Fostering friendship and building stronger bonds through sports

Mr Surjit Singh Wasan, Chairman, Sikh Advisory Board
Col. (Retd.) Charanjit Singh, President, Singapore Khalsa Association
Mr Santokh Singh, Chairman, Organising Committee
My Parliamentary colleague, Mr Sam Tan
Religious Leaders, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen

A very good afternoon to all of you!

1. It is so good to see all of you here gathered for this sixth edition of the Harmony Games. As Mr Santokh Singh said earlier, I think this is the biggest gathering of people of faith coming together for a common cause, which is to use sports as a way to bring us closer together. And I think it was wonderful just now when I went around to see all our young people in mixed teams, you come from different backgrounds but you got to know one another, you made new friends, and played games of interest together. I hope that through the process, you have made new friendships, you have learnt to enlarge the space that we all share together, and you have come together and strengthen the bonds that we share amongst ourselves as Singaporeans. This is the sixth edition of the Games, it was a ground-up event, in fact, this whole idea of having a Harmony Games. It was started by the National Council of Churches in 2008, it was an event driven by the people, for the people, and since then different religious communities have taken turns to organize it every year. It's a tradition that we have continued in Singapore, I think it's a uniquely Singaporean tradition that we can be very proud of.
   

2. For today's event I think all of us should give a round of applause to the Sikh Advisory Board, the Singapore Khalsa Assocation, to our friends in the Sikh community for working so hard to put this event together. 

3. Racial and religious harmony is something very precious in Singapore, I think it is something that we must never take for granted. Events around the world remind us of this, and I think what we have in Singapore so far has been built painstakingly over the years through commitment, through hard work, and through events like this, where we come together, we learn about one another, we build trust, understanding, and respect for one another better. Even though we may come from different faiths, we recognize that we all have something in common as Singaporeans. I hope that we will continue to work at improving our racial harmony and to continually work hard to have more interactions with friends from different faiths and backgrounds, so as to foster greater trust and understanding among our different communities. We can do this through the Harmony Games, as I said it is a ground up initiated by the people, for the people. And we hope that if any of you have other ideas to do more of such events, whether through the sports or through other ways in which we can bring people together, you will do something about your ideas and we, the Ministry, will help to support you.

4. In fact, we have just started a Harmony Fund. It is a new fund which we hope will support even more ground up events like this. So if you would like to do some other events that bring different groups of people together for racial and religious harmony, you have some ideas, let us know because we will help you make that event happen. We want to create a lot more ground up initiatives by the people that will allow racial and religious harmony to strengthen in Singapore. So if you have ideas, may I encourage you to pursue your ideas further, and do your part to promote racial and religious harmony.

5. I think the event today, which was put together by the Sikh community, also helps us in a very important way to understand the community's culture and traditions. For example, you saw as you came in, the display of Sikh exhibition on the Sikh values and practices. I think that is very useful for us to learn and understand each other's religious practices. We have today a game of hockey which is a sport that many Sikhs will play, so that is something which is introduced for the first time at the community games, which is, I think, very good for those of you who have not played hockey before to get the chance to play hockey. Earlier this morning, all of you had the chance to do your ''Bhangra-robics'', so all of you had the chance to try something different if you have not tried it before. And as I was walking in, I already saw people doing the movements. All of you have already have the chance to learn something different, to understand a different culture, practice, tradition, and I think that's wonderful, so I hope that we continue with this tradition. At next year's event we will look forward to coming together again, playing sports but also learning about each other's traditions, practices, and cultures. So I hope that all of you will enjoy yourselves, continue to interact with one another, get to make new friends, and more importantly, continue the friendships that you made this year. Next year when you come back again, renew the friendships, strengthen the bonds, and let us all do our part to strengthen racial and religious harmony in Singapore, and to build a stronger Singapore that we are proud to call home.

6. Thank you very much.