English-language tabla! relaunches website for greater community engagement

SINGAPORE - English publication tabla!, which caters to Singapore’s Indian community, officially relaunched its website on Nov 19 with the goal of bringing together and engaging with community leaders, entrepreneurs, supporters and stakeholders, both in the local Indian community and diaspora communities globally.

Mr T. Raja Segar, editor of Tamil Murasu and supervising editor of tabla!, called it “a new beginning”, at the launch held at the SPH Media News Centre in Toa Payoh.

Around 80 guests from key Indian associations, organisations and businesses attended the event.

Housed under Tamil Murasu, tabla! previously operated with a static website that displayed only its e-paper. The revamped site, which went live in June, got a bold new look, organised sections and daily content.

Mr Venga Subramaniam, editor of tabla!, said that while the publication’s primary purpose is to serve the local Indian community, its refreshed website and growing social media presence across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn are also designed to reach audiences worldwide.

In the coming days, the website will see an integrated social media feed as well as an AI-powered quick news feed.

“On a weekly basis, we reach about 17,000 people through our print and website mediums. On social media, we engage some 5,000 users. We’re just starting on this digitalisation journey, so these numbers are pretty good as a baseline,” Mr Venga said.

The event saw a closed-door dialogue with Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth and Manpower Dinesh Vasu Dash, who was guest of honour. The session was moderated by Mr Venga.

The topics discussed ranged from language and education to cremation rites, intra-racial and interracial integration, and moving towards a “we-first” society that helps one another.

In his closing remarks, Mr Dinesh said: “tabla! has a very important role in the community because it reaches out to parts of the community that may not necessarily be Tamil Murasu readers. The way tabla! and Tamil Murasu complement one another, I think, is the strength of the set-up that you have.”

Mr Patrick Daniel, former editor-in-chief of SPH’s English, Malay and Tamil newspapers, observed that the Indian community is largely bilingual. “All of them speak their dialects and their languages, but they are also very conversant in English. We quickly figured out that, actually, an English paper would be the best way to reach them.”

Former editors and journalists noted that tabla!, since its first edition on Oct 10, 2008, has always served the wider Indian community and non-Indians who were interested in Indian affairs and culture.

Former Tamil Murasu chairman S. Chandra Das said: “The non-Tamil organisations were able to use tabla! as a medium for them to publicise their events, so I think it did the Indian community some good.”

Former SPH journalist and current chairman of the Sikh Advisory Board, Mr Malminderjit Singh, has contributed as a guest writer to tabla!.

He said: “One thing that tabla! has done very well is provide a glimpse into the different sub-ethnic groups so that we can keep abreast of each other’s developments and events.”

Mr Raja noted the role of tabla! as a bridge between communities, saying: “The powerful thing we can do is to go beyond the community, so that the other ethnic groups in Singapore will get to know the Indian community better. They have a thousand questions about us, and sometimes you are not patient enough to answer, so let tabla! talk for you.”