The Lion's Roar is the second volume of Irene Ng's biography of Mr S. Rajaratnam, covering his life and work after 1963. Younger Singaporeans would not have known him in person, and may not even have heard of him. But he was an exceptional leader, one of the core group of founding fathers who shared a fierce conviction of what Singapore should be, and defied the odds to build a united, successful and confident nation.

Raja, as his friends called him, played many roles over the course of his extraordinary life. He was a journalist, anti-colonialist, philosopher, wordsmith, and diplomat – often several of these at once. Above all, he was a patriot who worked tirelessly to create a better future for Singaporeans.

He helped define Singapore's foundational ideals and values, framed principles and strategies to secure our place in the world, and fought with courage and conviction to make these words and ideas an enduring reality.

After Singapore merged with the Federation of Malaya, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah) to form Malaysia, Raja campaigned for a “Malaysian Malaysia”. Sadly, this proved incompatible with the racebased politics of the Federation.

After independence, in the aftermath of racial riots and the trauma of Separation, Raja crystallised his vision of a united, multiracial Singapore in the National Pledge.

As labour minister, he played a major role in transforming fractious labour management relations into our unique cooperative model of tripartism, where workers, employers and the government work together to expand the economic pie.

As our first foreign minister, Raja established the fundamental principles of Singapore's foreign policy. He advocated regional interdependence as the way forward for Southeast Asian countries, and negotiated the agreement that created ASEAN. He began Singapore's engagement of China. On his first visit there in 1975, he explained clearly to his hosts how Singapore, with its majority ethnic Chinese but multiracial population, intended to conduct its relations with China, cooperating on the basis of national interests and not ethnic affinity. When Vietnam attacked Cambodia in 1978, he rallied his ASEAN counterparts to oppose the invasion, emphasising the principle enshrined in the United Nations Charter – an existential one for Singapore – that international borders must not be violated.