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Stories have emerged, popular myths which are widely believed and yet may be untrue.

It is important to understand our past.

Every day, we make decisions based on our own personal history.

When we seek to grow as people, we seek to understand ourselves by thinking carefully about our past.

A country is no different.

Every day, our government makes decisions based on their understanding of our past.

Our people make decisions also based on our understanding of our shared history.

Today, as Singapore embarks on its golden jubilee, marking 50 years since separation with Malaysia, we are also entering a new era.

In order to fully understand ourselves, to make the best decisions for our future, we

also need to stop and understand where we have come from.

One such myth that governments perpetuate is the idea that their country's borders are natural, logical and represent a unique nation.

that somehow the nation perfectly overlaps with the state, and that they are one and the same.

And equally, that this nation, that the national identity, also has something timeless and inherent about it.

To a great extent, governments have to perpetuate this idea.

After all, a government can't call its own borders into question.

But in pursuit of a coherent national identity, governments often take the shortcut of suppressing and erasing other visions of national identity.

especially those of minorities or the marginalized or the weak and powerless

rather than the more difficult but constructive path of building a

a new civic identity out of the diversity of the nation. And in the case of former colonies, we often overlook the fact that both these national borders and these national identities are the products of colonialism.

that were constructed out of the compromises that were made during the process of decolonisation.

and were designed to perpetuate the influence of the colonial power long after decolonisation.

And so it is with Singapore and Malaysia.

and it is with the act that first set the modern boundaries of Singapore and West Malaysia that we begin.

The Partition of Malaya in 1946

Now, the partition of Singapore from the rest of the Malayan Peninsula in 1946 actually passed with little excitement.

The population was wrapped up in the rebuilding of Malaya after the Japanese occupation. News

headlines focused on the Indonesian Republican struggle for independence against the violent British and allied reoccupation of Indonesia.

In stark contrast with the later partitions of India and Palestine in 1948,

There were no riots over boundaries, or over citizenship, or over population transfers.

The British, colonial masters of Malaya, did not even consider it a partition.

On the contrary, they saw it as an act of eulogy.

The Malayan Union drew together the separate administrations that the British had direct or indirect rule over.

except for Singapore.

Singapore. Yet for the people of Malaya, the partition would have consequences that were no less profound than India or Palestine.

What was the Malayan Union?

In 1943, in the middle of World War II,

Britain announced its intention

to prepare Malia for eventual independence.

independence. The vehicle for this would be the Malayan Union.

The British believed that a strong centralised state and multiracial politics was necessary for the stability and development of

Malaya. To gain experience in running a democratic country

and to be loyal to Malay

all the people of Malaya had to have a stick in the

country, be given the opportunity to practice democracy, and to be given a role in the

The best way to learn how to do something, after all, is to practice, practice, practice

So the British accordingly unified 11 of the 12 Malayan states into the Malayan Union,

removed the sovereignty of the Malay rulers, established a strong central government under direct British rule,

and aimed to create a Malayan nation and Malayan people by offering citizenship to all who regarded Malaya as home.

To give Malay citizens a stake in the country and encourage democratisation,

the Malayan Union introduced a unitary Malayan citizenship.

All Malayan born, regardless of ancestry, were Malayan.

a clear and equitable path to citizenship was offered for immigrants.

but race dictated its composition from the outset.

Singapore's inclusion would mean non-Malays would outnumber

Malays in the Malayan Union. The Malay elite were worried about their community being overwhelmed by the Chinese.

and more prosaically, would not agree to be part of a democratic state in which they were the minority.

and therefore no longer the elite. So Singapore was excluded.

Many Malayans and former Malaya colonial officials protested that it was illogical to exclude Malaya's social, economic and cultural capital, but to no avail.

You see, before 1946, there was little conception of Singapore as a separate independent state.

Historically, Singapore was part of Johor.

and it was with the Sultan of Johor that Sir Stamford Raffle signed a treaty with in 1819.

which gave the British the right to set up a trading port

Throughout the 19th century, it was the military and economic power of Singapore

that made the British the paramount power in the peninsula.

And this was formalized in 1896

when four Malay states were federated with Kuala Lumpur as its capital.

The British High Commissioner in Malaya was also the governor of the straight settlements based in Singapore.

and superior to the Resident General of the Federated Malay States based in Kuala Lumpur.

Because of its status as a military, communications and trading hub, and its proximity to wealth,

Singapore was de facto the political capital of Malaya

but more than that Singapore was the intellectual, social

and economic capital of Malaya.

If you were a young man or woman who wanted to make it big,

you headed for the bright lights of Malaya's biggest city.

If you wanted a higher education,

You hit it for Raffles College in Singapore.

If you wanted to become a successful artist or singer or writer or journalist,

you hid it for Singapore because that's where the money was.

It was in Singapore that you'd find the big multinational companies.

The big artistic companies, the theatres, the movie industry,

and the intellectual industries, the publishers, the newspapers, the schools.

If Kuala Lumpur was Washington DC, Singapore was New York.

But all these links were thrown overboard by a colonial office that was anxious not to jeopardise elite Malay opinion.

Singapore's exclusion, of course, also ensured the protection of its free port and, more importantly, the British naval base.

But with this act, Malaya was split into two. Welcome back.

So for all the progressive ideals of the Malayan Union, separating Singapore from the rest of Malaya was a tacit admission that in Malaya, some people were more equal than others.

Malaya was not an inalienable home

by the political arrangements subject to political needs.

By calculating politics on ethnic terms, it legitimised and reinforced race as central to the political process.

Within a year of the creation of the Malayan Union, two opposing forces had coalesced, articulating two different Malayan identities.

On the right, the Federation-based United Malays National Organisation, or UMNO,

was the party of the Malay bureaucratic elite, the sons of the Malay aristocracy who had been trained for decades by the British to run the country.

They formed an alliance with the Sultan.

They objected to the granting of citizenship to non-Malays, the loss of autonomy for the Malay states, and the removal of the Sultan's powers.

they sought to do the right thing for Malay as Malays, to protect their people.

an exclusively Malay-Malayan identity and cemented their elite status atop a rigid social-political hierarchy.

On the left was the Singapore-centred AMCJA Putra, the All-Malaya Council of Joint Action and the Pusat Tenaga Rakyat .

a coalition of left-wing groups who supported the union but wanted the inclusion of Singapore.

Amongst its leaders were the Malayan Democratic Union, or MDU, the Parti Kembangsaan Melayu-Malaya, or PKMM, the Malay Nationalist Party,

of Malaya and the Malayan Communist Party or MCP.