SINGAPORE: A young Singaporean woman recently responded to a commenter online who had written that they “didn’t even know that Indians existed in Singapore.”
“This makes me so frustrated,” she said in a TikTok video, “because it just goes to show that Singapore Indians are so invisible globally.”
@rohinislm Replying to @AfterLost24 now you know, don’t forget it. #singaporetiktok #southasia #singaporeindian #tamiltiktok
While the woman, who goes by @rohinislm on the platform, has been living in Canada for some years now, her roots are in Singapore, and she regularly expresses how much she misses the city-state.
As she wrote in a recent Instagram post, Singapore is “forever my favourite place in the whole world.”
What she does mind is when Singaporean Indians go unseen, and she called this out in her July 6 video, which has since been viewed over 40,000 times.
“When people think of Singapore, they instantly associate it with just Chinese culture. But we are so much more than that,” she added.
The post author acknowledged that while Singaporean Chinese are the majority in the city-state, she underlined that “Indian Singaporeans do exist.”
“We are nine per cent of the population, and our community is really rich, vibrant, and deeply rooted in Singapore‘s history. As a Singaporean Tamil girl that lives abroad, I do not fully relate to other Tamils from India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Canada, the UK, and wherever else.
“Maybe Malaysian Tamils would get it, but we really have our own slang, our own struggles, our own culture. As a Singaporean Tamil girl that’s really tired of being made invisible, this is why representation matters. We’ve been in Singapore for a long time and we will always be in Singapore,” she added.
Her post has since been commented on over 400 times, with some TikTok users expressing how much they relate to what she said.
“As a Malaysian Tamil, I totally get you. The struggles that we constantly have to explain about our origins all the time are tiring. It’s true, we don’t relate ourselves to Indian Tamils since we have our own slang and culture. We do recognise ourselves as Southeast Asian rather than as South Asian,” one wrote.
“When I was residing in Perth, they thought Singapore was in China and were surprised that other races as Malay and Indian, exist in SG. I would have to explain again and again,” added another.
Some commented that Malays in Singapore sometimes have the same problem.
“Some are still not sure about our culture. They always ask about my race, and I say Malay. They’re like, Oh, from Malaysia? I say Nope, Singapore. Oh, Singapore has Malays? I was like erm… we have Chinese, Indians, Malay, and Eurasians too,” a commenter wrote.
“It’s so frustrating to go, ‘I’m Malay, not Malaysian,’” another added. /TISG
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