Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia: choosing the language of unity

The battle over the name of the language has yo-yoed a little bit, driven by pragmatism and nationalism, nation-building and cultural identity, nation versus race.

Here’s some history about Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of Indonesia, or basically the Indonesianised version of Malay, apparently the fourth most spoken language in the world.

Given that various forms of Malay are spoken by close to a third of a billion people in South-East Asia, that claim sounds credible.

Indonesia is an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, plus or minus a handful that appear or disappear because of random volcanic activities. It also has a slightly less bewildering number of languages.

In 1928, long before Indonesia’s hard-fought independence in 1947, a group of nationalists decided Indonesia needed a common language to bring her people together for practical and political reasons such as commerce, education, national pride etc.

One language to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, so to speak. The mostly-Javanese nationalists could have chosen their own tongue of Javanese, which was and remains the most widely spoken native language in Indonesia, and nobody would have defied them.

Many colonised nations, upon achieving independence, had to make that tough language choice, too.

Indonesia, however, made the decision two decades before its independence, choosing the version of Malay spoken by a small minority in Riau, Sumatra. They did so for practical reasons: they needed a language widely spoken in the region, and one that’s easy to learn.

Not an easy choice

That choice of Malay, standardised as Bahasa Indonesia, became as successful as China’s choice of Mandarin as their own national language. But it isn’t always that easy – just ask India and the many African countries that have many languages vying to be the national one.

Malaysia also made its own choice upon gaining independence. Malay was the most spoken language, but sizeable minorities spoke various Chinese and Indian languages and dialects, as well as the many indigenous languages when Sabah and Sarawak joined the federation in 1963.

Malay, or Bahasa Melayu – literally the language of the Malays – was enshrined in the constitution as the national language of Malaya. Later in the early founding days of Malaysia in 1963, likely inspired by Indonesia’s move decades earlier, it was renamed Bahasa Malaysia, literally the language of Malaysia.

Later, however, the name reverted to Bahasa Melayu. Some political segments – powerful ones certainly – felt they needed to take back ownership of the language.

Since then, the battle of names has yo-yoed a little bit, driven by pragmatism and nationalism, nation-building and cultural identity, nation versus race.

Would it have been better to have all the main languages used by Malaysians to be official languages? Pleasing everybody often ends up pleasing nobody. India ended up with two official languages and two dozen offically recognised languages, leading to a lot of resentment all around.

Respect for languages

Does Malay have to be the national language? If you believe in having one (not all countries do, the US doesn’t have a law identifying a national language), then it has to be Malay, which has been the language of the land for hundreds of years even before colonisation. If independence means being free, then it also must mean being free to go back to our roots.

What about the other languages then? Well, if we believe in respect for all cultures and that knowledge is wealth, then we must believe all languages deserve respect and that the more languages we speak, the “wealthier” we are.

Its not that difficult to make our education system accommodate both Malay as its main language while seriously teaching English and catering to the native languages of our diverse populations.

Malaysians are pretty good with languages. We could have easily taken on the new language challenges presented by the world, such as picking up Mandarin and Arabic, which already have a big presence in Malaysia, plus whatever other languages the modern world requires.

Renaming the language as Bahasa Malaysia – the language of Malaysia – literally was an invitation to all Malaysians into the big tent that is our country. That was exactly what the Indonesian nationalists wanted to achieve for their country way back in 1928.

Nobody can reasonably argue having a common language across the country is bad, and given how fast Indonesia is becoming a regional superpower, we could easily have got on their bandwagon and helped elevate Malay from a regional to a world language.

Nationalism and language politics

Now the issue of language is even more fraught with emotion and suspicion. Many Malays want their language to be paramount in Malaysia, and see the way to push it through politics and the bureaucracy. It’s almost as if some want others to reject the language as a justification to question their loyalty to Malaysia.

Our neighbours the Indonesians have already sorted this problem out. Most of their citizens still speak their own native tongues but all of them are connected with Bahasa Indonesia as their common language.

Is it then something as simple as a name? Of course not, but choice of names betray our motives and intentions. There’s a difference between saying “here’s a language for all of us” versus “here’s my language you all must use”.

It’s not too late for us to still tell our fellow Malaysians we need a language that can bind us together, just as its perfectly fine for the non-Malays to cherish their own mother tongue.

And it’s not too late for us Malays to accept that language indeed is knowledge, and that the more languages we know, the wealthier we are.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.