Young people like Lim Kim San might not have been very interested in the times, but the times were extremely interested in them. Even as the colonial police were warning him and his fellow-Rafflesians about the insidious threat of Communism, another disaster was in the making: Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia.

World War I had proved to be a windfall for Japan. As Western colonial powers diverted resources away from their possessions in the East, Japan gained political ground by acting as Britain's ally in the regional “power vacuum”. When British warships left Singapore in 1914 to reinforce the European front, the colony's defence fell to the Japanese navy, which played a crucial role in putting down the Indian Mutiny of 1915 in Singapore.

Japan's economic penetration of the region continued as well. Cheap Japanese goods flooded a market starved of European merchandise; retailers, wholesalers, entrepreneurs and speculators entered the fray. In 1922, Eifuku Tora successfully brought modern fishing methods to the colony, and he and others from Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures ushered in an era of Japanese domination over the local fisheries. Then the aggressively expanding Ishihara Sangyo, which had major mining concerns on the Malay peninsula, opened a Singapore office in 1925.

The closing of American markets during the Great Depression led Japanese manufacturers to look at emerging markets to their south even as the Slump provided economic impetus for an aggressive nationalism. “Japan needed an easily plundered store of raw materials and already had a client kingdom in the Manchukuo, the former Chinese province of Manchuria. But now Nationalist China itself was stirring under the leadership of the mercurial Chiang Kai Shek and began to re-assert its sovereignty in the north.”

Japan's Southeast Asian push continued and fuelled the region's modern economic dynamism. Japanese goods formed the core of the consumer boom in Malaya in the later 1930s. Seeking to corner the market in goods from matchboxes to condensed milk, Japanese firms imported more than half of Malaya's everyday goods, while in Singapore, about 100 motorized fishing boats and 1,500 fishermen supplied the larger proportion of the colony's needs.

Lim Kim San was a man of great determination. He lived a full life and also made great contributions to Singapore. Singaporeans now own their HDB homes. They owe this to him for setting a system that made this result possible.

Of all my old guard colleagues, he was the most active after he retired as minister in 1980. He became Senior Adviser to Singapore Press Holdings where he helped until illness overcame him in the last nine months of his life just before his death at the age of nearly ninety.

He suffered during the Japanese Occupation. The dreaded Kempeitai (Japanese Military Police) tortured him, accusing him of being pro-communist and pro-British. He was flogged, beaten, kicked and physically abused. He was confined in a filthy over-crowded room of thirty persons, sitting on his haunches all day and slept on a hard surface without a blanket at night which caused aches and pains. Released after a week, he was re-arrested a second time. Again more blows, kicks and lashes. In the cell with thirty other persons, there was only one squatting toilet, the water from which was used for defecating, washing and drinking.

In 1959 when I first assumed office, I made him a member of the Public Service Commission and later Deputy Chairman. In 1960, I made him Chairman of the HDB (Housing and Development Board).

The HDB was under the Minister for National Development, one Ong Eng Guan who was wildly popular for his theatrical populist gestures, posturing as an anti-colonialist by sacking and humiliating expatriates in his Ministry. To show the other expatriates still in our service that we wanted them to stay, that they were not at the mercy of the capricious Ministers, I had the expatriate Permanent Secretary, one Val Meadows, transferred to my office as the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties.

As Minister for National Development, Ong Eng Guan told Lim Kim San to hire workers direct and not use contractors in building the flats. Kim San sought me out to ask whether I wanted him to build flats or to become a labour contractor.

The YMCA of Singapore is a community organization, based on Christian values and affiliated worldwide, that engages a critical mass of volunteers to serve others regardless of race, language or religion.

The late Mr Lim Kim San was an Honorary Life Member and an active supporter of the YMCA.

To honour this distinguished son of Singapore, recognize his life in the service of others, and to hold him out as an inspirational challenge to our volunteers, the YMCA Volunteers Service Programme has been named after him.

The Programme aims to:

1. a) Promote volunteerism amongst Singaporeans, in particular in YMCA local community and international service programmes,

2. b) Attract and retain volunteers to undertake sustained service in specific service programmes, as well as recognise their service,

3. c) Enhance the capability of volunteers to better serve and understand the beneficiaries under their care,

4. d) Identify and develop leaders amongst our volunteers, and

5. e) Encourage and facilitate corporate volunteerism.

