COMMENTARY Two Kinds of Malaysia-Singapore: Ethnic Transformations Wang Gungwu East Asian Institute National University of Singapore The nine articles in this issue of the journal represent one of the first efforts to study ethnic transformations in Malaysia and Singapore in tandem. Five are about Singapore and three on Malaysia, with one general essay warning against the potential Chinese threat to the region. The eight country essays are mainly ethnographic in approach, each providing more than adequate theoretical background for the questions they have chosen to ask but none seeking to compare the transformations in the two countries directly. In his introduction, the editor has shown keen awareness of the sensitivities of the subject. He has been content to place the articles side by side, comment briefly on the key issues raised by each of them, and refer to such points of theoretical interest that may arise. He has concentrated on ensuring that the authors explain features of the ethnic process rather than enlarge on the consequences of state policies in nation-building. Editorial caution here is understandable. Ethnographic data is necessary before one can tackle such a large and complex subject. What is valuable about this collection is the amount of fresh information that has been gathered in several of these essays that contributes to the record and eventually enables us to begin to understand the changes taking place. One would have wished for some comparative essays, but must be content that the material is rich enough so that reading them together in one volume offers the reader many insights. In this brief commentary, I shall note two developments in scholarly writings which may have ramifications for the understanding of ethnic transformations. The first tends to confirm the popular view that both ethnic and national identities may be negotiated and renegotiated depending on the circumstances faced by various groups and communities. The second revives the opposite and now less fashionable view which uses the essentialist interpretations of specific cultures and religions in order to explain identity formations. Negotiable Identities It is remarkable how quickly various peoples in Malaysia and Singapore have accepted both the nation-state framework and the multicultural realities which that framework has had to face in each country. In the anti-colonial movements before the 183 184 • 1950s, most leaders took for granted that the nation-state of the West was the supreme political expression of modern civilization. Some even considered it as the secret of its power and wealth, the reason why the Western powers conquered all before them. Thus, the freedom and independence everyone wanted was symbolized most clearly by the act of reproducing new nations based on the original European model. Each sovereign state of defined borders would ideally consist of a single nation with one language, one religion, one culture, wholly united against all other states. Thus when Malaya-Malaysia, and then Singapore, became independent, it was recognized that neither was a ready-made nation-state. The task of nation-building was urgent, but one that called not for force but for sensitivity and multiple levels of negotiation. But the ultimate goal was to achieve the kind of unity of purpose that all nation-states were supposed to have. In the 1950s, all the new states of Southeast Asia were "plural societies" and had significant minority groups living within the borders they inherited from the British, Dutch, French and American powers. Thailand alone had not been colonized, but it had long cpmmitted itself to a similar nation-building programme by the beginning of the 20th century. Its rulers adapted the European model successfully, and the minority peoples who owed allegiance to the monarchy, notably immigrants of Chinese descent, were on their way to being assimilated to the new Thai nation. All its neighbours were encouraged by that success to follow similar policies as one of the first steps in nation-building the moment they had the chance to do so. With differences in emphasis and variations in speed and method, each of the new states after the end of World War II adopted assimilationist policies. Sooner or later, it was thought, the goal of one nation united in a single culture and loyalty would be reached. Malaysia and Singapore had a more difficult start than most of the others. The fact that their national borders were in a continual state of flux and uncertainty for over two decades after 1945 delayed the work of nation-building. The issue of the ratio of indigenous to immigrant peoples in British Malaya had led to the separation of Singapore from the Federation of Malaya soon after the war. The regional Communist challenge, however, induced the imaginative attempt to fuse all former British-administered areas together in the larger federation of Malaysia. But the ethnic mix of the territories was too volatile at the time for the new state to pursue the kinds of assimilationist policies other states had been following since the late 1940s. Thus the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in the late 1940s set in motion, under British tutelage, what eventually became two ways of looking at the task of nation formation, one arising from a Malay majority and the other from a Chinese majority. The circumstances leading to the merger of the two territories in 1963 and then a second separation in 1965 are only partially known today; the full story will have to wait until more firsthand documents are available. What is obvious is that we have two modified versions of the European nation-state model and, after more than 30 years, the possibility of two kinds of ethnic transformations. The five essays on Singapore focus on some less well-known groups to fill out what is already a considerable literature on the majority Chinese and the several minorities in the city-state. This is partly because Singapore is smaller and its peoples easier to describe. In contrast, the three essays on Malaysia lighten up only a corner of that multifaceted country. The many subgroups of the bumiputra spread over East .