Singapore is located at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca, the shortest sea route between China and India. Geography has moulded Singapore's self-definition much as it has shaped the contours of the rest of Southeast Asia: south of China, east of India. Placed within overlapping Sinic and Indic zones, Singapore's entrepôt role has served both. Today, as China and India emerge as rising powers, a port city is going beyond its trading role to engage them in political and security terms. This study examines how Singapore is positioning itself between China and India, two ancient entities rising simultaneously today. Singapore's engagement of China — like Beijing's contemporary engagement of Southeast Asia — is deeper, longer and more substantial than India's reach into the region. However, New Delhi is trying vigorously to make up for lost time. Its ties with Singapore are patently a part of that effort. The structure of this book, which treats Singapore's relations with China far more extensively than its relations with India, reflects the inherent asymmetry of the two Asian giants' contemporary interaction with the city-state and the region. However, this book examines how New Delhi is shaping up into a Southeast Asian player by extending its already preponderant influence in South Asia.

Much scholarly work now is focused on the economic rationale for the upswing in relations between a liberalizing India and a regionalizing Singapore, a development that replicates Singapore's economic rapprochement with China in the 1970s. However, the political and security aspects of the citystate's relations with the two regional powers are no less important because Southeast Asia is a part of the theatre of engagement between Beijing and New Delhi, a theatre that offers India a potential role as a counterweight to China. Singapore's pivotal position at the intersection of the two powers' emerging influence gives it an importance larger than would be suggested by its miniscule size. Singapore is important, too, to Japan and Russia, but these two existing great powers are outside the scope of this study, which focuses on the new gravitational orbit created by rising powers China and India. Singapore's relations with the two countries have implications not only for itself but for the region. This is a study of the evolution of those relations.

China's reforms straddled the global transition from the Cold War. China's future had hung in the balance in the late 1970s after the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping rose to power, determined to reform a failing system. Deng was opposed by those who believed that he would place the whole socialist project in jeopardy. The contest between the two sides came to the fore clearly at the Fifth National People's Congress in early 1978, when the Hua Guofeng faction (which would come to be branded as leftist) and Deng's moderates clashed. Within the year, there were signs that Deng had won. At the Third Plenum of the 11th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in December, the party line calling for protracted class struggle was repudiated in favour of the Four Modernizations of agriculture, industry, research and development, and the military. The Four Modernizations, which reoriented China towards the market, marked four successive phases of reform: agricultural and industrial devolution from 1979 to 1983; the second phase of reform from 1983 to 1987 that abolished communes and saw greater emphasis being placed on the establishment of special economic zones; the third phase from 1987 to 1993, during which the private sector was legalized as a complement to the public sector; and the fourth phase from 1993, when the socialist market economy was codified in the Constitution. It was clear that the Dengists were charting China's future anew.

However, Satya J. Gabriel argues that even when Marxian ideas ceased to determine public policies in post-Mao China, there remained among the Chinese leadership “a latent Marxian ontology of economic life as a continuous series of tensions and struggles…”. History had shaped the jagged contours of that ontology. Both the leaders of China and its masses could draw on a common pool of memory of how their country had been forced to open its markets to Western traders in the 19th century through a series of “unequal treaties“, notably the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 that had ceded Hong Kong to Britain.

Singapore is an “exceptional state” because its vulnerability — stemming from its miniscule size, its predominantly ethnic-Chinese population which traditionally has engaged in the economic activities of an entrepôt, and a geography that wedges it between two larger neighbours — nevertheless is paired with an astounding degree of economic success. It perhaps is this exceptional combination of vulnerability and excellence that also has made Singapore “the classic anticipatory state”, the energies of whose leaders are aimed at “positioning Singapore to enable it to take advantage of future developments while avoiding dangerous currents”. Against the backdrop of a maritime history within which Raffles had created the essential economic features of contemporary Singapore, it reappeared as a trading state after World War II by drawing on the opportunities opened up by the San Francisco System that ensured the security of non-communist Pacific Asian states through economic growth. Singapore went on to engage India and China in the context of a Cold War in which its early closeness to India was replaced by a movement towards China that reflected the effect of the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia on Singapore's security perceptions. After the end of the Cold War, Singapore engaged both Asian powers through a series of economic and political means, both bilateral and multilateral. As America's Long War on Terror begins, the least that can be said is that Singapore is entrenching its relations with India within a larger framework being established by the United States, but without giving up on its engagement of China, whose containment it remains opposed to.