Singapore's Public Service Commission (PSC) was set up in 1951 to advise the British governor on the recruitment, employment, promotion and terms of service of colonial civil servants. Its functions were extended later to cover the dismissal and disciplinary control of civil servants. In its early years, it did its work against the backdrop of demands for self-government in Malaya. These demands included moves towards the Malayanization, or localization, of the Civil Service, in which the PSC “was called to walk a fine line in balancing the need to find and promote more local men of talent and ability while also ensuring that the hallmarks of integrity and independence were maintained”.

This goal was codified in Government Command Paper 65 of 1956 called “Statement of Policy — Malayanisation”, which declared:

The Malayanization process was pushed ahead by the agitation of the Council of Joint Action which, led by top civil servants Goh Keng Swee and K.M. Byrne, protested against expatriate officers enjoying bigger allowances than their local counterparts. The opposition to these allowances symbolized “a general dissatisfaction with the status quo”.

Lim Kim San declined to get involved in active politics in 1959 because of his business preoccupations, but he told Goh, Toh Chin Chye and probably Byrne, that if the PAP won and there was anything that he could do for them, he would not mind doing so. The party won, and he was appointed to the PSC that very year, and served as member or deputy chairman till 1963, when he took part in elections.

The Housing and Development Board succeeded where the Singapore Improvement Trust had not because Singapore's new leadership was determined to change the face of the nation, both literally and metaphorically. Resettling squatters in the new flats being built was the literal part of that effort, and it changed people's metaphorical view of Singapore as well. Although many Singaporeans were suspicious initially of the resettlement efforts, and many encountered social problems in their transition to high-rise living, the HDB was able to overcome their scepticism. Combined with land acquisition, land reclamation to build houses, and urban renewal, resettlement laid the basis for the construction of low-cost, affordable housing on a mass scale that created a new Singapore landscape and skyline.

RESETTLEMENT

The Land Acquisition Ordinance that was passed in 1920 was amended in 1946 and 1955 to give the colonial government powers to acquire more private land for comprehensive new-town development and to try to stabilize prices. However, the powers granted were limited and the process was troublesome and slow. By contrast, when the People's Action Party came to power, it gave the HDB extensive powers over land acquisition and resettlement, crucial components of the ambitious housing programme that the party had in mind.

Compulsory land acquisition anywhere is a controversial issue. Critics view it as an infringement of the individual's right to own land, while supporters praise it as a vehicle for social equity that enables the majority of people to own homes. The truth is that, without land, there would be no housing. In 1960, only 44 per cent of the land in Singapore was owned by the government, while more than 35 per cent of the population then lived in squatter settlements. Without compulsory land acquisition, draconian though the measure was, the government would have found it difficult to fulfil its promise of creating a more egalitarian society that would underpin Singapore's evolution into a property-owning democracy.

Lim Kim San died from pneumonia and old age on 20 July 2006. He was 89, just four months short of turning 90. He had been ill from a lung ailment and had to spend long stints in hospital, but he passed away peacefully at his Dalvey Road home, surrounded by his family, his beloved koi fish, and his memories of his wife, who had died in 1994.

His children remember him as a man of integrity and impartiality who never made much of his position as a minister but who taught them, instead, the need for empathy with people from all walks of life. Believing that charity begins at home, he shared the fruits of his business success through the entire extended family. He was a conservative patriarch, but he tried to be emphatically fair as well.

Lim was a private man who kept his six children out of his political life. Daughter Lim Siew Tin said: “We kept a low profile. Father did not like our telling people who we were because he was worried that they would ask him for favours.” Indeed, Lim Kiat Seng, his eldest son, recalled that he would turn away relatives who wanted to meet him to seek favours. But that did not mean that politics did not pursue the family. “Father was known as a cleaner,” Lim Siew Tin said. “He cleaned up ministries. He stepped on a lot of toes, but did not care about what people thought about him.” That cost the family dear at times. She recounted how a nephew of hers had been punished in a leading school for being Lim's grandson. “He was made to stand on the table while the teacher taunted him, saying that a minister's grandson was so ill-behaved that he had to be punished.” In her account, the teacher was against certain policies of the Ministry of National Development, which Lim headed, and took out her anger on the child. “A teacher in the same school picked on my daughter so much that I had to withdraw her from it. But my father did not interfere,” Lim Siew Tin said.

