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2 Etymology of an ethnic
conflict By Jason Johnson
PATTANI - In Thailand's
insurgency-hit three southernmost provinces of
Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, the state's
marginalization of the Malay language has been a
core grievance among Malay Muslim nationalists
aiming for either independence or substantial
autonomy from the predominantly Buddhist nation.
For nearly a century, the
state's effort to promote central Thai as the sole
legitimate language has engendered animosity and
even violent resistance in the historically
Malay-speaking region. If relative peace is ever
to be restored, the issue of language use will
need to be addressed.
After the 1921 Compulsory
Primary Education Act, which required all children
in Thailand to attend state primary schools
where
central Thai was the medium
of instruction, Tengku Abdul Kadir, a Malay Muslim
aristocrat, launched an organized rebellion
against the government. Kadir and others
considered the reforms an attempt by the
government to destroy the identity of Malay
Muslims and convert them into Thai-speaking
Buddhists.
Organized Malay Muslim
resistance to Thai rule later contributed to the
government's approval of the use of Malay as a
medium of instruction in some public primary and
secondary schools in the region beginning in 1948.
Yet the authoritarian government of Sarit Thanarat
began in 1961 to transform traditional Islamic pondok schools into
state-accredited private Islamic schools, which
used the Thai language as the medium of
instruction.
The policy served as the key
proximate factor in the founding of the separatist
organization Barisan Revolusi Nasional in 1963.
Analysts believe BRN remains at the heart of
Thailand's shadowy and, as widely believed,
fractured southern insurgency.
Islamic pondok schools were a
bastion of symbolic capital for Malay Muslims in
the former Patani Sultanate, a region that roughly
corresponds with the area currently embroiled in
unrest. Although Islam was introduced to the
region around the 14th century, there was a
dramatic rise in the establishment of pondok schools in the
19th century.
This took place at a time
when Siam, present-day Thailand, began to assert
its power over Patani and other neighboring Malay
kingdoms through warfare. Siam's internal
colonization of Patani dramatically diminished the
region's role as a vibrant commercial trading
center in the Malay Peninsula.
Historians David Wyatt and
Francis Bradley have pointed out that the
destruction of Patani led the region's religious
scholars to turn more toward Mecca in an effort to
restructure and reform Patani. Those local
religious leaders would later become prominent
figures in Southeast Asian networks of Islamic
scholars. Their role in publishing Jawi-based
texts helped to transform Patani into the main
center of Islamic learning in the Malay Peninsula
in the second half of the 19th century.
Jawi, the use of a modified
Arabic script to write classical Malay, has
gradually been undermined by the introduction of
central Thai and the Thai script to the region. As
a result, Malay-speaking Muslims are now
noticeably more fluent in written Thai than the
antiquated Jawi, once the dominant form of writing
Malay in maritime Southeast Asia.
Now,
the majority of Malay speakers cannot write an
original sentence in Jawi, or draw much meaning
from reading Jawi texts. A younger generation of
Malay speakers, however, has gained some fluency
in Jawi because it is taught at the region's
growing number of Islamic tadika kindergartens and
private Islamic schools.
The
demise of Jawi has long engendered strong
resentment among those who take pride and dignity
through disseminating Islamic knowledge. But there
is broader animosity among Malay Muslims toward
the more general erosion of the use of Malay. To
varying degrees, many Malay Muslims - especially
among the educated classes - in Thailand look
south toward Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and
Singapore and see how Malay dialects are not only
widely spoken but are also used as official
languages.
Many Malay Muslims here quip
that while Thai is only useful in Thailand, Malay
can be used in these Southeast Asian countries.
Those sentiments have deepened among those looking
toward further integration of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations through the introduction
of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. This,
they believe, will provide a way to elevate the
Malay language's status in Thailand's far south.
In spite of the linguistic
affinity with Malay speakers beyond Thailand's
territorial borders, the rise of the Thai language
means a minority of Malay Muslims are no longer
fluent in their native language. As a result, many
Malay parents from a range of socio-economic
backgrounds are concerned that future generations
will not understand their mother tongue. Some
older Malays in particular have been known to
engage in language policing, scolding youth who
use Thai in both public and private settings.
Those elders can still
reflect on a time when Malay was the lingua franca
throughout the region. As recently as 40 years
ago, ethnic Chinese and Thais were compelled to
learn the local Malay dialect for business and
commerce. As a result, many elderly Malays cannot
speak Thai, while some elderly Thai and
ethnic-Chinese Buddhists are fluent in local
Malay.
In some villages with
ethnic-Malay majorities and Thai-speaking
minorities, even younger Thai speakers can speak
the local Malay dialect. It is a reminder that the
state's efforts toward linguistic unification have
only recently begun to take hold in the
ethnic-minority region, where relative fluency in
central Thai pales in comparison to other areas of
the country.
Linguistic twists While a period of relative
peace in the region spanning the late 1980s
through the 1990s saw a rise in the use of Thai,
the protracted violence since 2004 has opened up a
new debate over the future course of language use
in the region. The unrest has provided a political
opportunity for Patani-nationalist activists to
undermine the trend toward Thai and give Malay
more recognition. Frequent
seminars and conferences on the southern conflict
have provided a platform for nationalist activists
to argue in favor of legitimating the use of Malay
in the region. For instance, local activists have
worked toward making terms such as "Patani Malay"
or "Melayu Patani" official in Thai to refer to
the local dialect.
In bids to boost their
reputation with the local populace and
international observers, successive Thai
governments have felt compelled to show greater
respect and sensitivity toward the local use of
Malay. Long accustomed to referring to the Malay
dialect as pasa Yawi
or pasa Isalam in
Thai, many Thai officials have drawn from recent
intellectual debates and now refer to the language
as pasa Melayu, or
"Malay language". A seeming minority has gone a
step further by specifically referring to the
local Malay as pasa Melayu
Patani, or "Patani Malay language".
Addressing historical
grievances over language use was central to the
conflict-resolution proposals laid out by the
National Reconciliation Commission, which was
established in 2005 by the administration of
then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The NRC
recommended in 2006 that Malay be used as a second
working language in the region, meaning
significantly that it could be used in government
offices.
The recommendation, however,
was rejected by one of Thailand's most influential
figures, Prem Tinsulanonda, a former prime
minister and current president of the monarchy's
advisory Privy Council. Prem, who is now 92 years
old, voiced that only Thai should be used as a
medium of instruction in schools, underscoring a
long-standing Thai reluctance to recognize Malay.
Yet even figures aligned with
the opposition Democrat Party - often viewed as a
conservative party that is reluctant to alter the
political power arrangements between the central
government and the ethno-religious minority region
- have shown support for elevating the status of
Malay.
Head Office:
Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand
Bureau: 11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin,
Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand
77110
