The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

In his world shattered by loss, Raja kept a doleful watch over the politics of the day. With Piroska gone, he clung on to the one remaining constant in his life: his vision of a non-communal nation. More than ever, he longed for certainty, and for clarity to the questions: Had it all been worthwhile? After all the struggles and sacrifices, all the terrors and the triumphs – what remained? There was Singapore, a living community that would outlast him – but what kind of Singapore?

With antennae tuned to possible unintended consequences, he was anguished at what appeared to be policy stirrings towards an ethnicbased nationalism in recent years. It was not just a few random issues or remarks; it was the systematic appeals to citizens to identify, organise and express themselves along ascribed ethnic lines, and to return to their cultural roots for moral ballast and self-identity.

It was a path that he feared would raise ethnic consciousness, reinforce cleavages, and set the country towards religious ethnonationalism and fundamentalism. That would spell the end of a Singaporean Singapore, the very basis of his generation's political credo, or at least his own.

He responded the only way he knew how: he marshalled his dwindling energies to mount a one-man education campaign. He targeted both opinion makers and the masses, just in case the present generation of leaders failed in the task. He began with a series of questions in the manner of a Socratic inquiry: “We know what happened to a Malayan Malaya, and to a Malaysian Malaysia,” he said at a university alumni dinner in March 1990, before asking pointedly: “But what has happened to a Singaporean Singapore?” Then, at a gathering of the Straits Chinese community in December, he asked: “If not a Singaporean Singapore, where are we heading?”

The questions he posed might sound simple, but in fact they were very powerful, for they required not only an evaluation of current policies but also an excavation into the very foundations of the nation itself. These were fundamental yet sensitive areas into which few dared to venture. Raja was well aware of the fine line he had to tread between being a critic and a party faithful; between staying true to his convictions and showing sensitivity to the government's challenges.

By the time he retired, Piroska was extremely ill. Her lung disease had reached a stage where every breath was a laboured struggle. It was agonising for Raja to see her face warped with pain as she gasped for air. Most of the time, she had to be hooked up to an oxygen machine with a plastic nebuliser mask strapped around her face. She could hardly sleep at nights; neither could he.

She was suffering from late-stage emphysema, a severe form of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The damage to her lungs was irreversible, and would only worsen over time. Aware that her time was running out, she planned ahead for her husband's future wellbeing. While he had shown great strength looking after the nation, she harboured grave doubts about his ability to look after himself. His cooking skills, for example, were limited to boiling an egg.

So, first, she asked their Filipina helper Cecilia Tandoc, who had joined the household in May 1985, to swear that she would stay on to look after Raja. For added insurance, Piroska took on another Filipina domestic helper. She trained both maids to cook Raja's favourite dishes, particularly the spicy Indian curries, the peppery Hungarian goulash and stuffed cabbage as well as mee rebus. She also taught them how to prepare the dinner parties that her husband had so enjoyed hosting.

On top of that, she extracted promises from trusted relatives and friends, such as V.K. Pillay and Dennis Bloodworth as well as Tommy Koh and his wife Siew Aing, to look after Raja. Koh recalled: “We promised her we would do so.” Then, in an act of selfless love, Piroska hunted for a suitable woman for him to re-marry after her death – someone who could keep him company for the rest of his life. She discussed one or two possible prospects with close friends, but it was a line of inquiry that none of them encouraged. They knew that Raja would never contemplate marrying another woman.

In one of Piroska's desperately low points in 1989, Raja tried to focus her mind on an upcoming happy occasion – their golden wedding anniversary to mark their 50 years together. They were officially married in a simple registry ceremony in 1943 in London, but had begun living together two years before then, in a rented apartment in Hampstead.

Overnight, Raja found himself the foreign minister of an independent micro-state that was predicted by many to fail. He had never dreamt of such an office for Singapore – not even in his “wildest nightmares” – let alone for him to hold it. Yet here he was, expected to represent Singapore to the world, secure its international recognition, and reimagine its future.

Like most of the two million people on the island, he was shaken to the core by the seismic political rupture of 9 August 1965. To carry out his new role, however, he had to keep to himself that which most wounded him, and all his deepest fears and anxieties.

The intense political scrutiny, with foreign powers sizing up the country's prospects, made his position arguably among the most sensitive and high-profile in the Cabinet other than the prime minister’s. That thrust him into a position of great responsibility – and vulnerability.

