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‘Sinhala Only’ in retrospect </h1>
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2018-11-07 00:00:31 <div class="gmail-comment-views gmail-icon-right" style="margin-left:25px;font-size:15px"><span style="font-size:15px" class="gmail-glyphicon gmail-glyphicon-comment"></span>
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</p><p style="text-align:justify"><img alt="" src="http://static.dailymirror.lk/media/images/image_1541528004-e3169ebe3a.jpg"></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><img alt="" src="http://static.dailymirror.lk/media/images/image_1541528013-87051f70ee.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 93px; margin: 7px; float: left;">The
‘Sinhala Only’ legislation of 1956 was immediately turned into a bogey
by anti-majority propagandists to frighten off progressive political
reforms aimed at redressing the historical injustices perpetrated
against the nation by European occupations of the previous 450 years.
But the dethronement of English by making Sinhala the only official
language ‘in 24 hours’ (as S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike had pledged) was not
the renegade step which it was made out to be. An obviously
well-informed senior citizen signing as ND, in an opinion piece
published in The Island/November 1, recalled that even (Prime Minister)
John Kotelawala of the UNP, during electioneering that year, promised to
make Sinhala the official language, though it was Bandaranaike who was
elected to power and was able to implement the proposal. Making the
language of the majority Sinhalese the official language was one of the
well meant ‘affirmative actions’ taken to put an end to the oppressive
discrimination that, particularly, they were made to endure under the
British and even under their native successors who got into their boots
on the former’s departure. ND also recollected that it was J.R.
Jayawardene who moved in the State Council that Sinhala be made the
official language in 1944. In other words, it was a necessary
transitional first-step taken towards a fuller realisation of national
independence from foreign domination; it was not intended to further
disadvantage any section of the broad mass of the Lankan population that
had long been oppressed and dispossessed by British colonialism.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Affirmative action regimes implemented
by some progressive governments since 1956 including language policy
reforms have generally failed due to non-cooperation from certain
opportunistic minority politicians who exploit race or religion to win
votes at elections, for whom politics is everything and national
interest is nothing. It has often been charged that so-called
Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism has done a lot of damage to Sri Lanka. The
truth is that the Sinhala Buddhists have always been victims of
chauvinists of other brands. <br>
The 1956 ‘Sinhala Only’ slogan has to be understood in terms of the
political context that prevailed at that time. The existing political
reality then was characterised by the majority of the common people
being oppressed by an English-speaking Westernised native ruling elite
(a privileged minority) that followed at the heels of the recently
departed European colonizers in government. Whereas English was a key to
privilege and a badge of prestige for this elite, it was a sword of
oppression (kaduwa) for the masses. The ‘Sinhala Only’ policy knocked it
off its pedestal. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The Sinhala Only legislation was before
long amended in Parliament allowing ‘reasonable use of Tamil.’ This
reformative trend continued until Tamil was also made an official
language in the early 1980s, and today both languages enjoy the same
official language status. However, there are still lapses in the
implementation of the official languages policy, which affect both
communities. Scarcity of Sinhala and Tamil bilingual proficiency among
government servants has been a perennial problem, but this is not an
insurmountable obstacle, provided politicians in power make themselves
responsible for the implementation of official language policies made
into law. Such issues need to be addressed by those elected to power
without unnecessarily politicising them. </p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong>The 1956 ‘Sinhala Only’ slogan has to be understood in terms of the political context that prevailed at that time </strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align:justify">Language policy changes introduced in
1956 and appropriately reformed since have done a lot of good to the
common masses of the country, particularly in the education of the
young. Although ‘language management’ began to rouse wide popular
awareness only after 1956, the subject had already engaged the attention
of the patriotic segment of the country’s intelligentsia decades before
that date. This was mainly due to rising levels of education among
common Sinhala and Tamil speaking masses who had been deliberately
denied it in colonial times; at that time a decent education was
available only in the English medium for the children of the privileged
class, and it prepared them to serve as cogs in the colonial government
machinery, in the businesses, and in professions such as law, medicine
and engineering. This English medium education was superior to the
rudimentary kind of Swabhasha or vernacular (Sinhala and Tamil) medium
instruction that catered to the rural poor who far outnumbered the
privileged minority.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The instruction provided in English
medium schools cost the government many times more than what it spent on
vernacular education. This was deliberate government policy. To prevent
poor parents from sending their progeny to English medium schools, the
authorities introduced a fee levying system. The fee charged was not
very high, but it was high enough to be too prohibitive for poor parents
to afford. The education minister of the State Council C.W.W.