Housing had been a persistent problem for Singapore since the early years of the twentieth century. Reports produced by visiting health and sanitary authorities in 1907 spoke of overcrowding and insanitary conditions in heavily populated parts of the island's city area. A Housing Commission report in 1918 noted that poorer residents could not afford to pay rent for individual flats for each family, causing a “general subdivision of housing space into cubicles thus further aggravating the overcrowding conditions and leading to a high percentage of sickness and a high rate of mortality”. It recommended the creation of an Improvement Commission, which in turn resulted in the setting up of the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) in 1927.

SINGAPORE IMPROVEMENT TRUST

Writing two decades later, SIT Chairman L. Rayman noted that its mission was “to rehouse the people and to abolish the fearful slums of the town with their terrible overcrowding and their attendant evils of crime and disease”. How far the SIT lay from achieving its goal is manifest in its own publication, The Work of the Singapore Improvement Trust 1927–1947, which blames its “limited means” and “circumscribed powers” for its woes. For example, the colonial government earmarked, and placed at the SIT's disposal, $10 million in 1926 for the clearance of slums, but the fund's nature and purpose were never defined clearly, and at the end of 1947, it had decreased to a miserly half-a-million dollars. Then, the government's General Improvement Plan for Singapore was not intended to be a complete plan for the entire island. “It is merely a record of existing development together with layouts and subdivisions which have reached the stage of statutory approval. It has been built up in piecemeal fashion in circumstances over which the Trust has had no control.” Consequently, the SIT undertook practically no improvement schemes in the decade from 1937 because its energies were directed to working on back lanes and ordinary planning duties.

Lim Kim San became Singapore's Finance Minister on its independence in 1965, and served till August 1967. He brought to the portfolio, during those make-or-break years, an emphasis on prudence in spending that produced a balanced Budget, with a small surplus in fact. He was busy in a period when the republic witnessed a period of legislative activism that reflected its new constitutional position on separation. Changes were made to the law in fields such as tax reliefs to boost exports, income tax, property tax, dual taxation avoidance agreements, and customs. Lim participated in Singapore's reserves and currency negotiations with Malaysia that led to the republic releasing its own currency in 1967; and he helped formulate the nascent state's policies on industrialization and foreign markets that underpinned its strategies of survival and success. One motif of the period was how independence had brought Singapore, now unshackled from Malaysia, new opportunities for industrialization, trade and investment. These were the lifelines of an island-state that would have to make the world its market now that it had lost its traditional economic hinterland, Malaya.

BREAKING WITH MALAYSIA

As Finance Minister, Lim played an important role in Singapore's dealings with Malaysia in the acrimonious immediate aftermath of separation. Kuala Lumpur was dismayed by Singapore's decision to impose restrictions on almost 200 items of mainland-manufactured goods, but Lim justified the action, arguing that post-separation Malaysia must expect to compete on the same terms as any other country in exporting to Singapore. Indeed, the list of Malaysian goods to which quotas applied were the same as had been recommended by the Malaysian Tariff Advisory Board in 1964; there was no question of selective discrimination.

Such arguments received a cold reception in Kuala Lumpur, where the political mood was summed up in Malaysian Finance Minister Tan Siew Sin's argument that Malaysia could prosper even without Singapore because the Malaysian market without Singapore was larger than the Singapore market. Kuala Lumpur retaliated to the republic's restrictions by imposing licensing and quota restrictions on Singapore-made goods.

Soon after being appointed Chairman of Singapore's Housing and Development Board (HDB) in 1960, Lim Kim San went around the slum area in Chinatown. He came across a labourer in a bunk who had a blanket pulled right up to his neck. Lim asked the man whether he was sick. The labourer replied: “No. I've got no pants on.” Lim asked him why. He replied: “My other brother has just taken my pants out. I'm wearing briefs.” Lim's thoughts on the man's reply: “No, I don't think he was in briefs. There was no such thing as briefs at that time. You see how poor they were! They had to share [clothes].” The dead were not exempt from sharing, either. “In those days, there were shops which pulled clothing and shoes off the dead to sell them. ‘My God,’ I thought to myself, ‘I really must help these people.’”

