Linguistic Rights Essay Example

to be about 1500 languages in India. Article 334-335 declared that the official languages of India will be Hindi and English. India does not have a national language.

Article 345 states that “the Legislature of a state may by law adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi as the language or languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes of that State: Provided that, until the Legislature of the State otherwise provides by law, the English language shall continue to be used for those official purposes within the State for which it was being used immediately before the commencement of this Constitution”. Rights in 1948. Collective Linguistic Rights Collective linguistic rights are linguistic rights of a group, notably a language group or a state.

Collective rights is "the right of a linguistic group to ensure the survival of its language and to transmit the language to future generations". Language groups are complex and difficult to demarcate than states. Part of this difficulty is that members within language groups assign different roles to their language, and because of the difficulty in defining a language. Some states have legal provisions for the safeguard of collective linguistic rights because there are clear-cut situations and under particular historical and social circumstances.

Collective linguistic rights apply to states because it expresses itself in one or more languages. Generally, the language regime of states, which is communicated through allocation of statuses to languages used within its boundaries, qualifies linguistic rights claimed by groups and individuals in the name of efficient governance, in the best interest of the common good. States are held

in check by international conventions and the demands of the citizens. Linguistic rights translate to laws differently from country to country, as there is no generally accepted standard legal definition.

The most basic definition of linguistic rights is the right of an individual to use their language with other members of their linguistic group, regardless of the status of their language. They evolve from general human rights, in particular: non-discrimination, freedom of expression, right to private life, and the right of members of a linguistic minority to use their language with other members of their community.

Individual linguistic rights are provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Article 2 - all individuals are entitled to the rights declared without discrimination based on language. Article 10 - individuals are entitled to a fair trial, and this is generally recognized to involve the right to an interpreter if an individual does not understand the language used in criminal court proceedings, or in a criminal accusation. The individual has to right to have the interpreter translate the proceedings, including court documents.
• Article 19 - individuals have the right to freedom of expression, including the right to choose any language as the medium of expression.
• Article 26 - everyone has the right to education, with relevance to the language of medium of instruction.

Linguistic rights can be applied to the private arena and the public domain. Sri Lanka See also: Sinhala Only Act The start of the conflict regarding languages in Sri Lanka goes as far back as the rule of the British. During the colonial period, English had a special and powerful position in Sri Lanka. The British ruled

in Sri Lanka from the late eighteenth century to 1948. English was the official language of administration then. Just before the departure of the British, a “swabhasha” (your own language) movement was launched in a bid to slowly phase out English, replacing it with Sinhala or Tamil.

However, shortly after the departure of the British the campaign, due to various political reasons, evolved from Sinhala and Tamil to replace English to just Sinhala replacing English. In 1956, the first election after independence, the opposition won and the official language was declared to be Sinhala. The Tamil people were unhappy because they felt that they were greatly disadvantaged. Due to the fact that Sinhala was now the official language, it made it easier for the people whose mother tongue was Sinhala to enter into government sector and also provided them with an unfair advantage in the education system.

Tamil people who also did not understand Sinhala felt greatly inconvenienced as they had to depend on others to translate official documents for them. Both the Tamil and Sinhala-speaking people felt that language was crucial to their identity. The Sinhala people associated the language with their rich heritage. They were also afraid that, given that there were only 9 million speakers of the language at that time, if Sinhala was not the only official language it would eventually be slowly lost. The Tamil people felt that the Sinhala only policy would assert the dominance of the Sinhalese people and as such they might lose their language, culture and identity.

Despite the unhappiness of the Tamil people, no big political movement was undertaken till the early 1970s. Eventually in May 1976, there

was publicly made demand for a Tamil state. During the 1956 election the Federal party had replaced the Tamil congress. The party was bent on “the attainment of freedom for the Tamil-speaking people of Ceylon by the establishment of an autonomous Tamil state on the linguistic basis within the framework of a Federal Union of Ceylon". However it did not have much success. As such, in 1972, the Federal Party, Tamil Congress and other organizations banded together into a new party called the “Tamil United Front”. One of the catalysts for Tamil separation arose in 1972 when the Sinhala government made amendments to the constitution. The Sinhala government decided to promote Buddhism as the official religion and claimed that "it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster Buddhism”. Given that the majority of the Tamils were Hindus, this created unease.

There was then a fear among the Tamils that people belonging to the “untouchable castes” would be encouraged to convert to Buddhism and then “brainwashed” to learn Sinhala as well. Another spur was also the impatience of the Tamil youths in Sri Lanka. The veteran politicians noted that the current youths more ready to engage in violence and some of them even had ties to certain rebel groups in South India. Also in 1974, there was conference of Tamil studies organized in Jaffna. The conference turned violent. This resulted in the deaths of seven people.

Given the rise in violence, about 40 – 50 Tamil youths in between the years of 1972 and 1975 were detained without being properly charged further increasing the tension. A third stimulus was the changes in the criteria

for University examinations in the early 1970s. the government decided that they wanted to standardize the university admission criteria based on the language the entrance exams were taken. It was identified that students who took the exams in Tamil scored better than the students who took it in Sinhala.

As such, the government decided that Tamil students had to achieve a higher score than the students who took the exam in Sinhala to enter the universities. As a result, the number of Tamil students entering universities fell. After the July 1977 election, relations between the Sinhalese and the Ceylon Tamil people became worse. There was flash violence in parts of the country. It is estimated about 100 people were killed and thousands of people flee from their home. Among all these tensions, the call for a separate state among Tamil people grew louder.