[Photo (centre): Balaji Sadasivan]

By Pradeep Paul

SENIOR Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Balaji Sadasivan is the man behind the drive to narrow the communication gap between Indian Singaporeans and expatriate Indians. The 54-year-old neurosurgeon who is married to a fellow doctor and is a father of two, gave up his practice to be a politician in 2001. He is the Member of Parliament for the Ang Mo Kio Group Representative Constituency and has held various portfolios as a minister of state for the Environment, Health and Transport ministries and as senior minister of state for the Information, Communications and the Arts. He is recovering from a health scare last year when a cancerous tumour was removed from his colon. Dr Balaji is also the president of the Singapore Indian Development Association (Sinda), spearheading the self-help group's Indian Integration Committee which is exploring ways to bridge the differences between the two communities through dialogues with locals and expatriates. tabla! has a chat with the minister about how he intends to go about bringing the two groups together.

What are the Indian aspects of your life?

Every aspect! If you consider yourself as an Indian and you have no major doubts about the origins of your paternity or your maternity, than you are leading your life as an Indian.

Who is an Indian? There is no idealised stereotypical Indian. A wide spectrum of diverse habits and lifestyles are practised by Indians. It is the diversity and the tolerance of diversity that defines Indian culture. So V.S. Naipal and Amartya Sen are as Indian as a person who only wears ethnic Indian clothes and eats only curry and rice.

As an Indian, you very much can lead your life as you wish, as long as your life is productive and you realise your obligations to your family, friends, community and society.

What are your views on the divide between the new migrant Indians and Singapore-born Indians?

There will be differences between migrant Indians and Singapore-born Indians. This is similar to the differences between new Chinese migrants and Singapore-born Chinese. People are influenced by the environment they grow up in or live in.

I was in the UK for a short period in the 1980s to sit for my surgical exams. The stereotype of the Indian in the UK was one who was from the poorer socio-economic class. So Indians who were doctors or surgeons took great pains to dress in a certain manner and speak Queen's English so that shopkeepers and service providers would provide them better service. It was a class conscious society.

I lived in the Mid-West region of the United States for five years and the stereotype of the Indian was different. Because of selective immigration, most of the Indians you met in the Mid-West were academics, doctors, scientists or engineers. So regardless of how you dressed or spoke, most people assumed you were highly-educated if you were an Indian. So Indians in the US were less concerned about how they dressed or spoke. They were less class conscious.

Our immigration policy in Singapore encourages migrants who are skilled and who can value-add to our economy to settle down here. Naturally, this policy selects the more successful Indians and excludes the millions who are poor and unskilled. We are better off having educated, skilled Indians as migrants than poorly-educated Indians.

The migrants come from a select group in India. They naturally take pride in being part of this select group, whose skills and talents make them welcome in other countries. They bring many of the positive attributes of a migrant culture with them. They are generally hardworking, willing to take risks and be innovative in finding solutions to problems.

But they grew up in a different social environment. The divide between the rich and the poor is stark. The successful Indians and the poor who may live on the streets have little social interaction.

Their behaviour and attitudes are influenced by the environment they grew up in.

Indian Singaporeans have made the transition from living in a third world country to a first world country. National service and our love for hawker food means there is social interaction between all Indian Singaporeans from different socio-economic groups.

We are an egalitarian society that rewards merit. Since the best eduction is provided for every child, there is social mobility. We can be proud of these aspects of our society. Growing up in this environment has moulded our attitudes.

With time, as more Singaporeans visit India, they will appreciate the factors that influence the behaviour patterns of our migrants and with time the Indian migrants who settle in Singapore will become more and more Singaporean day by day.

Is there a divide between the Tamil speakers and the Hindi speakers?

I don't see a divide but I see diversity. In India, the administrative service, the medical service and the legal service operate in the English language. So Punjabis, Bengalis, Tamils and the many other language groups can communicate with each other.

We do the same in Singapore. Narpani and Sinda conduct their affairs in English so all Indians can be involved. With regard to cultural activities, Tamils will have them in the Tamil language, North Indians in Hindi and so on. This is a reflection of the diversity within Indian culture. No Hindi speaking Indian need feel that he should conduct his cultural activities in Tamil.

Tamils form more than half of the local Indian population and naturally there will be a large number of cultural activities in the Tamil language. It is also one of the four official languages of the country and is the dominant Indian language in Singapore.

But all the other non-Tamil communities should have the space to maintain their culture and language. So we encourage and support the Hindi speakers, the Punjabi speakers, the Bengali speakers, the Gujarati speakers etc to maintain their culture and language. They are our cultural bridge to the different states of India.