Nationalist movements can be used to study how memory and forgetfulness brought into play as political resources. Recalling the historical events of the sub-continent and the surrounding violence provides evidence for the nationalistic struggles.

The theoretical approaches to analyze nationalist historiographies in the Indian memory include how colonialism legitimized itself, how the “native” experiences were thought of as “letting go,” how nationalist groups refused to forget hurtful memories, and how the melancholia suffered metamorphosed into counter-memory.

Paying attention to the conflicts between Hindus and Sikhs highlights how anticolonial unity worked between the communities. Foucault pushed to study discontinuity and periods of “reversal of forces” to understand history effectively. He also built on Nietzsche’s work and pointed out three means of recounting history, namely antiquarian, monumental, and effective.

However, the forgetting of history might give rise to novel identities instead of preserving the older ones. Here the counter-memory made into normative in the past can lead to a conformist history. Many authors have put forward that history should be normative and effective, and this might not confine the past to the past, but its impact will be felt in the present, like the partition of India and Pakistan. Other examples include Emma Tarlo’s recollection of memories from the “Emergency” in Delhi during 1975-77 and the Gurdwara incident.

While Das has demonstrated that Sikh and Hindu identity reasoning depends on forgetfulness, many studies on counter-memory can help people understand the non-obligatory value of the dominant narrative and aid in removing contradictions between present identities and the past memories.

The street name system in colonial Singapore was founded on the European interpretation of the urbanization framework. Simultaneously there was another system of naming streets that was primarily found in the Asian immigrant localities. A focus on functionality and purpose, as well as the origin, seemed to resonate in the street names.

Regardless of the native systems, official names derived from British places continued to abound. The names of British counties and urban centers inspired road names such as Dorset Road, Norfolk Road, Bristol Road, and Shrewsbury Road.

Although municipal authorities attempted to choose street names recognizing Asian communities where that was deemed appropriate, most municipal street names honored the perceptions of power-holding Europeans rather than those of the residents of specific areas

The contrast between corporate and Asian street names went beyond differences in etymological content and phonetics. The two systems also represented different ways of signifying the landscape. Whereas municipal street names primarily sought to identify the urban landscape with civic notions of appropriateness and ordering, Chinese nomenclature was firmly anchored to local features, symbols, and activities that formed a significant role in daily experience.

Municipal attempts to enhance the acceptability and the usage of official street names among the Asian communities had limited success.

As a process, the naming of places in Singapore was not the simple prerogative of the municipal authorities but was contingent on social dynamics. The authorities had the power to select what was considered appropriate names and to assign them formally to the streets of the city, but the Asian communities determined whether the names took on typical usage. Failure to impose and to enforce the adoption of one uniform system of place-names partly reflected the lack of absolute power for the government and its acceptance of multicultural patterns of behavior.

References

Legg, Stephen, Sites of Counter-Memory: The Refusal to Forget and the Nationalist Struggle in Colonial Delhi

Yeoh, Brenda, Street Names in Colonial Singapore