Written by Nanthini d/o T Sambanthan, AWARE intern

On the evening of Wednesday, 16 January, AWARE had the privilege of hosting “The Untold History of Singapore’s Indian Women”, a talk by Constance Singam, former AWARE President and civil rights activist. The sold-out talk was moderated by Ranjana Raghunathan, a former AWARE board member and doctoral candidate whose thesis explores marriage in the Singaporean Indian community.

Born in Singapore before WWII, Constance has witnessed a significant part of the nation’s history. Her accomplishments as an activist, specifically in women’s rights, migrant worker rights and race relations, have cemented her place as a leader in Singapore’s civil society. As an Indian-Singaporean woman herself, she told the crowd, this topic was deeply personal and one that she hoped the audience would further explore themselves. Early Chinese-Singaporeans—such as the writer Janet Lim—recorded their history, to the benefit of academics. Yet large gaps remain on the subject of early Indian-Singaporeans, and even less exists about early Indian women in Singapore.

Constance began her talk with the idea of stereotypes: how they can form based on misrepresentations and then linger on in the collective consciousness. Bringing up the stereotype that Indians are lazier than Chinese people, which dates back to early Singapore history, she noted that its roots lay in the supposed lack of productivity of the Indian coolie versus the Chinese coolie. In fact, however, “unlike the Chinese coolies who were employed and so paid by the amount they collected, the Indian coolies were at that time indentured servants and not paid.”

A major theme of the talk was how the various phases of migration to the region shaped the legacy of the Indian community in Singapore. Of the early migrants, Constance explained, the men were political prisoners, while the women were criminals who had been convicted of capital crimes such as murder and infanticide. She estimated that the British brought 25,000 such convicts to the Straits Settlements (i.e. modern-day Singapore, Malacca, Penang and Dinding) in the 19th century. Later waves of Indian migrants in the mid-to-late 1800s arrived not as convicts, but as economic migrants. Most of the migrants of these latter waves came from Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Out of this population, only 10 percent were women—reflecting a gender disparity that continued well into the 20th century. Constance posited a reason for this: the fact that many Indian migrants regarded Singapore as a place for economic opportunity, but not a place to bring and raise a family.

The lack of historical records led Constance to examine fictional representations of Indians under British colonial rule, in books such as 1930’s The Soul of Malaya by Henri Fauconnier. These fictional accounts reflect the reality of the average Tamil woman living and working in the large British-owned plantations of colonial Singapore, Constance said: a life of frequent exploitation by plantation owners. The phrase “sleeping dictionaries”, she suggested, reflects how British men viewed these women—as objects for sex and for learning Tamil.

Indian women’s lack of independence and agency changed drastically during World War II. Constance shared a photo of the all-female Rani of Jhansi regiment. Named after Lakshmibai, a famous Indian queen who fought against the British in the late 1800s, and founded by controversial Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose, it was formed in Singapore in 1943 as part of the Indian National Army. Trained as soldiers and led by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan (later Lakshmi Sahgal), this regiment marched to Burma, although the tide of the war would later prevent them from seeing actual combat. According to Constance, the regiment instilled a certain amount of self-confidence in its women—especially middle-class women such as Rasamma Bhupalan, who would go on to be the principal of the Methodist Girls School Kuala Lumpur and a prominent member of Malaysia’s National Council of Women’s Organisation.

Other prominent Indian women referenced by Constance included Shirin Fozdar, the driving force behind the Women’s Charter, Khatijun Nissa Siraj, who led the formation of the Singapore Syariah Court to protect Muslim women, as well as Ellice Handy, the first Asian principal of the Methodist Girls’ School and author of My Favourite Recipes (which Constance endorses).

Constance and Ranjana opened the second half of the event up to the floor, and a vibrant discussion ensued on topics ranging from mental health to the legacy of the caste system (which, Ranjana pointed out, doesn’t factor into everyday life for most Singaporeans except during discussions of marriage and children). The diversity of the Indian community in Singapore was a topic that was returned to over and over again—the fact that in Singapore, several ethnicities, faiths and castes co-exist. For Constance, this heterogeneity was the result of the ability of Indians to travel back and forth freely from Singapore to India, unlike the Chinese, unable to return to their homeland due to the civil strife in China from the late 19th to the 20th century.

Several attendees also emphasised the attention that should be paid to working-class Indians, not just the educated elite. Taahira, an audience member, brought up her mother and grandmother who had been selling spices in the market for over 50 years; they had to learn Mandarin, Malay and Hokkien in order to better interact with their customers. Their legacies, she said, have affected her own life, and this talk was an opportunity for her to learn about the “breadth and depth of Indian women”, as previously she had only heard personal anecdotes.

“Seeing the pictures of the various women, I feel my history is cool,” said Taahira. “To hear Constance Singam talk was to be reminded of the past that I wasn’t born in and the past I could be a part of.”

20-year old sociology student Divya told me that attending the talk made her realise that her feelings of alienation in her own country were not unique. “Something I could really relate to was that a lot of Singaporean Indian women have this problem—they don’t fit in. I’ve always felt that, growing up… I didn’t make an effort to assimilate better,” she said. The knowledge that she wasn’t alone was “comforting”, but it also inspired her to do better: “I realise I have a lot of privileges that my mum and grandparents didn’t have, so it’s my responsibility to use my privilege to change things.”

For the non-Indian members of the audience, the talk was also eye-opening. I spoke to Tina, a Chinese attendee. “As a Chinese, I don’t get to interact enough with the other communities,” she said. “This was a chance to hear them talk about themselves.”

At the end of the talk, Ranjana reminded the audience that “minorities have to claim their right to a nation.” For Constance, this means that Singaporean Indians “have to do our own work” to make ourselves continually “relevant” in Singapore’s diverse culture.