Research Area B Tamil-Speaking Muslims (B13)

Project Leader: Hans Harder
Project Members: Torsten Tschacher

Home to diverse people from Southeast, East, and South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and a node of the circulation of goods, people, ideas and information between 'East' and 'West', the city of Singapore played an important role in the cultural flows which connected Asia and Europe. Between 1819 and 1942, Singapore grew from a small port to one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the British Empire. The presence of such a diverse population soon forced various communities to talk not only amongst themselves, but with each other as well as with the colonial state. The result was the rise of a number of interrelated public spheres, whose relationship with each other was characterized by strong asymmetries. This project endeavoured to trace the engagement of one particularly mobile (spatially and socially) segment of the Singaporean population, Tamil-speaking Muslims from South India, in Singapore's diverse public spheres, and to gauge the role played by them in the local translation of international transcultural flows.