At 60, Singapore is ready to find new ways to understand itself

This is the final part of a series of primers on current affairs and issues in the news, and what they mean for Singapore.

- Clement Yong

On the sidelines of a panel in August convened for Nor's Nusantara, a podcast started by museum veteran Nor Wang, historian Kwa Chong Guan was in a conversational mood.

The nephew of the late Kwa Geok Choo—Mr Lee Kuan Yew's wife—was excited about this new audiovisual series, which re-inserts Singapore into its regional archipelagic context through topics like art and food.

Ms Wang's emphasis on Singapore's connections with its surrounding Malay and Indonesian islands, stretching back to the 9th century, is very different from 20th-century textbooks by white scholars who believed life began on the island only with the entry of the British, Prof Kwa says.

The latter colonial view was passed on to first-generation leaders in then Raffles College, who inevitably imbibed some of these notions.

"You've got to understand how history is written here and ask: 'Why are you writing that history and for what purpose?'" Prof Kwa, 79, says, reiterating questions any secondary school student who studies the humanities is taught to ask.

"For your generation, how are you going to write the next generation of Singapore's history? Your generation will have to rethink its priorities, its identity."

Prof Kwa was more explicit about the potential for revising what we think we know in a recent video for Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, addressing whether Singapore's departure from Malaysia in 1965 can truly be characterized as an expulsion.

"Every generation must rethink Separation in terms of its current needs and identity. The documents are there only to support the memories and stories we want to tell about ourselves."

The stories countries choose to tell about themselves have power, hence the political wrangling about historical narratives from the United States and Argentina to India and Australia.