This is the latest new;-
But the grapevine among Indian community seems to differ.So say my drinking kakis.They say a Sikhs such as Pritam Singh never identify themselves with local Indians.They usually opt for Malay as their mother tongue and never Tamil in schools.And that PAP had always cherished Sikhs to come in between their Indian political opponents such as JBJ,it's always a Sikh policeman,a Sikh judge,a Sikh officer in the bankruptcy office that gave JBJ sleep less days and nights--I was told.
Hence,though Pritam is classified as an Indian but I reckon the differences between them is wide as between local Chinese and PRC.
The Sikh community in Singapore has always been split from the Tamils - the "unity" has usually been on the basis of Tamils domination - traditionally there has always been a notion of Tamils representing the "Indian" minority in Singapore, whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist.
Predominantly, Punjabis in Singapore have been culturally, religiously and linguistically apart from the Tamils. So although conveniently categorized as "Indian", the new influx of Indians from the subcontinent has blown that premise off once and for all. T
he Tamils feels squeezed out of their monopoly over the preponderance of "Indian" culture when in actually fact it was Madrasi Indian culture with sprinklings of Malayees.
The Punjabis (mostly Sikh, some Christian and fewer Muslim) had always been as a preference opted for Malay as the family spoke the language and it was much easier to cultivate than Tamil an altogether different language from Punjabi. The latinised Malay script made it easier to accommodate as they usually spoke English at home and it was easier to digest Malay vocabulary. The issue of religious affiliation becomes more acute for the Punjabi Sikhs in Singapore because they naturally associated in school with Malay students because of the access to language classes - this would lead to the typical cross-over in bf/gf territory where the 50-year old wounds carried from one generation to this did not seem to have been overcome because dating a Malay girl would be synonymous with eventually converting into Islam, the traditional "enemy" of the Sikhs because of what happened during Partition and 500 years earlier.
Hence the dilemma more so for the boys than the girls - you would probably be aware that there is a higher likelihood over the past 20 years to find a Punjabi Sikh girl in Singapore married to a Tamil Hindu boy than a Punjabi Sikh boy married to a Tamil Hindu girl - I've always found it curious that due to ignorance amongst the local Punjabis, the Punjabi Sikh community inevitably found itself eclipsed by the representation of "Indian" culture as represented by the Tamil majority.
It was probably easier for the Punjabi family to accept a Sikh girl marrying into a Hindu or Christian Tamil family. And in a twisted way, Tamil boys traditionally prized the fairer Punjabi Sikh girl as a gf or bride - on a ludicrously shallow level, it can be attributed the the white/black perception of status enhancement. Curiously though, a number of Sikhs were beaten up in Tekka market by Tamils (who have no idea about what India actually is) after Indra-Gandhi was assassinated,
The last 10 years have led to a much more interesting development - Punjabi Sikhs in Singapore now realize that there is more to "India" than the Tamils - that there is a huge diversity of Indians and that they don't necessarily have to settle for the Tamil alternative because there are North Indians who have a much closer affinity with them than the Tamils ever did from a cultural perspective. It is very likely that the Punjabi-Tamil marriage model is a relic of our society - and maybe the fact that the Punjabi Sikhs had always been seen as a minority amongst the "Indian" minority now takes a turn as there are more "similar looking" Indians in Singapore.
P.S. I know of a few Bayis who insisted that the Race portion of their IC said "Punjabi" rather than "Indian" and I know one Malay guy whose IC states "Sikh" because his father was a Muslim convert but his original papers did not change.
A bizarre event from as a few years ago was about this Bayi who was a closet Muslim - he passed away and the family were stunned when the local musilms called on the house to claim the body for immediate burial instead of cremation (as is the norm) - the family had no idea that he was a convert (he was non-turbaned) - I think my Malay friend still has not changed his IC and it could very well work in reverse for him.