7 - The Politics of Language Policy in Myanmar: Imagining Togetherness, Practising Difference?

Summary

Although Myanmar has been an independent state for over half a century, its 135 different national races and equally numerous dialects and languages renders language the main continual source of problems for its incomplete and problem-ridden nation-building process. Because successive post-colonial Myanmar governments based nation-building projects on the culture and history of the ethnic majority, Burman, many ethnic minority groups and observers have long accused the Burman-dominated post-colonial governments, especially the Socialist and current military governments, of Burmanizing the country's entire population. The adoption of the Burman language as the country's official language by successive governments and the suspension of minority language classes at pre-university public schools since the early 1970s were viewed by many as attempts to homogenize the population and establish a monolingual nation. Both scholars and minority nationalists have directly and indirectly suggested that the Burman-dominated language policy only benefited the regime and the Burmans, whereas ethnic minorities suffered from it.

While acknowledging the prevalence of Burman chauvinistic elements in the nation-building discourse and activities undertaken by post-colonial Myanmar governments, this paper intends to show that successive Myanmar governments did not try to establish a monolingual nation. Rather, the governments would usually allow ethnic minorities to undertake cultural activities, including the freedom to speak and write their own languages, as long as those activities were not related to political attempts to topple them or undermine their control of the country. In addition, to understand the complexities of the politics of language in Myanmar, one also ought to pay more attention to the politics of interaction between officials from the centre and local areas. During the Socialist and current military periods, local officials responsible for promoting minority cultures were not elected by local people but appointed by the central government. Since those officials were more interested in keeping their jobs than serving the minority peoples, most of them stayed away from minority cultural activities because they did not want to be associated with insurgent groups, who usually sought to promote minority cultures.