Ending language discrimination

Although it took some time in coming, all right thinking Sri Lankans could take deep satisfaction in the fact that there is now parity of status for our national languages, Sinhala and Tamil. These are also the official languages of the land and the agencies of the state have no choice but to transact all their chores with the public in these languages.

Given that the government is committed to the building and sustenance of communal harmony, it is only to be expected that parity of status between Sinhala and Tamil would not only be fully endorsed by the state but be made the cornerstone of its drive towards national integration. This is as it should be because national integration needs to be predicated on peaceful co-existence among our communities and language parity is one effective means of achieving this.

Making the Tamil Language an official language of this country by the state was a watershed in ending language discrimination, but it would not serve any purpose now to rake-up any contentious issues of the past. Suffice it to realize that an important grievance of the Tamil community has been rectified and that the possibility exists for Tamil-speakers to correspond and transact business with the government in their mother tongue.

The morale of Tamil speakers is bound to grow in leaps and bounds on the strength of assurances by the Official Languages Commission (OLC) that the government's official language policy would not only be implemented but that punitive action would be taken against those who violate it.

That is, every agency of the state is obliged to conduct its business with the public in Sinhala and Tamil. An inability to correspond with the public in Tamil, for instance, would render the institution concerned liable to even prosecution in a court of law.

Thus, the basics could be said to be in place for the implementation of the official language policy of the state. What is left to be done is to ensure that the policy would be given full practical effect.

However, it is with regard to practical implementation that some problems are bound to crop-up. It is quite some time since the official language policy was adopted but, apparently, not all agencies of the state have the capacity to implement it. Until recently, Tamil speakers, in particular, experienced the problem of going to some state institutions and finding that the relevant officials could not converse with them in Tamil or issue them letters in Tamil, when the need arose.

It is particularly important that the law enforcement agencies have at least a bilingual capability. It is crucial that this capability is possessed in the North-East in particular, where the services of our law enforcers are keenly felt. But on this issue there has been some progress because more and more Tamil-speaking personnel have been recruited for service in the North-East. Last week, some travellers found to their pleasant surprise that very many law enforcement personnel in the Trincomalee district, for instance, were from the Tamil-speaking communities.

This is a highly positive turn in the affairs of these provinces because the local people's requirement has right along been that they interact with state personnel who can converse in their mother tongue.

Therefore, it is vitally important that we ensure that all our state agencies are endowed with at least a capacity to conduct their businesses in Sinhala and Tamil. Ideally, there ought to be a trilingual capability - that is, the ability to conduct business in Sinhala, Tamil and English. However, the short and medium term requirement is a Sinhala and Tamil Language capability.

However, it is cause for comfort that the state is not leaving anything to chance. It has put in place a ministry which is tasked with overseeing its official language policy plus effecting national integration and this institution would prove crucial to nation-building in the days ahead.

Examined closely, one would find that the state's official language policy is a measure which is endowed with a great healing potential. Both Sinhala and Tamil are not only classical languages but have been used in this part of the world from time immemorial. They are the sources which continuously nourish this country's cultural ethos and have to be allowed to grow and flourish together and inseparably because they are very much part of the Sri Lankan identity and constitute the basis of Sri Lankanness.