SRI LANKA: Kumaratunga Walks the Risky Language Tight-Rope

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Mar 2 1998 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga sent a powerful political message last month when she delivered her independence day speech in English.

By opting for English she signalled her government’s determination to usher in peace in the Tamil-dominated north and east, ending the civil war that has crippled one of the world’s fastest growing developing countries.

The roots of the conflict can be traced to the replacing of English with Sinhala as the official language, clearly aimed at the minority Hindu Tamils who were better educated than the majority Buddhist Sinhalas.

Ironically the anti-Tamil campaign was spearheaded by President Kumaratunga’s father, Solomon Dias Bandaranaike who won in 1956 on a “Sinhala only language policy” slogan.

Thirty eight years later his daughter rode to power by promising to heal the deep ethnic wounds. Her People’s Alliance government has been trying to win back estranged Tamils. “The president was perfectly justified in speaking in English,” says peace activist Charles Abeysekera of the Movement for Inter- Racial Justice and Equality.

Pro-peace lobbies in Sri Lanka say that the president was only reflecting the importance of a link language in Sri Lanka by speaking in English on Feb. 4 — 50 years after independence. Officials then read out the Sinhala and Tamil translations of her speech.

Sinhala language fanatics, including Buddhist high priests, have demanded she apologise, accusing her of turning the clock back to the era of British domination.

University researcher Dr. Ahamed Mohamed, in a recent paper titled ‘English as a medium of instruction in Sri Lanka’, says that the British colonialists had used the missionary school system to establish control.

But colonial-era fears do not hold 50 years after the end of British rule, he argues. Sri Lanka needs to reintroduce English in schools to be able to build on local talent.

When Sinhala became the official language, government officials who could not speak the language were eased out. As the Tamils, though only 12 percent of the population, were amongst the best professionals, they were hard hit.

By the 1970s, Tamil politicians were demanding equality in language and jobs for their community but successive governments were silent. Feeding on the minority’s frustration, the peaceful campaign turned into a guerrilla war in the 1980s.

Belatedly Tamil was also made an official language alongside Sinhala but in practice implementation is weak even by government departments who communicate with Tamils in Sinhala, which most of them cannot understand.

The ‘Midweek Mirror’ newspaper commenting on the language tussle recently, said “besides being the dynamo spurring Sri Lankans up the social ladder, the abandoning of English severed the bridge between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and fanned the flames of ethnic animosity.”

But the newspaper also pointed out that outside the government, English has become the language of business ever since Sri Lanka’s economic shift from state control to private enterprise in 1977.

“Today most of the private sector firms do their day-to-day work in English. It has become not only desirable, but essential,” said Rajan Asirwatham, partner in a top accountancy firm and a former government official.

Most Colombo firms prefer to recruit youngsters with a good working knowledge of English rather than highly-qualified graduates from Sri Lanka’s universities who do not speak the language — one of the major reasons for the student unrest of the 1980s which turned anti-government.

The People’s Liberation Front, better known by its Sinhala acronym JVP, turned student anger against the government. But its violent tactics were matched by the government which eventually brutally crushed the movement.

The explosive language issue has never been tackled. The Kumaratunga government appears ready for change, even though less than 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 18 million people would have understood President Kumaratunga’s independence day speech, says Reggie Siriwardene, well-known writer.

According to researcher Mohamed, political disinterest was also because those who have the money are educating their

children abroad, enabling them to claim the best jobs on their return.

He thinks the best way to ensure ethnic harmony, in multi- ethnic Sri Lanka would be to bring back English so all children will study together and learn to understand and respect the culture, religion, traditions and life-styles of other ethnic groups.

But unless Sinhalese hardliners relent, even the Kumaratunga government will find the going tough.