THE REVIVAL OF A MINORITY LANGUAGE IN MALAYSIA
Written by LPP Blog Administrator on Thursday, October 23, 2008THE REVIVAL OF A MINORITY LANGUAGE IN MALAYSIA:
The Dynamics between National Linguistic Ideology and Ethnic Linguistic Identity
Saran Kaur Gill
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
Malaysia is a multi-ethnic nation with a rich and colourful multilingual environment, where languages possess multi-functional roles and varying status. The breadth of language variety and spread in Malaysia is discussed extensively in Language and Society in Malaysia (Asmah, 1982), The Linguistic Scenery in Malaysia (Asmah, 1992) and Language Planning in Southeast Asia (Abdullah Hassan, 1994).
A broad paintbrush of the minority community’s linguistic scenery in Malaysia further contributes to this multilingual richness. Many of Malaysia’s minority groups have had a long immigrant history and they are not native to the country. Therefore their languages are regarded as “ethnic minority languages” as opposed to “native minority languages” (May, 2001: 16)
This paper will focus specifically on the minority Punjabi-Sikh community and its language. It will do this in the context of the government provisions made for the sustenance of minority languages in the post-independence years and community attempts made for the reversal of language shift in the 90’s and the 21st century, a time period that spans 50 years in total. This will be examined against a backdrop of the ideological views on minority languages of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, who has played a dominant role in the policies and development of the nation over an extensive period of 22 years.
Malaysia (encompassing both East and West Malaysia) has a population of 25 million. The dominant ethnic group, the Malays, are regarded as natives of the soil as manifest in the term used to describe them politically – the bumiputera, which translated means “sons of the soil”. They make up 65.1% of the population, numbering 16,275,000. In contrast, a large proportion of the population is of immigrant ancestry and is made up of two significant minority groups – the Chinese and the Indian communities. They make up 26% (6,500,000) and 7.7% (1,925,000) respectively. (http://www.statistics.gov.my) (Census 2000) In addition, there is a host of other lesser-numbered minority groups, one of which is the Punjabi-Sikh community, which numbers about 100,000 making up 0.4% of the population.
We will begin with a short description of the historical background of the Punjabi-Sikh community in Malaysia.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE PUNJABI-SIKH COMMUNITY IN MALAYSIA
The Punjabi-Sikh community in Malaysia originated from the state of Punjab in India and the process of migration began in the last quarter of the 19th century. “Reports about the favourable climate, the existence of an influential Sikh community which had set up Sikh temples in most major towns, and of good job prospects, together with the relatively high wages, made many young Sikhs eager to seek a fortune … in distant Malaysa.” (Sidhu, 1991: 7)
Initially, the Punjabi-Sikhs, renowned for their fearlessness and courage, were largely employed by the British to work in the armed forces. They also joined the police force as it gave them high wages, prestige and a regular once every five years paid holiday to the Punjab. (Sidhu, 1991: 17) Those who were not as educated and could not get employment in the security forces, were still gainfully employed as watchmen, bullock-cart drivers, dairymen and mining labourers. (Mahli, 1998)
Gradually this changed, and a large number of Sikhs from the commercial and educated classes migrated to Malaysia. They became wholesalers and retailers in the textile trade. They were mainly attracted by opportunities of employment by the British Government. (For a detailed description on patterns and reasons for migration see Sidhu, 1991; Malhi, 1998)
Today, “The Punjabi-Sikh community in Malaysia though small in absolute numbers, has certainly made a great impact on all phases of the Malaysian socio-economic and political scene, especially in business, education, agriculture and dairy farming, the armed forces, sports, politics as well as specific professions like law and medicine.” (Mahinder Santokh Singh cited in Sidhu, 1991: 1)
This small but proud community brought with them their cultural heritage and their language – the Punjabi language.
POLITICAL VIEWPOINT: MAHATHIR AND MINORITY LANGUAGES
In our examination of the challenges this minority community faced in sustaining the Punjabi language, it would be pertinent to begin with the interview conducted with the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir. Since there was the rare opportunity of directly meeting with Tun Mahathir, it was felt important to find out the political viewpoint about minority languages and the nature of government support.
