The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 8

CHAPTER EIGHT LANGUAGE AND POLITICS In traditional political histories, it is quite difficult to find references to the anti-colonial campaign fought on the cultural front Given the surfeit of powerful evidence regarding the language campaign and the many examples of other anti-colonial cultural productions (novels, plays, music, folk literature), it not difficult to conceive that the absence is precipitated by the very way we frame our histories—predispositions toward certain arch narratives or an emphasis, for example on elections and elected officials—compel us to exclude other campaigns such as the language campaign Is it possible, though, that the popular groundswell for the cultural issue was just not as powerful in instigating anti-colonial movements? When one compares the central role of language and culture in the 20th Century, anticolonial struggle in Burma to that of the Philippines, one finds an astounding difference The center of Burma’s anti-colonial movement, as so many historians and linguists have told us was language and culture; as a matter of fact, the concern for culture and language came first as anticolonial politics had its roots in organizations like the YMBA (Young Man’s Buddhist Organization) and the Dobama Asiayone that was concerned about the drowning out by British education of traditional Burmese culture, language and religion The history of these anticolonial movements that were centered around culture was also quite sensational—large massmovements, strikes, boycotts, the rejection of the colonial education system and the setting up of their own national schools In the Philippines, after the Philippine-American War, and especially after the establishment of the Philippine Assembly and the promise of independence, resistance movements became enervated and/or isolated 226 Such a difference is emphasized by historians like Vince Boudreau587 who characterizes Philippine anti-colonial movements as essentially fragmented with the nationalist elite separated from the popular masses This, according to Boudreau was because of certain American colonial policies (principally the promise of independence) that diluted anti-colonial movements or because of the elite’s own class interests Boudreau argues that the great difference in the colonial social structure between the Philippines and Burma was that in Burma, because of various reasons like the abolition of the ruling class at the end of the Anglo-Burmese wars and because the British policy for the peopling of the bureaucracy favored other ethnicities (Indians and Chinese)588, there was no nationalist elite to serve as a buffer between the British and the broad masses The Americans, on the other hand, were so successful in deploying the nationalist elite that soon enough, social and political tension was not so much directed toward the Americans as it was more pronounced between the two classes.589 Boudreau’s discussion includes detailed explanations of the particulars of the Philippine conditions in 1898 when America embarked on its project and it also includes an account of the specific American policies that shaped the character of the anti-colonial resistance However, of particular importance to this discussion is his depiction of those modes of resistance Essentially, he argues that Philippine anti-colonial resistance was different from the Southeast Asian anticolonial experience in that it had a nationalist elite class that was alienated from the broad masses and, because they were very early on given control over a lot of the Philippine bureaucracy and was cooperating and working with the American colonial officials “If Philippine collective action under U.S rule is in many ways distinct from that in other Southeast Asian colonies,” Boudreau argues, “the utter absence of a truly integrative and national elite leadership for Philippine collective action is central to this difference.”590 In a logic that suggests the tradition of exceptionalist thinking, he argues that what was really at odds were the American liberal 587 Vince Boudreau, “Methods of Domination and Modes of Resistance: The U.S Colonial State and Philippine Mobilization in Comparative Perspective,” in The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives, ed Julian Go and Anne L Foster, (Manila: Anvil Publication, 2005), 256-292 588 Ibid, 274 589 Ibid, 263 and 270 590 Ibid, 263 227 orientation that “produced support for universal education, broad suffrage, and upward mobility” (since “its own Civil War helped dispatch the aristocratic ideology on which the U.S South’s plantation economy had rested”) with the nationalist elite which “relied on more unequal social and political conventions” and therefore would gain by “insur[ing] a docile labor force.”591 Of course it is inconceivable that American liberal traditions that would wage a violent, uneven war, occupy a land, alienate its people from its culture by attempting to, among other things, eradicate the local languages, would itself be interested in creating unequal social and political conventions and a docile labor force The dilution of the anti-colonial movement was brought about by particular colonial policies Several policies that America launched (such as the institution of a Department of Labor) coopted segments of society that were traditionally radical (such as laborers) and diffused these radical sentiments Boudreau also claims that there was an anti-colonial struggle in the Philippines but its character was completely different from that of its neighbors as it essentially played out through elections, rather than through large protest movements If the nationalist elite were unable to forge collective anti-colonial action, then the corollary to that must be argued: that mass movements, were weak, marginal, small, and essentially localized This is how Boudreau depicts the popular struggles, particularly the agrarian struggles up to the 1930s The largest of these agrarian movements was the Sakdal movement headed by Benigno Ramos, that in May of 1935 waged a 65,000 strong uprising in the provinces of Cavite, Laguna and Bulacan The Sakdal movement was only one of a series of other peasant uprisings that had germinated throughout the country Boudreau depicts such uprisings as “local affairs with weak national alliances and relatively parochial orientations,”592 as “limited affairs of small sections of society,”593 and as “rebellions [that] never spread beyond their local points of origin—even in the broadest movement of all, the Sakdal Rebellion of 1935.”594 591 Ibid, 259 Ibid, 256 593 Ibid, 264 594 Ibid 592 228 By contrast, Boudreau presents the Burmese anti-colonial movement as containing all the elements (missing in the Philippine case) for a powerful and unified mass, protest movement The nationalist elite in Burma, unlike in the Philippines, had been deprived by the British of their role in running the government bureaucracy By the time the British had decided to institute an electoral process, elections had become associated with capitulation and thus participation in it had always been poor.595 Finally, he suggests that a broad alliance was created between peasants, students, Buddhist monks, the rising middle class, when he talks about the dissatisfaction created by the British restructuring of Burmese agrarian life 596 Such a model does paint the Burmese anti-colonial movement in a very brave light, and, especially for the purposes of appreciating the Philippine understanding of the relation of