It was a moment of transformation for Lim, then in his forties. Scion of a well-to-do business family, a product of the prestigious Anglo Chinese School and the elite Raffles College, he was a talented and successful businessman. The gourmet and racecourse enthusiast had access to what the good life could offer in Singapore. He had often driven past Upper Nanking Street, but had never been inside the shophouses where Singapore's poor huddled — lured from China and elsewhere, ironically by the island's prosperity.

Prosperity during colonial times had been a mixed blessing. Singapore had prospered since Stamford Raffles had established an entrepôt on the island in 1819 to service the East India Company's China trade. As East-West trade grew during the nineteenth century, the British colony became the clearing-house for the region's produce and the distribution centre for the European goods traded in return. Indeed, the city became the trading, banking and insurance headquarters for the whole of Southeast Asia. However, the population grew as well. From a mere 52,900 in 1850, it rose to 229,900 by 1901, shot up to 940,700 by 1947, and almost doubled in the following decade. People crowded into the shop houses at the centre of the city area.

When the British returned to Singapore after the end of World War II in 1945, food and medical supplies were scarce, electricity and other services were in disarray, and the death rate was twice what it had been before the war. Gambling and prostitution were growth industries, with opium and alcohol serving as religion to the most dispossessed among the masses. In September 1945, Singapore became the headquarters of the British Military Administration (BMA). The BMA, cynically renamed the “Black Market Administration”, was rife with incompetence, arbitrary rule and corruption. Profiteers and former collaborators thrived as the returning British depended on the “professional survivors” who had served the Japanese with the same effortless chicanery that they had displayed previously towards the British.

However, by April 1946, when military rule came to an end, the BMA had restored gas, water, and electric services to levels that were above their pre-war capacity. The port returned to civilian control; several companies received priority in importing sorely-needed supplies and materials; Japanese prisoners were made to repair docks and airfields; and schools were reopened. By late 1947, the economy began to recover because of growing demand around the world for tin and rubber. The following year, Singapore's rubber production reached an all-time high, and abundant harvests in neighbouring rice-producing countries ended the most serious food shortages. By 1949, trade, productivity, and social services were restored to their pre-war levels. By 1951, demand for tin and rubber for the Korean War brought an economic boom to Singapore.

After the war, Lim's family went about rehabilitating its business interests. His father restarted his petrol stations, and his father-in-law reactivated his gold, jewellery and pawnshops business. The establishment in 1946 of the Malayan Union and the exclusion from it of Singapore, which became a separate Crown Colony, did not affect his father-in-law's business interests in Malaya because there were no policies then that favoured indigenous bumiputra (native Malays).

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) hosted an international conference on “Early Indian Influences in Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-cultural Movements” from 21 to 23 November 2007 in Singapore. We acknowledge the generous funding provided by the AMM Foundation of the Murugappa Group, Chennai, India, who co-sponsored the conference. Two volumes have emerged from the proceedings of the above conference: the current volume Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia, and one on the main theme of the conference, that is, Early Indian Influence in Southeast Asia.

The South Indian Chola kings had developed a sophisticated maritime enterprise centred on sea-based commerce with trading contacts in Malaya, Sumatra, and China. This had produced an ocean-going fleet that was dispatched by the Chola King Rajendra Chola I against the Srivijaya Kingdom. The essays in this volume reflect on the naval expedition, which is also mentioned in the inscription dated 1030–31 of the big temple of Tanjavur in South India.

The volume contains seminal contributions by eminent historians and scholars of Asian history who have meticulously presented their findings in these essays. Perhaps the most significant contribution of this volume to Asian maritime history are the translations of ancient and medieval Tamil and Sanskrit inscriptions relating to Southeast Asia and China, and of the Chinese texts describing or referring to the Chola Kingdom as Zhu-nian.

I am thankful to the contributors of this volume for sharing valuable insights into their understanding and interpretation of the Chola naval expedition to Southeast Asia. ISEAS is particularly indebted to Professor Hermann Kulke for the intellectual leadership he provided for the project. It is hoped that this volume will provide greater understanding of early Indian influences in Southeast Asia and generate further research on the subject.

My sincere thanks to Professor P. Ramasamy and other ISEAS colleagues who worked tirelessly towards the preparation and organization of this major three-day conference that attracted over a hundred synopses, and in which fifty-two short-listed papers were presented.