This interview was conducted as part of a government funded two-year project, “Language Policy and Planning in Higher Education in Malaysia: Responding to the Needs of the Knowledge Economy.” (Gill, Saran K. Hazita Azman, Norizan Razak and Fadhil Mansor, 2003-2005) This interview focused mainly on the dynamic tension between Bahasa Melayu, the national language and English, a former colonial language and the dominant language of science and technology. It focused on the recent drastic change in the medium of instruction from Bahasa Melayu to English for science and technology in the education system, a decision which was largely driven by Tun Mahathir himself. (For further discussion of the reasons and impact of this change in policy see Gill, 2005, 2006a, 2006b)
Amidst many other questions, the following question was posed to him:
Should the government support or enhance the teaching of minority languages in this country?
Mahathir’s response:
That will end us into a lot of problems because we have about 30 different dialects in Malaysia including Tamil. We cannot do for one minority without doing for the rest. In the end, of course we will become vegetable soup …. such a mixture that we find ourselves being divided. You want to learn your own language ….no country has been as liberal as Malaysia. If you look at other countries in the region, you will find that they give no support at all except to the language of that country. Other immigrant communities they are certainly not allowed (to be educated in their own language) (my inclusion)….. That is why we see some of them coming to study in Malaysia. Other communities do not have their own school. They go to their national school or not at all. That is the policy but we are liberal. We have Tamil schools, Chinese schools and the government pays. We are liberal but to keep on chipping away at the national policy will end in us being so mixed up that we really cannot identify ourselves.
UNRAVELLING THE IDEOLOGY UNDERLYING THE RHETORIC OF THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER
It will be pertinent to unravel the ideology and issues that are pertinent to our language maintenace/shift journey that have emerged from the above statement.
The first issue is underpinned by an ideology of liberalism towards minority languages. In contrast, the second raises the highly debatable issue that support for minority languages will lead to a divisive national community. The following sections will deal with these two issues and their impact on the development of Punjabi education in Malaysia.
LIBERAL APPROACH TO MOTHER-TONGUE EDUCATION: ITS IMPACT ON PUNJABI LANGUAGE
This arises from the following extract of Tun Mahathir’s political viewpoint:
“You want to learn you own language ….no country has been as liberal as Malaysia. If you look at other countries in the region, you will find that they give no support at all except to the language of that country. Other immigrant communities they are certainly not allowed (to be educated in their own language) (my inclusion)….. That is why we see some of them coming to study in Malaysia. Other communities do not have their own school. They go to their national school or not at all. That is the policy but we are liberal. We have Tamil schools, Chinese schools and the government pays.”
(Interview conducted by Gill on the 16 June, 2005)
As Tun Dr. Mahathir has articulated above, the support for these significant minority languages has always been there, both in legislation as well as implementation. Even though Bahasa Melayu has been designated the national official language, Malaysia has adopted a liberal policy of allowing for minority languages to be used in systems of education. These are minority languages that play a dominant role in the education system through the medium of instruction in respective Mandarin and Tamil schools. What is pertinent for this paper is to examine the strength of the rhetoric in terms of the reality of actual implementation with regards the minority language – Punjabi.
We will begin with an examination of post-independence history which provides an explanation for this liberal policy. In the year prior to independence, The Razak Report 1956 (declared a year before independence) proposed the establishment of,
“… a national system of education acceptable to the people of Federation as a whole which will satisfy their needs to promote their cultural, social, economic and political development as a nation, having regard to the intention of making Malay the national language of the country whilst preserving and sustaining the growth of the language and culture of other communities living in the country.” (cited in Yang, 1998: 36)
All of this was part of “drawing up the various policies which all aimed at evolving Malaya, now Malaysia, into an integrated nation” (Asmah, 1987: 59) after gaining independence from the British colonial powers.
Therefore, the 1956 Razak Report provided for mother-tongue education at the primary school level to be integrated into the national education system. This was later legislated into the Education Ordinance 1957. This resulted in the dominant minority communities, like the Chinese and Tamils setting up what was described as national-type schools as compared to national schools.2 In a similar manner, Punjabi language schools at the primary level were also set up in various towns in Malaysia in the early 1900s.3
Children received 6 years of education in their own mother tongue and then were transferred to Secondary schools where the medium was Malay. There were about 14 such Punjabi National-Type Schools in Malaysia in the 1960’s and about 60 to 70 private Punjabi Language schools. In 1960 about 200 pupils sat for the PMR Punjabi Language paper and 47 sat for the SPM paper. It is noted that both the government and the community actively taught and promoted the language. It could be safely said that over 80% of the Punjabi community received some sort of formal or informal education in the language (Randhawa, 2004: 1).