language and culture to the nation, features the vital position of language and culture in the Burmese struggle Language and Culture in Burmese Anti-Colonial Movements The large, anti-colonial protests have their origins in disputes over educational issues, and in particular in the dispute over the destructive power of English education over Burmese culture British efforts as systematizing the Burmese education system began in the 1860s after the annexation of Lower Burma Despite the fact that this education was principally based on the vernacular, there were however, some Anglo-Burmese or even English schools which provided training for advancement in the British colony: either a training in law, commerce or a preparation for further study in India or in England itself By the turn of the century, Burma had developed its own hierarchy of language with English at the top (it was the language of government and 595 Ibid, 276 Ibid, 274 Burmese anti-colonial movements have been depicted as both fragmented or unified by various historians Kratoska and Batson, for example, provide full details of what they call an “increasingly divided nationalist movement.” See Paul Kratoska and Ben Batson, “Nationalism and Modernist Reform,” in Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, volume 2, part 1, 253-320, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), particularly on page 283 Robert H Taylor, on the other hand, provides a detailed account of the rise of the unified Burmese middle class that “became the main force behind the development of modern Burmese political nationalism.” See Robert H Taylor, The State in Burma, (London: C Hurst and Company, 1987), page 124-126 Taylor’s explanation for the rise of this anti-colonial force, unlike that of Boudreau has little to with a buffer, nationalist elite, but more with a combination of factors, the most evident of which is the threat posed by Indian workers and traders 596 229 higher education) and with Burmese being the language of the rural areas or of domestic life The satisfaction with such a system (and the desire for more of Western culture) was held by Burmese such as Mg Mya, a paragon of the good colonial subject Mg Mya argued: In my humble opinion the Burman wants no Burmese school education His ability to read and write is enough to all intents and purposes What he wants is a thorough and good knowledge of the English language When he gains a good knowledge of English, he will have a taste for English literature which cannot but inspire into him a sense of love and admiration of British justice, of just pride as a member of the worldwide empire in which the sun never sets Enjoying the full privileges of a British subject and of loyalty and devotion to His Most Gracious Majesty.597 It is this kind of excited acceptance of English and Western culture and an almost equal excitement to reject Burmese culture that must have alarmed many budding nationalists In reaction to both British policies and the easy Burmese acceptance of Western domination, a number of associations mostly focused on Buddhism, arose at the turn of the century, the largest and most popular of which was the Young Man’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), which was founded in 1906 The YMBA was principally a non-political group (at least until 1917) whose members were vexed by Western values, language, dress, ideas that were encroaching into Burmese culture and was thereby focused on the protection of Burmese values, culture, and traditions and the protection of the Buddhist faith This organization would eventually become a political organization but the first impetus for organizing (which remained a concern through to independence) was a concern for culture and tradition Initially, however, the resolutions of YMBA were “framed as polite request[s] and not as demand[s].598 Student organizations would be moved to action also by the long and contentious process of creating Burma’s own university The establishment of Rangoon University was first proposed in 1910 In this proposal, the existing colleges, Judson College and Rangoon College would merge to form Rangoon University Numerous delays—disagreements over curriculum, status, location, British colonial government’s foot-dragging, World War One—caused a ten year delay When it was finally going to be launched in 1920, many Burmese objected to it The objections 597 Mg Mya “The Imperial Idea and Sense of Personal Loyalty to the King-Emperor,” typescript, Myanmar National Archives, series 1/15 (E), accession number 4035 598 Aye Kyaw, The Voice of Young Burma, (Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asian Program, 1993), 16 230 were focused on the high cost of the University education, its excessively long preparatory requirement coursework, the lack of adequate Burmese representation in the University council, and the fact that the University was not going to be affiliated with any of the colleges outside of Rangoon Several newspapers carried articles that expressed objections to the blueprint of the University Various groups and associations formulated resolutions and memorials and delivered them to the colonial authorities The reaction to these protests, apparently, was simply to ignore them and the University was inaugurated in December of 1920 The colonial government’s intransigence would be the cause of a series of popular, large, and sometimes violent strikes and boycotts.599 The boycotts would be lead by the senior students of Judson and Rangoon Colleges, many of whom were members of the YMBA The boycotts began in early December, 1920 when a number of students met underneath a tree at the Shwedagon Pagoda (a beautiful marker that lists the names of the students currently marks the spot) to plan the boycott The boycott (in the form of a kind of sit-down strike at one of the monasteries) was initially attended by about 300 students for the two colleges but within a few days many more secondary school students had joined in the effort and it had gained massive public support This initial strike has been described as: “the first organized attempt by the intelligentsia in expressing disobedience to the foreign rule.”600 Although the boycott initially started as an objection to the University Charter, it quickly turned into a protest against the general character of education in general under the British Soon enough the boycott had turned into a campaign to establish national educational institutions, where instruction would be carried out entirely in Burmese and much financial support was shown by the general public in the campaign to raise money to establish such institutions Indeed, one may rightly claim that the protest had a national character in that it was participated in by students from different districts Aye Kyaw recounts an interesting incident 599 There are numerous accounts of these student strikes Almost any general history of Burma will provide a narrative account of them The most engaging and the most detailed is Aye Kyaw’s The Voice of Young Burma (see previous footnote) See also Joseph Silverstein, “Burmese and Malaysian Student Politics: A Preliminary Comparative Inquiry,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1.1 (1970): 3-2 600 Nyi Nyi, “The Development of University Education in Burma”, Journal of the Burma Research Society 47 (1964): 11-45 231 about a famous pwe (traditional show) performer based in Mandalay named U Po Sein who had incensed the Mandalay student boycotters by openly professing his non-support of them The Mandalay students called for a boycott as well of U Po Sein’s traveling pwe They were boycotted at Mandalay, and then again at Pegu and then finally at Rangoon Facing the prospect of financial ruin because of the boycott issued upon him and supported by the general populace, U Po Sein had to make a public apology (both written and at a mass meeting back in Mandalay) before the boycott of his pwe troupe would be lifted.601 Eventually, the boycott would dissipate without concession on the part of the British colonial government but would morph into an amazing resolve among the boycotters to establish a nationwide system of national schools Of course, the boycott is widely credited with being one of the corner-stones of the Burmese nationalist movement In response the student strikes, W Booth-Gravely, a British colonial official would ironically declare: No one has ever affirmed that those who are still in the state of college or school instruction should be accepted as the guides of a race or nation seeking to attain a larger political independence The students are without a doubt the raw material out of which the citizens of the future will be fashioned Their time is to come, but for them to attempt prematurely to appropriate to themselves the authority of mature citizens in any movement which should have its origin and support only from those of riper age and with experience of the sterner lessons of life, is a course of action which cannot but meet with the disapproval of all reasonable persons.602 Booth-Gravely could not have known that beginning ten years after his avuncular pronouncement students would actually become the vanguards who would lead Burma into independence Aye Kyaw tells us that the mood fifteen or twenty years later would be quite the opposite of the sentiment expressed by Booth-Gravely: It was the popular belief then [late 1930s] that young college students had to instruct the people in the ways of democracy and had to lead the Burmese in their march toward national independence.”603 The student strikes of 1920 would sow the seeds for an eventual massive, broad-spectrumed anti-colonial movement 601 Aye Kyaw The Voice of Young Burma, 30 W Booth-Gravely, “Extracts from the Proceedings of the Government of Burma Education Department dated 20th December 1920,” Myanmar National Archives, Series Number 1/15 (D), Accession Number 1469 603 Aye Kyaw The Voice of Young Burma, 80 602 232 Although the boycott was the first organized anti-colonial attempt carried out by the Burmese intelligentsia, it was in no way the first Burmese expression of anti-colonial sentiment Drake identifies the three crucial groups that made up the nationalist movement: the peasants, represented by the village pongyis (religious leaders) and the Buddhist sangha, the studentoriented associations, and the Western educated elite that banded together to form European-style political parties.604 After the boycotts of 1920, the focus of political attention became the Dyarchy issue, the British plan to grant the Burmese some control of their government (similar to the Philippines’ Jones Law of 1916 where America retained top leadership of the bureaucracy but some government departments were to be run by Filipinos) The Dyarchy issue saw the rise of formal politics, the growth of an elite class that was essentially separated from the masses, and defections and then splintering of these elite groups into smaller factions, concerned mostly with party politics They were, however almost unanimously united in their slow (but sure) disassociation from the broad masses such that by 1930, virtually none of these politicians lent their support to the Saya San peasant rebellion 605 By the 1930s, the students were again to organize themselves into a powerful political party that was to distinguish itself from the more traditional politics engaged in by the westerninfluenced politicians The students founded the Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Association), known for the members’ appropriation of the title Thakin (master) as a prefix to their names The principal concern of this party was once again cultural but now also very much political: their principal objectives were the revival of a national culture and independence Their campaigns centered around a wider use of the Burmese language in all aspects of Burmese life and with literary production in the Burmese language The excitement of this time and the popularity of the Dobama Asiayone is described by Ma Ma Lay in her novel Not Out of Hate In this novel, the brother of the main character slowly transforms from an indifferent young man to a Thakin who 604 B.K Drake, Burma: Nationalist Movements and Independence, (Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, Longman, 1979), 15 605 Drake lists other campaigns in which these “western-oriented politicians” distanced themselves from the sentiments of the masses They are boycott of the Simon Commission (appointed to look into the India-Burma connection), the revitalization of the anti-tax campaign, and the attitude toward the death of a pongyi through hunger strike (page 23) 233 advocates independence from Britain and is concerned about the suffering of the Burmese broad masses The Dobama Asiayone slowly organized among the students and soon became a strong force that could mobilize student discontent By 1936, the Thakins had control of the Rangoon University Student Union and was able to launch a successful three-month strike, which like the boycott of 1920, spread among other colleges and the various secondary schools throughout Burma Though the students of the Dobama Asiayone had sympathy for the broad Burmese masses and the peasant movements606 and there was also much popular support for the student strikes, it was not until 1938 when the students in the Dobama started to organize peasants and laborers that the anti-colonial protest movement gained its character of having a strong united front It was around 1938, when that Thakins started to involve themselves with the task of labor organizing that the protest movements really started to grow by massive proportions There were various attempts to organize dock workers, bus drivers, and oil company workers and lead them to strike The arrest of two students during an oil company rally pushed the students to organize a large protest action attended by more than a thousand students The rally turned violent, a student was killed and many were injured This was followed by a series of other massive protest actions some of which also ended in violence; the February, 1939 protest action in Mandalay saw fourteen students and pongyis killed) It was really only at this point, when public opposition against the British colonial administration and the Burmese “sell-out” government was extremely heightened that the students, the Thakins, the radical pongyis and the broad Burmese masses were united It would take about ten more years and the Second World War before independence would be granted and through those ten years the Dobama Asiayone, supported by the broad Burmese masses, would be at the forefront of the struggle What began with a concern for the preservation of language and culture among the members of the YMBA and then later with the Dobama Asiayone quickly swelled into an 606 Aye Kyaw, The Voice of Young Burma, 66 234 awareness of the political dimension of the threat to Burmese language and culture Members of these organizations soon made the connection between colonial control, marginalization of the labor and peasants, the imposition of western-style politics and the erasure of Burmese traditions, culture, and language Language, Anti-Colonial Struggles, and National Histories It goes without saying that the conclusions that you arrive at depend on the way you approach the problem, on the kind of questions you ask, on the data that you select to include (or leave out) In presenting the story of the anti-colonial struggle in Burma during the first half of the 20th Century, a united front can be suggested (and would not necessarily be untrue) by excluding information about Burmese elite politics To suggest, however, the way Boudreau does, that Burmese elite politics did not exist (“the vacuum left by the dissolution of the local Myonthungyis meant that no legitimizing force stood between colonial power and society”607) is to single out the Philippine colonial experience as particularly harsh and particularly exploitative Starting the 1920s, Burma did in fact have the Golden Valley Group (similar to the Philippine Federalista Party) that gave support to the colonial administration and were largely unpopular and the 21 Party, later the People’s Party (similar to the Philippine Nationalista Party) that advocated home rule It seems probable that any society, even those with strong liberal traditions, would inevitably generate an elite class (complex enough to have both liberals and conservatives within it) that would put its class interest above all else and would attempt legislation and policy to protect those interests In the Philippines, great interest has been placed on the role of the elite during the American colonial period There has been a surplus of writings focused on this privileged class Benedict Anderson’s “Cacique Democracy in the Philippines,” Michael Cullinane’s Ilustrado Politics, and Julian Go’s American Empire and the Politics of Meaning all track the character and role and political education of the Philippine elite in the shaping of the nation during the American colonial period Though informative, such projects are, at worst, restatements of the 607 Boudreau, “Methods of Domination,” 274 235 words.610 It seems that even early on, Santos had developed an instinct for Tagalog and for what it meant to the Philippine nation Quezon’s first language was Spanish, in fact, in his autobiography, he reveals where his true sentiments were at the end of the Spanish-American War I confess to a feeling of deep sadness when I saw the old [Spanish] flag come down forever After all, I inherited from my mother some Spanish blood, I spoke from childhood the language of Castile, and although the last Spanish friar, parish priest of my town, was far from what his vocation required him to be, one of his predecessors had been my teacher.611 When Quezon was starting to gain recognition as a politician, he would often be called on to make speeches He would hire Lope K Santos to translate into Tagalog the speeches he would first write in Spanish Santos’ analysis of Quezon’s relation to Tagalog is this: “Palibhasa’y hindi niya lubos na nasasaklaw ang kayamanan ng wikang Tagalog, madalas na siya’y nabibitin sa pagsasalita at naghahagilap ng tamang salita.”612 (“He did not thoroughly master the richness of the Tagalog language, he was often frustrated when speaking it and would frantically search for the right word.”) This is not to say that the non-mastery of a language automatically translates into a non-loyalty (or in Quezon’s case a floundering of loyalty) to that language In Quezon, however, the cause of his floundering loyalty to Tagalog may not be known but it is nevertheless a fact, of which, many Filipinos would be quite surprised to learn, given his reputation as “The Father of the National Language.” The popular understanding today for why Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, is based so heavily on Tagalog is that it was what Quezon (who was President at the time of the official declaration of the national language in 1937) wanted since he was a Tagalog The establishment of the National language based on Tagalog had a lot more to with people like Lope K Santos and the Tagalog organizations than with Quezon, who, for many years, vigorously supported English as the only official language of the Philippines One of Quezon’s first declarations of a partiality toward English was made in 1913 when asked to comment on the state of English in the Philippines He replied that he felt that the 610 Ibid, Quezon, A Good Fight, 37 612 Santos, Talambuhay ni Lope K Santos, 47 611 240 Filipinos had “gained by the acquisition of the English language and that it was “more useful to us than Spanish.” The local languages, he relegates to the home and believes that “English will never supplant them” yet as the common language of the nation “the adoption of one of our native dialects as the common language for the Islands would have been less useful than Spanish because we could not communicate through that language with any other foreign country.”613 The rhetoric in these statements is simple and reveals a kind of easy practicality in Quezon’s logic The rhetoric in his declarations of support for English, whether he was speaking to an American audience or a Filipino audience becomes more dramatic when speaking to an audience and he tended to link English to American benevolence In 1919, he addressed The Leauge of Free Nations in New York City614 and there he declared, much to the delight of the audience, the continued presence and centrality of English in the Philippines He declared “It should be a matter of satisfaction to all of you to know that inside of a few more years there will be but one language spoken universally in the Philippine Islands, and if I may say so myself, as a Filipino, I think it will be the Shakespearean language that you have just heard here today.” Quezon’s approach here is interesting His object was political independence and his idea was to argue that through the English language, the Filipinos had learned the meaning of freedom and democracy and are therefore now desirous of their independence He claimed that all the Filipino boys and girls had been educated in “American” schools (he qualifies this not to mean that the schools are financed by America and only that it was founded by Americans and where English is used as the medium of instruction) and that if independence was not granted now “ten years hence those girls and boys will claim in a louder voice their right to be free.” His picture of the relationship between the Philippines and America was one of mutual care and love “Do you know of any case,” he asks, “where people who have been under foreign domination seek to be free, not because they have been mistreated, but because they have been so well treated?” 