Singapore's engagement of China reflects Randall L. Schweller's description of the term to mean the use of non-coercive means to blunt the non-status quo aspects of a rising power's behaviour so that it employs its growing power in ways that are consistent with peaceful change. To that end, soft-authoritarian Singapore has played an important interlocutory role for China in its relations with the West over crucial issues such as the Tiananmen Square killings and Hong Kong's return to the Chinese mainland. The Asian Values debate demonstrated the degree of congruence between the ideological outlook of Singapore and that of Beijing. Singapore's measured closeness to China has been apparent, too, in ASEAN, an essential platform for China's relations with Southeast Asia.

The Southeast Asian dimension of Singapore's relations with China cannot be detached from the Republic's expectations of the U.S. role in East Asia as a whole. The evolution of the U.S.-Singapore relationship provides a context for the way in which Singapore sees its options in the age of Chinese ascendancy.

The Republic's view of the United States as a benign hegemon made it continue to support, after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, an American presence in the region to counter the potentially malign influence of other powers. But it was the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the dismantling of bipolarity in international affairs that saw one of the clearest reaffirmations of Singapore's balance of power outlook. On 4 August 1989, Brigadier-General George Yeo, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told Parliament that Singapore was prepared to allow the United States to use some of its military facilities to make it easier for the Philippines to continue hosting the American bases at Clark airfield and Subic naval bay. Singapore's stance basically was that the Philippines government was coming under increasing domestic pressure on the American bases; and although all non-communist Southeast Asian countries enjoyed the protection of the U.S. cover, Manila was the only capital to have to bear the political burden of hosting them. Although the military facilities that Singapore was offering were negligible in physical terms — all of Singapore could fit into the Subic naval base — the move was a pointed gesture of support for the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. Such gestures were seen as being necessary because the end of the Cold War was coinciding with a deepening of America's economic problems and a strengthening of U.S. domestic sentiments in favour of military disengagement abroad and the diversion of saved resources to the domestic economy. By making it easier for the United States to remain engaged abroad, beneficiaries of its presence would be furthering their own interests in an era when the domestic mood in the United States was in favour of isolationism. What would come to be called the'“places, not bases” strategy adjusted forward deployment to changing strategic and economic needs.

Singapore's relations with China reflect its acute awareness of sensitivities in ASEAN over its being the only Chinese-majority state outside China; and its need to strengthen its hand in its dealings with Beijing by placing its China initiatives within a larger regional framework. ASEAN is, therefore, an integral part of Singapore's policy towards China. Singapore drew on ASEAN's ability to provide its members with a multiplier effect in their international relations although it was (and is) not a supranational organization along the lines of the European Union. But in drawing on ASEAN as a diplomatic resource, Singapore keenly was aware that there was more than one view of China among regional states. The crisis over the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia had revealed fault lines in the ASEAN view, from one extreme in which Indonesia's closeness to Vietnam attested to its suspicion of China, and the other extreme, in which Thailand and Singapore believed that Beijing was the lesser threat to Southeast Asia. The disappearance of the Cold War and the end of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia transformed such perceptions and approaches, but there were residual differences over China in an expanded ASEAN that included, not least, its former nemesis, Vietnam. In emerging as ASEAN's most articulate exponent of the need to engage China, Singapore gave apprehensions of China due weight. However, its response, which emanated from its general policy of engagement, was that a peacefully rising Beijing must be given a stake in the Southeast Asian status quo by having its legitimate interests accommodated — even as regional states sought to ensure that America remained the balancer power in East Asia as a whole.

It is outside the scope of this work to describe the evolution of China's relations with the individual states of ASEAN, or to show how the interplay of intentions, interests and behaviour among the external powers — America, China, Japan, Russia and, increasingly, India — influenced the direction of regional affairs. What is important is to recognize that Southeast Asia was not just another region coming to terms with China's rise.

The Garos are one of the many non-Bengali communities of Bangladesh. They feel very different from other Bangladeshis and make it a point to maintain their separate identity. This book presented a history of this Garo community. It analysed the evolution of their distinct ethnic identity and tried to unravel the complex processes that contributed to their ethnogenesis. Although this study is heavily indebted to theoretical and empirical contributions from anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists, it is primarily a historical endeavour. The book thus breaks away from the majority of tribal studies, which are generally dominated by anthropologists, and often lack a historical perspective. Historians of South Asia, on the other hand, seldom focus on so-called tribal communities. Particularly in the case of Bangladesh, historical accounts give no voice to tribal minorities as agents in the (national) history. Their experiences and histories have been marginalized in the dominant accounts, because they disturb the nationalist presumptions which inform the bulk of writing on Bangladesh today.

