Multiculturalism

How successful as a country are we in Multiculturalism? It is defined as the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviours, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles.

For years since the beginning of our young country, our forefathers have been emphasizing the cohesion of all citizens as one people, regardless of race, language or religion. There were the social experiments to force everyone to live together in public housing in the 1960s. This was frown upon by the Western world then. Moving into current times, history has shown that people of the same group instinctively prefer to live together – see the Chinatowns of the various big cities as an example. With the influence of the ISIS threat now, Europe is questioning if the authorities should break up large Muslim communities.

One great champion of multiculturalism was our ex-President SR Nathan, who passed away recently at 92. He embodied the true meaning of being color blind and served all citizens as one united people. While he retains his Indian roots and heritage, he nevertheless tirelessly supports all groups and utilizes his vast network to do good, to bring everyone together. We have seen so many examples of his largeness as many from different faiths shared about his contributions last week.

With subsequent generations, I tend to believe that our children are more receptive of other races and religions than my parents or my age group. This process takes time to inculcate and it needs to begin at a young age. Hopefully, we can truly say that we have reached the ideal goal of multiculturalism by the time we reach SG100.