613 Manuel L Quezon, Signed letter to H.G Poblador, August 12, 1913, Camilo Osias Papers, Philippine National Library, Reel 0145, Image Number 614 Manuel L Quezon, “Address Delivered Before the League of Free Nations Aassociation at Hotel Oncorde, New York City, on April 19, 1919.” Manuel L Quezon Papers, Philippine National Library, Reel 118, Image Number 241 In his 1921 address to the Philippine Inter-Alumni Union, Quezon demonstrates how he himself had so expertly taken in the American discourse on English in the Philippines He declares: I have just read your constitution and found that one of the things for which you are working is to have the English language declared as the only official language in the Philippines I have been for that proposition long before I knew English and I really think it is no longer a debatable question It was settled long ago by our own Government and by our people when it was decided that the English language would be the language to be taught in the public schools, that was tantamount to a definite declaration of the part of the Government that English will ultimately be adopted as the only official language of the Philippine Islands Of course, the English language has to be the official language of the Philippine Islands It is out of the question to think of any of our native dialects for this purpose because we would not be able to come to an agreement as to which one should be adopted Besides, our native dialects have not the literature necessary for the education and intellectual training of our youth I shall simply say that if you want to have a clear notion and conception of liberty and freedom you have to get it through English literature.615 Quezon here has adopted all the major points of the discourse on English: that the Filipinos wanted it, that there is disagreement among the Filipinos as to which local language can be used as the common language, that the literature from the local languages are underdeveloped and unsuitable for education, and that English itself is the language of democracy Quezon must have sensed in all his dealings with the Americans that the idea of English remaining in the Philippines was important to them and that the best proof that Filipinos were educated enough as to finally merit independence was their English proficiency “It would appeal to the American nation,” Quezon continued, “to know that even after their flag has been pulled down American institutions and American ideals will remain as the heritage of the Filipino They will be assured of this when they know that the English language has been adopted by the people of the Philippine Islands as their official language.”616 Quezon’s commitment to English continued and all the way through to his lobbying for the Tydings-McDuffy law of 1934 which finally provided for the establishment of a Commonwealth Government and independence ten years after the 615 “Stenographic Report of the Speech of Hon Manuel L Quezon, President of the Senate in the Third Open Program of the Inter-Alumni Union Held on the Philippine Normal Auditorium, March 12, 1921.” Manuel L Quezon Papers, Philippine National Library, Reel 118, Image Number 616 Ibid 242 Commonwealth It was Tydings-McDuffy that stipulated that the Philippine constitution that was to be drafted the following year had to specify that English would be the medium of instruction in the soon to become independent Philippine nation Although Manuel L Quezon’s and Lope K Santos’ position on language would meet again in 1935 and 1936 when Quezon would make the institution of the National Language on of the priorities of his administration, in those years before the Commonwealth, Quezon would manifest his position on language quite clearly and it was not, despite what his speeches declared, the primacy of English It would be difficult to reconcile his advocacy of English with his later advocacy of a national language unless, one understands that Quezon’s commitment was really not to English but to political independence English, in his view was merely a tool to arrive at that independence It would be fair then to reprise here Santos’ assessment of Quezon that “he did not thoroughly master the richness of the Tagalog language” (“hindi niya lubos na nasasaklaw ang kayamanan ng wikang Tagalog”) as, in using English as a tool, and therefore allowing it dominance over the Philippines, he seems to have missed what the Muling Pagsilang writers had asserted so many years ago: that Tagalog was the soul of the nation and that nation was found in Tagalog Political independence was not the same as nationhood The Broad Strokes The explanation here of the role of language in creating the nation will rely on an outline made up of broad strokes To be sure, these strokes are large enough as to be both somewhat restrictive and at the same time allow for exceptions that may prove it wrong Nevertheless, it is in the larger sweep of the events of the forty or so years of American occupation that one may understand how the actions of oppression and domination, refusal, struggle and resistance and, inevitably, negotiation moved to establish the role of English and Tagalog within the Philippine nation In this narrative, Tagalog moved from a marginalized position to a relatively dominant one At the very opening of the century, the resolute assault launched by American colonial officials against all the native language in its bid to supplant (by some accounts even annihilate) 243 them and replace them with English united Tagalog writers and thinkers in the cause of saving their beloved language Thirty or so years later, the Tagalog campaign would be alive and sanguine The Philippine Commonwealth Constitution of 1935 would provide for a national language based on a local language and two years later Tagalog would be declared as that language upon which the national language would be based English, on the other hand, managed to maintain its dominant position while yielding to Tagalog Those first few years of occupation found the Americans insistent upon the imposition of English throughout the Philippines, in their crusade to depict the local languages as useless or near death, and in their project of creating an American educated elite who would defend American ways, American policy and the American language Yet, their policies would also have to yield to the inevitability of a people’s devotion to their history, language, and culture Independence would be inevitable as would be the continued use of the vernaculars, yet the colonial project would find a way to endure and English would continue to occupy an essential part of Philippine society through the constitutional provision the Americans would insist upon: that English remain the language of education even after independence The principal agents in this process—the Tagalog writers (like Lope K Santos), the American colonial officials (like David Barrows), the Spanish-speaking, later American-educated and English-speaking elite (like Manuel L Quezon) who occupied the most powerful positions in government—all held fast to their positions but yielded to what they must have seen at the time as historical inevitability The American colonial officials started out like gangbusters in their vigorous attempt to make English the common language throughout the Philippines The pinnacle of this certainty saw Barrows declare the inevitable death of the local languages Yet, with a realization of the impossibility of their project, these officials adjusted their proclamation about and definition of the common language (as the Monroe Report of 1925 did) These officials were forced to accept that the vernaculars would, forever more, have a place in Philippine society With the inevitability of independence, they had to tolerate the idea that a linguistic symbol for the new nation would have to be erected and that it was not going to be English Yet, even with the 244 supposed benevolence of the granting of political independence came a chilling reminder of American colonial desire for control There was to be no independence for the Filipino in their choice of the language that was to be used as the medium of instruction Inscribed in the constitution that was to stand for almost forty years was the continued use of English as the medium of instruction English was something for which there was going to be no negotiation