This End of the Rainbow

4 ideas

1. Multiracial students imagining Malaya before independence

   In 1950s Singapore, a mixed group of Malay, Chinese and Indian students at the University of Malaya argue over what the independent country should be. They draft its values in conversation, before any state, constitution or flag exists, while family expectations, communal loyalties and colonial politics press on them. Singapore's later separation from Malaysia in 1965 means the campus where they imagine a single Malayan nation ends up outside the country they are planning.

2. The nation as argument before institution

   Before independence, a nation exists only as a debate among the people who hope to build it. At that stage it is shaped by friendship, idealism and talk rather than by budgets, parties and compromises. Looking at this pre-institutional window shows which hopes were present at the founding, and which of them could not survive once the country had to be run.

3. Cross-ethnic friendship tests plural nationhood

   A plural nation holds together only if personal ties across ethnic lines survive pressure from family, community and politics. Formal declarations of unity cannot do that work. Friendship among young people from different communities is where a shared national identity is first rehearsed, and the first place it breaks when communal loyalties are called in.

4. Living at this end of the rainbow

   The rainbow stands for a harmonious, many-coloured society whose promise always seems to lie at the far end. The title points attention instead to the near end, the present where people must act without the reward in hand. Idealism is measured by what people do with the unfinished situation in front of them, not by whether they reach the promised destination.

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