The clutter of the Indian enclave off Serangoon Road may seem an aberration amid the meticulous order of Singapore, but Devjyot Ghoshal feels it gives the area a special flavour.
It’s the rhythm that hits you, almost instantaneously. Not merely the drums and horns of Tamil film music that waft by, but the throbbing of crowded streets and vendors on the pavement with their precariously-perched wares, the glare of garish signboards in multiple Indian languages standing above even brighter shop fronts, and the constant quiet dispute between customers and cars on the narrow streets. Amidst the concrete, steel and meticulous maintenance of order that is much of Singapore, the unimposing and sometimes cluttered Indian quarter is an aberration. But it is this peculiarity, lifted piecemeal from the subcontinent, which gives Little India that special flavour.
It’s another matter altogether that Little India isn’t where it was originally planned to be. Stamford Raffles, celebrated as the founder of Singapore, wanted the city’s Indian quarter elsewhere in the Jackson Plan of 1822. But whether Kampong Chulia, or the Indian village, designed by the colony’s engineer, Philip Jackson, ever grew into something substantial is conjecture. What is certain is that Indians settled in large numbers in the area now known as Little India for a reason very close to their hearts: cattle. Eventually, it ended up in the heart of modern Singapore — a little less than 1 sq km of prime real estate.
The first historical mention of an Indian settlement comes in the form of a buffalo village in the late 1820s, says Rajesh Rai, a professor at the National University of Singapore who helped put together The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. “Indians moved there for cattle farming as it was close to the Rochor river. By the 1840s, institutions were emerging, including a mosque and a temple, and by the 1880s the area was drawing in migrants.” The only bovines today left in Little India are in murals, on dinner plates and in frozen packs.
And how much of India is left behind in the original inhabitants of Little India? “My perspective of India is very Singaporean,” says 47-year-old Prema Natarajan, a third-generation Singaporean Indian. “So every time I go to Little India, it is a bit of a discovery; I realise how much I know about India. Going there is an excuse to feel connected, to feel the Indian-ness.”
In the lanes that sprout off Serangoon Road, the main street that cuts through Little India, quaint well-preserved shop houses — two-storey buildings, typical of the region, originally built to serve both commercial and residential purposes — continue to house Indian businesses. The signboards on these streets could be from anywhere in South India: Veerasamy Road, Hindoo Road, Baboo Lane and Chitty Road. The “Indian-ness” is all-pervasive, though a little partial towards anything south of the Vindhyas. And although a seeming epidemic of new eateries — covering almost the whole culinary map of the subcontinent — has beset the neighbourhood, the typical concerns of the Indian shopper are still addressed here: grocers stock all the essential ingredients for authentic sambar, sari shops sell fine South-Indian silks and there are stalls scattered around the temples for the customary marigold garlands. “It is still functionally very important to us. Although now there are pockets in Singapore where these Indian things can be found, the range in Little India is much better. It’s also a good excuse to make a trip there,” says Natarajan.
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The quarter’s contribution to the history of Singapore is deep and powerful. It has nurtured waves of South Asian immigrants, including the swell of South Indian workers that came in the early 20th century. During World War II, it offered protection to all because it was thought that the Japanese would refrain from bombing an Indian enclave. When the Japanese did occupy Singapore and the British left their subjects to fend for themselves, it was central to the raising of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. Yet, as the Republic of Singapore emerged and grew in the years after 1965, the social fabric of Little India slowly unravelled. The city-state’s new housing policy laid down that Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians would each have a quota in every public housing estate in a bid to ensure that racial enclaves weren’t formed. It meant that the community that once formed the bedrock of the district gradually scattered across the island. The quarter’s original residential population now stands eroded. Only a few hundred families reside in Little India now. Most of the shop houses have been converted into shops or restaurants.
“By the 1970s, considerable numbers had moved out; and by the early 1980s, the Singapore Tourism Board had started selling Little India as a tourist destination. The old retail shops that had once catered to the local community now had to market themselves to tourists,” says Rai. The rise of the legendary Mustafa Centre from a small retail establishment into a gigantic 24-hour mall, encompassing what is nearly an entire block in Little India, must be seen against this backdrop of the commercialisation of the quarter, adds Rai. The store’s annual sales volumes are known to exceed S$300 million or almost Rs 1,100 crore. The influx of tourists is perhaps another reason why Little India is packed with restaurants.
Those shopkeepers who thought they could survive on Singaporean Indians alone haven’t been so fortunate. At Meena Gold Jewellers, one among the many jewellers that line Serangoon Road, business has plummeted over 30 per cent. The shop’s manager, who gives his name simply as Mr Rai, claims that this is despite the fact that “95 per cent of Indians in Singapore still buy gold from Little India”. Sim, the smiling 70-year-old proprietor of Eng Hoe Auto Supply, a rare Chinese shop that still inhabits this stretch of Serangoon Road, can’t stop lamenting about dwindling business either. His bigger concern, though, is how crowded Little India has become. “On weekends, there is hardly any place to walk,” he complains. All told, there are around 700 shops in Little India, and 95 per cent of these are owned by people from the Indian subcontinent. Rajakumar Chandra, chairman of the Little India Shopkeepers and Heritage Association, says that many of the old businesses have either had to close or transform with this change in clientele.
Just as the first few waves of South Asian immigrants helped alter the character of the quarter, the arrival of significant numbers of educated and skilled workers — or “foreign talent” as they are called here — from the subcontinent since the 1990s has had its effect on the institutions, businesses and cuisine of the quarter. For one, there is more diversity now. Along with the Southern staples of Thaipusam and Deepavali, Durga and her brood have begun making an annual homecoming here with a little help from the Bengali community.
As it has for a few decades now, Little India continues to straddle its rich legacy with increasing commercialisation. The future, too, is likely to be a struggle along similar lines. But in Singapore — with a Chinese majority, and the Malays and Indians forming the largest minorities, respectively — Little India is also evidence of the city-state’s successful experiment in multiculturalism. Under the torrid afternoon sun, the red and white of the Singaporean flag stands starkly against the Gopuram of Sri Perumal Temple, amongst the oldest in the city. The Lion City’s modest Indian quarter may not have the ghettoised sprawl that often defines ethnic enclaves elsewhere, but in Singapore small is, almost always, beautiful.
