“…That is why Russian Marxists say that there must be no compulsory official language, that the population must be provided with schools where teaching will be carried on in all the local languages, that a fundamental law must be introduced in the constitution declaring invalid all privileges of any one nation and all violations of the rights of national minorities…”.

Is a compulsory official language needed? By Lenin.

Introduction

One fundamental and yet unresolved agenda of the left is language. Beyond being a tool of communication languages had developed to become icons of identity and culture. This paper addresses on language as the unresolved national question and attempts to explain a case for vernacular languages.

Kamus Dewan defines vernacular as “relating to or a language or dialect commonly spoken by the members of a particular group or a community in a society. (yang berkaitan dengan atau yang menggunakan bahasa atau dialek yang dipertuturkan oleh sesuatu golongan atau kaum dalam masyarakat).

Oxford Fajar Advanced Learner’s English-Malay Dictionary defines vernacular as: “language or dialect spoken in a particular country or region, as compared with a formal or written language. (bahasa atau dialek yang dituturkan di negara atau kawasan tertentu berbanding dengan bahasa yang formal atau bahasa bertulis).

The term vernacular therefore refers to a non-formal language (commonly spoken) used by a particular group or a community in a society.

During the British occupation, the language system (involving language, school and education system) for the Malays, Chinese, Indians and other minorities were considered to be vernacular whereas the formal language was English.

After independence, Bahasa Melayu became the national and official language of the country forming the official language system. The language system (involving language, school and education system) of the Chinese, Indians and other minorities became vernacular.

A simple analogy from the above is that language system is function of power. The one in control of power imposes the choice of his language over the others. Therefore whether a language is treated as formal or vernacular is dependant on the choice of dominant power ruling the country.

During the British occupation, the anti-colonialist left-movement had no problem in supporting the vernacular language/school/education. The multiracial left stood against the English language system alleging it to be discriminatory and oppressive against other languages.

Similarly, during the Japanese occupation, the use of Japanese language system (involving language, school and education system) was opposed by the Left, based on the same reasoning.

The Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) issued a Nine Point anti-Japanese Manifesto in 1943. Item 6 of the manifesto stated that the development of a national culture should be through a multilingual system of free education. (p.77, alias Chin Peng: My Side of History, Chinese version)

The CPM announced an Eight Point Programme in August 15, 1945. Item 6 of this programme stated that a democratic education system must be placed in lieu of the existing system and the development of national culture shall encompass multi languages. (p.105, alias Chin Peng: My Side of History, Chinese version)

The left view, on the equality of the languages and culture as contained in their Anti-Japanese Nine Point Manifesto in 1943 and the Eight Point Programme in 1945, was surprisingly dropped.

In 1947, through the combine effort of two progressive forces comprising Malay nationalist group Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (Putera) and the All-Malayan Council of Joint Action (AMCJA) a document called The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya was formulated. In this document the earlier left views on equality of languages and culture were compromised and replaced with the Malay nationalist views advocated by Putera.

Thereafter, the post independent Malaya saw the replacement of the Malay language as the national and official language replacing English. The Chinese, Tamil and other languages of the minorities took a back stage. The Alliance and Barisan Nasional governments claiming to be racially representing the races did not promote the growth of other languages. In fact the Chinese, Tamil and other minority languages faced official discrimination hampering its development in the post-independent Malaysia.

Arguably the left movements can be said to have failed in its role to reach a consensus on this sensitive and controversial issue of language. Perhaps it is time for the left movements to review its position and make a firm stand through democratic debates and discussions with relevant groups. The ensuing perspective is an outline for an open discussion on this issue.

People’s constitution and Malay nationalism

The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya was drafted jointly by Putera and AMCJA. The AMCJA was formed in Dec 22, 1946. It then had about 400,000 members representing political parties, workers unions, women organisations and youth groups from all races and all classes. Its formation was based on six principles.

