The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan Yew Read Free Book Online Page A

might not want to give both scholarships to Singapore students, in which case coming second might just not be good enough.
    I did not enjoy my first year in Raffles College as much as my first year in Raffles Institution. Ragging or hazing was then part of the initiation of freshmen and went on for a whole term. Being the top student, my reputation had preceded me, and I suppose as I was also one of the taller and more conspicuous freshmen, some seniors picked on me.
    I had to sing. I had to crawl around the quadrangle pushing a marble forward on the ground with my nose. I had to walk at the head of all the freshmen wearing a ragged green tie and carrying a silly green flag. I thought it all stupid, but went through with it as part of the price to be paid for joining an institution that lacked maturity and was developing the wrong traditions. When my turn came in the second year, I turned my face against ragging and tried to discourage it, but was not successful. I strongly disapproved of those who took it out on freshmen for what they had endured when they themselves were “freshies”.
    We had to attend lectures wearing coat and tie. The lecture rooms were not air-conditioned – indeed, one in the science block was an oven in the afternoons because it faced the setting sun. To be caught in a draught when I was sopping wet with sweat was a sure way for me to get coughs and colds. There was also the disorientation from having to live in strange surroundings, in close proximity with 19 other students in one block, and to eat unappetising institutional food.
    After the first year I changed from “C” block to the better-sited “E” block where I was in a cooler and pleasanter room. But the disorientation must have affected my academic performance. I remember that in one term examination I did not come out top even in mathematics. Nevertheless, in the examinations at the end of the academic year (March 1941), I did creditably, and came in first in pure mathematics.But Miss Kwa Geok Choo was the top student in English and economics, and probably in history too, her third subject. I scored a little better than she did in the statistics paper, which was part of economics. I knew I would face stiff competition for the Queen’s scholarship.
    There were other problems. It was only in retrospect that I realised Raffles College was my initiation into the politics of race and religion. In a British colony that made no distinction between the races, Singapore Malays were accustomed to being treated the same as others. But in June 1940, for the first time, I met significant numbers of Malays who had been born and brought up under a different system. In the Federated Malay States (FMS) of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan, and even more so in the Unfederated Malay States (Johor, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu), indigenous Malays were given special political and economic rights. In the FMS, there were only five scholarships to Raffles College open to non-Malays, whereas the Malays had a choice of more, as they did in the Unfederated Malay States. Of the hundred students admitted each year, 20 were Malays from upcountry on scholarships paid for by their state governments.
    There was a strong sense of solidarity among the Malays, which I was to learn grew from a feeling of being threatened, a fear of being overwhelmed by the more energetic and hardworking Chinese and Indian immigrants. One Malay in my year was to become prime minister of Malaysia. Abdul Razak bin Hussain attended the same classes in English and economics as I did, but we were not close friends. He was a member of the Malay aristocracy of Pahang, and was therefore somewhat distant from the other Malay students, who looked up to him. Those I got on with more easily were commoners, two of whom played cricket for the college. Because I had many Malay friends from childhood, my spoken Malay was fluent. But I soon discovered that their attitude towards