The nascent state's primary aim was to establish viability and sovereignty, resulting in the politics of survival" as one commentator called it (Chan, 1972). Though the dominant political party, the People's Action Party was a party in which all ethno-cultural groups were represented, and the party had endorsed the continued use of English in the schools and made Malay the national language, the political leadership saw, and continues to see, Singapore as a plural society in which ethnic cleavages persist. It argues that rather than opt for a shallow multiculturalism, the state should accept the reality of primordial attachments (Mutalib, 1992) and treat it as a resource. Thus the dominant feature of political discourse in relation to culture is that of culture with a capital C (Goodenough, 1981) the tradition-bound collection of values, beliefs, folk traditions, and customary practices that is represented in the rituals and literary and religious classics. In this context it would be unthinkable to think of Chinese culture without Confucius coming to mind,