At the same time, the debate on the issue of the National Language
came to the fore.
It is now conceded that the
left wing trade unions under Lim Chin Siong, took
a decision early on in support of Malay as the national language
and at the same time arguing for a reduction in the role of the
English language and the elevation of the languages of the local
communities, principally Chinese and
Tamil.
Lim’s role in this has been
acknowledged by Usman and Samad Ismail and others.
The left
wing support for the use of Malay as the national language and the
common lingua franca, created a strong surge of interest for the
learning of Malay.
This momentum was accelerated after
1959, when widespread classes for Malay in night schools,
adult education centres and private tuition was widespread and
extensive.
This movement for
the study of Malay declined after Singapore left
Malaysia after 1965.
Since then, the island republic had gone on to embrace the English
language with a new fervour and intensity, bringing in its wake the
widespread dissemination of western values, culture and mores.
The impact on Singapore society was so profound, that in the
nineties a debate to emphasize on the superiority of Asian values
was initiated to counter the trend.
A campaign to speak Mandarin and study the mother tongues was
launched.
It is perhaps a forlorn attempt against the background of the
material incentives associated with mastery of the English language
in the context of globalization. From the hindsight of recent
history, one sometimes wonders, what would have been the
socio-political situation in the region, had the political
reunification process in the sixties not been so traumatic, and had
Singapore stayed the course.
Would Singapore have retained its position as the
pre-eminent center for Malay literature
and scholarship, and whether the
creative and intellectual scholarship and energies among non-Malays
would have attained more breadth and depth...
http://s-pores.com/2008/01/usman/
On
the other hand, when Malay
leaders suggested in 1970s for Malay language as a compulsory
subject, Lee Kuan Yew rebuked
them,
"If
any government is mad enough to accept this proposal,
it can
only provoke the Chinese-educated to
hostility."
The left wing support for the use of Malay as
the national language and the common lingua franca, created a
strong surge of interest for the learning of
Malay.
This momentum was accelerated after
1959, when widespread classes for Malay in night schools,
adult education centres and private tuition was widespread and
extensive.
I think if you use the alien and colonial english as dominant
language at the expense of local languages, sooner or later, the
chinese, the malays, the tamil will all rebel.
And the anglophile Harry Lee Kuan Yew will be exposed as the
political rat and hypocritical fraud that he is.