DRAVIDA PERAVAI MOURNS THE DEMISE OF FORMER PRESIDENT OF SINGAPORE MR.DEVAN NAIR
Former Singapore President CV Devan Nair (82) has had breathed his last. He chose to live dignified life in self imposed exile away from Singapore after quitting office of President Mr. Devan Nair was a teacher, a communist, unionist and ruling party stalwart — all in a lifetime that was staunchly dedicated to nation-building in Singapore’s early history. The third President of Singapore, Mr. Nair was in office from 1981 to 1985. Born in August 1923, Mr. Devan Nair, the son of a rubber plantation clerk in Malaysia, identified with the working class early on in life. His first political conviction was Communism, one that was sealed when the trainee teacher met PV Sharma, an influential figure in the teachers’ union. Under Mr. Sharma’s influence, Mr. Devan Nair joined the Anti-British League; a cover for the Malayan Communist Party, and in 1951 was detained on St John’s Island. Said Patrick Jaswan, Mr. Devan Nair’s friend, “His University is actually the prison. There was not a single book left that he didn’t browse through.” Out of prison, he continued with left-wing union activism. He was an effective mobiliser and with Chinese-educated activists like the late Lim Chin Siong, had a considerable following. In 1954, Lee Kuan Yew asked Mr. Devan Nair to join him so the unions could provide the mass base for a new party. It was a marriage of convenience, but an uneasy one for Mr. Devan Nair. Referring to those days, he said, “There was a great turmoil going on inside me because I was caught in an emotional fix. On the one hand, my head was increasingly with Lee Kuan Yew and company. But on the other hand my heart emotionally was tied up with the people. And it became an intolerable contradiction.” When the Hock Lee bus riots took place, the British government cracked down on the unions and Mr. Devan Nair and his comrades were arrested. Mr. Lee persuaded Mr. Devan Nair to get all the detainees to commit to a non-communist Malaya, before securing their release. Although he was closer to the People’s Action Party after it came into power in 1959, this did not mean Mr. Devan Nair was willing to fight his communist friends. So, he went back to teaching, but was soon drawn back out into the political fray by Mr. Lee. Said Janadas Devan, Mr. Devan Nair’s son, “He would say to my father, ‘here we are Rajaratnam and I, Toh Chin Chye, fighting with our backs to the wall and there you are marking exercise books.’” Mr. Devan Nair’s work with the PAP included a stint as the only elected PAP MP in Malaysia after the merger. Loyal to those who voted for him, Mr. Devan Nair stayed put after the Separation, and formed the Democratic Action Party. But he soon found his position untenable.
Mr Lee, Singapore’s Prime Minister from 1959 to 1990, said on 23 October 1981, “It was not a lack of courage that made him leave Kuala Lumpur. The Cabinet decided that Singapore-Malaysia relations would always be bedeviled if Devan Nair remained as a DAP leader. I persuaded him to come back. I told him that the trade union movement in Singapore had to be rebuilt on different assumptions and different attitudes.”
And that was Mr. Devan Nair’s most significant work — forming the National Trades Union Congress. But instead of calling for strikes, he focused on “delivering the goods”; his fighting ring was not the streets, but the Industrial Arbitration Court. To win over the workers used to confrontation, the teacher in him came to the fore. Mr. Devan Nair, in a 1981 Teachers’ Day Reception speech at the Istana, said, “We were all engaged in a vast educational effort but we did not teach in classrooms. I myself had to conceive of the whole labour movement as a gigantic educational workshop.”
In 1969, the NTUC held a major “modernization” seminar which Mr. Devan Nair saw as a “do or die” attempt to revitalize the labor movement. At its centerpiece, was the setting up of workers’ cooperatives, like INCOME, WELCOME and COMFORT? Mr. Devan Nair did not make his debut in the Singapore Parliament till 1979, when he won the Anson seat left vacant after veteran unionist P Govindasamy died. But his biggest personal decision came when he was asked to take up Singapore’s highest public office; a position he was to later say was in contradiction to his temperament. Said Mr. Janadas Devan, “He didn’t want to be president. He was persuaded but to the very last moment, he tried to get out of it.” He added, “He, I supposed, tried to change the nature of the office to fit his personality but there are limits beyond which that cannot be done. So in retrospect it was quite clear that it was the wrong job for the wrong person.” The late author and journalist, Dennis Blood worth, summed up Mr. Devan Nair’s experience as President: “As President with largely constitutional functions, he was to put it frankly, bored. He didn’t like the job, he was not really cut out to meet the presidents, kings, queens and others from these countries that visited Singapore. That was not the Nair thing at all.” Mr. Blood worth added, “He started off life as a dogmatic, argumentative sort of chap, ‘pugnacious’ when Lee Kuan Yew first saw him; and he was hardly suited for what rather was in those days, the milk and water role of being president.” In March 1985, a drinking problem led to Mr. Devan Nair’s resignation. Then-Prime Minister Lee said on 28 March 1985, “Mr. Speaker, honorable members will want to join me in wishing him fortitude in his task of rehabilitation. With the help of his wife and family, he must find the strength and stamina to break his dependency.” A few years later, Mr. Devan Nair was to dispute the diagnosis of alcoholism and a public exchange of letters ensued. Mr. Devan Nair, who migrated to Canada with his wife, was philosophical about his place in Singapore’s history. He once said his only regret in life was to allow himself to be persuaded to occupy a highly ceremonial office so contradicted by his temperament.
But he blamed no one. And after he had said his piece for what it was worth, Mr. Devan Nair added that he expected “to fade away, like all old warriors, into the past.” Some verdicts, he said, “are best left to history.”
Courtesy:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/182396/1/.html
RARE SPRING OF HOPE IN BIHAR 
