English deserves one more chance in Lanka

With the nearly two decades-old ethnic war, and such other distractions as political hit squads and bloody election campaigns grabbing the headlines, the reintroduction of the English language, last year, as a medium of instruction in a handful of elite schools, has not exactly set Sri Lankan hearts on fire.

Although it should.

Over a generation after being jettisoned as a medium of instruction in Sri Lankan schools, English is being brought back in the senior forms as an 'experiment'. In those spacious (sigh) days, the small Indian Ocean island was fondly known as Ceylon, and a largely helpful West and many well wishers expected great things of it.

The country had tasted its first decade of independence when its prime minister, the late Solomon Bandaranaike, put his election promise of 'Sinhala only' (the language of the major ethnic group) into practise.

Bandaranaike, a product of Oxford, was the father of current President Chandrika Kum-aratunge. He had broken away from the GOP (the right-wing United National Party) to put together a third alternative.

His party, the MEP (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna or people's united front), set out to carve a middle path between the UNP and the left parties, both of which boasted some of the country's most astute politicians.

To do so, he reached out to the countryside, to the so-called country bumpkins, and workers, to complete his unique five-fold power base - the powerful Buddhist clergy; the influential ayurvedic medical practitioners (traditional healers) who were (still are) held in high esteem in the rural areas; the peasantry; teachers; and workers, a majority of whom had not made much headway under their Trotskyist masters who controlled most of the major trade unions.

These segments comprised the overwhelming majority of the population and as far as the maths went, it made for shrewd politics. The other vital lure of the policy was that the majority Sinhalese hardly had any link with the English-educated minority which, sans much provocation, was lording it over them.

This westernised elite had untrammelled access to the plum jobs in the public and private sectors. The prestigious schools in Colombo, the capital, and a handful in other major metropolitan areas, were turning them out almost to order with every condition met, right down to the 'propah' accent.

While such city students, armed with a Senior School Certificate (SSC) walked into private sector firms as management trainees, their rural compatriots, with a degree, were lucky to get low-level jobs in packing, dispatching, warehouse or wherever.

Small wonder then, that the educated youths from the rural sector began to resent this elitist equation and referred to the English language as the Kaduwa (the sword of Damocles).

To Solomon Bandaranaike's detractors - and they were many - his was a cleverly-timed opportunistic policy to ride to power. That it worked almost to perfection proves that, at that moment in time in 1956, his constituency, including a considerable number of Sinhala chauvinists, was ready for such a 'democratic revolution'.

That it made perfect politics is borne out by the fact that, during the run-up to the 1956 election, the UNP tried to hijack Bandaranaike's platform by passing a resolution calling for Sinhala-only!

Bandaranaike's loyalists argue, to this day, that while his strategy was the only one which would have brought him to power, he had realised the gravity of his action not long after taking residence at Temple Trees (the prime minister's official residence).

Unfortunately for Sri Lanka, they say, he was assassinated by a Buddhist monk before he could reverse the 'Sinhala only' policy.

The devastating repercussions of that policy were perhaps beyond his capacity to foresee, although a few sane political and apolitical voices were warning of what might be.

And what came to pass were two upheavals that nearly rendered Sri Lankan society asunder - an insurgency by the frustrated Sinhala youth, and an ethnic war unleashed by the Tamil minority, the latter sapping the nation of its economic vitality.

Even for some years after Bandaranaike's assassination, the rural masses - who had tasted a heady period of ape aanduwa (our government), which was not without a liberal dose of indiscipline and 'payback-time' excesses - remained hopeful of joining the English-educated ruling class in the echelons of economic power.

What they discovered with each passing day, however, was a continuance of the status quo. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who swept to power on the crest of a sympathy wave following her husband's assassination, tried during a long career to deliver some of Solomon Bandaranaike's and her own promises to the rural masses, with partial success.

Still, despite her land reform programme and other initiatives of rural empowerment, the core issue of thousands of Sinhala youth still being outside the command structure of the economy remained.

They were 'victims' of the Sinhala-only policy, as were the Tamil minority, which felt marginalised by it.

The Tamils, a number of whom were exceptionally fluent in English, felt the blow even more, as their facility with the language was now largely useful only in the private sector. And English, for decades the 'link' language between the Sinhala majority and Tamil minority, was seen to be playing that role less and less.

Successive governments between the mid-sixties and late nineties chose not to revisit the issue, due in the main to political expediency. They probably failed to fully comprehend the people's aspirations.

The dozens of private English academies and international schools in Colombo and other major cities and their suburbs are testimony to a considerable section of the populace that has chosen to afford their children an English education.

It is debatable that there won't be many takers in the rural areas, if the state made it available. And in a new century that could continue to see great numbers of expatriate labour in many foreign lands, an islandwide introduction of the English language might possibly result in value-added Sri Lankan labour exports in, say, 2020.

By then, thousands of Sri Lankan housemaids, governesses, factory workers, waiters, pool attendants et al could well arrive at their places of foreign employment armed with the ability to speak, read and write English. They would also have a far better chance of upward mobility.

Such changes, of course, demand vision. Perhaps among the great expectations Sri Lankans have of their new government, and especially Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, would be a commitment to making an English education available soon throughout the island.

In doing so, the government will have to convince Sri Lankans that the initiative will not have a negative effect on their mother tongue - Sinhala or Tamil. The task will be made that much easier because the Sri Lankan premier has never been known to speak with a forked tongue.