His first remarks on foreign policy had to be formed literally on the fly. As soon as he stepped off the plane from KL at the Singapore airport on 10 August, he was surrounded by reporters pressing him about Singapore's foreign policy. An event as ominous and confusing as Singapore's sudden expulsion from Malaysia made his ability to think on his feet more important than ever.

Despite being visibly dog-tired, he managed to articulate a coherent answer. First, Singapore would pursue a non-aligned policy in respect to the “power struggle” between the Communist and Western blocs. Second, it would be friendly with all countries that recognised its integrity and sovereignty, regardless of their ideologies. Third, it would ensure that foreign policy became a means of underpinning its domestic policy and attitudes. Fourth, it would seek to preserve the country's integrity and independence. Finally – despite the Separation – it would “ensure that our foreign policy safeguards also the interests of Malaysia”.

That unscripted performance basically set the pattern for those early chaotic days, when almost everything had to be improvised. It also laid out the general direction for Singapore's foreign policy and its cardinal principles. For an unbriefed minister literally on his first day on the job, his response was remarkably lucid and authoritative – a classic example of his ability to maintain poise in even the most stressful of times.

To say that Raja found Razak's proposals jarring would be an understatement. They came with a demand that was loaded with political dynamite: UMNO must have the monopoly of leadership over the Malays – including those in Singapore.

Raja recoiled at the very idea of it. To submit to them would be tantamount to surrendering the PAP's non-communal vision, and risking Singapore's future. He was not alone in recognising the dangerous implications for the party and Singapore. Toh Chin Chye was as vehemently opposed.

The two leaders voiced their concerns to Lee when he consulted them on the urgent matter on 28 July 1964, almost immediately after Goh Keng Swee's phone update on his ongoing talks with Razak in KL that same day. It was a live situation, with the Goh-Razak negotiations still being conducted in KL.

According to Goh, the Malaysian deputy premier had made two offers. The first was “cooperation”: a coalition government, with the PAP represented in the Malaysian Cabinet, but on condition that Lee step down as prime minister. Razak, who deeply distrusted Lee, had stressed that “Lee was unacceptable to the central government in any basic settlement.”

Goh had asked if, as a quid pro quo for Lee's departure, Albar would be removed, but Razak dismissed the idea, saying that he had complete control over Albar and the Utusan Melayu. This admission was hardly assuring to Goh; in fact, it appeared to point to Razak's complicity in the riots. Goh concluded: “He was involved in it, and it was clearly his intention to remove Mr Lee from office. That was the purpose of Albar's campaign.”

The other option was “co-existence” – no Cabinet seat for the PAP, no political interference in each other's territories, and no propaganda campaigns for the time being, but on the condition that the PAP deal with Malays only through Khir Johari, who also led the UMNO liaison committee in Singapore.

On the face of it, Raja was in fine fettle as he settled into political retirement. Freed from the trappings of officialdom, he could now pursue his lifelong passions at his own pace – philosophy, photography, literature and the arts in general – and to ponder and pontificate on issues that mattered most to him.

He shared the views of UK defence secretary Denis Healey – one of the “smartest, sharpest and most erudite British politicians I know” – that politicians “without an intellectual hinterland would find it difficult to cope with retirement”. Raja, of course, was a politician with a vast intellectual hinterland.

On 1 November 1988, he joined the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) as its first Distinguished Senior Fellow. It kept his days purposeful, for the institute provided a stimulating and supportive environment for his reading and writing – the very heart-tick of his intellectual life. And it would also give him a vehicle for his passion for public education on international affairs.

In a press statement announcing the new post, the institute said it would enable Raja to “contribute to the intellectual life of the institute as well as of Singapore through his writings”. This included working on a book tentatively titled From Wanderers to Star-makers.

The retired minister remained in great demand. His perspective on politics and world affairs continued to carry weight. But his public profile obscured a deep emotional hinterland beneath, one that was churning with frustration and despair.

Everything Raja was, everything he did, was tied to his country – its terrors, its triumphs and its hopes. He would carry, always, the weight of work unfinished, the sense of being needed in a nation whose identity and destiny were still in the making. Even after retiring from active politics, he could not withdraw from the battlefield, especially when he spied any threat of division over race, ethnicity or religious beliefs, the destroyer of nations.

Nothing chilled his heart like the spectre of any violation of his vision of a Singaporean Singapore. Conceptually, it was his baby.

