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Around 1930, at a time of rising nationalisms in China and India, English-educated Chinese and Indians in the British colony of Singapore debated with great intensity the issue of national identity. They sought to clarify their own position as members of ethnic communities of immigrant origin, while remaining individuals who identified the territory of British Malaya as their home. Readers' letters published in the Malaya Tribune, an English-medium newspaper founded to serve the interests of Anglophone Asians, questioned prevailing assumptions of how to define a nation from the perspectives of territory, political loyalty, race, and language. Lived circumstances in Malaya proved that being Chinese or Indian could encompass a range of political, cultural, and linguistic characteristics, rather than a homogenous identity as promoted by nationalist movements of the time. Through these debates, Chinese and Indians in Malaya found ways to simultaneously reaffirm their ethnic pride as well as their sense of being ‘Malayan’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the deployment of religion in the effort to raise nationalist consciousness among the Chinese community in colonial Singapore in the early twentieth century. It has often been noted that religion played a significant role in the emergence of nationalism in colonised Asia. However, the religions usually thought of in this context have been Islam and Buddhism, rather than Confucianism (Chong 2009: 2). With the formation of the Young Men?s Buddhist Association in 1906 which inaugurated moves towards nationalist consciousness in Burma, or the organisation of the Sarekat Islam in 1912, which was an early milestone in the development of the Indonesian nationalist movement, Buddhism and Islam demonstrated their dynamic potential in the realm of politics. Confucianism, on the other hand, has generally had a reputation as an ossified, elitist and obsolescent form of religion. In fact it has been quite common for Western commentators to deny that it was a religion at all. This paper focuses on the intellectual contributions of an outstanding Chinese Singaporean community leader, Lim Boon Keng. Lim looked to Confucianism as a source of national pride for the diasporic Chinese community living under British colonial rule in Singapore. Directly contradicting Western assumptions about the rigidity and authoritarianism of Confucianism, Lim offered an interpretation which highlighted its dynamic, progressive political potential. In particular, he developed the case for Confucianism as a source of democratic political impetus, and thus as a challenge to the autocratic, elitist nature of the British system of colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Chinese diasporic culture and national identity in Singapore. The section reflects on the importance of the Tiger Balm Gardens or Haw Par Villa, built in the 1930s by overseas Chinese pharmaceuticals tycoon Aw Boon Haw, in Singapore's Chinese community area. According to the report, during the colonial era, the garden marked the success not only of Aw Boon Haw but also of the Chinese migrant community in Singapore, which was renovated into an orientalized theme park and then resuscitated as the repository of diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship.