Lest we forget - One of our founding fathers

Every morning, half a million schoolchildren in Singapore stand with their right fists over their hearts and recite 38 words.

"We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation."

Those words were written by a man who was born in Ceylon, raised in Malaya, spent 12 years in London, married a Hungarian woman, and didn't call Singapore home until he was in his thirties.

He wasn't born Singaporean. There was no Singapore to be born into.

He had to help build the country first... and then write the words that would teach its children who they were.

His name was S. Rajaratnam.

He was born on February 25, 1915, in Jaffna, Ceylon. 

But only because his father wanted him born there for auspicious reasons... his elder brother had died prematurely, and the family believed a birth in the ancestral homeland would protect the second child.

Six months later, the baby was carried back to Malaya. 

To Seremban. 

Where his father worked as a supervisor on a rubber estate owned by Europeans.

This is where Raja grew up. Not in Ceylon. Not in Singapore. In Seremban, surrounded by rubber trees, Tamil relatives, Malay neighbours, and Chinese tin miners.

His father eventually rose from supervising other people's rubber to owning his own plantation. He wanted his son to become a lawyer. Raja wanted to read books.

He was an avid reader from childhood. 

His uncles bought him everything they could find. 

He attended St. Paul's Institution in Seremban, then Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, then Raffles Institution in Singapore. Each school a step further from home. Each school a step closer to the man he would become.

In 1937, his father sent him to King's College London to study law.

Raja arrived in London at 22. He would not leave for 12 years.

London changed everything.

He was supposed to study law. 

Instead, he found politics. 

He joined the Left Book Club... a socialist organisation that held meetings, rallies, and readings across Britain. He moved in Fabian circles. He met activists, writers, students from the colonies. He read Marx, debated imperialism, and became, in his own words, "fashionably anti-imperial."

He never finished his law degree.

When World War II broke out, his father could no longer send money from a Japanese-occupied Malaya. Raja was stranded. No degree. No income. No way home.

So he did what a man without a country does. He wrote.

He became a journalist. Freelanced for the Daily Express and several left-leaning publications. He wrote short stories that were reviewed positively by The Spectator. He caught the attention of 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗢𝗿𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹, who was then working in the Indian Section of the BBC's Eastern Service. Orwell recruited Raja to write scripts for the network.

A Ceylonese boy from a rubber estate in Seremban... writing for the BBC during the Blitz, at the invitation of the man who would write 1984.

And somewhere in those London years, at a Left Book Club meeting in 1938, he met a Hungarian woman named 𝗣𝗶𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗸𝗮 𝗙𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗿.

Piroska's family had been wealthy once. 

Her grandmother was a member of the Csáky clan, old Hungarian aristocracy. 

But the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I had destroyed their fortune. Piroska, disgusted by the rise of Nazism, had left Hungary for Britain, where she worked as an au pair and teacher.

They married in a simple registry ceremony in 1943, in the middle of the war.

His family disapproved. They told Piroska they would not accept "half-caste" descendants.

Raja and Piroska stood their ground. They never had children. They stayed together for 46 years, until her death in 1989.

In 1947, Raja and Piroska returned to Malaya. 

His father pressed him to go back to London, finish his degree, become a lawyer.

Raja refused. He was clear about what he wanted to do. His place was in Malaya. Which, to him, had to include Singapore.

He found work as a journalist. First at the Malaya Tribune. Then the Singapore Standard. Then he started his own weekly, the Raayat. When that failed, he joined The Straits Times.

At The Straits Times, he wrote a column called "𝗜 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝘀 𝗜 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲."

The name tells you everything about the man.

He attacked the British colonial government openly. He wrote that Singapore deserved self-governance. He was called in for questioning by 𝗚𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗿, the British High Commissioner, who tried to intimidate him by opening a desk drawer and showing him a gun.

Raja kept writing.

He attacked the communists just as fiercely. His desk at the newspaper was doused with kerosene and set on fire. More than once. He received death threats.

He kept writing.

A journalist from Ceylon. Married to a Hungarian. Living in a colony that wasn't his. Writing things that got his desk set on fire. Because he believed this place could become something.

In 1952, Raja met Lee Kuan Yew through Goh Keng Swee. 

Lee was a young lawyer representing postal workers in a pay dispute. He asked Raja to use his column to support the strikers. Raja did... publishing daily articles across the 17-day strike.