Raja looked over the Separation Agreement that Lee Kuan Yew had handed him, and said: “I will not sign it.” He could not bow to the decision to split Singapore from Malaysia. And he would not. It was 7 August 1965, and he was enduring the most painful hours of his political life.

Lee had broken the grim news to Raja as soon as he strode into Temasek House in KL. It was just past 8 a.m. Raja had rushed up after being summoned by a phone call from Lee in KL at about 1 a.m. Come to Temasek House for an urgent meeting, the PM instructed. Take the first morning flight to KL, and tell no one, he added.

Upon arriving at the two-storey bungalow, Raja found Lee in a “very agitated frame of mind”. Without any pleasantries to ease the blow, the PM took him aside and told him: “Raja, we have come to a fork on the road.” He then laid out the Tunku's proposals. They sounded to Raja like an ultimatum mixed with a threat: either leave Malaysia willingly, or be responsible for a racial bloodbath.

The full horror of the situation hit him when Lee said he did not want to be responsible for a bloodbath and had to accept separation from Malaysia. Raja's answer was a sustained attempt to challenge and overturn that decision. In an anguished voice, he asked: How could they betray the leaders from Sabah and Sarawak? He went over how the Borneo territories, fearful of Malay domination, would not have joined Malaysia in 1963 had it not been for Singapore's assurance of its countervailing presence. And how could they abandon their MSC allies and supporters after marching them up the hill? They had stuck out their necks to fight alongside the PAP for a Malaysian Malaysia.

Lee felt his angst. It was “painful” to let down all the people that they had mobilised in Malaysia, he said. “But I think I have to do this,” he added, referring to the Separation Agreement.

The attacks from KL were still coming, but Raja – now pushing 50 – scrambled to mobilise allies in Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to rise up for a Malaysian Malaysia. It marked a new phase of action for him as a Malaysian patriot, reformer and rebel – a phase that that was to be short-lived, and that would end in calamity.

Its contours took shape under a cloak of secrecy on the damp, drizzly evening of 12 February 1965. The place: a spartan meeting room in Sri Temasek, a colonial bungalow that served as the prime minister's official residence on the Istana grounds.

There, Raja, together with four of his colleagues, huddled with five opposition leaders from Malaysian non-communal parties. It was their first preliminary meeting to discuss forming a convention to staunch the communal tide in Malaysia. That gathering, organised principally by Raja, set in train a series of talks that would culminate in the formation of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention (MSC) in May 1965.

But even a man with as heroic a heart as Raja must have had foreboding about undertaking such a journey. His unwavering ally was Singapore's deputy premier and PAP chairman Toh Chin Chye, who had made the seminal suggestion for a convention.

Raja, who by that time had already linked up with like-minded opposition leaders in Malaysia, nurtured and refined the idea until conditions combined to ripen it for adoption by Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP central executive committee (CEC). If the MSC was Toh's “baby” – as Lee later described it – then Raja presided as benevolent godfather at its conception.

Anxious to guide it to its full purpose, Raja had prepared painstakingly for the landmark February meeting. He had in hand copies of a draft statement he had composed earlier as a basis for their talks. He had briefed his colleagues in advance. Besides Toh, the others were Lee (who could join the meeting only mid-way because of a prior official function), labour minister Jek Yeun Thong and law minister Eddie Barker.

As he listened to the frantic voice on the phone, S. Rajaratnam realised that his greatest fear had come to pass. He tried not to give in to despair. It was difficult. As one of the chief architects of Singapore's independence, he had experienced some tough situations – but this was the worst tragedy to befall his country in his five years in politics.

It was 21 July 1964, barely a year after Singapore merged with Malaya and two Borneo states, Sabah and Sarawak, to form Malaysia in September 1963.

The voice on the phone that late afternoon was that of his close colleague Othman Wok, the social affairs minister. Othman had looked up to Raja, as the culture minister was usually known, since their journalism days in the 1950s. They had then worked for different newspapers – Raja was a famous columnist with the Singapore Standard, while Othman reported for the Malay-language newspaper Utusan Melayu – but both were joined in a common cause in the Singapore Union of Journalists to fight for social justice. Raja had led the union as its president with Othman as his deputy.

After Raja, together with Lee Kuan Yew and others, formed the People's Action Party (PAP) in 1954, Othman had joined the new left-wing party. What bound them was a common vision: to build a non-communal society based on justice and equality. In working towards this vision, Raja and Othman, as minority political leaders in a Chinese-dominated country, came to represent both the face and spirit of the party's multiracial ideology.

