One of my earliest memories related to my racial identity is being in school and my fellow classmates reacting in shock when they found out my race. “But you’re so fair!” many of them exclaimed.
So began my childhood journey of feeling a little bit guilty that I wasn’t ‘dark enough’ to be considered Indian. It also didn’t help that, when filling in forms, I was encouraged to tick the ‘other’ box when asked my race. (My siblings, who are all older than me, recall having the same experience.) Why? Because, according to the authorities, you’re Sikh, so you’re not Indian. I had no idea why this was the case—and I still don’t get it now—but I did as I was told.
It was weird to have my Indian identity questioned. As far as I knew, I was a Punjabi girl whose parents spoke to her in a mix of English and Punjabi. And we spent most of our weekends with my extended family of aunties, uncles and cousins, watching Bollywood movies and eating homemade Indian food—mostly doused in ghee, of course. What could be more Indian than that?
The Sikh community in Singapore has grown in prominence over the decades. Most people I meet these days are aware of my race and how exactly we fit into the Indian diaspora. Gone are the days—or there are fewer of them, at least—of openly racist Sikh jokes, like making fun of men in turbans. (This doesn’t mean Sikhs in Singapore don’t experience racism now, though.)
I also grew up in an era where ‘casual racism’ wasn’t a known term. In my experience, such interactions were seen as banter. Whether as teenagers or young adults, my friends and I often joked about how Indians don’t eat chicken wings as ‘cleanly’ as the Chinese do—consuming every part of the wing, including the cartilage—or how my Chinese friends’ faces turned red after one or two alcoholic drinks while us Indians were able to hold our alcohol well. Everyone joined in with the ribbing. If it ever got to a point where someone crossed a line (and this was rare), they would be called out on it. I had similar experiences across different circles over the decades: school friends, university mates, colleagues in various jobs, friends from the industry in which I work, and so on.
I didn’t grow up during the famous ‘kampung spirit’ years of the ’60s and ’70s, but during my childhood and teenage years, I felt that race overall wasn’t a big issue. Nevertheless, I have encountered my fair share of racist incidents, the most memorable one being from the aunty who worked at the drinks stall in my primary school’s canteen. For some reason, she never ever served me. She hardly spoke English so whenever she saw me, she turned away and let someone else take my drink order. She often muttered something in Mandarin when she saw me but I never understood it. Eight-year-old me just waited till a nice aunty helped me out.
In my 20s, I went for a job interview at a popular women’s magazine and was asked if I could speak Mandarin. I couldn’t, of course, and asked why this was needed for a job writing in English. I was given an airy-fairy response and it was shrugged off quickly. I didn’t get the job. I’ve never read an article in that publication that required the writer to speak Mandarin. But I knew better than to go up against an entire publishing company.
I have sat through a number of meetings at various jobs where the entire team started conversations in Mandarin and I was the only one who had no idea what they were on about. They’d switch back to English once I reminded them of my existence (often with a jokey, “Hello? English please!”) but the fact that it needed pointing out perhaps showed how much they took for granted that everyone in Singapore would understand Mandarin.
As someone in her 40s, I am more confident talking about my race now. And I’m definitely prouder of it. This is probably a result of age or the fact that race is more discussed in general these days—the current generation of Indians in Singapore have a totally different experience of being Indian in Singapore than me.
There has always been—and there still is—racism in Singapore, but perhaps it wasn’t always as ‘accessible’ for everyone to see. Maybe racists who were ‘hidden’ before have been emboldened for years without facing any consequences, and have inadvertently been given the power to become worse as time goes by.
Things like job ads requiring applicants to speak Mandarin when it’s not actually relevant to the job, or people not wanting to rent out their homes to Indians, have been happening for decades. This doesn’t mean it’s okay and we have to live with it.
In a population that is getting even more mixed by the generation, I hope that someone will never be ‘too dark’ or ‘too fair’ to be a certain race and that opportunities will be equal for everyone. We already celebrate festivals of the various ethnicities in Singapore (even if it’s only because we love all the food) so I think it’s time we took that a step further and celebrated each other too.
Around five years ago, I was waiting in a taxi queue at a shopping mall, and a taxi arrived to pick up an elderly Malay couple. They had a shopping trolley filled with groceries and the Chinese taxi driver got out of the car to help them load the bags into the boot. As he was doing so, he began having a conversation with them in Malay and the three of them joked together. At one point, the taxi driver turned to me—the only person left in the queue—and made a joke in Malay. I studied Malay in school for 12 years and although I’m not at all fluent in the language, I understood what he said (my cikgus would be so proud of me!) and laughed along with them. I felt like I was in a National Day ad (in a good way) and, as someone who no longer lives in Singapore, it reminded me of the country that I miss. As an Indian Singaporean, I always want to feel like I belong in this country. And at that moment, I did.
Balvinder Sandhu is a writer/editor who has worked on newspapers, magazines and websites in Singapore for over 25 years. She currently lives in Melbourne with her husband and she misses Singapore so much, she literally dreams about her favourite chicken rice and Old Chang Kee curry puffs.
