SINGAPORE – Where race and religion are fault lines that divide societies elsewhere, Singapore chose to deliberately build a multiracial and multireligious nation, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

Speaking on Sept 12 at the 85th anniversary celebration of the Singapore Kadayanallur Muslim League (SKML), a Tamil Muslim group that founded the first Tamil-medium secondary school in South-east Asia, PM Wong said Government policies helped create the conditions.

He added: “We made sure that every community has its place and can practice its faith, speak its language, and celebrate its culture and traditions.

“At the same time, we have common spaces and shared experiences in our schools, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our national service, where Singaporeans from different backgrounds can mix, socialise, make friends, and grow up together.

Ultimately, cohesion is built through people, he said.

“It depends on all our communities being confident in their identities, at the same time being willing to reach out, build bridges, and develop trust with one another,” added PM Wong.

The work Singapore does to keep its society cohesive and strong is becoming even more important as societies around the world are becoming more fragmented, divided and polarised, partly due to economic challenges, he said.

“Some segments of society don’t do as well, and they become disappointed and frustrated.

“But beyond the economic issues, the challenge comes when these economic dislocations get fed into a sense of identity, belonging, and perceived unfairness.

“That’s when divisions really start to become more entrenched, and people start to build walls between us versus them,” said PM Wong.