My research on the Garos clearly demonstrates that South Asian tribal studies have much to gain from a historical perspective. It shows that only a long-term perspective allows us to uncover the changeability and flexibility of social boundaries and identities, and to understand contemporary identity formation and inter-group relations in the region. The Garo case offered ample opportunity to analyse complex processes of categorization, group formation, identification, and othering in Bangladesh. It also revealed that Garos themselves have been active participants in the making of their own history (and that of others). Hence, my prime concern was to historize anthropological categories, to shift the perspective from anthropological objects to historical subjects, and to give voice to people who have long been missing from (national) histories.

The Garos also belong to the category of so-called tribes. This has in various ways influenced their ethnogenesis. Attached to the concept of tribe are many preconceived notions of primitivism, isolation, and general backwardness, which do no justice to the experienced day-to-day realities of the people belonging to this tribal category, and which have impacted the very process of identity formation and boundary articulation throughout the region.

FIXED CATEGORIES, FROZEN IMAGES

During a brief visit to Bangladesh, in December 2005, I spotted a recent edition of the national encyclopaedia (the Banglapedia), in the showcase of a professor of history at Rajshahi University. I eagerly searched for a reference to the Garos, among who I had carried out research between 1993 and 2000, and to my satisfaction, discovered four whole pages devoted to their history, culture, religion, and habitat. To me this meant they have a place in the national representation of Bangladesh. My pleasure, however, at once gave away to disappointment, as I discovered one more image frozen in time; one that might as well be found in a nineteenth-century colonial report on Garos or another tribe. The Banglapedia described the Garos as follows:

This is a common depiction of a so-called tribe in South Asia. Hundreds of other groups that fall into the tribal category are often described in a similar vein, both in popular and administrative publications, and frequently also in academic accounts. Somehow, dominant discourse of tribe has undergone noticeably little change since the British began their arduous (and impossible) task to classify the Indian population into neat categories of castes, tribes, religions, races, etc.

INTRODUCTION

One afternoon in February 1995, the Garo student Rosie told us the following anecdote:

At the time of the interview, Rosie was a student of anthropology at Dhaka University. In this interview fragment, she referred to that morning's lecture, in which the teacher explained how food culture has developed from primitive to civilized in an evolutionary manner. When the teacher discussed the diet of the so-called ancient people, the students started staring at Rosie, associating her with those primitive people. The behaviour of Rosie's fellow students leads to the question of why an intelligent girl like her, who had made it all the way to Dhaka University and who dressed or behaved no differently from 28 her fellow students, was so easily included in the category of primitives. The answer is shockingly simple: they knew Rosie to be a Garo, and Garos are one of Bangladesh's many ‘tribes’, upojatis, adivasis, or Indigenous Peoples. To this very day, many Bangladeshis imagine these communities as inherently unsophisticated, simple, primitive people without a history.

The following fragment from the same interview also illustrates the primitive image of contemporary Garos:

‘DID SHE NOTICE THE BAD THINGS?’

To an outsider, Bangladeshi Garos come across as a close-knit, harmonious, peaceful and hospitable community. In view of their efforts to uphold such an image, this is no great surprise. On several occasions, I noticed anxiety about me, an outsider, looking backstage. More than once, when Suborno and I returned from the village to Dhaka for a couple of days, Suborno was confronted with some of his friends worrying about what I, an outsider, had seen and come to know. “Did she notice the bad things?”, they would ask. And then they would instruct Suborno to only show me the positive sides of their community. Such behaviour is by no means exceptional for people or communities that are subject to discrimination, and who, like Suborno's anxious friends, tend to magnify differences between themselves and others, and to play down discord and hide problems within the group in order to maintain a positive image for the outside world.

This chapter centres on Garo narratives of Self and examines how these are influenced by, as well as inform, tribalist discourse. Soon after I began my research, I found that being Garo, whatever that entails, is an important component of the social identity of most Garos. Whether they are villagers or city dwellers, male or female, high class or low class, educated or illiterate, all share a strong ethnic awareness. Being Garo determines to a large extent their self-perception, how they organize their lives, and how they relate to others, within and across ethnic borders. This shared identity does not mean, however, that one and all experience and express their identity in the same way, nor that it has the same relevance for everyone. Close scrutiny of emic discourses at work amongst the Garos reveals a heterogeneous understanding of Self. This chapter analyses five different narratives of Self and ensuing self-expressions.