1. Consolidate Singapore with Malaya

2. Election of a central government and state councils

3. Malay rulers shall have vested power and responsibility to the people through the Council Meetings.

4. A new constitution for Malaya with special provisions for the development of Malays in politics and economy.

5. Malay traditions and Islam fully protected by Malays through a special council.

6. Citizenship for all who adopts Malaya as the land of permanent residence and declares undivided loyalty.

On the other side, Putera, which was formed on Feb 22, 1947, was made up of about 150,000 members. Its membership was represented by Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM), Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API), Kesatuan Tani, Angkatan Wanita Sedar (Awas) and some 80 other smaller organisations. It had 10 principles, in addition to the six form the above and the following four were added.

- Bahasa Melayu shall be made the national language.

- Defence and the state affairs shall be the joint responsibility of the government of Malaysia and the British government.

- The citizens of Malaya shall be named as Malays.

- The national flag for Malaya shall have red and white colours as the background.

Undeniably the four principles of Putera represented Malay nationalism. With an open mind AMCJA compromised and accepted these, which had the support of the CPM, the influential partner of both teams.

The attack on the vernacular system

Often it is stated that the vernacular system is a ‘divide and rule’ policy of the British. Not denying the British intent to divide and rule, one report of the British on education in 1951, i.e. Barnes Report failed to affirm that it had such intention with regard to vernacular education “… Chinese and Indians are being asked to give up gradually their own vernacular schools, and to send their children … to schools where Malay is the only oriental language taught…”

There were objections raised by the Chinese and Indians. This prompted the tabling of the Fenn-Wu Report in the same year. It defended the vernacular system: “… any restrictive imposition of a language or two languages upon the people of Malaya would not provide a healthy atmosphere for community understanding and national unity”. Somehow this put a stop to any effort to implement the proposal contained in the Barnes Report.

The minister of education of the Alliance government, Abdul Razak headed a committee and formulated the education policy for the soon to be free country. The Razak Report 1956 stated: “.. the ultimate objective of educational policy in this country must be to bring the children of all races under a national education system in which the national language is the main medium of interaction.”

The ‘ultimate objective’ policy faced tremendous opposition from Chinese educationalist movements, in particular the Dong Jiao Zong. The policy intended to close down Chinese and Tamil schools was temporarily disbanded. The lesser controversial Education Ordinance 1957 was well received by all races.

But, it was not too long before the controversy erupted in the form of the Rahman Talib Report in 1960. The ‘ultimate objective’ tune was replayed again and this time it was to close down secondary schools which used mother tongue languages. The reason given was to promote national unity.

The mono-language and monoculture policies became very evident in the Alliance government when the Education Act 1961 was introduced. The Act gave vested power to the minister to convert mother-tongue based secondary schools to national secondary schools and to convert in suitable time any SJKC or SJKM to national schools.

The ‘ultimate objective’ policy continued its existence in the Education Act 1996. The Act exempted the application of the policy to schools existing prior to1996 or that established under the direction of the minister.

In addition to that, the 1971 National Cultural Policy was based on a mono-cultural concept of assimilation. For example, it states:

a. National culture must be based on the Malay culture
b. Suitable elements of other cultures may be incorporated
c. Islam shall be an important component in the National culture

Principle of equality of races

“….Whoever does not recognise and champion the equality of nations and languages, and does not fight against all national oppression or inequality, is not a Marxist; he is not even a democrat. That is beyond doubt…”

In theory, this statement of Lenin on equality of nations and languages i.e. races is readily acceptable in any rational and fair debate.

But reality in a multicultural society is different. A ruling race seldom accommodates the interests of other races for equality without discrimination in their society. This is true for even in certain socialist countries. Often the situation is that of a chauvinist or a narrow nationalist goal to oppress others in the name of assimilation.

On the basis of equality of all races, Malaysia being a multicultural society should have embraced a language system of all races on equal footing. There should not have been a classification of official and unofficial languages or formal and vernacular systems. All languages have a right to exist and developed to the needs of the relevant races.

The main characteristic of a multiracial society is its plural identity. Unity in diversity is the strength that should be harnessed to forge a distinct national unity and not by an assimilated uniformity through forced integration.

