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 system for a greater understanding.

Yesterday: Vernacular education system and the Left (Pt 1)

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