time. It is about how Rajaratnam related his story to his vision of the future
of the PAP in relation to its past. There is an element of moralizing about the
past and how it may prefigure29 in the PAP's understanding of its present and
projections of its future.
What is the contribution of the archival record to the writing of contemporary
history of the historian's present which he was witness or participant to? Is
it to be evidence as Jenkinson would have understood it, for an empirical and
verifiable reconstruction of what Leopold von Ranke has infamously decreed
of 'what actually happened'? Or, are the archival documents more evidential
proof of what the historian experienced30 and remembers to have 'happened'?
If the latter is assumed, the Jenkinson vision of the archives-as-things to be
preserved for posterity has experienced an 'archival turn', perceiving archives-as-
process of how information and memories become transformed into things with
consequences on our understanding of post-colonial Singapore.
Creating Archival Records
This archiving of the PAP story by Rajaratnam in 1964 became in the early 1980's
the beginning of the 'Singapore Story.' What started as an anti-colonial struggle
for independence became a heroic battle against the communist underground
for the right to lead Singapore into nationhood. As Rajaratnam rhetorically
asked a student audience in 1984, 'if not the Singapore created by the PAP, then
what kind of Singapore would have emerged in its place?'31 In Rajaratnam's
recollection, 'up till 1965 the dice of history in the circumstances prevailing in
the 1950's was loaded in favour of a communist victory.'32 Rajaratnam argued
that Singapore's success after 1965 was because of 'a PAP leadership which was
not afraid to face unpleasant realities and which eventually convinced the people
that they too should face up to these realities.'33
But where are the records documenting this telling of the story of the PAP as
the Singapore Story? The Colonial records of governing Singapore through the
tumultuous political change of the 1950s were still closed in the mid-1980s. The
records of the David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock administrations from the 1955
to the 1959 elections had gone missing. What we are left with then are the public
records. These would be the newspaper and media reports and the Hansard record
of the Legislative and Parliament proceedings. Each of these categories of records
would document one aspect of the story of Singapore's journey to nationhood
and as a category of records are incomplete, fragmentary and elliptical.
Recognising the need for a more systematic documentation of the political
struggles that has shaped Singapore, then Defence Minister Dr Goh Keng Swee
proposed the establishment of an Oral History Centre within the National
Archives to 'tape record the personal reminiscences of people who have played
an important role in the history and development of Singapore.' The Centre
was modelled after the Imperial War Museum's oral history programme of
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
29 On figural causation in history, see: White, 'Auerbach's literary history".
30 On the significance of experience as historical evidence, see: LaCapra's essay classifying the different
meanings of 'experience' in 'Experience and identity'.
31 Rajaratnam, 'Birth of a Nation'.
32 Rajaratnam, 'Birth of a Nation', 257.
132