and, although they had transformed from gangbusters to shrewd negotiators, in effect their policy from thirty years before stood It turned out, as David Barrows had predicted in 1908, that “civilization [was] to be accomplished not by force but by persuasion.”617 A small, elite group of wealthy influentials controlled business, education, and government They were mostly Spanish and English-speaking, well-educated (many in America), landed or owners of industry Throughout the thirty or so years before the Commonwealth, they were divided in their positions about language Although there had always been a group that defended the vernaculars, the majority of them felt that it was either Spanish or English that would claim primary importance in Philippine life For a great majority of this class (as it is still with this class today), Spanish and/or English was the language of business and high culture; the local languages were the languages of the common people Yet, by the 1930s, the support for Tagalog (in some it was the support for what it represented in terms of independence) became the dominant position such that the paragon of this class, Manuel L Quezon, would champion it and ensure its place as the national language The Tagalog writers worked tirelessly to keep Tagalog alive The people’s unshakable devotion to Tagalog and the impossibility of obliging them to take up another language and culture were what these Tagalog writers drew from and fed into And yet, in a manner of speaking, they eventually had to give up Tagalog in order to attain political independence America’s tenacity at implementing the policy to make English the common language has already been discussed in previous chapters What is left to underscore here is the paradox of the flexible rigidity of this policy; of how it could extend to a point where it could tolerate dissention 617 Philippines The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1908), 101 245 even among the top officials of the colonial government This of course is just good old fashioned American democracy; the rigidity, however belies all the rhetoric of democracy and exposes the pretense of a “rule by, for, and of the people.” It is, however, within this flexibility that Philippine writers could imagine and hope that Tagalog and the other Philippine languages would formally take up an important place in Philippine life In August of 1931, for example, Vice-governor and Secretary of Public Instruction George Butte, in an address to the Catholic Women’s League, declared that “After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that all instruction in each of the elementary schools in the Philippines should be given in one of the nine native languages, which is approximate to the locality, as soon as the necessary textbooks can be provided and qualified teachers obtained.”618 Although various American politicians and colonial officials throughout the span of the colonial occupation had expressed this position, it had taken thirty years for the head of the Secretary of Public Instruction to assume it It was assumed too late In a matter of three years the Commonwealth constitution was going to be written with the provision that would permanently ensure that instruction was going to be in English As the colonial government moved from a military to a civil government (in 1901) and as the tight grip on expressions of nationalism and a desire for independence slowly loosened (this loosening corresponds to the gains made in their pacification campaign), Tagalog writers were given more space to freely express their sentiments regarding their language and their opposition to English The Philippine Assembly passed, in 1907, a bill that was to provide for primary education in the vernacular The Philippine Commission vetoed the bill but the passage of the bill demonstrated how important the vernaculars were to the Filipinos During this period, the local press became bolder and articulations against the English policy were abundant It is no wonder then that the most strident defense of English and the harshest attack on the vernacular comes during this period from the Director of the Bureau of Public Education of the time, David Barrows Barrows is often depicted as one of the most benevolent of the directors 618 George C Butte, “Shall the Philippines Have a Common Language?,” Philippine Journal of Education 14, no (1931): 149 246 who had a real vision and commitment to Philippine education.619 Yet from him came the strongest defense of English, the severest analysis of the condition of Philippine culture, and a dismal prediction that the local languages would disappear Barrows would claim approval for the Corrales bill save for some administrative difficulties620 and acknowledge in it the destiny of the Filipinos to endure by “absorbing and fitting to its own purposes the common civilization of the western world.”621 Yet, even in these condescensions, Barrows held fast to the English policy The 1925 Board of Education Survey, also known as the Monroe Report was quoted in length in Chapter and held up as the apotheosis of the American discourse on the correctness of the English policy in the Philippines However, the discourse is not all that unshakeable and in some of the details of the Monroe report one finds some contradictions The Report, for example, admits, “At one point in the school curriculum some use of the dialect seems desirable.”622 This point is ethics education The Study admits that the understanding of such an important matter as good morals and right conduct “depends largely upon a familiarity with the language form.”623 The Survey therefore recommends the “possible use of the dialects in giving instruction to children in manners and morals.”624 Here then is an admission of what Bocobo calls the “axiomatic,” that idea that the comprehension of new concepts will be most efficiently accomplished if the conveyance is done in the mother tongue The recommendation is never heeded but here is one of the first official acknowledgements, tiny as it may be, of an error in the policy Another contradiction of the Monroe report comes in their definition of terms and in their statement of intention Although for over twenty years, colonial officials were making pronouncements about how English would become the common language of the Filipinos and, in 619 In Social Engineering in the Philippines, for example, Glen May idealized Barrows as a champion of liberal education who had a sincere belief in universal education as a precondition for development and progress and in a “’literary’ education for young Filipinos [that would] emphasize academic subjects at the expense of manual training (pages 98-99) See also Chapter for a discussion of this 620 The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education 99 621 Ibid, 101 622 The Board of Education Survey, A Survey of the Educational System of the Philippine Islands, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925), 28 623 Ibid 624 Ibid 247 the case of Barrows, how the local languages would eventually disappear, this report had to admit differently There is no anticipation and no desire to replace the native dialects as a common medium of communication among the masses of the people This can only come about as a natural process through the course of time By a common language is meant a language for common intercourse in business, professional, intellectual, political, and cultural affairs This language will be a medium of communication between all the educated members of