My study of the Bangladeshi Garos revealed that dominant notions of tribe have a strong bearing on emic discourses of Garo-ness and serve as a guideline or touchstone for Garo images and representations of Self.

This is how Semion, a student at Dhaka University, summarized the significance of Christianity for contemporary Garos in Bangladesh. Christianity does not only provide an important ethnic marker for Christian Garos, who comprise at least ninety per cent of the Garos, but in many ways also for Sangsarek and Hindu Garos. Other than this, it has a major impact on their socio-economic, psychological, cultural, and political situation; it influences their outlook on life and on the world, provides them with a sense of belonging to a world that extends far beyond the borders of Bangladesh, offers new educational and professional opportunities, and regulates relationships within their society and with others. This chapter explores the relation between (conversion to) Christianity and the (ethnic) identity of Garos. The central question is how Christianity has influenced their self-perception, sense of identity and group formation. How have missionaries, the Christian religion, and Christian institutions and organizations affected the (ethnic) identity of the Garos of Bangladesh?

The main purpose is not to write up yet another church history or missionary success story, or to present an elaborate theory about the susceptibility of Garos to Christianity, but to examine the social dimensions of conversion to Christianity vis-à-vis the process of ethnogenesis. The chapter is broadly divided into two sections. The first section deals with conversion. How and why has Christianity come to play such a prominent role for the Garos? What does the process of conversion, for example, tell us about how Garos have related to one another? The second section concentrates on the relation between the church and the organization of Garos. Here I touch on the relation between Garo identity and Christianity, and on how Christianity has influenced the self-perception of Garos and their ethnic identity. The central question is how Christianity has (re)organized the social, economic and political life of the Garos. First I shall briefly discuss how I define some relevant concepts to the chapter such as Christianity, conversion, and religious identity.

Etic and emic ideas of Garo-ness suggest clear-cut categories, well demarcated by social boundaries, and labelled with unambiguous names. Close scrutiny of past and present administrative and ethnographic accounts however, shows that boundaries between the Garos and others have been much fuzzier and more permeable than those investigations suggest. While the Garos and other upland people were generally considered similar in their “primitiveness” as pointed out in Chapter 2, these so-called hill tribes were not regarded as a homogeneous lot. From the moment that the British began their explorations of this region, they attempted to impose order on the bewildering diversity they encountered. So many articles and books about the region's cultural variety have since been published that it has become a cliché. This chapter concentrates on these attempts to classify the heterogeneous lot of “primitives” into clear-cut races, nations, or tribes, with particular focus on the boundaries between the Garos and others as they were applied by these colonial observers. Through careful comparison I examine the dynamics and changeability of social boundaries and hope to show that, in the words of Charles Keyes, “[t]here is no logical reason why self-identification and assigned identity should always coincide since the two identifications belong to different cultural sets.”

FROM FUZZY IDENTITIES TO FIXED COMMUNITIES

With the following fragment, Playfair begins his preface (in 1909) to the first monograph ever published on the Garos. In his duty as Civil Officer of the Garo Hills district, he was in daily contact with its inhabitants. His book, which he simply entitled The Garos, was the first systematic account on the Garos and probably became the most important source for his contemporaries and many later writers. It has perhaps become the most famous of all works on Garos and is still widely used as a reference work.

Away from home and outside the Garo area, a Garo may well ask anyone who looks Garo: “Na Mandi ma [are you Mandi]?” A positive reply surely leads to smiling faces. This question shows more than inquisitiveness. It also reflects the strong sense of Garo identity that is shared by most present-day Bangladeshi Garos. Feeling Garo plays an important role in their lives and meeting a fellow Garo on the way provides a sense of recognition, identification, and security. Garos share a strong sense of belonging together, of constituting a distinct ethnic community with a common history, culture, origin, and cause. Contemporary Bangladeshi Garos also answer the definition of what De Vos' calls an “in-group”:

Although in practice, relations between hill Garos (from India) and plains Garos (from former East Pakistan and now Bangladesh) have become much more difficult to sustain since the partition of 1947, and the people on each side of the border seem to have increasingly developed in two different directions, Indian Garos “are also Garos”, and are considered a vital part of the imagined community of Garos. These perceptions are consistent with nineteenth-century colonial observations, which also portrayed all Garos – whether they lived in hills or plains – as members of one race, nation or tribe. However, in the previous chapter, it was suggested that colonial categorization did not correspond with local perceptions of social groupings and boundaries, and that nineteenth-century Garos did not constitute one category of people or one self-defined in-group with a shared ethnic identity.