The provision of Punjabi language education in Malaysia began with Stage 4 of Fishman’s “Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale” (see Fishman, 1991: 81-121) There are 8 stages in this scale ranging from Stage 1 which is “the most secure position for a minority language” where there is “some use of the minority language (henceforth ML) in higher level educational, occupational, governmental and media realms” to that of the least secure stage, Stage 8, where “remaining speakers of a ML are old and usually vestigial users.” (Paraphrased in May, 2001: 2) Stage 4 is at the mid-level where the minority language has a functional role to play in the educational system and is used as a medium of instruction.
Personally, this is a reasonable provision for an immigrant population as it provides the balance that needs to be maintained between minority community needs and the needs of the state dominated by a majority ethnic group. This is a crucial consideration for ethnic and political stability of most multi-ethnic nations.
REASONS FOR GRADUAL DECLINE OF THE FUNCTIONAL ROLES OF THE PUNJABI LANGUAGE
Unfortunately, despite the above provisions, the 1970’s and 1980’s saw a drastic change and decline in the teaching and learning of the language. The working paper on the Historical Background of Punjabi Education in Malaysia (Randhawa, 2004) and the cover story of the Sikh Magazine (Jaspal S., 2003: 24) aptly and timely trace the challenges facing the development of Punjabi education in Malaysia and its gradual demise. There were many varied reasons for this gradual marginalisation of mother-tongue education and we will begin with the dominant political nationalistic reason.
This marginalisation of mother-tongue education began with the Rahman Talib Committee 1960. The recommendations of this Report reversed the liberal approach taken in the Razak Report 1956. Its recommendations were translated into the Education Act 1961. It did this by leaving out crucial aspects of the 1957 Ordinance, as underlined below:
“3. The educational policy of the Federation is to establish a national system of education acceptable to the people as a whole which will satisfy their needs and promote their cultural, social, economic and political development as a nation, with the intention of making the Malay language the national language of the country whilst preserving and sustaining the growth of the language and culture of peoples other than Malays living in the country.” (cited in Yang, 1998: 40)
This is because during this period, Malaysia, focused, like a number of other countries, on the essential “educational agendas of nation-building, national identity and unity ….” (Tollefson and Tsui, 2004: viii) This is supported by Asmah (1982: 19), who states unequivocally that “the national language is the basis for the identification of the nation as one which is defined by linguistic and cultural characteristic peculiar to itself and which set it apart from others. This is especially so in a multiracial and multilingual independent country where if a common culture is to unify the young nation, it must have a common language, the national language.”
The authorities were very serious about ‘the progressive development of an educational system in which the national language is the main medium of instruction,” (para 3 of the Preamble of the Act). As a result, significant resources were channeled to enhancing the status and functional use of Bahasa Melayu in the education system. Consequently, there was a reduction in the budgets for the upkeep of schools that used the vernacular as the medium of education.
In addition to the political nationalistic reason, Randawa outlines other reasons for the decline of the Punjabi language. He explains that,
“ …. the lack of economic profitability for mastering the minority language, few trained teachers, lack of suitable books, lack of leadership and no anchor organization to support the measures that needed to be taken (Randhawa, 2004: 2).
As a result of all these, from 1980 onwards fewer and fewer pupils took the Punjabi language paper in SRP (now known as the PMR) and SPM. (The former is an exam for students who are 14 years of age and the latter is equivalent to the ‘O’ levels). The decline was so great that the Education Department did not set the PMR papers in 1993, 1994 and 1995. However, after a concerted request from some Punjabi Organisations the paper was resumed in 1996.
A drastic consequence of the above situation was that religious and language studies began to deteriorate amongst the Punjabi community. They seemed to have lost a “cultural core value” of attachment to one’s language or mother tongue. This is further explained by Skutnab-Kangas who when discussing other minority groups in the European context elaborates,
“You are born into a specific ethnic group, and this circumstance decides what your mother tongue … will initially be. But what happens later to your ethnicity, your identity, and your language (s) and how they are shaped and actualized is influenced by economic and political concerns and by your social circumstances and later life. These things also influence to what extent you are aware of the importance of your ethnicity and your mother tongue and the connection between them.” (Skutnab-Kangas, 1999: 55).
