Growing up, I carried an unexamined assumption that socialism was something to be wary of — a word easily associated with communism, ideology, and political extremism. It was not a position I had reasoned myself into it was simply absorbed, quietly and unconsciously. That assumption remained largely intact until my years in Kuala Lumpur, where I met Dr J. P. Jeyakumar, then chairman of the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM).

The circumstances of our meeting had nothing to do with politics. Three of my extended family members stateless children under my care were caught in a long and uncertain struggle for documentation. Through this process, I learned that Dr Jeyakumar was handling their case.

At the time, I did not even know of his political affiliation. What I encountered instead was a man who was humble, patient, and deeply attentive. He explained, in detail, the steps he had taken documents submitted, offices engaged, avenues exhausted and reopened, without theatrics or self-importance.

A few days later, he came personally to my homeschooling centre, saying simply that he wanted to see the environment for himself. It was only later that the irony struck me: I was sitting across from the very man who had unseated a long-serving MIC president, a socialist politician many considered radical. And I remember thinking, not proudly, but honestly :- What if a photograph of me with him circulated in Singapore? What would people assume?

That moment forced a quiet reckoning. I realised that I am not partisan, and never have been. As a social activist, my responsibility is not to ideological labels, but to outcomes. If someone regardless of political stripe is committed to reducing harm, restoring dignity, and improving lives, then I see no contradiction in working alongside them. Social justice, I learned, is not made more credible by the labels we fear but by the lives we are willing to stand up for.

Then, in November, during one of my regular monthly trips back to Kuala Lumpur, I noticed an event taking place:- Socialism 2025. Without much deliberation, I decided to attend. I wanted to know for myself what was being discussed under the banner of socialism.

Not through commentary, headlines, or inherited assumptions, but through direct experience. If I had carried certain ideas about socialism for most of my life, it seemed only fair to examine them properly to listen, to observe, and to make sense of them firsthand. There was no intention to convert, align, or advocate. I went simply because I had reached a point where second-hand opinions were no longer sufficient.

Understanding, I realised, requires presence. I had spent years forming opinions about socialism without ever setting foot in a space where it was actually discussed. Attending the event felt less like a political act and more like a personal reckoning.

Interestingly, the gathering began with something I did not expect :- an anthem. Everyone stood before the programme commenced, in a manner not unlike the familiar ritual of standing for the national anthem at the start of a school day. The structure felt intentional, almost ceremonial.

What remained imprinted in my mind, however, was not the anthem itself, but the raised fist :- a symbol repeated across banners and gestures. At one point, voices rose together in a chant: “Workers unite.” It was a powerful image. Charged. Emphatic. Difficult to ignore.

Did I raise my fist along with everyone else? No, I did not. Not out of rejection or discomfort, but because I was not yet certain what the gesture meant to me. I have never been inclined to follow collective actions simply because they are collective. Participation, for me, requires understanding. I need to sit with a symbol before I inhabit it.

So I stood there, observing. Watching the faces around me. Listening to the cadence of the chant. Noticing how meaning can be carried not only through words, but through posture, repetition, and shared movement. In that moment, I realised that my presence there was not about agreement or performance. It was about witnessing allowing myself the space to understand before deciding where, or whether, I stood.

The first speaker was Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), speaking under the title People’s Power: Lessons from Sri Lanka. The session traced the rise of the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition and its victory in Sri Lanka’s 2024 elections:- a political turning point shaped by the aragalaya, the people’s struggle against corruption, economic collapse, and entrenched misrule.

Listening to the narrative, I was struck not so much by the electoral outcome, but by the conditions that made it possible. The emphasis was on collective exhaustion, moral clarity, and the slow crystallisation of public anger into organised action. It was a story of how frustration, when shared widely enough, can transform into political momentum.

After the plenary sessions, participants were invited to join smaller workshops. I chose one titled “Building Socialism: Mass Movements and the Role of the State.” It was the phrase mass movement that drew me in. Having witnessed the Bersih movement in Malaysia, I realised that while I had seen crowds gather, slogans take hold, and pressure mount, I had never fully understood what allows a movement to cross a threshold — from scattered dissent to collective force.

What makes people show up? What sustains them beyond outrage? And how does leadership emerge without being imposed? This workshop felt like an opportunity to explore those questions not as theory alone, but as lived political practice. I was less interested in ideology than in mechanics: how one person, or a small group, manages to rally many how individual grievances become shared purpose and where the state fits into that uneasy relationship between power and protest.

Interestingly, before the workshop formally began, conversation turned to a mass protest in Kampung Papan. I recognised the name immediately. I had read about it in the news about demonstrations, police presence, and the arrest of several PSM members. What I had not expected was the tone. They spoke about the arrests almost casually, even jokingly.

There was laughter in the room. At one point, I heard someone say, without drama or bravado, “Tomorrow we’ll be there again.” It was said not as a challenge, but as a statement of fact. I found myself quietly stunned. There was no visible fear, no agitation, no sense of martyrdom. Just a steady, unshakeable resolve. I struggled to find words for what I felt in that moment admiration, perhaps, but also something deeper. A recognition of devotion that did not need to announce itself.

These were people who had already accepted the cost of what they were doing, and were prepared to pay it again. What struck me most was how ordinary it all felt to them. Arrest was not framed as sacrifice, nor protest as performance. It was simply part of the work. Later, I would come to understand what had happened in Kampung Papan, and why these individuals were willing to return there despite the threat of arrest. But at that moment, what stayed with me was not the details of the case, but the quiet courage in that room the kind that does not raise its voice, because it does not need to.