the dialect group .625 Contrary to how English was previously projected as “the great equalizer” that would unite all Filipinos, now English is unabashedly admitted as the elite language Within this short excerpt is contained the great social divide of “masses of the people” and “educated members.” Given the history of the enthusiastic predictions of English replacing local languages and uniting Filipinos, there is an undertone of defeat in this statement This defeat is not just in the admission that the local languages cannot be replaced but maybe more so in the realization that English emphasizes and encourages a sharp division among the social classes, which is exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to Despite this, the Monroe Report is still, after all, a powerful affirmation of the English policy Though the members of the board may have been somewhat (infinitesimally so) attuned to the Filipino sentiment on language, in the end, the recommendations remained simply recommendations and the English policy remained intact and absolute Despite all the protestations of the Anti-imperialist Leauge, and all the Saleebys and all the Buttes of America, when it was time to stipulate the conditions under which independence would happen, it was clear that it was only going to happen if English would remain in the same place carved out for it in 1899 Benevolence and flexibility could be projected and spun but in the fine print is found the absolute rigidity of the policy The Tydings-McDuffie law, passed by the American legislature in March of 1934 and accepted by the Philippine legislature in May of the same year, was crafted by the American Senate and the Filipino members of the Independence missions It was the law that would finally provide for Philippinene independence In the details of the independence law is found the ties that would continue to connect the U.S to the Philippines, ties that would bind the Philippines for a long time; bind it even till today 625 Ibid, 26 248 The stranglehold is most evident in the economic provisions The law provides for limited626 duty free trade on American imports of sugar, coconut oil and hemp products In order to protect America’s own industries, the law stipulated that the Philippine government collect an export tax, the rate of which increased yearly, on these duty free item The law specified where the collection of this tax would go—it was to go to “the payment of the principal and interest on the bonded indebtedness of the Philippine Islands.”627 This tact is one that would become increasingly familiar to the Philippines and to most Third World countries With the exponential growth of national debts beginning in the 1960s, America and agencies like the IMF-World Bank would insist on more and more taxes levied on practically every financial transaction no matter how tiny, in order to pay the “principal and interest of bonded indebtedness.” The first provision of this law is “All citizens of the Philippine Islands shall owe allegiance to the Unites States.”628 The eighth provision, which, in a manner of speaking is a restatement of the first provision, reads: “Provision shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of an adequate system of public school, primarily conducted in English.”629 This translated into the actual 1935 constitution as: “The Government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines shall establish and maintain an adequate system of public school, primarily conducted in the English language.”630 Given the popularity in the early 1930s of the idea of vernacular education and of Tagalog itself, this is quite a bizarre provision Even more than the economic provisions, the English provision gives one a ghostly sense of the insistence on continued American presence in the Philippines Independence and Philippine Nationalism The Philippine politicians, those who are acknowledged as the architects of the independence bills, politicians like Quezon, Osmeña, and Roxas, are often depicted in their bid 626 Exports of these products were to enter the United States duty free up to a specified tonnage For refined sugar, for example, it was fifty thousand long tons 627 Full Text of the Philippine Constitution and the Tydings-McDuffie Law, compiled by Ricardo S Sison, (Manila: Ricardo S Sison, 1935), 40 See pages 39-40 for the full text of the economic provisions 628 Ibid, 36 629 Ibid 630 Ibid, 24 Article 12, Section 1, Number 249 for independence as being not too concerned about political autonomy as they were with economic dependencies Free trade between the Philippines and the U.S was insured while the Philippines was a colony of the United States and this condition was a mightily profitable one for manufacturers, traders and (sugar, coconut, and hemp) land owners Independence for this sector of society, of which elite politicians were a part of, became undesirable The motivation for such politicians in the quest for independence became the insurance of economic dependencies Constantino calls this sector of society the “economic and political elite” and describes them as “coterminous or at least intimately interrelated” and as “becoming increasingly reluctant to trade their prosperous dependence for the uncertainties of freedom.”631 It is indeed difficult to argue against the much-documented political maneuverings and unscrupulous position shifting of such politicians as Quezon His record on language policy alone, is cause for extreme wariness of his motives Theodore Friend’s analysis of independence and the quality of Philippine nationalism is similar in sentiment to that of Constantino He argues that: Only in the 1950s, after independence, would the prime expression of Philippine nationalism become cultural and economic Before that, during the decades of American rule, as in the last years of the Spanish, Philippine nationalism was chiefly social and political.632 The overdetermined quality of the nationalism of a whole nation is evident in how, on so many levels, this statement is both valid and questionable The Muling Pagsilang essays, the seditious plays, the numerous social novels, the Balagtasan, the “reign” of Jose Corazon de Jesus, are all testaments to the cultural/linguistic quality of Philippine nationalism Though these expressions of nationalism might not have been the product of the political/economic elite, they were, nonetheless, strong, one dare say even “prime” expressions of Philippine nationalism during this period “between two empires.” It is perhaps valid to see the nationalism of Quezon and his ilk as principally political After all, with the complicated maneuverings and horse trading in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting bill 631 Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited, 341 Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), 35 632 250 and the Tydings-McDuffie bill, political independence was achieved As the crusade was focused on the political and economic (continued economic dependencies, not economic independence), there seems to have been little attention paid to the English provision The result of this was the linguistic and cultural paralysis of the Philippine nation The independent nation could not decide for itself what language was to be used as the medium of instruction; could not act on an education policy that seemed to all its citizens as “axiomatic” (as Bocobo had argued in 1916 and Cecilio Lopez argued again in the 1920s and 1930s); and was forced to continue with the use of a foreign language as medium of