Confronting oppression is the most important principle to defend a race. In this context recalling Lenin;

“…What we do not want is the element of coercion. We do not want to have people driven into paradise with a cudgel, for no matter how many fine phrases about “culture” you may utter, a compulsory official language involves coercion, the use of the cudgel…”

Therefore if national unity becomes a pretext to deny rights of affected races and their vernacular system, then what is achieved cannot be termed as unity. It is fragmenting the socio-cultural fabric, which is oppressive and unfair.

In a multicultural society, the characteristics of diversity must be promoted and valued as the strength of the society. Any compelling action to unify the natural diversity judicially or administratively will tantamount to racial oppression, however noble is the intention.

In short, the principles of equality of races need to be the leading principle in dealing with the relationship between races and its vernacular language system. Every race has a right to develop and promote its mother language and culture freely.

Language rights a fundamental Human right

In our country, the existence of three major races (in relative population size); Malays, Chinese and Indians and many other minority groups is a reflection of a multiracial social fabric.

These races have their own distinct identities and characteristics (descendant, language, religion, culture, economic and social activities and psychological make-up and others). The existence of them being different and at variance cannot be denied.

On the other hand, our political system is based on communal lines. The political concepts of the Alliance and Barisan Nasional government based on ‘Malay Supremacy’, ’special rights of the Malays’ and ‘Bumiputraism’, were labels to deceive the Malays and the concept of “power sharing” to deceive the non-Malays.

Under the race-based rule of the Alliance and BN people of all races became victims of the policies. As a result of which there were protests and struggles by oppressed races to defend their communal rights to promote their own language in education, religion and culture. The reactive roles of these races should not be taken as a racist stand against nation building but rather are in defence of their own rights to survive in their own identities.

Rather than looking at them as merely communal rights, one could see it from the perspective of fundamental human rights as well to overcome the racial barrier to defend them. Perhaps such a perspective would garner support of the other races.

The international community has identified various rights linked to languages and recognised them as universally acceptable. Article 15 and 25 Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights, Barcelona 1996 states:

Article 15: 1. All language communities are entitled to the official use of their language within their territory.

Article 25: All language communities are entitled to have at their disposal all the human and material resources necessary to ensure that their language is present to the extent they desire at all levels of education within their territory: properly trained teachers, appropriate teaching methods, text books, finance, buildings and equipment, traditional and innovative technology.

The right to defend ones language rights as well can be seen from the acceptance of the concept of cultural diversity. In the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Unesco, 2001, in opposing homogenisation that silences other languages, states in Article 1:

“Cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as bio-diversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.”

Importantly, not allowing the existence of schools to promote learning of mother languages has been termed as “linguistic genocide” in the UN International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (E793, 1948):

Article III (1) Prohibiting the use of the language of the group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of publications in the language of the group.

In accordance with Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, in her well researched paper Language policies and education: the role of education in destroying or supporting the world’s linguistic diversity articulates a case for the understanding of the mother language and the need for mother tongue education.

She argues, “Assimilationist submersion education where indigenous and minority children are taught through the medium of dominant languages, causes mental harm and often leads to the students using the dominant language with their own children later on, i.e. over a generation or two the children are linguistically and often in other ways too forcibly transferred to a dominant group”.

“This happens to millions of speakers of threatened languages all over the world. There are no schools or classes teaching the children through the medium of the threatened indigenous or minority languages”.

“The transfer to the majority language-speaking group is not voluntary: alternatives do not exist, and parents do not have enough reliable information about the long-term consequences of the various choices. Because of this, we are not talking about ‘language suicide’, even if it might at first seem like the speakers are themselves abandoning their languages”.

“‘Prohibition’ can be direct or indirect. If there are no minority teachers in the pre-school/schools and if the minority languages are not used as the main media of education, the use of these languages is indirectly prohibited in daily intercourse/in schools, i.e. it is a question of linguistic genocide. Most of this prohibition is today more sophisticated than the earlier physical punishment for speaking the mother tongue.”

