Plenary Speech on “Forging Societal Resilience” at ICCS 2025

1. Excellencies, ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow panellists – Mr Ho, Venerable Napan Thawornbanjob – Professor Mona Siddiqui, friends from around the world. It is indeed a great pleasure and honour for me to be here, to speak to every one of you. And the intention for me really, is to highlight Singapore’s blend of forging societal resilience and how we went about doing so over the last 60 years.

2. The journey for us started with bloodshed, divisiveness, and helplessness, when we were thrusted with independence almost 60 years ago.

3. Fast-forward to where we are today. We have moved from a notion of helplessness. Based on the guidance given by our first Prime Minister of building a country that is not a Chinese country, not a Malay country, not an Indian country, but a Singaporean country.

4. Hence, the building blocks were placed very early on in terms of our policy direction and to ensure that we have had a multicultural society moving forward.

5. I would like to also add that in our schools today, our students take the National Pledge, which forges one Singapore, regardless of race, language or religion.

6. This is important for us, because at the end of the day, we are a blend of multiple cultures, ethnicities, religions, and the social glue that keeps us together and to build societal resilience, is a forged sense of solidarity.

7. This was built on three main pillars that the government has put in place over the last couple of years.

8. The first is policy structures, the hardware. The way we have done it over the years was to create the integration of society in our Ethnic Integration Policy. A rather intrusive housing policy, where each Housing Development Board flat or public housing would have to mirror the national profile, as far as our races are concerned. That was one particular way in where you are forced to see each other daily, either in the lifts or underneath the blocks, and therefore integration takes place by way of proximity.

9. Second, we move towards English as the lingua franca for Singapore, where we were able to then use it as our language for communication and business, but at the same time maintaining a second language that is based on our respective ethnicities. This way, once again, a nice mix between being able to communicate with one another, but at the same time maintaining our cultural roots.

10. Thirdly, our national service policy, particularly for our men among us, over the age of 18. A compulsory two years of National Service, where they will be deployed to either the Army, Police, or Civil Defence Force. Once again, somewhat less explained usually, but this is a very important way where, at least the male population of Singapore are banded together and are expected to take on tasks for the nation by way of National Service.

11. I would like to just add that from a personal perspective, having served in the armed forces for many years, I have been able to observe the integration that happens at a very organic level between our various soldiers regardless of race, language or religion.

12. In fact, my son will be enlisting for National Service next week. Next week, he is getting enlisted, and he is actually looking forward to it.

13. So again, National Service has been a very important social group that stitches all of us together. For me personally, I have been able to see Chinese, Indians and Malays being deployed to far-flung areas. In my case, we were deployed to Afghanistan for a couple of months, and all of us were together, and we were brothers. Doing what we need to do and flying our flags high.

14. But it is not just about top-down measures alone, but also bottom-up.

15. Here, there is much support that the government gives towards self-help groups. These are bottom-up initiatives where certain races may come together to say, “I need to have self-help groups for the purpose of educational upliftment,” for example.

16. And for this particular category, there have been specific agencies that have been put in place, including Yayasan MENDAKI for the Malays to uplift education. Similarly, the CDAC (Chinese Development Assistance Council), and SINDA (Singapore Indian Development Association).

17. Again, these are very much grounded by the respective races in which they would look at ways at which to uplift their particular community and to be able to do specific, targeted policy interventions and initiatives that are related to the respective racial groups.

18. This has yielded us tremendous benefits.

19. I have been a volunteer of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) and SINDA has not only moved as much as it can from the educational angle, but it has also moved towards upliftment, as far as social norms and to help those who are less privileged within society.

20. The third principle is really building bridges across communities.

21. So it's not just top-down, “hardware”; bottom-up, a bit of “heartware”; but we are looking at building bridges across society, really the “software,” the glue that holds itself together.

22. And here, I am very proud to add that there are several agencies that have been formed, pretty much ground up too.

23. For example, the Harmony Circles. Many of you here are from the Harmony Circles, the inter-religious organisations, where the ability for us to bring together not just racial groups, but also religious groups, to be able to forge societal cohesion and to be able to understand one another and to be able to help one another in times of need.

24. Not too long ago, in November 2024, we had an unfortunate situation in one of our churches where one of the congregants, who unfortunately had mental issues, stabbed the pastor. It was identified that it was not terrorist related but nonetheless, members of the Christian, Muslim, and Hindu communities came together, with our Sikh community and Buddhist brothers and sisters. We came together and organically came up with a statement of support to our Christian brothers at a time of need. Now this might just be a small little example of testing our social resilience, but all of this happened without any form of government intervention, and it happened organically. I think we are all very happy and heartened that such actions are indeed taking place to stitch us together as part of this social glue that we call Singapore.

25. I would just like to add that the journey that we have had is only 60 years old. We are a country of 60 years of heritage as an independent nation. We celebrate what is called SG60 this year, where we celebrate all that we have done over the last 60 years to bring us to where we are: a proud and cohesive society.

26. The statistics seem to be quite encouraging as well. Where, again, in the theme of 60, 60% of our people report¹ having a personal connection with another religion other than their own, and this was identified by a Pew study that was conducted in 2022.

27. And the same study indicated that 82%² felt that their religion is compatible with the national culture, which I think are all very encouraging signs for a very young nation, a very small nation with quite a bit of a way left to go.

28. However, we don't rest on our laurels, and we, for one, do not believe that we have arrived. We are indeed a work in progress. We continue to believe that more needs to be done, not just at the intra-state level, but the inter-state level as well, and conferences like this are a very important reminder for us that we need to extend our knowledge, connections, and networks to the world, and not just to remain in Singapore only.

29. I do believe we need to do more: the state has to do more, and so too does the need for businesses, as well as civil society – our religious organisations, especially – to come forward, to move towards one where we are not just tightly banded together, but we are closely blended with one another. And I think that's still a work in progress, and hopefully over time, we will get there.

30. For some of us who may be struggling with the heat in Singapore, perhaps one way to look at it is to consider ourselves at some stage down the future, where we will end up becoming like an ice-blended coffee, where you have ice and coffee that are mixed with one another; where you can't quite separate the ice cubes from the coffee.

31. Or better still, there's another drink that I like very much, which is called the Yuan Yang, which is a combination of tea and coffee, and perhaps a blend of that too – so you have got a triple blend going on, and that is what we should be aiming towards in Singapore at some point in time.

32. Perhaps not the ice-blended Yuan Yang yet, but at least we start off with a nice cup of ice-blended coffee, and perhaps that would be one way we start the journey in the days forward, as we move towards Singapore 60 years from now and in the long run.

33. Thank you very much.

[1] In Singapore, religious diversity and tolerance go hand in hand – 6 October 2023

[2] How people in South and Southeast Asia view religious diversity and pluralism – 20 November 2023