
Malaya. Many later came to work in Singapore once free of their bonds. Another group that was less than free was the military. The first Indians in Singapore were 120
sepoys in the Bengal Native Infantry and a 'bazaar contingent' of washermen, servants and others who came with
Stamford Raffles on his first visit in 1819. Throughout the colonial period, military personnel came from all over India. Most returned home after their service without settling in Singapore. Finally, there were the convicts. In the 19th century, the British shipped Indian convicts to Singapore to relieve overcrowded Indian jails. These men (and some women) were used as labour to build public buildings and roads in Singapore. Like the sepoys, they came from all parts of India. While some returned to India, several settled in Singapore after serving their sentences.
Social reform movements From the 19th century,
Hindu reform movements emerged in India as part of a broader cultural modernisation. These movements sought to promote what they saw as a more authentic form of Hinduism while addressing social abuses, such as the
Hindu caste system. These movements spread to overseas Indian communities, including Singapore. Groups like the
Ramakrishna Mission,
Arya Samaj and Sree Narayana Mission were active conduits of this reform movement. Traditional religious practices, especially among lower caste Hindus, centred around various rural folk traditions, esoteric rituals and superstitions. In contrast, the new movement appealed to better educated urban Hindus by conducting religious education classes for children and adults and interpreting the values, concepts and principles behind the religion for lay people. These groups also encouraged a more direct relationship with God, unmediated by Brahmin priests and rituals, through individual devotion (stemming from the
Bhakti movement), chanting Bhajans, or hymns, as well as through
yoga. Charitable service was also promoted. The Ramakrishna Mission in Singapore set up a home for boys from troubled homes, while the Sree Narayana Mission set up a home for the destitute elderly. Another social reform movement was the
Self-Respect Movement, which emerged in Tamil Nadu in the 1920s to liberate
Dravidian people, and especially
Adi Dravidas and lower caste Tamils from what was seen as
Brahmin oppression. This movement sought inspiration from Tamil history and culture. In Singapore, groups like the Tamil Reform Association were inspired by this movement. They imported publications from India that promoted the movement, and they also hosted visiting leaders of the Self-Respect Movement from Tamil Nadu when they visited Singapore. The Singapore groups focused on moral, social and religious reform. For example, they campaigned against caste distinctions and alcohol abuse. These groups also promoted the use of the Tamil language and the development of Tamil literature in Singapore through the establishment of Tamil newspapers and schools. They were also involved in the union activism, especially in those work sectors dominated by Tamils. Tamil-educated journalists and teachers were at the forefront of this movement. Leaders like
Thamizhavel G. Sarangapani were especially instrumental in championing the rights of Tamils and Indians, by encouraging Indians to register for Singapore citizenship in the 1950s and by campaigning to make Tamil one of Singapore's official languages.
1915 Singapore Mutiny The
1915 Singapore Mutiny, also known as the 1915 Sepoy Mutiny, was an incident concerning 850
Indian Army soldiers who mutinied against their British superiors on 15 February 1915 in Singapore, as part of the
1915 Ghadar Conspiracy (not to be mistaken for the
Indian Mutiny of 1857). The predominantly Muslim soldiers mutinied because they believed they were being sent to fight against the Islamic
Ottoman Empire as part of the
Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. This mutiny lasted nearly seven days and resulted in the deaths of 47 soldiers and civilians at the hands of the mutineers, who were subsequently arrested and
court-martialled; those who were found guilty of capital crimes were executed by the
Singapore Volunteer Corps. In general, the mutiny was restricted to Muslim soldiers and did not involve the wider Indian population in Singapore. While the mutiny was a significant event in Singaporean history, and one of the most important ones specifically involving the Indian diaspora, it was somewhat distinct from the mainstream development of nationalist sentiments among the Indian population in Singapore, which emerged most prominently around the time of the
Second World War.
