Conservation and Ethnicization of Little India

Abstract

Within a plural society, it has become commonplace for different ethnic groups to establish certain ethnic markers in order to both create an identity and differentiate themselves from others. Religion, language and cultural practices have increasingly become regarded as important features in the creation of ethnic markers. Establishing their sociocultural space is also another important feature in raising their social visibility and ethnic boundary. The establishment of Chinatown , Korean-town, Japanese-town, Indian-town and others can be seen as attempts by these ethnic minorities to display their economic but more significantly sociocultural and religious activities and ethnic solidarity within the confines of a bounded space. In Singapore, the state pushed itself into the forefront as the propeller of development and a guardian of cultural preservation . It wanted to be known as a “moral state” where the state viewed its next important task as preserving the ethico-moral and cultural fabric of the society. In the case of Little India , the Singaporean Indians were not prepared to be bystanders and participated actively in this process of change and development. This chapter examined the relationship between the state and the Indians in the conservation and transformation of the Little India district. It argued that the state, by earmarking the Little India district as a conservation area, reinforced the district as an Indian economic and sociocultural space. At the same time, the Indians themselves, through their cultural and religious activities, not only reclaimed their ethnic space but established their own culturally based ethnicity. In so doing, they defined their Indian racial identity in addition to the state-based CMIO model.