For the Punjabis, as a minority ethnic group, whose immigrant ancestry moved to this nation during colonial times to work at improving their economic standing in life, the priority then for this group, like many other immigrant minority groups was to succeed educationally, economically and socially. This is further explicated by Skutnab-Kangas who says,
“For many … minorities, ethnic identity was not initially seen as important. Rather they focused on school achievement, educational opportunity and equality.” Mastering the dominant languages were seen “as possessing instrumental value which their own languages, cultures and ethnicities could not promise.” This led to “the loss of their own linguistic resource, their own language or at least the chance of developing it to a high formal level.” (Skutnab-Kangas, 1999: 56)
This therefore raises the question of why and how should a minority community sustain and maintain their ethnic language? Should they not just ensure that their children are able to compete educationally and economically through the national language and English and not worry about their ethnic socio-cultural values and identity? Our pursuit of an answer to the above brings us then to the second issue emanating from Tun Mahathir’s interview.
DYNAMIC TENSION BETWEEN NATIONAL COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND ETHNIC COMMUNITY IDENTITY
The second ideological statement underlying Tun Mahathir’s rhetoric is that support for minority languages will result in us being a mixture of ethnic identities that will divide us and not serve the purposes of developing a collective national identity.
He supports this by saying:
“That will end us into a lot of problems because we have about 30 different dialects in Malaysia including Tamil. We cannot do for one minority without doing for the rest. In the end, of course we will become vegetable soup …. such a mixture that we find ourselves being divided.
We are liberal but to keep on chipping away at the national policy will end in us being so mixed up that we really cannot identify ourselves.”
It is clear that the political viewpoint is if support is given for the many minority languages, we will end up being a “vegetable soup … such a mixture that we find ourselves being divided … and really cannot identify ourselves.”
The message that is being conveyed is that it is alright to learn one’s mother tongue, but to expect the government to support this measure is a different consideration altogether. This is because strengthening of ethnic identity will lead to division of the multi-ethnic population of the nation. In addition, it will lead to a lack of identity, which in this case presumably refers to national identity – the strengthening of ethnic identities negates the building up of national identities.
The statement above directly contradicts one of the nine central strategic challenges for Malaysia’s full development by 2020, which was spearheaded by Mahathir himself. In this blueprint document for Malaysia’s aspirations to attain developed nation status, he states that the nation had to confront:
The challenge of establishing a matured, liberal and tolerant society in which Malaysians of all colors and creeds are free to practise and profess their customs, cultures and religious beliefs and yet feeling that they belong to one nation. (Mahathir, 1993: 405)
How then does one reconcile the above contradictory statements? It is very clear that the government is liberal with regards to rhetoric re: communities being free to practise and profess their cultures. This is encouraging for cultures and communities that have a strong ethnic language and as a result strong cultures. But some minority communities whose cultures and languages are in a state of decline (for reasons discussed earlier) may not be able to benefit from this liberal stance. This is because what they need at this point of decline in their ethnic language, culture and religion is concrete assistance from the government with regard reversing language shift. This situation runs parallel with Phillipson conclusion in the European context which states that, “Although several existing charters and documents protect cultural and social rights, the existing international or ‘universal’ declarations are in no way adequate to provide support for dominated languages.” (1992: 95)
This raises a crucial question which needs to be examined – does governmental support for minority languages lead to its population being a mixture of cultural identities with no focus on its collective national identity? Is this a zero sum game – an either or situation where mastery of the ethnic minority language leads to strengthening of ethnic boundaries and results in an inability to create and partake in a collective national identity?