I am also thankful to Betty Kwan from ISEAS who worked very efficiently to take care of the finer details of the conference; Y.L. Lee, Head of Administration, for the administrative support and cooperation in the organization of the conference; and Triena Ong, Managing Editor of the Publications Unit, for the successful production of the current volume.

Since ancient times, India had active maritime trade relations with many countries around the Indian Ocean. In the medieval period, South Indian states were particularly involved in this trade. Kings used to get a good deal of their income from trade and could thus afford to maintain a large army and build a powerful navy without exhausting their land revenue base, which was mostly confined to the fertile core area of their dominion.

Around AD 1000, there was a remarkable change in the structure of Asian maritime trade. The previous pattern of pre-emporia trade changed into a new pattern of emporia trade. Whereas in the phase of pre-emporia trade goods were shipped directly from the place of origin to that of final consumption, the rise of emporia, particularly along the Indian coasts, implied new practices of re-export, such as breaking bulk or assorting shipments according to the demands of various ports of call. This major change in the pattern of Asian maritime trade was related to the simultaneous rise of powerful corporate empires in several parts of Asia: the Chola empire of South India, the Khmer empire of Cambodia, the empire of Champa in Vietnam, and China under the Song dynasty emerged in the early eleventh century AD. Most of these witnessed a large-scale increase in local and long-distance trade and the rapid extension of rice cultivation. The goods traded were not limited to luxury items and were diversified to include a wide variety of commodities such as processed iron, spices, sandalwood, camphor, pearls, textiles, as well as animals such as horses and elephants. Customs duties played a major role in the budgets of these corporate empires, which was different from the land-revenue-based agrarian states. The political order of these medieval corporate empires was not so much that of territorial sovereignty, but of a corporate network of rulers, merchants, temples, priests, and/or royal officers. A brief survey of the rise of the Chola empire and of China under the Song dynasty will illustrate this new development.

RAJENDRA — “THE KADARAM KONDAN”

Tamil Nadu was ruled by the early Cholas between the first and fourth centuries CE. Karikalan was the first and most famous king, who built the Kallanai (Kall — stone, Anai – bound), a dam across the Kaveri River, which is considered to be an engineering marvel of that time.

The emperor Rajendra Chola (1012–1044 CE) was the illustrious son of the great Chola King Rajaraja I (985–1014 CE), who shouldered the task of building, extending, and maintaining the Chola empire. The foundation laid by both Rajaraja I and Rajendra I paved the way for the existence of Chola power for about 250 years, making the Cholas the most powerful dynasty in Asia in the medieval period. Rajendra I was a great warrior and assisted his father in numerous expeditions to project the Cholas to supreme power. He conducted various expeditions: the Gangetic expedition, eastern/western Chalukyas, the wars against the Cheras, and Pandyas, the Ceylon expedition, and the Kadaram expedition, etc. Rajendra assumed the title of Gangaikonda Chola and the city Gangaikondacholapuram (which means the town of the Chola who captured the Ganges) was founded by him to commemorate his victorious march to the Ganges. He also constructed the Siva temple named after his title as Gangaikkondacholeswaram, and soon thereafter, the Chola capital was moved from Thanjavur to Gangaikondacholapuram. The city of Gangaikondacholapuram was probably founded by Rajendra I after his sixth regnal year, that is, c. 1020 CE.

Gangaikondacholapuram, once the flourishing capital of the imperial Cholas, is now a small forgotten village devoid of its ancient glory in Udyarpalayam taluk of the Ariyalur district. This district is a centrally located inland district of Tamilnadu which was trifurcated from the erstwhile composite Tiruchirappalli district. The district is bounded by the Cuddalore district in the north, Tiruchirappalli district in the south, Thanjavur in the east, and Namakkal and Tiruchirappalli districts are in the west.

South India has was always been noted for the art of building temples which were constructed with blocks of granite stones. The medieval period kings built permanent structures for the gods while their dwelling places were constructed with mud and bricks. Hence, only the ruined remains of their living quarters were exposed in the excavation.

Rajendra I and his successors built a big palace at Utkottai, which is about 1.5 km away from the Brihadisvara Temple in Gangaikondacholapuram, where even now a mound is called Maalikai Medu (palace mound). The capital itself has disappeared, the place where the emperor dwelt does not exist, and the ruins are marked by brick debris, which the nearby villagers even today take for the construction of their houses.