From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

25. South Asia’s Legends and Leaders
As a young student, I admired Nehru and his objective of a secular multiracial
society. Like most nationalists from British colonies, I had read his books
written during his long years in British jails, especially his letters to his daughter.
They were elegantly written, and his views and sentiments struck a resonant
chord in me. Together with other democratic socialists of the 1950s, I had
wondered whether India or China would become the model for development. I
wanted democratic India, not communist China, to win. But despite
achievements such as the green revolution, population growth has kept down
India’s standard of living and quality of life.
I visited Delhi for the first time as prime minister in April 1962. I was driven
to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s home to meet him. It had been the residence of one
of the British military commanders – two storeys, wide verandas, spacious
grounds beautifully laid out. We had a half-hour discussion.
For lunch, we were seated at a long table, probably inherited from British
times. Each guest had a large silver tray as his dinner plate, and picked what he
fancied from a wide array of rice, chapatis, curries, vegetables, meats, fish,
pickles and condiments that were brought to him. What was unusual was that
everyone ate with their fingers. Choo and I had had no practice at this. While
they held their food neatly and daintily with their fingertips, we rummaged
through ours, the gravy reaching up to our knuckles. We felt and looked messy. I
was relieved when silver finger bowls of water with slices of lime came for
guests to wash their greasy fingers before eating the sweets, which were
delicious. Nehru, sitting opposite me, noticed our awkwardness. I explained that
besides chopsticks we usually used forks and spoons. Fortunately, they provided
us with cutlery at other meals in Delhi.
Nehru was sufficiently interested in what I had told him to invite me to a
second meeting the next day, when he gave me 90 minutes. I explained the
demographics of Singapore and of Malaya, and the hold the communists had on
the Chinese population because of their enormous success in transforming China

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from a corrupt, decadent society into a disciplined, clean and dynamic if
regimented one. But communism was totally unsuited to Southeast Asia.
Moreover, an independent Singapore would be a disaster, as it would be bound
to incur the hostility of its neighbours – Malays in Malaya, and Javanese and
other Malay racial groups in Indonesia. I believed the best solution was to merge
Singapore with Malaya and the Borneo territories since the Tunku did not want
to take Singapore alone because then the Chinese would become equal to the
Malays in voting strength. Nehru was pleasantly surprised to find a Chinese so
determined not to have Singapore under communist control and the influence of
Beijing.
I visited Nehru again in 1964 when I stopped in Delhi on my way back from
a tour of Africa. He was a shadow of his former self, weary, weak in voice and
posture, slumped on a sofa. His concentration was poor. The Chinese attack
across the Himalayas had been a blow to his hopes of Afro-Asian solidarity. I
left the meeting filled with sadness. He died a few months later, in May.
My meetings with Nehru in the 1960s allowed me to meet his daughter,
Indira Gandhi. When we became independent, we asked the Indian government
to help Singapore gain acceptance into Afro-Asian organisations; their
diplomatic missions gave us unstinting assistance. A year later I visited India to
thank Mrs Gandhi and to interest her government in Southeast Asia. A young,
energetic and optimistic Indira Gandhi met me at the airport with a guard of
honour, and drove with me to the former Vice-regal Lodge, now called
Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Mrs Gandhi was frank and friendly towards the end of my three-day stay in
1966. She said it was difficult for her to carry on with a cabinet not of her own
choosing. Ministers were going in different directions. Although she had been
appointed in a most cynical manner by the Congress Party bosses who wanted to
use Nehru’s image for the next election, I thought that if she won by a handsome
majority, she had every intention of governing in her own right.
It was sad to see the gradual run-down of the country, visible even in the
Rashtrapati Bhavan. The crockery and cutlery were dreadful – at dinner one
knife literally snapped in my hand and nearly bounced into my face. Air-
conditioners, which India had been manufacturing for many years, rumbled
noisily and ineffectively. The servants, liveried in dingy white and red uniforms,
removed hospitality liquor from the side tables in our rooms. Delhi was “dry”
most days of the week. On one occasion, returning to the Rashtrapati Bhavan
after a reception given by our high commissioner, my two Indian ADCs in

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resplendent uniforms entered the lift with me with their hands behind their
backs. As I got out, I noticed they were holding some bottles. I asked my
secretary who explained that they were bottles of Scotch. It was the practice at
our high commission’s diplomatic receptions to give bottles of Johnnie Walker
Scotch whisky to deserving guests, and each ADC received two. They were not
obtainable in India because they could not be imported. There was a hypocritical
pretence at public egalitarianism, with political leaders wearing homespun
clothes to identify themselves with their poor, while they quietly amassed
wealth. This undermined the morale of the elite officers, civil and military.
My few days’ stay in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and my meetings with their top
leaders at receptions and in various settings were a sobering experience. On my
earlier visits in 1959 and 1962, when Nehru was in charge, I thought India
showed promise of becoming a thriving society and a great power. By the late
1970s I thought it would become a big military power because of its size but not
an economically thriving one because of its stifling bureaucracy.
Indian officials were more interested in getting into the joint communiqué a
commitment from Singapore to join it in its “great concern over the danger to the
world in general and Southeast Asia in particular arising from prolongation of
the conflict in Vietnam.” Its non-alignment policy was tilted towards the Soviet
Union; this was the price to ensure a regular supply of weapons and military
technology.
Mrs Gandhi visited Singapore two years later, in May 1968. We had a wide-
ranging exchange during which I concluded that India did not have the
wherewithal to extend its influence in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, when I
visited India in 1970, I asked her whether India intended to extend its naval
interests into Southeast Asia. Their foreign minister, Swaran Singh, who was
present, intervened to say India was interested in increasing economic ties but its
greater interest was in keeping its western sea lanes open. I sensed that India’s
primary defence concern was Pakistan, fearing a US-China-Pakistan line-up.
When Morarji Desai became prime minister in 1977, I soon established
rapport with him. I had known him when he was India’s deputy prime minister
in 1969. During the London Commonwealth conference in June 1977, I lunched
with him at his high commissioner’s residence. He was in his 80s, a strict
vegetarian who ate only raw nuts, fruit and vegetables, nothing cooked. His meal
that day consisted of raisins and nuts. The chocolates heaped in front of him
were untouched. His high commissioner did not know of his strict diet. Even his
milk had to come straight from a cow, not from a bottle. Indeed, at a regional

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Commonwealth conference in Sydney the following year, Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm Fraser had a milch cow at hand. Desai assured me he had
more than enough nourishment from his diet, that vegetarians were long-lived.
He proved his thesis by living till 99. He had a dry sense of humour and a
capacious memory, but some unusual ideas. In December 1978, in the car taking
us from Delhi airport to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, he said that thousands of years
ago Indians had made a space journey and visited the planets, which the
Americans were then doing. I must have looked sceptical, so he emphasised,
“Yes, it is true. It is by reincarnation. It is recorded in the