The babel of the vernaculars
Josh Hong
‘I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.’ – Charles V.
So, he is no more Mr Nice Guy, although when he took over the helm from the once ‘much hated’ Dr Mahathir Mohamad, he was made out to be the one whiter than snow and everyone’s darling.
To win favour with the Chinese community, he sent a Lunar New Year’s greeting in Chinese calligraphy just two months before the 2004 general election. Unlike his predecessor of Indian lineage who was fanatical about being a true blue Malay, he allowed the Chinese press to reveal that his maternal grandfather was a Chinese Muslim hailing from Hainan island in China.
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There was a pervasive (mis)belief that he would be very different from the Chinese-sceptic Mahathir, and his PR consultants went as far as to portray him as a modern-day Justice Bao, a legendary judge in the Song Dynasty best known for his uprightness and stern judgements against the crooked and the corrupt.
Vernacular school issue
But even this meagre hope has evaporated at lightning speed by now. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has managed to generate much of the hatred on the part of the Chinese community that was once reserved for his predecessor by suggesting that “different races studying in the same classroom gives Malaysia the best hope of staying a united country”.
What a lucky coincidence, that Utusan Malaysia happens to be in the same mind with the PM. Lidah Pegarang (for goodness’ sake, never mistake the writer for a Lidah Propaganda!) is all for a unitary education system so that children of all races may grow up together and appreciate each other’s cultural heritage better.
The ‘sensitive’ issue of vernacular education was first raised by the MCA. The Chinese-based party may rebuke PAS Youth chief Salahuddin Ayub for questioning its sincerity, but it does stretch one’s credulity to see the otherwise tame MCA stir the hornet’s nest of vernacular education.
Some Chinese appeared dismayed by the swift but negative response from Mohd Ali Rustam, the Malacca chief minister, and Khairy Jamaluddin, a ‘political newbie’ in the eyes of the MCA, in regard to the demand for more Chinese primary schools. For those who had pinned their hopes for greater openness on a single personality, the once ‘most liberal faces of Umno’ have now turned, eh, pretty ugly.
What’s the problem?
As if to assuage any unwarranted fear that might arise, the PM went on to say “we respect their choice of going to Chinese or Tamil schools, but it is also our hope that when students in vernacular schools complete their primary schooling, they will join their friends of other races in national secondary schools”.
Well, our Deputy Education Minister Hon Choon Kim has apparently failed to inform the PM that 90 percent of the pupils in Chinese primary schools already go to national schools. So, what is the problem?
As the head of a party founded to safeguard primarily the interests and dignity of the Malay community, Abdullah would have found himself in deep waters had he wavered over the issue. But his response also reflects the mindset of many Malays that Malaysia is first and foremost Tanah Melayu, and it can only be multicultural so long as the ‘native’ community in the country permits it.
Furthermore, nearly five decades of indoctrination by the state has created a deeply entrenched belief among the Malays that the Malaysian citizenship given to the non-Bumiputras is the maximum ‘compromise’ rather than a right, furnished with all the trappings of political participation for all races. With these generous concessions, it comes as no surprise that the Malay community is puzzled and at times irritated by the constant nagging for more Chinese schools by its Chinese counterpart.
The idea that a common language and a unitary education system are essential in fostering and maintaining social cohesion as well as racial unity may not be entirely false, but it is yet to be proven absolute. In all likelihood, language is hardly the be-all and end-all in many ethnic disputes.
The Republic of Indonesia, with Bahasa Indonesia as the lingua franca, lost its 27th province of East Timor in 2001, and is still fighting tooth and nail to keep Aceh within the family, whereas the Swiss, be they German, French, Italian or Romansch-speaking, may find a singular education system for a heterogeneous country ridiculous and even repugnant.
Years of one-dimensional education are enough to condition a large part of the Malaysian populace to believing that communal interests would be best articulated in either Malay or English, pushing others such as Tamil, Punjabi and Chinese to the fringes of national politics. The ironic truth is, much like the Umno politicians, many non-Malays, too, erroneously regard vernacular education as a hindrance to national unity.
In a milieu like this, it is a given that we are all obligated to learn Malay, and we hardly question why there is very little interest on the part of the Malays and the Chinese in picking up even some rudiments of Tamil, let alone the languages of the foreign workers on our soil.
The Malay mindset
Will Kymlicka, a prominent theorist of minority rights, wrote in his seminal book Politics in the Vernacular that politics can only be democratic if it is discussed in the vernacular, for ‘the average citizen feels at ease only when he discusses politics in his own language’, and that ‘the more political debate takes place in the vernacular, the greater the participation’.
Noble Kymlicka’s idea may be, it is beyond the comprehension of the ruling elites in Malaysia. Thanks to the guided democracy being practiced here, linguistic diversity is a blessing as long as it does not interfere too much in the public space. Once the line is crossed, it becomes a curse. And the Damocles’s sword of Malay supremacy seems perpetually hanging.
There is nothing wrong for the government to hope to promote national unity among school kids. However, when a non-Bumiputra student is about to look forward to his or her university life, the reality begins to bite. I am curious to know what will the PM say to those who have to go for STPM, while most of their Bumiputra classmates are conspicuously absent from the class, some even being quietly whisked away to a foreign country for the much-coveted tertiary education.
Walking home from a cup of teh tarik the other day, I picked up a leaflet about a new housing project in the area, with prices going up to RM230,000 - plus a discount of 15 percent for Bumiputras. National unity begins in school. Hmm, it does sound nice on paper.