How does one face the challenge of assisting minority communities to practice and profess their “customs, cultures and religious beliefs and yet feeling that they belong to one nation?” If one is sure of one’s ethnic roots then one can have a strong sense of collective identity which is based on the language of the dominant ethnic group. But if you take that away from the ethnic groups then it will be difficult for them to reconcile to their loss of ethnic identity whilst at the same time face the challenges of working towards a collective identity. After all, “… an accepting and unconflicted view of one’s own culture may be a building block of and a pre-condition for accepting unconflicted views of other cultures. Security begets security.” (Fishman, 1991: 31)
Stephen May in his discussion of this very same issue articulates what is clearly a disagreement with the ideology adopted by Tun Mahathir. He says,
“Such a position considerably understates the possibilities of holding dual or multiple identities, except oppositionally. And yet it is clear that many of us can and do hold multiple and complementary identities – social, political and linguistic – at one and the same time …. Certainly, one can hold both a regional and national identity without these necessarily being conflictual. Why then should this not also be the case for ethnic and national identities (Stepan, 1998; Taylor, 1998) (cited in May, 2001:106)
Given this, it will be appropriate at this stage at this stage to remind ourselves of the relationship between mother-tongue and ethnic identity. How crucial is a mother tongue to a community and its people? “The mother tongue is needed for psychological, cognitive and spiritual survival – cultural rights. … A child must be able to speak to parents, family and relatives, to know who he or she is ….” (Skutnab-Kangas, 1999: 58). After all, language is a pillar of identity. Fishman stresses this by stating that, “It has been claimed that ethnic identity is intrinsically connected to the language as spoken language is one of the most salient characteristics of ethnic groups.” (Fishman, 1999: 143). The tie between language and cultural identity is said to be so close that Wierzbicka (1992:22) opined that “languages are the best mirror of human mind and cultures, and it is through the vocabulary of human languages that we can discover and identify the culture specific conceptual organizations characteristic of different people of the world.” This is further emphasized by Spolsky (1998:57) who states that an important identity signifier for a person is the social group whose language a person speaks. All of these scholars stress a common emphasis of the fact that language is an integral part of a person’s identity.
Therefore in any multi-ethnic community, should it not be possible to help its population sustain identities at varying levels depending both on ethnic community and national needs? After all as Fishman emphasizes, “The human capacity to juggle, combine and implement these identities should not be underestimated, for to do so is to impoverish the human experience itself.” (Fishman, 2001: 21) Therefore it was crucial for the minority Punjabi-Sikh community to re-establish its ethnic identity through a reversal of the shift in the Punjabi language.
We move on now to explore the measures in existence for the sustenance and to initiate reversal of Punjabi language shift.
PRESENT-DAY GOVERNMENT MEASURES FOR MOTHER-TONGUE ACQUISITION: IMPACT ON PUNJABI LANGUAGE
The rapid decline in mastery of the mother tongue impacted deeply by creating the “lost generation” – a generation of Sikh children who could hardly speak Punjabi. This painted a darker picture of the fact that this heralded a fast decline in the Sikh identity itself. Fishman in his seminal work … says, “The problems of maintenance are particularly severe for speech communities which are undergoing language shift that is already so advanced that they cannot even control informal intergenerational usage within the confines of the home, family, neighbourhood and face-to-face community.” (Fishman, 1991: xii)
In these moments of hopelessness, Santokh Singh, an RLS activist writes that, “it is easy for a community to organize and overcome a problem like education if it has the backing of the government.” (Randhawa. 2004).
This then leads to an examination of the nature of the support given by the government in terms of mother-tongue acquisition in present times. As discussed in the earlier parts of the paper, the constitution provides for and encourages the teachings and learning of vernacular languages. Chinese and Tamil language is widely taught at primary level in such schools. The government plays the role of training Chinese and Tamil language teachers who are paid by the government.
In fact more recently, through government efforts to attract non-Malay students to national schools (Bahasa Melayu-medium schools), there have been moves to provide for the teaching and learning of Mandarin and Tamil.
In the Education Act, Reprint 1996, in the “Jadual 3” under “mata Pelajaran Tambahan Perinkat Rendah’ and “ Jadual 8 “ “Mata Pelajaran Tambahan Peringkat Menengah”, it is specifically stated that the following languages will be offered in schools:
a) Mandarin
b) Tamil
c) Arabic Language (communication)
d) Iban
e) Kadazandusun and
f) Semai
The Punjabi Language was not specifically mentioned in the Education Act. Despite this, the government did provide support through legislation for the teaching of Pupil’s Own Language (P.O.L.) in the national primary schools. The educational circular on “Conditions for Mother-Tongue Classes” (Education Dept, Federal Territory, 20th January 1988), which still applies, states that the teaching of these languages is not compulsory but it will only be made available given the following conditions:
1. If the parents of at least 15 pupils per standard or form so request for it.
2. There must be qualified teachers.
3. It is held for not more than 2 hours per week.
4. Classes are not allowed during the school holidays.
(JPWP. 03 – 018/ Jld. 10/(1).
This resulted in almost a non-existent provision for the teaching of Punjabi in national primary schools because in the majority of schools it was impossible to collectively obtain 15 Punjabi children in the school. If they did succeed in obtaining 15 Punjabi students, they would be of different levels of maturity and competency levels. In addition, there was no assistance given for the training of Punjabi language teachers.