Political movements Nationalist movements in India established branch organisations in Singapore to draw on local Indian support for Indian independence. The
Indian Independence League was a
political organisation operated from the 1920s to the 1940s to organise those living outside of India to remove the British from India. Founded in 1928 by Indian nationalists
Subhas Chandra Bose and
Jawaharlal Nehru, the organisation was active in Singapore and Malaya following Japan's successful
Malayan Campaign in the
Second World War. The
Indian National Army (INA) was an armed force formed by
Indian nationalists in 1942 in
Southeast Asia, also during
World War II. Their aim was to overthrow the
British Raj in colonial India, with
Japanese assistance. Many Indian soldiers and civilians were recruited in Singapore and Malaya to join the INA during the Japanese occupation. Many of them died fighting alongside the Japanese against the British in Burma during the war. Indian nationalist sentiments in Singapore and Malaya were paralleled by the rise of Chinese nationalism amongst the overseas Chinese in these territories. As these colonies progressed towards independence, Indians and Chinese in Malaya organised themselves along the lines of ethnic political parties. For instance, the Indian Association in Singapore, today a social and recreational club, was one of a network of such clubs in early 20th century Malaya which came together to form what would become the
Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), the current ethnic Indian party within Malaysia's ruling
Barisan National coalition government. Unlike Malaysia's delicate ethno-demographic balance, Singapore had a large Chinese majority. This rendered ethnic-based politics less viable and tended to support class-based politics instead. For example, several Indian professionals supported the more conservative pro-British parties, as they had been beneficiaries of the colonial system. In contrast, the ruling '''
People's Action Party''' (PAP) espoused an ideology of
social democracy which gained the support of Indian union workers.
S. Rajaratnam was one of the founding members of the PAP, and he worked to define and champion its vision of a multi-racial country, in contrast to the Malaysian model. More left-leaning Indian leaders and intellectuals, such as
C.V. Devan Nair and James Puthucheary, initially supported more radically left-wing groups. They had been imprisoned by the British for their radical union activism. Later, some of these men join the more moderate wing of the PAP. Devan Nair went on to build the modern trades union movement in Singapore, the
National Trades Union Congress. Consequently, Indians in Singapore tended to align themselves, both individually and as groups, with parties advocating specific political or economic ideologies, rather than along purely racial lines. This basic difference between the Indian communities of Singapore and Malaysia has endured to the present day.
Post-colonial history: 1960s – present Immediate post-colonial period: 1960s – 1980s Scholars have identified two phases in the development of the Indian community after Singapore's independence in 1965. The first phase, from 1965 to the early 1990s, saw a decline in the proportion of the community from 9% in 1957 to a low of 6.4% in 1980. One reason was the withdrawal of British military forces in the early 1970s, which led to the repatriation of many Indian base workers. Another factor was the retirement of older men, who chose to return to their families in India. Meanwhile, post-1965 immigration restrictions ended new migration from India. Furthermore, there was a rise in the emigration of Indian Singaporeans to the West in the late 1980s. During this time, the Indian population continued to grow in absolute terms due to natural increase. Even as it grew proportionally smaller, the community also became more settled, with several new generations born locally. A historical novel titled 'Sembawang: A Novel' explores this notion as well as traces the lives of Indian migrants who lived in an Indian enclave outside the HM Naval Base in the 1960s. From the 1960s to 1980s, the
People's Action Party government tried to cultivate a shared national identity and to end the historical tendency of Singaporeans to identify with the national – and often nationalistic – politics of their ancestral homelands. While different ethnic groups were allowed and sometimes encouraged to retain their cultural identities, they were also pushed to integrate socially, politically and economically across ethnic lines. The government pursued policies to integrate the races in public housing estates and national schools. Young men underwent two years of compulsory national service in ethnically mixed military or police camps. Traditional family businesses were superseded by government agencies or foreign multi-national corporations, which hired multi-ethnic workforces on the basis of meritocratic ability rather than kinship or ethnicity. Consequently, "the cultivation of a Singaporean identity has been largely successful in converting Indian migrants into Indian-Singaporeans." This group includes two-year work permit holders as well as those holding renewable Employment, Dependant and Student Passes. In 2005, Dr Rajesh Rai from the
National University of Singapore has observed that "independent surveys approximate the number of South Asians on work permits to be… approximately 90,000–100,000." Based on these figures, the number of short-term or 'non-resident' Indians in Singapore in 2007 is likely to be in the region of 100,000. As such, the proportion of Indians in the total population is likely to range from 9% to 10% (suggesting 89,000 to 135,000 'non-resident' Indians). The advance release figures from Singapore's 2010 Census show, for the first time, the number of ethnic Indian Singapore citizens, and ethnic Indian Singapore Permanent Residents, separately – instead of combining the two. As of 2010, there were 237,473 Indian Singapore citizens, or 7.35% of the citizen population. There were 110,646 Indian PRs, or 20.45% of the PR population. In total, ethnic Indians formed 348,119, or 9.23% of the 'resident' population of citizens and PRs.
In-depth studies Several in-depth studies have been conducted and published in the recent years on the Indian communities in Singapore such as Rajesh Rai's, Indians in Singapore, 1819–1945: Diaspora in the Colonial Port City, Anitha Devi Pillai's, From Kerala to Singapore: Voices from the Singapore Malayalee Community, Mathew Mathews, The Singapore Ethnic Mosaic, S A Nathanji's Singapore: Nation Building and Indians' Legacy amongst others. ==Demographics==