Now, on this hot, horrible day in July 1964, Othman bore news of a racial clash that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. “Some Malays are causing problems,” he reported. “Beating up Chinese bystanders. Things are getting out of control.”

Othman, the only Malay minister in the Singapore Cabinet, was leading a PAP contingent as part of a 20,000-strong procession to mark Prophet Muhammad's birthday that day.

Over the phone, he told Raja the scenes he had just witnessed: Malay youths punching a Chinese policeman struggling to control the rowdy procession as it headed towards the Malay settlement of Geylang, then breaking off from the march to attack Chinese passers-by at random. Sensing danger, he and several others had slipped into the People's Association headquarters in Kallang.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979 was a game-changer for Raja's global activism. Having warned of Soviet expansionist designs for years, the Singapore leader was not impressed by American president Jimmy Carter's response that the scales had fallen from his eyes. Nevertheless, the American reappraisal of the Soviet threat helped draw the US back into the region. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he rejected détente and took a tough stance with the Soviet Union to reverse its advance.

Taking advantage of the changed strategic situation, Raja was quick to emphasise the connection between ASEAN's campaign to retain Democratic Kampuchea's seat in the United Nations and the wider struggle against world domination by the Soviet Union.

At a time when the world's gaze was turning away from Kampuchea to the latest crisis in Afghanistan and much of the liberal West was turning their back on the Khmer Rouge regime, his explicit linking of Kampuchea with Afghanistan drew their attention back to ASEAN's diplomatic campaign. It opened a new front in ASEAN's battle for international support, giving it broad geopolitical impact and global relevance.

To seal the connection in the mind of the international community, he choreographed an unprecedented show of coldly calculated – and convoluted – diplomatic offensives around the globe. And he did so by adopting a dual profile as a sophisticated statesman and a rugged crusader.

Over the next few years, he criss-crossed the globe, living out of suitcases for weeks at a time, to convince the world that the situations in Afghanistan and Kampuchea had a common feature – the use of force to subjugate a small independent country. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its support of the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea, he charged, were both part of a bid by Moscow to set up a new communist world order.

A point he kept emphasising was this: the war in Kampuchea was not a Vietnamese war, but a Soviet war. As he said on 20 January 1980, “It is a Soviet war because everyone knows, especially the Vietnamese, that the war would come to a grinding halt the day the Soviets switch off supplies.”

In an appearance filled with philosophical musings and irony, Raja made a speech on foreign policy on 12 July 1988 without anybody knowing that it was his last on the subject in office. About a month later, on 17 August, Parliament was dissolved prematurely, setting the stage for a snap election on 3 September. It also cued Raja's political exit.

For the senior minister, who had lived and breathed foreign policy since Singapore's independence in 1965, the theme of his final lecture could not have been more fitting: “Evolving a Foreign Policy for Singapore”. The event, organised by the newly formed think tank the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) at its premises on Kent Ridge campus, was closed-door, with no press coverage. This allowed him to speak freely to his audience – mainly politicians, senior civil servants and intellectuals – without fear of his views being misrepresented by the media, which could cause a diplomatic incident or public uproar.

It was thus not a well-known speech, although it was one of the most explicit that he had ever made on his strategic worldview. It was Raja without his guard up; Raja with nothing left to prove or lose. In a candid tell-it-like-it-is mode, he addressed perennial issues of foreign policy such as morality, nationalism, the self-interest of states, globalisation and the alignment between domestic and foreign policy.

At a time of uncertainty about what the future held for Singapore against a backdrop of complex global challenges, he set out some guiding principles for formulating rational foreign policy in a harsh and dangerous world. In such a world, which was beyond the control of a small state like Singapore, one had to distinguish between the means and ends of a nation's foreign policy, he said. Do not confuse the rhetoric or the “theology of a nation's foreign policy” with its practice, he advised.

Throughout history, he observed, nation states had prescribed moral ends to justify their existence and actions such as establishing empires and lording over other countries. Some were purely a cover for loot and plunder, for conquest and oppression, although there had been nations whose political theology had been genuinely moral.

INTRODUCTION

Thailand is currently experiencing drastic political polarization. Since the 2020–21 pro-democracy protests, traditional values, norms and even knowledge have been challenged by young people who are calling for changes to a social, economic and political structure that they perceive to be corrupt and unfair. As part of this movement, young Thais and the anti-establishment faction are challenging the conventionally accepted narrative of Thai history. No doubt debates on the correct interpretation of Thai history have been going on for decades, but these have been largely confined to academic circles and professional historians. Since 2020, however, historical debates have not only spread into the public sphere but have done so to an unprecedented level.