Kannangara succeeded in 1944 in seeing his free education bill through
after an intense six-year struggle against severe opposition mounted by
the privileged class. Initially, his reforms benefited the minority of
children attending English medium schools more than it did rural
children, because the former didn’t have to pay for their education any
longer. But this was insignificant compared to the immense benefit that
the free education policy brought to the rural children studying in the
Swabhasha mediums. It was not possible to provide English medium
education to all the children at that time, and it is not possible even
today for a variety of reasons. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">It is sometimes argued that Bandaranaike
played the official language card to gain power in 1956. This is wrong.
Bandaranaike left the UNP in 1951 on a principled basis to form his own
SLFP. He later conceived of the country’s polity as a close-knit
society consisting of a Fivefold Great Force or Pancha Maha Balavegaya
spelt out as Sangha-Veda-Guru-Govi-Kamkaru or Buddhist Monks-Native
Physicians-Teachers-Peasant Farmers and Workers. This was seen as an
authentic analysis of the prevalent socio-political reality of the time.
It seems that the small Westernised ruling elite represented by the UNP
was excluded from this formula. Thus dawned the ‘Era of the Common Man’
-- as Bandaranaike often described it. It is nonsense to say
Bandaranaike did away with English as the medium of instruction in all
educational institutions, as someone said recently. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The minority of schools that had English
medium education continued to function as before while Swabhasha
education greatly expanded. Kannangara reforms started the ‘Central
School System’ in order to extend English medium education to the
villages, where well-performing rural students were selected at a
competitive examination to study in the English medium from Class Six
onwards. However, since it was held that children learn best in their
mother tongue, the pioneers of free education decided to phase out the
English medium from government schools completely by 1960. And this is
what happened. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Although the limited English medium
instruction in the government school system thus came to an end, the
importance of English for a proper education was never lost sight of.
All post-independence governments, particularly, those after 1956, paid
the highest attention to the teaching of English as a second language.
But the effort became a failure for various reasons, which I don’t want
to elaborate on here. It is not true that nationalist politics led to an
abandonment of English. The truth is that English was made available to
children from all classes irrespective of their economic or social
background only after free education was introduced. This was done in
compliance with the advice of the farseeing political and civil
nationalist leaders of the past century who unerringly recognised
English as the indispensable key to modernisation. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">All nationalist intellectuals of the
time emphasised the importance of English for a decent education. Even
Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933), who used to be condemned, until
recently, for his alleged racism, chauvinism, fanaticism, etc., (though
he was not guilty of any of these) stressed the need to learn English,
in addition the mother tongue; he also wanted young people to learn
science and technology, for these were indispensable for creating a
modern independent progressive society. He was not averse to the
adoption of good social etiquette from the Westernised class. For
instance, he wrote articles in Sinhala explaining, for those who liked
to use forks and spoons during meals, how to do so in the proper manner.
Anagarika Dharmapala was a passionate anti-imperialist, and he made no
secret of this, either in his words or in his deeds. But he was careful
to ensure that his criticism of the government was within the law.
Anagarika was primarily a Buddhist missionary and secondarily a
fervently nationalist social reformer. In both roles, he was a
prodigious writer and speaker. According to the late Ananda Guruge, who
researched into the Anagarika’s life and work for over fifty years, the
bulk of his writings and speeches (75%) was done in English. All the
pioneering nationalists who worked for freedom from foreign rule were
English educated, and acknowledged the value of the language for the
betterment of the future of the Sri Lankan people. </p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The language policy changes that began
with Sinhala Only were meant to eliminate English language based
discrimination that prevailed even after independence was achieved in
1948. Sinhala is our birthright. It is an inalienable legacy of profound
importance for us. Sinhala is a most ancient language. Even Mahinda
Thera who formally introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka more than two
thousand three hundred years ago preached in the language of the
islanders, Sihala/Sinhale. While preserving that invaluable linguistic
heritage, we need to learn English with the same dedication that we
learn Sinhala for our survival as a modern nation. There has never been a
question about this need over the past one hundred and fifty years,
though colonial discrimination against the dispossessed majority of the
population prevented its fulfilment over most of that period. However,
English language learning in combination with ICT and even English
medium education received a new impetus in the last fifteen years. This
trend must be fostered and properly channelled in the broad national
interest, while preserving our own proud linguistic heritage. </p></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>