instruction Yet, the picture would be incomplete if the depiction of Quezon was one who was motivated purely by the interests of familial and economic connections Quezon was not untouched by the concerns and passions of the common people What Ileto calls “popular radicalism”—the rhetorical technique of appealing to the Filipino masses (during the first 20 years or so of American occupation) by calling up images of revolution—was employed by even conservative politicians such as Osmeña and Quezon Even if his motives were not always faithful to the spirit of radicalism and the threat of revolt, Quezon knew the power of its rhetoric and how to use it Ileto describes him as sometimes emulating other radical orators and delivering “’one of the most fiery speeches at the foot of the Bonifacio monument’” where he boasted that he kept a flag of the Katpunan in his office in Washington.633 One can never accuse Quezon of not knowing the sentiments of the people The sentiments may have been used simply as rhetorical device or in order to create a bogeyman or to gain popularity Nevertheless, Quezon had his ear to the masses and would sometimes deliver In the 1930s when the sentiments of the people were found in Liwayway and the Balagtasan, Quezon made his final stand on language that would mark him forever as the “Father of the National Language.” Thus, the very same constitution that provides for “an adequate system of public schools, primarily conducted in English” also provides for Article Thirteen, Section Three which states: 633 Reynaldo C Ileto, “Orators and the Crowd: Independence Politics, 1910-1914 147 Ileto provides numerous examples of Quezon employing this strategy 251 “The National Assembly shall take steps toward the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages.”634 A Story of Triumph The story of triumph must begin with a story of defeat This is how our language story has often been told One cannot but see the harsh oppression perpetrated by the English policy When a foreign language was forced upon a people, there were numerous dismal consequences A pedagogical practice, recognized by so many as impoverished was allowed to perpetuate for more than seventy years English, which was promised as that which would become “the great equalizer,” ended up underscoring the social divide even more In years to come, access to English was to become a privilege and a grasp of it a mark of one’s high economic standing Tagalog and the other local languages were to be further marginalized The attitude towards these languages was one that continued to see them as underdeveloped and literatures from the local languagaes were poorly represented in the national culture The tragedy is not just a language tragedy but is connected to problems of continued economic dependence As E San Juan explains in some basic premises he outlines to understand the Philippine language question: Language is not a self-sufficient entity or phenomenon in itself but a component of the social forms of consciousness of any given social formation it can only be properly addressed within the historical specificity of a given mode of production and attendant social-political formation.635 Concretely, the Philippines’ continued valuation of English and marginalization of the language of the people is complicit in national development plans that rely on the placing of the majority of Filipinos as wage laborers—either as assembly line workers in export processing zones or as domestic helpers throughout the world The defeat is also seen in less obvious venues as those mentioned above Politically, the crusade for the Philippine languages underwent a transformation throughout the period of 634 The Philippine Constitution and the Tydings-McDuffie Law, 21 E San Juan, Jr “Sneaking into the Philippines, Along the Rivers of Babylon: An Intervention into the Language Question” (paper presented at the launching of Balik-Bayang Sinta: An E San Juan Reader, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines, March 12, 2008) 635 252 American occupation This transformation was the de-radicalization of the language crusade At the beginning of the century, Tagalog, the memory of the revolution and the threat (and fulfillment) of unrest were tied together Gradually, as the seditious dramas gave way to the more popular forms like the Balagtasan, so did the Tagalog writers shift their focus almost purely to the refinement of the language and to the resolution of such problems as morphology, syntax, and the like Despite all this, how can one not also see this as a story of triumph? Despite the attempts to disparage, erase, create falsehoods about the Philippine languages, these languages did, after all, survive, endure, and thrive This period was witness to a concerted and sustained effort, carried out by so many committed men and women to give life to Tagalog If one begins an accounting of this monumental effort with Salamanca’s 1965 book, The Filipino Reaction to American Rule, 1901-1913, one would be left with a disturbing feeling that there really was not much of a reaction to the English policy Yet, one is quickly impressed by the deluge of archival material that exists that confirms that there was indeed a powerful crusade to save Tagalog Chapters Six and Seven already recounted some of these efforts of the numerous language organizations such as Ilaw at Panitik and Aklatang Bayan and described how popular they were The explanations in those chapters did not, however, emphasize enough the scope and range of these efforts It will be the province of other studies to undertake the work of describing the sustained efforts of these language organizations Meanwhile, numerous other studies already exist that describe the breath of output in novels, seditious plays, the Balagtasan, popular magazines, grammars and dictionaries All these also contributed to the Tagalog success story The effort to keep Tagalog at the forefront of the consciousness of the people paid off The Philippines did not become a nation when America finally decided to grant it independence in 1945 in the same way that we did not finally get a national linguistic symbol when the Filipino language was declared in 1937 Many identify the moment of the commencement of nationhood as being the years of the revolution when disparate groups of people banded together and challenged the occupying force In that way, the Philippine nation 253 continues to define itself everyday in a struggle against an occupation that started small in 1898 but grew into a global phenomenon experienced most dramatically in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Columbia, and Iraq but is, in a manner of speaking, experienced everywhere in the world The Filipino language story cannot but be a story of triumph simply because, in this struggle, the majority of the people, the masses, find in their language their feelings, their struggles, their identity and their nationhood 254 ... the Philippines? ?? continued valuation of English and marginalization of the language of the people is complicit in national development plans that rely on the placing of the majority of Filipinos... appreciating the Philippine understanding of the relation of language and culture to the nation, features the vital position of language and culture in the Burmese struggle Language and Culture in. .. legislation and policy to protect those interests In the Philippines, great interest has been placed on the role of the elite during the American colonial period There has been a surplus of writings