Japanese On Signboards At The Expense Of Tamil Irks Singapore's Indians

Singapore's use of Japanese on signboards in an apparent bid to lure more Japanese tourists has roused concern among some ethnic Indians who make up almost 10 percent of the city-state's citizens, with some feeling snubbed at the exclusion of their native language Tamil.

The city-state has four official languages -- English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil -- to accommodate its multiethnic population, which is majority Chinese with sizeable Malay and Indian minorities.

Signs are mostly in English, which is the administrative and working language.

But government offices often convey policy information in the four languages and announcements for passengers at commuter train stations are delivered in the four languages, one after the other.

And all Singaporean students are required to study their native languages in school, in addition to English.

In recent years, however, multilingual signs have mushroomed at Changi international airport and at tourist hotspots bearing only three of those four languages plus Japanese, with Tamil not among them.

The increasing appearance of such signs is widely seen as a deliberate policy to make Singapore more tourist-friendly to non-English speakers, including Japanese.

Last year, Japan was Singapore's sixth largest source of tourists after Indonesia, China, Australia, India and Malaysia.

Thamiselvan Karuppaya, a 40-year-old ethnic Indian real estate agent, applied to speak Friday on the issue at Speakers' Corner, a park in Singapore's financial and business district that has been designated since 2000 by the government as a venue for citizens to air grievances.

But he had to abandon his plan after the police objected on ground the issue touches on racial sensitivities.

Singapore forbids speakers at the park from touching on race and religion for fear it might ignite tension among the races in the wealthy Southeast Asian state, which though peaceful now, saw violent riots between Chinese and Malays in the 1960s.

Karuppaya's friend Rethinam Sabapathy, 51, told Kyodo News that some street signs near the country's biggest Hindu temples also fail to use Tamil.

"All this doesn't make sense. It's a mistake. They are trying to attract more Japanese by using Japanese language for the signboards. But as Tamil speakers, we have a slight feeling of 'unwantedness' creeping into us," Sabapathy said.

"The Japanese are very nice people known for manufacturing good cameras and for their sumo wrestlers, but it's wrong to put up Japanese language because they come here to get the real multicultural flavor of Singapore," he said.

In response to inquiries from Kyodo News, Rebecca Lim, deputy director for Infrastructural Development at the Singapore Tourism Board, said multilingual signs in Singapore are meant to serve the needs of tourists, especially those who are non-English speakers.

She said the agency encourages multilingual signs that "take into consideration the needs of our non-English speaking visitors from key visitor-generating markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Japan."

This is why Chinese, Malay and Japanese were added to English for signs at the Changi Airport, she said in an email response to Kyodo.

Aside from the signboard issue, Sabapathy, who works as a horticulturalist, said ethnic Indians do not feel marginalized as the government does promote their native language by ensuring the continuance of a Tamil newspaper, the state-run broadcasting station runs a Tamil radio channel and brochures explaining government policies also include Tamil.

Singapore's local population of 3.6 million is made up of 2.7 million ethnic Chinese, 491,000 ethnic Malays and 313,000 ethnic Indians.

If foreigners working in the state are included, Singapore's population is 4.6 million.

In a statement Friday, Singapore police said they have informed Karuppaya the issue he was planning to raise in his speech "is a sensitive one impinging on race."

"Singapore is a multi-ethnic society and maintaining community harmony is a key imperative that we must not take for granted," it said.

Japan was once the shining star of Singapore tourism but it has in recent years been overshadowed by tourists from emerging Asian economies flocking to Singapore in ever greater numbers due to buoyant economies and a boom in low-cost airlines. (Read the whole report HERE.)

***** Whether under Malay or Chinese hegemony, it looks like the Indians are the ones who get shafted! And what better excuse than 'race is a sensitive issue' to stifle expressions of their unhappiness over the matter? It seems that Singapore and Malaysia do have more things in common than we thought.