descendants from the Chinese mainland and the Indian subcontinent, and indigenous Malays –
remains the key field of social conflict until today.17
What Malaysia and Singapore have in common is an agenda of identity conflicts colored by history.
What define them are that striking experiences in the past are higlighted as the issues, along with a
historicized story or original roots. The visible manifestation of these conflicts is the controversy
over the political concept "bumiputera" (also: "bumiputra") – a concept that essentially serves to
create an imaginary joint story of origin for the Chinese and Indian immigrants (and their descendants)
who largely migrated to the country in the 19th and early 20th century to distinguish them
from the Malay-speaking population of Malaysia.18
While following the colonial era in Singapore the society that developed was primarily of Chinese
identity, in the population of which over three-quarters define themselves culturally as Chinese, 14
percent as Malay and some eight percent as Indians, in the territories of the newly-born federation
of Malaya19 an even more complex network of cultural communities developed. For example, in
1968 the bumiputra represented some 48 percent of the population, while Chinese (36) and Indians
jointly made up 45 percent. According to the official census in 1999 the bumiputra accounted
for just under 58 percent of the population (49% Malay and 8.8% non-Malay bumiputra), while the
share of Chinese stood at 24.9 percent and that of Indians seven percent (Embong, 2001: 59).
Both Singapore and present-day Malaysia were hard-hit in the early years by violence between the
cultural groups – in Singapore between Malay and Chinese (July and September 1964) and in Malaysia
during the Communist insurgency (1948-1960/1989) and the "racial riots" of 1969. In the last
ten years or so Malaysia has experienced a rise in local tensions – especially between Malay and
Indians. Increasingly Chinese and Indians (but also bumiputras) feel threatened by Islamization
trends in Malaysia’s politics (Chin, 2007). Since then, however, in both countries potential for conflict
between the cultural groups has been civilized to the extent that in the past four decades there
have been no significant outbreaks of intercultural violence.
What is remarkable is that the political elite in both nations have applied quite different methods of
intercultural conflict management.
In Malaysia, the political, economic and social relations of the various sections of the population
continue to be guided by a formula that essentially served as the basis for the constitutional com-