22 Lubna Alsagoff
intention of making Bahasa Malaysia the national language of the country
while preserving and sustaining the growth of the language and culture
of other communities living in the country. (cited in Gill 2005, p. 245)The Razak Report proposed the establishment of two types of primary
schools: the “national school” using Malay as the medium; and the
“national-type” school which could use either English, Chinese or Tamil
as the medium. Refinements to these policies were made in 1960 — the
Rahman Talib Report, named after its chair, the then Education Minister,
led to the legislation of a new Education Act, which allowed Chinese and
Tamil primary schools to co-exist with national schools. To safeguard
the status of Malay, however, the government now made it mandatory
that all secondary schools use Malay as the medium of instruction. All
schools were also required to adopt a common set of subject syllabi and
examinations. At the tertiary level, Malay was also gaining ground. The
University of Malaya began converting its courses into Malay — as an
interim measure, English was used for science and technology while Malay
was used for the arts and humanities. This transformation was completed
in 1983, after eighteen years, when all subjects including the sciences, were
taught in Malay.
In grappling with its multicultural and multilingual population,
the Malaysian government emphasized the need for a single national
language — Malay — that would serve to unite the multiethnic nation
and form the basis of a national identity. Gill (2005), however, argues
that a more compelling reason might have been to reduce the inequities
between those who received their education in English and those who did
not. Gill suggests that the Malay nationalist group were unhappy about
the economic power of the English-speaking, who were, by and large,
the Chinese who lived in the urban areas, along with a small number
of Indians and Malays who also attended the English-medium schools.
The Malaysian government clearly believed that instituting Malay as the
national language and the sole official language of Malaysia would elevate
its linguistic capital, which in turn would provide the Malays with the
capital and economic opportunities they desired. The Chinese and Indian
groups were also in favour of the use of their own languages rather than
English (Lee 2007). However, this pace of reform that would ensure Malay
of its premier linguistic status proved to be slow. In Sabah, for example,
English continued to be an official language alongside Malay until 1973,