In 2003, the BN government had forced the conversion of teaching of Science and Mathematics subjects in schools from mother tongue languages in vernacular schools to English language. Skutnabb-Kangas views such move as one-step backward.

“Most children obviously want in their own interest to learn the official language of a country and mostly also to learn English if it is not one of the official languages. But learning new languages, including the dominant languages should not happen subtractively, but additively, in addition to their own languages. Formal education which is subtractive, i.e. which teaches children something of a dominant language at the cost of their first language, is genocidal.”

Unesco’s position paper on education in a multilingual world, states in its preface as follows, “Education is both a tool for and a reflection of cultural diversity. In addition, research has shown that learners learn best in their mother tongue as a prelude to and complement of bilingual education approaches.”

The position paper is concluded with the following three principles.

Principle I

Unesco supports mother tongue instruction as a means of improving educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience of the learners and teachers

Principle II

Unesco supports bilingual and/or multilingual education at all levels of education as a means of promoting both social and gender equality and as a key element of linguistically diverse societies.

Principle III

Unesco supports language as an essential component of inter-cultural education in order to encourage understanding between different population groups and ensure respect for fundamental rights.

Fundamental human rights/communal rights vs class perspective

The rights perspective does not stop with the major races of the country in demanding for their language and cultural rights but also enables the same to all minority communities to enjoy such rights, thus invoking similar demands.

Demanding rights with regard to language in our country often gets complicated. For instance, can the demand to promote and expand Chinese (SJKC) and Tamil (SJKT) primary schools, 60 existing private Chinese secondary cchools (PCSS) and calling for the setting up of a Merdeka University be against national unity and a claim for ‘cultural autonomy’?

Essentially the SJKC and SJKT fall within the national educational curriculum under the Ministry of Education and PCSS has little difference with the national secondary schools but for the medium of instruction.

Numerous private educational institutions have their medium of instruction in English. Why is it that these institutions do not pose any threat to national unity but a threat is envisaged only when the medium is in Chinese? And why and how the demand for language rights could be interpreted as a demand for ‘cultural autonomy’?

Going by the principles of equality of races, recognizing the linguistic rights of communities and rejecting any forced means to build racial relationship, the most logical outcome ought to be for the existence of multi language mediums in our education system.

In other words a socialist perspective founded on class analysis cannot contradict the aspirations of oppressed races for the rights of their languages and other fundamental rights. Otherwise, how are we going to declare that the socialist perspective is progressive and superior to other bourgeoisie models?

To quote Lenin again:”Recognition of the equality of nations and languages is important to Marxists, not only because they are the most consistent democrats. The interests of proletarian solidarity and comradely unity in the workers’ class struggle call for the fullest equality of nations with a view to removing every trace of national distrust, estrangement, suspicion and enmity. And full equality implies the repudiation of all privileges for any one language and the recognition of the right of self-determination for all nations.”

There is argument that national or racial demands are subordinate to the interest of class struggle. To argue this, one must locate how the vernacular system is contradicted with class struggle. Do we have any evidence that the products of a vernacular education system to become anti-class and products of a national system are advocates of class
struggle?

Our local history has striking examples to prove that class struggles were historically waged mainly by the proletariat of vernacular system. It is undeniable that the products of the vernacular system had contributed and sacrificed for the cause of the class struggle in our country.

Some comrades may argue, we support linguistic rights and equality of races, but do not support the education system being taken over by them, and do not support schools being divided according to race. These arguments in reality need a debate.

In fact it is the denial of the rights to different mediums of instruction that create the polarisation and not the other way round. When we support equality and linguistic rights, we are promoting aspirations of all races and languages. The single Malay medium goal is an obstruction to language freedom.

For instance, the 60 Chinese secondary schools are privately run by Dong Jiao Zong, because they are denied of their right to become part of the national system. The only reason is that they refuse to change their medium of instruction from Mandarin to Malay in accordance with the Education Act 1961. As a result, how could we say we could not support Dong Jiao Zong because it has taken over the 60 PCSS?

