INTAN BANJAR, PARMATA SINGAPURA: THE STORY OF THE BANJARESE DIAMOND TRADE IN SINGAPORE THROUGH THREE MEN

Abstract

The stories of the Banjarese living in Singapore were first told in the form of the Urang Banjar exhibition, with a small, interactive section dedicated to talk about Haji Ahmad Jamal, one of the last intan Banjar jeweller and trader in Singapore. However, the Banjarese trade of precious gemstones was a much bigger and multi-generational series of businesses that formed part of the socioeconomic development of colonial Singapore and part of the core memories of the Banjarese diasporic community in Singapore. Three historical Banjarese traders: Haji Osman, Haji Hassan and Haji Mahmood loom as key historical personalities in the Singapore-Banjarese community. These three men migrated and set up their intan Banjar business in Singapore in the late 19th to the early 20th century. This story is left out of the formal Singapore Story, perhaps in part due to a paucity of documentary sources of both the businesses and personalities. By leveraging on my familial connections as a fifth-generation descendant of Haji Osman, I interviewed my relatives and created an interaction between these oral sources and other historical traces like newspaper entries on property auctions and death notices, maps and also cross-disciplinary urban modelling methods. These interactions faintly reconstructed the motivations behind their movement from Banjarmasin to Singapore, their business acumen and other methods engaged in increasing their wealth. A modicum of success in uncovering these Banjarese stories in Singapore raise historical possibilities of uncovering more family-based histories by identifying traces that lie latent among family members and descendants. If carefully curated and narrated, such painstaking efforts can thicken and further complexify the Singapore Story, nudging it towards greater inclusivity.