The Malay Annals, Raffles, National Day

The National Day 2005 is coming. And again you'd see and hear all that saccharine community songs being played to the max on TVs and radio - if you're diabetic you'd be gangrenous by now.

So we're an independent sovereign state the day we left Malaysia, or was that supposed to be "we got kicked out?" That's forty years of nation-building and truly, we can certainly look back and feel proud of what we have achieved. I've no issue in this because I did my NS liabilities and now a taxpayer.

But do not ask me to look in wonderment at how this one person came to Singapore and changed her from a sleepy fishing village to the busy port that it was.

I think the generational change is complete because if you talk to any teenagers now, for them history and the birth of our nation starts with Raffles. It's folks like me who still put a lot of sentimental attachment in pre-Rafflesia timeline that ought to be phased out. We're the 'stubborn' ones. One might even argue that it's much easier for history curriculum developer to come out with a national education programme if we just 'ignore' all that blurry pre-Raffles stories.

Which is why the The Malay Annals is such a difficult issue among historians here because the book is part historical narrative and part fantastic. If you're a historian, you simply cannot stomach it. And if you want to be a creditable historian in Singapore vis-a-vis within the National Library, NUS or MOE millieu, you must not 'espouse' the book because it forsakes documentarian rigour for nonchalant diction. But that still does not stop many academics putting out papers and thesis after thesis on The Malay Annals.

So when I got a copy, I naturally devoured it because I wanted to know more about pre-Raffles time and that I will not blame my 'gahmen' should there be any paucity in my historical knowledge. At least, I ventured out of the textbooks and can irritate my young nephews and nieces that it was Parameswara or Sri Tri Buana who founded Singapore. Lol!

I'm not being difficult, all I know is that I'm a 70's child and so I absolutely do not buy into this birth of a nation crap, and at the same time I just want my nephews and nieces to be critical and to go beyond their textbooks. Start young, don't wait till you're in JC or poly to do it, because by that time, everyone accords humanities subjects with less importance.

Anyway, I will not suffer from historical amnesia because I believe in looking up from other sources even if it entails dusting off Winstedt or Munshi Abdullah.

And the more historical facts contemporary historians and commissioned writers try to 'canonise' their versions, the more resistant I will be ...