Secret societies in Singapore have been largely eradicated as a security issue in the city-state. However many smaller groups remain today which attempt to mimic societies of the past. The membership of these societies is largely adolescent.
Despite fading from contemporary Singaporean society, these secret societies hold great relevance to Singapore's modern history. The founding of the city-state in 1819 saw the arrival of thousands of Chinese, thereby transplanting to Singapore social systems already present in China itself. Although the secret societies were commonly associated with violence, extortion and vice, they also played a part in building a social fabric for early Chinese migrants in Singapore. They were given leeway to control the Chinese populace due to the hands-off policy adopted by the British colonials, who hoped to create stability.
Read more about Secret Societies In Singapore: Policing Secret Societies, Reasons For The Decline
Famous quotes containing the words secret and/or societies:
“I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)