I’ve been interested in history a little more than usual lately. I’m not sure where exactly it started. It might’ve been when I met a group of people who were from around the world, not just Singapore. It might’ve been from seeing a few things online that surprised me – learning about the Indian diaspora around the world, about the struggles of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and hearing phrases like “Hindu nationalists”.
I’ve always had a pretty benign relationship with the various words and ideas that have been foisted upon me – Indian, Hindu (I don’t personally think of myself as one, but I have a relationship with Hinduism whether I like it or not). I don’t understand these things. Am I a Tamil? Am I an Indian? Do I have a caste? My own parents didn’t tell me anything about this for 20+ years until I asked them fairly recently. My mother’s of a higher caste than my dad. A similar pairing in India resulted in the groom being murdered. My existence is literally blasphemous to some people.
I’m reminded of Obama and Bozoma St John – people who have inspired me with their tremendous courage in the face of being chronic outsiders – people who became leaders. I want that for myself. Selfishly, because I want a goddamn table to sit at. Lots of people inherit a place at one, I don’t feel like I’ve ever really had one. This is perhaps related to why I have sympathies for all sorts of people who are marginalized or otherwise outsiders – women, black and brown people, LGBTQ folks and so on.
The point of this vomit is to clarify my own thinking and motivations about learning history. My motivations have changed over the years.
When I was younger, I read whatever I thought was cool – the “horrible histories” stuff. That was actually a great phase, and a part of me wishes I could stay there forever. (I remember Alan Watts talked about something similar – how a child might love dancing, and then be asked by adults to dance for them, and then now he becomes self-conscious and it’s never quite the same again. Genuine, childlike wonder with zero self-consciousness is pretty hard to recreate. I suppose it’s always worth trying.). It’s very difficult to shake off the fact that you’re being watched. And being watched is a part of life as a social creature. It gets a little complicated…
Anyway. Around the age of maybe… 17? I started getting interested in Developing An Identity. I wanted to be an intellectual. I wanted to be smart, cool, interesting. I wanted to be well-read. I remember reading books like Team Of Rivals (about the Lincoln administration) and The New Asian Hemisphere.
There are a lot of questions to think about. What does it mean to be a brown person? What does it mean to be Indian?
I was thinking out loud a while ago that maybe every word vomit should be titled in the form of a directive – there’s something about the nature of directives that make them very memorable, very compelling. When you’re being told to do something, you have a pretty natural emotional response to it – whether positive or negative. It stirs something, at least. Similarly, I wonder if questions about history – and also questions about things like health (I was recently following a bunny trail about heart health) should follow this sort of pattern. Eliminate all vague general questions that aren’t grounded in some sort of real-world curiosity.
At first, this sounds a little… restrictive. What about wild flights of fancy? I think there should be room for those questions, too… but mostly I think I would like to experiment with reworking all of the questions I have into things that are more compelling. So reading something about Scottish history, while interesting, doesn’t teach me a lot more about myself – unless, of course, I suddenly develop an interest in Scotland. It’s true that sometimes well-written things from other parts of the world are interesting for their own sake, or even interesting precisely because they’re so novel and foreign… I’m revising my opinion on this as I go.
Let’s start over. I want to say “I do think it’s good to have random interests” – but I don’t think randomness for randomness’s sake is particularly useful either. A more honest statement would be… I think it’s good to do what you think is best. And right now, I think it’s best to get to know myself better. To know my history. To know where I am.
I don’t want to get overly self-conscious about race, but it really has been on my mind a lot recently. What are the other things that contribute to my identity? I find myself thinking about the geopolitics of the region – I am a “southeast asian” – a phrase that was invented and conceptualized by Allied forces during WW2.
Let’s wrap up. What was all of this about? I was trying to clarify my motivations for reading about history, learning about the world. I have been feeling nervous, anxious and afraid of the world lately – like we’re in the eye of the storm and have no idea. Things have been too good for too long in my lifetime – it’s been too long since some major conflict, major disasters, and so on.
I want to live with my eyes open. I want to be reasonably prepared for the worst, while doing pretty decently for myself, and having a pretty good time. I want more friends. I want more conversations. I want to write more. I want to create more. I want to learn to draw.
I watched Moana recently, and there are some bits about knowing who you are by knowing where you are, and where you’ve been before. I like it – it’s a navigator’s worldview – we are explorers reading every sign, we name every star, we know where we are, we know who we are – we keep our island in our mind, and when it’s time to find home we know the way.
I read about Indian Muslim history in Nagore Dargah at Telok Ayer Street. It says that they form about 1/4 of Indians in Singapore which is a surprise to me. And there are many fascinating stories too.
I think local history has an edge as we can relate to it and have a skin in the game. Even though it may not be as blockbuster as China history or UK history, the fact that we live in Singapore makes Singapore history more 3 dimensional to us.
With regards to identity, my thinking is that i would like to have, identify and remember a coherent set of knowledge and beliefs and to be able to use it to work together with others who have also a similar set as me so that we can do teamwork stuff and make bigger output and even change and rewrite the history which we are a part of.
But then again, its not easy to organise life as there are many distinct things and responsibilities, bad habits and oddities that I am shouldering.