PM Lee Hsien Loong at official lunch hosted in honour of PM Narendra Modi

His Excellency Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I am delighted to welcome Prime Minister Modi and his delegation to Singapore. This visit comes at a significant time because Singapore and India celebrate the 50th anniversary of our diplomatic relations this year. Just now, I presented Prime Minister Modi with a copy of the Tamil Murasu article on India’s recognition of Singapore as an independent country. The date was 11 August 1965, just two days after our Separation from Malaysia. It demonstrates the longstanding and special friendship between India and Singapore and interestingly, the founder of Tamil Murasu, Mr G Sarangapany, came to Singapore from Tamil Nadu in 1924 when he was 21 to work as a book-keeper. He fought for social reform for poorly educated immigrant Indians here, set up Tamil Murasu in 1935, and sold the paper at one cent a copy so that the poor could read it too. He championed Tamil education and advocated for Tamil to be recognised as one of Singapore’s official languages. He believed in the future of Singapore and encouraged ethnic Indians here to make Singapore their home. And because of leaders like him, Singapore has today a thriving community of Indians who are well-integrated into our society and form an essential part of our multi-racial, multi-religious mix.

India has very much been a part of Singapore’s history. If you go back to the 13th century, Singapore was part of the Majapahit Empire, one of the Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Long before the term “soft power” was coined, Indian influences left their mark on our traditions and landscape. So we see the Hindu Prambanan temple in Yogyakarta, the Buddhist temple in Borobudur and Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. These are legacies of ancient Hindu-Buddhist influences in this region. Islam also came to this region from India, and the very names Indo-nesia and Indo-China attest to India’s far reaching influence. In the 19th century during the British Raj, modern Singapore was a gateway for India’s trade with East Asia. Enterprising Indian traders, businessmen and civil servants came to Singapore to seek their fortune or work for the British, and Indian labourers helped build landmark buildings in Singapore, including this Istana, where we are having lunch today. So Indians have played a large part in building modern Singapore. Besides G Sarangapany, who founded Tamil Murasu, the pioneers included leading businessmen like Rajabali Jumabhoy, who was the first President of the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and incidentally came from Gujarat. We have social workers and religious leaders like Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddique, an Indian Muslim from Meerut India, who founded Jamiyah, a social welfare organisation in 1932, and also founded our Inter-Religious Organisation which continues to foster understanding between the faiths. Sikhs did well in many professions. They are a small community, but they rose to become leading lawyers and judges, and senior officers in the armed forces. We have also had five Indian-origin Foreign Ministers!

Over the years, we maintained and built upon our friendship with India. India is a great Asian country that has a lot to contribute to the region. We wish India success in its economic reforms and development. We hope to develop our economic cooperation, financial and air links, and our broader cooperation in the region. So we are happy to support India’s broadening and opening up wherever we can, because this is a mutually beneficial relationship.

We just signed a Strategic Partnership between Singapore and India. This is a major step forward. It covers many areas, including defence and security cooperation, air transport, trade and investment, culture and others. Prime Minister Modi has many bold and exciting plans for India. I am happy that the Strategic Partnership can fit into his plans. For example, in Andhra Pradesh, we are helping Chief Minister Mr Chandrababu Naidu to conceptualise his new capital city Amaravati, which is one city in Prime Minister Modi’s vision of “100 Smart Cities”. We have set up a Skills Centre in Delhi and are setting up a Centre of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality in Udaipur, Rajasthan to develop and harness the potential of Indian youth. We hope these centres will make a useful contribution to Prime Minister Modi’s Skill India Campaign, which he launched in July this year. And that is why we will be visiting the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) later this afternoon.

We look forward to India playing an active role in the region, promoting regional security and peace, linking its economy with the rest of Asia, and helping to shape an open and inclusive regional architecture. My predecessor, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, was an early advocate for India’s Look East policy and helped to bring India in as ASEAN’s Dialogue Partner. He also supported its entry into the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit. I am glad that we are also able to advance our defence relationship with India, with the revised Defence Cooperation Agreement. I look forward to India integrating its dynamic economy more closely with the region, as we strive to complete a high-quality Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

We have had long and close exchanges with India over the years. Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew saw India’s importance very early on. He visited India many times, he admired Indian leaders like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for their peaceful struggle for freedom, commitment to secularism, and leadership of the non-aligned movement. When Nehru died in 1964, Mr Lee delivered a tribute to Nehru at a condolence service in his memory at the Jalan Besar Stadium in Singapore. 50 plus years on, when Mr Lee passed away earlier this year, India declared a national day of mourning for him and flew flags at half-mast all over the subcontinent for Mr Lee. We are deeply honoured by this extraordinary gesture and I would like to especially thank Prime Minister Modi for doing this, and also attending the State Funeral Service for Mr Lee.

I thank Prime Minister Modi for taking time to visit Singapore and for our good discussions. I look forward to visiting India next year to take our partnership and cooperation further steps forward. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, please rise and join me in a toast: To the good health and success of Prime Minister Modi and to the enduring friendship between India and Singapore.

* * * * *