One of the most prominent events drawing public attention has been the declassification of documents on Pridi Phanomyong (1900–83). Pridi was part of the People's Party (Kanaratsadorn) which orchestrated the 1932 revolution that changed Thailand from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. He served briefly as Thailand's first popularly elected prime minister in 1946. After the death of King Ananda Mahidol or Rama VIII (r. 1935–46) and a military coup d’etat, Pridi fled the country. During his exile, he remained a staunch critic of authoritarianism and the Thai military. Pridi moved to France in 1970, where he remained until his death. In recent times, Pridi has been idolized by many young people, especially those seeking progressive change in Thailand and who had been critical of Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha's regime.

In the 2020s, it came to the public's attention that a “Dossier de Pridi Phanomyong” held by the Centre des archives diplomatiques du ministère des affaires étrangères in Paris was scheduled to be declassified in 2024. Normally, such news would most likely have been exciting only to a handful of academics and historians. On this occasion, the event was written about in various online magazines and newspapers. Many Thai netizens began expressing how much they were looking forward to seeing the contents of this document. As is the case for most online news today, misunderstanding and misinformation widely spread that the dossier included a “letter” written by Pridi. Netizens speculated whether the “letter” would reveal unknown information about various politicians and military officers during his time in politics or, even more scandalously, the accident that caused the death of King Ananda Mahidol.

One February day in 1966, Raja sat in his new spartan office in City Hall and settled into his rich world of ideas. He ignored, for the moment, his in-tray piled high with turgid memos: problems with neighbouring countries, proposals for overseas embassies, plans for his trip with the prime minister to Eastern European countries. Also buried somewhere underneath was the SOS list of his threadbare ministry. The space, on the first floor in the west wing of the building, still had an air of work-in-progress about it. There was the acrid whiff of fresh paint and crisis.

Each day brought new conflicts and decisions. But few were more demanding on Raja's creative faculties than the task at hand – distilling the essence of Singapore's ideals and identity into one sentence. The words would form the country's national pledge. He could not know it then, but it would be considered his most enduring legacy to Singapore.

The exercise had begun in response to a request for help from his Cabinet colleague Ong Pang Boon. Like Raja, he was adjusting painfully to Singapore's independence. The KL-born leader had fought alongside Raja and Toh during the Malaysian Malaysia campaign, and had been as devastated as the duo at being forced to accept Separation.

Ong had a gentle disposition, but was as tough as the boots he wore as a volunteer of the newly formed paramilitary defence unit, the People's Defence Force. He had to be. As education minister, he had to root out communist infiltration in Chinese-medium schools and roll out the government's multilingual and multiracial policy. Now, with independence, an important part of his brief was to inculcate national consciousness and patriotism among the half million pupils who made up over a quarter of the country's population.

In his letter headed “Flag Raising Ceremony” dated 2 February 1966, Ong sought Raja's advice on the wording for a students’ pledge of allegiance to the flag. By way of background, the education minister detailed the practical problems of holding school assemblies every day for a flag-raising ceremony. The compromise was, he wrote, to have the pledge recited daily by students in classrooms and at least once a week in a school assembly “wherever possible”. Furnishing two versions drafted by staff, he asked Raja for his comments and for “whatever amendments you wish to suggest”.

Cutting an imposing figure in his trademark military fatigues, Fidel Castro swaggered through the NAM conference with a singular purpose: to manoeuvre the movement into the Soviet orbit and seat the Vietnam-installed Heng Samrin regime, which enjoyed the support of the Soviet bloc.

The Cuban leader made no secret of his aim as he asserted that Soviet bloc countries were the “natural allies” of the 95-member NAM. He gave warm bear hugs to the Heng Samrin representatives whom he had invited for a state visit timed to coincide with the conference, which began on 3 September 1979. At the same time, he locked out the Khmer Rouge delegation from the conference, leaving the Kampuchean seat conspicuously empty.

Raja was not blind to the intimidating shadow cast by Castro's revolutionary reputation on NAM discussions. The cigar-chomping guerrilla's defiance of the US and support for national liberation struggles in Latin America and Afro-Asia had made him a Third World icon. Given Castro's clear determination to impose his will on the conference, a foreign minister from a small country would be perhaps well advised to keep his eyes averted. Obviously, Raja did not read the script.