It was the beginning of a partnership that would change the region.

In 1954, Raja co-founded the 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆 with Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, Toh Chin Chye, and others.

The journalist became a politician.

In 1959, the PAP won the general election. Raja was elected Member of Parliament for 𝗞𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗹𝗮𝗺... a constituency he would represent for the next 29 years. He was appointed 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲.

When Singapore separated from Malaysia on August 9, 1965, Raja was appointed 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿𝘀.

Think about that assignment.

You are responsible for introducing a country to the world... a country that didn't exist yesterday. A country that most of the world has never heard of. A country that had been expelled from a federation and now has to prove it can survive on its own.

Raja secured Singapore's admission to the 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. He built the Foreign Service from nothing. He established diplomatic links with countries that weren't sure Singapore would last. He represented Singapore during the Konfrontasi crisis with Indonesia and through the withdrawal of British troops in the early 1970s.

And in 1967, he was one of the five men who founded 𝗔𝗦𝗘𝗔𝗡... the Association of Southeast Asian Nations... an organisation that now encompasses 680 million people across ten countries.

A man born in Ceylon. Building a foreign policy for a country he wasn't born in. Introducing that country to a world that didn't know it existed.

But the thing Raja did that touches the most lives... the thing that millions of Singaporeans carry inside them without thinking about where it came from... happened in February 1966.

The idea came from Ong Pang Boon, then Education Minister. 

He wanted schoolchildren to have a daily flag-raising ceremony with a pledge of allegiance. Two drafts were written by ministry officials. They were sent to Raja for comments.

Raja didn't comment. 

He rewrote the entire thing.

He took it home. 

It took him a day or two. 

The words came from a man who had spent his whole life crossing borders, languages, and races... and who believed, more fiercely than anyone, that those differences could be overcome if people cared enough about their country.

His first draft read: "We, as citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves to 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 differences of race, language and religion and become one united people."

That word... "forget"... was later changed to "regardless." 

A small edit with enormous meaning. 

The final version doesn't ask you to forget who you are. It asks you to go beyond it.

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew refined the text. 

The Cabinet approved it. On 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟮𝟰, 𝟭𝟵𝟲𝟲, roughly 500,000 students at 529 schools recited the National Pledge for the first time.

They've been reciting it every school day since.

Raja served as Minister for Foreign Affairs until 1980. He became Second Deputy Prime Minister from 1980 to 1985, then Senior Minister until 1988.

He represented Kampong Glam for 29 straight years. He never lost an election.

After he retired, he served as Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He kept reading. He kept thinking.

In 1989, Piroska died. 

She was 76.

Late-stage emphysema had destroyed her lungs. 

In her final months, knowing she was dying, she trained the household helpers to cook Raja's favourite dishes... Indian curries, Hungarian goulash, mee rebus. She extracted promises from friends to look after him. She even tried to find him a suitable companion for after she was gone.

46 years together. A Hungarian refugee and a Ceylonese journalist. Married during the Blitz. Lived through the birth of a nation. No children. Just each other.

In 1994, Raja was diagnosed with dementia. 

By 2001, he could no longer speak or move. He was cared for by six helpers.

On February 22, 2006... three days before what would have been his 91st birthday... S. Rajaratnam died of heart failure at his home on Chancery Lane.

He was given a 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 at the Esplanade. The first for a government minister. 1,500 mourners attended.

They recited the Pledge.

Here's what I think about when I recite those 38 words.

The man who wrote them wasn't born here. 

He was born in Jaffna, raised in Seremban, shaped in London, married in wartime, set on fire twice in a newsroom, and expelled from a federation he helped build.

He didn't have a country. 

So he helped make one.

And then he sat down and wrote the words that would teach millions of children what it meant to belong to it.

"Regardless of race, language or religion."

That line was written by a Tamil man from Ceylon, married to a Hungarian, who spent his career arguing that identity isn't about where you're from. It's about what you're willing to build.

Most founding fathers build roads, economies, armies.

Raja built something harder to see but impossible to undo.

𝗛𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿.

Every morning, in 529 schools and beyond, children stand with their fists over their hearts and say the words a man from Jaffna wrote for a country that didn't exist when he was born.

That is what home means when you create it from scratch.

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘁. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲.

Adapted from Alvin Huang facebook page