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN REVERSE LANGUAGE SHIFT(RLS) MEASURES
Out of this despair, came a strong realization that if anything was to be done it has to be initiated by the community, the heartland of where the language needs to be recaptured before looking outward for assistance from political and governmental institutions. It will be seen that the attempts carried out below are in line with Fishman’s recommendations of RLS when he advises that,
“The priorities at various points in the RLS struggle must vary but they must, nevertheless, derive from a single, integrated theory of language-in-society processes that places intergenerational mother-tongue transmission at the very center and that makes sure to defend that center before setting out to conquer societal processes that are more distant, dubious and tenuous vis-à-vis such transmission.” (Fishman, 1991: 6)
Therefore, as a base force to activate and energise the collective spirits, the Sikh elders comprising a four member team, led by Santokh Singh, the main force, who provided inspiring and determined leadership, Gurnam Singh, Sarbir Singh and Seketar Singh decided to do something about the increasingly demoralizing situation. They looked to Singapore because according to Santokh Singh,
“the Singapore model of the Punjabi education programme is still the best existing model in the Asean region and perhaps globally. After having studied the instructional materials, the delegation came back to Malaysia with books and other materials provided by Singapore Sikh Education Fund.”
Working hard and putting in their best efforts, the committee first established the now famous Punjabi Education Trust Malaysia (PETM). After many discussions, group dynamics and negotiations, the PETM, by November 2000, was ready to launch the new Punjabi education programme. There are now 20 Punjabi Education Centres nationwide with more than 3000 students and 220 teachers. Santokh Singh proudly proclaims that,
“The Punjabi education is expanding like the glory of a flower when it opens in the triumphant morning sun …. Our children are benefiting from our collective efforts, and if we continue to put our best then we can ensure the revival of our mother-tongue in the country.” (cited from Jaspal S., 2003: 26)
To ensure that the Punjabi education keeps expanding, the Punjabi Education Trust Malaysia (PETM) has submitted a special memorandum, (25th February 2004) titled, “Development and Growth of the Punjabi Language in the Malaysian Education System” to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, seeking a meeting to present budget details and plans to carry out Punjabi language teaching till the year 2008. To date, they have received a reply from the Prime Minister’s office stating that he will look into the matter.
Santokh Singh strongly feels that it was crucial for the community to first show the powers-that-be that “we are serious about our own language and have taken serious steps to set up and run the Punjabi education centers. … Only then can we convince the government about our mission and appeal for the allocation …” (cited from Jaspal S., 2003: 28).
Some of the areas that the community needs help in are: ensuring that the text books already prepared for the different levels should be placed under the free-loan text book scheme; providing free school facilities on Saturdays from 2 pm to 6 pm; providing teachers with allowances for teaching in these centers; providing in-service or holiday courses to teachers and above all, the Government should give recognition to the structure that is in motion now. (Randhawa, 2004: 9)
This case depicts the power of effective and inspiring leadership and the collective energies of a community – the collective resources that need to be sustained by state support to provide opportunities for the development of a generation rooted in intimate ethnic, national and international cultures and relationships. “The community is willing to take up the challenge and in fact it has to teach its own pupils but we need assistance from the government.” (Randhawa, 2004: 9).
CONCLUSION
This raises the delicate balance that needs to be maintained for the development of both national and ethnic identities as manifest through language policy and management in Malaysia. Effective management requires the state to be sensitive and provide opportunities for the revival in some cases and enhancement in others of the various languages that are utilized in this nation, minority or otherwise. At the same time, communities need to be proactive with the provision of language education for their various ethnic groups. The state support and the development and rooting of ethnic identity is essential for the multi-ethnic population to possess a sense of inclusion which in turn will spur and enhance loyalty for the national language of the nation.
In fact, what needs to be worked on for the nation is a blueprint of language planning and policy for our nation to plan and assist its multi-ethnic population in establishing ethnic, national and international identities. This will be a blueprint that will work out the resources and plans for the continued enhancement and development of Bahasa Melayu as our national language and ethnic minority languages that form the base of ethnic identities. In discussing the justice of the distribution of resources, Wright explicates that, “Clear functional differentiation and secure financial support for the weaker language are the most basic of requirements …and other protective mechanisms will probably be necessary.” (Wright, 2004: 188) Only through these crucial considerations can there be the pursuit of the integral balance needed between the collective national identity and the individual ethnic identity.
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