Instead, armed with little more than conviction and pluck, he took on Castro himself, and in his defiance became recognised as one of the few moderates in NAM who showed an all-or-nothing willingness to fight and defend his position even when up against Cuban skulduggery. Throughout the proceedings, the Cubans manipulated the speakers’ list, favouring those who agreed with them and fixing those who did not. And they would gavel through phony “consensus” agreements that reflected their views, ignoring all objections.

The Singapore minister struck hard at the first opportunity during the foreign ministers’ meeting that preceded the summit. In his speech on 31 August, he attacked the arbitrary Cuban action to exclude the Pol Pot delegation, which had occupied the seat only 10 days before at the previous NAM plenary in New York.

By the early 1970s, the future seemed bright for Singapore. The economy was buoyant. Singapore's international profile was high. But all was not well beneath the surface. Dangers lurked in the form of foreign intervention and subversion, which were heightened by the intensifying power rivalry in the region. As foreign minister, Raja made it his job to look below the ripples on the surface and to identify, as far as he could, the ideological and geopolitical currents swirling around the island.

What he discerned was this: The tide of a communist armed struggle was sweeping across Southeast Asia, expanding from Vietnam to Laos and Cambodia as the British retreated from the region. There was a danger that their withdrawal, coupled with the Americans’ anticipated pull-out from Vietnam, would give a fillip to the communists’ efforts to subvert Singapore. Across the Causeway, Malaysia was already facing a resurgence of China-supported communist guerrilla activity.

As China and the Soviet Union expanded their influence in the region to fill the power vacuum, another danger loomed: that Singapore would find itself caught in big power rivalry in a world where the US, China and the Soviet Union regularly waged war through proxies.

This was illustrated dramatically in January 1971, when two Soviet warships conspicuously sailed through the Singapore Strait while Singapore was hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Raja, of course, was not the only one who took note. So did all the Commonwealth leaders in town. The Soviets said nothing. This only intensified speculation on their intentions, given that the Soviet threat to the Indian Ocean was hotly debated during the meeting.

Clearly, Singapore, whose position commanded the sea routes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, had acquired a new strategic importance. As Raja observed, where previously the island was important only to the British, in the 1970s it would become important to “many more big and not-so-big nations”. He expected the geopolitical plot to take a different turn, but “if Singapore is to be in the play at all, it must get as shrewd an idea as it can as to what the drama is all about”.

Given Singapore's location, “it would be foolish of us to think that we are going to be left alone: that interested parties will not try to convert Singapore into their pawn in this deadly power game”, Raja told the public in May 1971.

That sentence captures in a nutshell the guiding philosophy of S. Rajaratnam, who stands out among the founding leaders of Singapore as its chief national ideologue and foreign policy strategist.

This philosophy, with its emphasis on the future and the power of the human spirit, had been a basic premise of his political ideology long before he entered politics in 1959, and even longer before Singapore became independent in 1965. It was a dictum that was put to the test in his own eventful life. As a founding leader of the People's Action Party (PAP) who went on to hold multiple key ministerial portfolios, he lived out his faith in unfathomable circumstances. Heartbreak, anxiety and despair hovered constantly over his attempts to overcome them.

Yet his guiding belief in the power of the human will did not come naturally to him; neither did it come easily. Born on 25 February 1915 in Jaffna, Ceylon, he was a child of the colonial era, when Ceylon, India, Malaya and large swathes of the world were part of the British Empire. He was also a child of several identities not of his own making. In his original birth certificate, his name was registered in Tamil script as Rajendram (which can mean “God among Kings” in Sanskrit), thanks to his maternal grandfather in Ceylon. That changed after he turned six months old – his mother, Annammah, brought him to Seremban, Malaya, to join his father, Sinnathamby, a supervisor in a rubber estate. There, his devout Hindu parents consulted the family priest and astrologer, and renamed him Rajaratnam (“Jewel among Kings”).

In the rubber estate, Raja, as he was usually called, found himself the latest addition to the generations of Jaffna Tamil immigrants who had settled in the area. He grew up in an environment in which blood relations, tradition and tribe largely defined one's world. His religious elders believed that one's destiny was written in the stars, that one's fate was determined at birth, by one's horoscope, and could not be fully escaped. From young, he watched them consult the astrologer on anything and everything – be it choosing a marriage partner, starting a new job, or even determining an auspicious time to leave their house in the morning.