When the session opened for questions, I did what I usually do I asked. Not to challenge, and certainly not to advocate, but because I wanted to hear the answers from the activists themselves, rather than form conclusions on my own. I shared an observation drawn from my own travels. I had been to India, and had spent time in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The contrast between the two had stayed with me. In Tamil Nadu, even access to the divine appeared stratified. To see God, there were different queues. Those who paid more stood closer those who paid less waited longer. In Kerala, I did not encounter this. The experience felt less transactional, less hierarchical.

Looking more broadly, Kerala’s overall indicators:- education, health, social development, stood out. Economically and socially, it consistently ranked among the strongest states in India. What struck me was that Kerala remained the only state governed by a socialist-oriented administration within one of the world’s largest democracies. It stood apart not noisily, but unmistakably. I then shared a thought that had come up in a conversation with a group of Malaysians.

Malaysia has thirteen states. If one genuinely wanted to assess the effectiveness of socialist governance, wouldn’t the most honest way be to allow a party like PSM to administer just one state — not as a theoretical exercise, but as a lived experiment? So I asked the room a simple, hypothetical question:

If PSM were ever given the mandate to govern a single state in Malaysia, which state would it be? There was a brief pause, followed by discussion. A few voices mentioned Negeri Sembilan, but the majority converged on Perak.

What interested me was not the answer itself, but the way it was reached through practical considerations rather than ideological enthusiasm. In that exchange, I sensed something important. This was not socialism spoken as abstraction or slogan. It was socialism discussed as administration, responsibility, and consequence.

I asked a second question — one that reflected not just what I had observed in that room, but what I had been thinking about for some time. I spoke about Southeast Asia, and the particular obstacles socialist and progressive movements face in the region: deeply entrenched oligarchies and military interests, the persistent manipulation of ethnic and religious identity, and the long shadow of anti-communist stigma that still shapes public fear.

Given how diverse Southeast Asia is :- politically, culturally, historically, I asked what the future of socialism might realistically look like in this part of the world. And if they had to identify just one thing, I asked, what would be the key strategic imperative for the next decade? As I spoke, I was aware that this was no longer a question born of suspicion.

It came from a place of engagement of wanting to understand how movements survive in environments that are not designed to tolerate them. I wasn’t asking about ideology in its pure form, but about endurance: how ideas adapt, how people organise, and how hope is sustained under constant pressure.

I asked a third question and by then, I was very aware that my curiosity had momentum of its own. I spoke about Malaysia and Indonesia, and how the equation socialism equals communism remains a powerful legacy of the Cold War and anti-colonial conflicts. It is a narrative that has been carefully cultivated and sustained by entrenched elites, not merely as history, but as a political tool, one that continues to suppress alternative ways of imagining social and economic organisation. I suggested that this stigma might be the single greatest barrier to building any genuine mass movement in the region.

And so I asked: what has proven to be the most successful and practical counter-narrative strategy for the socialist left in Southeast Asia? The discussion that followed was long, animated, and thoughtful. Voices around the room engaged seriously with the question, not defensively, but with the familiarity of people who had lived with this problem for years. It was clear that this was not an abstract challenge, but a daily reality. At that point, I stopped myself.

Not because I had run out of questions quite the opposite. But because I realised that asking more would no longer be fair to the other participants. Three questions had already opened extended discussion, and the space belonged to everyone in the room, not just to my curiosity. That moment, too, stayed with me. It reminded me that understanding is not only about asking the right questions, but about knowing when to step back and listen.

We broke for dinner, and at 8.30 p.m., we reconvened for a collective dialogue titled Mass Movements and Leftist Parties in Southeast Asia. Representatives from different countries across the region took turns sharing their experiences recounting how mass movements had emerged in their own contexts, the resistance they faced, and the changes they believed those movements had helped to bring about.

Each story carried its own weight, shaped by local histories, political constraints, and social realities. As I listened, I realised that what held my attention was not the passion of the accounts that I had already witnessed earlier in the day but a quieter question that kept returning: what real change had these movements actually produced?

I have always been uneasy about mass movements. From where I stand, they often appear disruptive loud, exhausting, and emotionally charged without clear or lasting outcomes. Even in Malaysia, where I witnessed the Bersih movement unfold, I remain uncertain about how much tangible political change it ultimately achieved.

Governments shifted, rhetoric changed, but whether power itself was meaningfully transformed is harder to say. So as the representatives spoke, I found myself listening less for inspiration and more for evidence — moments where collective action translated into durable gains: policy shifts, institutional reform, improved lives. I was not looking for perfection, but for something measurable enough to justify the cost such movements demand of those who participate in them.

What this session offered me was not a definitive answer, but something more honest: an acknowledgement that change is rarely linear, rarely immediate, and almost never clean. Mass movements do not always deliver what they promise — but they do alter the boundaries of what becomes possible.

Interestingly, I also met several Singaporeans who had travelled specifically for this event. Some I recognised immediately from conversation others revealed themselves only later, in quieter exchanges over coffee or dinner.

We spoke not as activists or representatives, but simply as people trying to understand what we were witnessing. Before parting, we exchanged contacts not with grand plans or declarations, but with a shared sense that the conversation did not need to end there.

There was talk of keeping in touch, perhaps meeting again in Singapore, continuing the dialogue in a different setting, under different circumstances. I found that moment quietly reassuring.

It reminded me that beyond labels, movements, and ideologies, what often persists are relationships small, tentative, human connections formed around shared curiosity rather than shared certainty.