Similarly, in another instance, how could we say we also cannot support the existence and development of vernacular Tamil schools, which only caters for the Tamil children though others are not denied entry?

We believe the socialist perspective based on class analysis is not in contradiction with the rights of different races that are fair and reasonable and in consonant with universally accepted human rights. The contradiction seems to exist only in the failure of socialist appreciation to defend and protect such rights from being deprived.

The weakness of the Left movement

The left movement has yet to reach a consensus stand on the vernacular education system. Perhaps, different educational backgrounds and upbringing may shape different understanding of the vernacular system.

Generally, the English educated do not appreciate the vernacular system very much. They aspire to promote an education system that can bring together children of all races, and are inclined to hold English language higher than mother languages.

They may accept the Singaporean education system, or the BN government’s Vision School concept, the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English language and the teaching of Tamil and Mandarin as optional subjects in the national schools and finally for the closing down of SJKC and SJKT.

Some leftist Malays, entrenched in Malay nationalism, which advocates Malay as the national language and sole official language, may fear that the existence of SJKC and SJKT would become a hindrance to national unity. Neither do they articulate openly of their fear, nor openly support and defend SJKC and SJKT, Chinese private secondary schools, the establishment of Nanyang University, Merdeka University, ERA college and so forth.

And yet another group that is in dilemma is those Chinese and Indians educated in their respective mother tongues and involved with the grass roots. This group is faced with various ” class analyses” that attempt to move them away from demanding reasonable and fair linguistic and race rights in terms of equality.

Should they support the demands of the Chinese and Indians to make their languages as official languages or support the establishment of Merdeka University, they would be accused as racist. They often face argument, and some tend to accept that to maintain racial unity, race rights must be compromised. Therefore, the vernacular system never had the full support of the left movement.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially in the election manifestoes in1959 and 1964 of the Socialist Front, a coalition of the Labour Party and Parti Rakyat, reflected that, Malay shall be the sole official language and it shall be the language of communication to unify the masses and also the main language medium for education. Also noted is that they accommodated that Chinese, Tamil and English shall exists as mediums of instructions in accordance with Article 152 of Federal Constitution.

In 1967, the language policy of the Labour Party changed. It opposed the Language Bill that supported English supremacy, and moved its support for making Chinese and Tamil as official languages of the country.

Parti Rakyat disagreed with this and it had become a factor for it to withdraw from the Socialist Front.

At the time, the Singapore Socialist Front made a radical change. It took a stand to declare all languages shall have equal status and that there is no need for a national language. It argued that a need for lingua franca language does not mean it should be a national or official language.

After such events, the vernacular system became an unresolved phenomena of the Left movement. It is exploited by politicians of all races in the context of racial politics for gaining ground among their own races. So much so that, at present it has become a controversial and sensitive issue for discussion and debate.

The effort by Parti Sosialis Malaysia to discuss this issue is laudable. It is time for the Left movement to study deeply and make new grounds in understanding the vernacular system. Factors such as equality of races, linguistic rights as fundamental human rights and balanced class analysis need a dimension that can overlap the aspirations of a multiracial society.

Conclusion

Based on the above views and analyses, some preliminary inferences are made to initiate discussions:

a. Bahasa Melayu shall remain and be supported as the national language and lingua franca or the language of communication of the people of the country.

b. The language/schools/education system of other races shall not be discriminated by labeling them as vernacular, unofficial, informal or as a system that threatens national unity and should be abolished.

c. Based on the principles of equality of all races as enshrined in the linguistic rights of races and fundamental human rights, upon a balanced class analysis considering the cultural diversity and multiracial environment, the Left movement should make a stand and move forward proactively to support the mother language system of education.

It is hoped that the ensuing debate on this issue redefines the vernacular csystem for a greater understanding.

* * *

This working paper, co-authored by K ARUMUGAM, was presented at a recent event in Kuala Lumpur.

KeadilanRakyat.org: Vernacular education system and the Left