Article

Individual and state narratives of Lee Kuan Yew as ancestor and founding father

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Individual and state narratives of Lee Kuan Yew as ancestor and founding father

Abstract

Rituals are not merely symbolic; they are also ‘powerful moments of change’ in which narratives are created. They sometimes fall within the purview of the state and sometimes are carried out by individuals. Based on this understanding of narrative creation to examine Singapore’s week-long period of mourning for its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, I argue that two distinct narratives were generated, one of Lee as ancestor and another of Lee as founding father. The state and individuals were both involved in these creations, which had ramifications for the 2015 general election in Singapore.

Summary

This article examines how two distinct narratives of Lee Kuan Yew were constructed during Singapore’s one-week national mourning period in March 2015: one of Lee as ancestor, generated primarily by individuals, and another of Lee as founding father, generated primarily by the state. Drawing on Martha Kaplan’s framework of ritual as “powerful moments of change” in which narratives are created to “control or empower, to contest the old or envision the new,” the author argues that both state and individual actors participated in these narrative constructions, and that the resulting memorializations carried political ramifications for the 2015 general election (pp. 115–116).

The primary sources are drawn from Facebook comments posted in the immediate aftermath of Lee’s death, the author’s own ethnographic observations at community tribute sites, the curated route of the state funeral procession, and the People’s Action Party’s social media response to a rainstorm on the day of the funeral. The ancestor narrative emerged organically from individual mourners connecting Lee to Chinese folk traditions of ancestor veneration—evident in both textual comments and the physical practices of bowing before tribute boards—while the founding father narrative was deliberately inscribed onto physical landscapes through the procession route, which passed locations commemorating milestones in Lee’s political career (pp. 116–119).

The article’s central analytical move is to show how the rainstorm on the day of the funeral became a shared symbol that simultaneously served both narratives: for individuals, it represented ancestor beneficence (Lee providing water to his descendants, consistent with his well-known obsession with Singapore’s water security); for the state, it evoked the 1968 National Day Parade and a narrative of national endurance into a post-Lee era. This dual reading encapsulates the article’s broader point about how rituals generate competing but complementary narratives that serve different political and cultural functions (pp. 118–119).

Key Findings

  • The national mourning period ran from 23–29 March 2015; state venues for public memorialization were set up at the Istana and Parliament House, with community tribute sites added from 24–29 March across the island (p. 116).
  • The state funeral procession route was 15.4 km, carefully curated by the State Funeral Organising Committee to pass locations commemorating milestones in Lee’s political career, including Padang, Marina Bay, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, and the public housing estates of Bukit Merah and Queenstown (p. 118).
  • A Facebook post by the PAP on 29 March 2015 drawing parallels between the funeral rainstorm and the 1968 National Day Parade attracted 53,528 ‘likes’ and responses echoing the call to “brave on” (p. 119).
  • The earliest Facebook comment representing Lee as ancestor was posted at 4:30 am on 23 March, invoking the Chinese folk saying liu san can gei hou ren (“leaving three meals behind to the descendants”), which interprets a morning death as a sign that the material needs of descendants would be met (p. 117).
  • The PAP’s vote share increased from 60 per cent in the previous election to 69.9 per cent in the 11 September 2015 general election, winning 83 of 89 seats (p. 120).

Conclusion

The author concludes that Lee’s death generated a political subtext—whether Singapore could survive without him—that was answered reassuringly by the PAP, and that the party’s election manifesto, which emphasized its fifty-year record of contributions rather than proposing new policies, suggests it deliberately rode this groundswell of sentiment. The article’s broader takeaway is that a political anthropology of Singapore requires not only an examination of the actions of its political figures but also an exegesis of the meanings attributed to and arising from the death of its most significant leader, for in death as in life Lee continues to loom large in Singapore’s political scene (p. 120).

Context

  • Primary sources: Facebook comments, the author’s own ethnographic fieldwork at community tribute sites (Tanjong Pagar Community Centre, Istana), the State Funeral Organising Committee’s fact sheet on the procession route, and PAP social media posts.
  • Historiographical contribution: Applies Kaplan’s ritual theory and Kong and Yeoh’s analysis of national spectacle to a contemporary Singaporean event, bridging political geography and public memory studies in a way that extends their earlier work on National Day parades to the domain of state funerals.

References