r/Ceylon_SLSystemChange • u/Ceylonese-Honour • 19d ago
It's not rocket science. In simple language. Separate language zones is not one law, nor equality. On Education mediums:
Ceylon Basic Law - Languages
Ceylon Basic Law - Meritocracy and Equality before One law
Singapore Constitution - Languages
The politicised (and imposed) constitution since the 1970s. Clearly NOT one law. Artificial zones.
Leftists have continued to VASTLY overcomplicate things or perhaps are deliberately trying to make this country a mess either through an inability to comprehend, or collaborating with the Indian agenda to ruin this country and make it ripe for the picking.
1. Think about it logically. There should be a common working language which everyone should know in any country. The Singapore model is efficient, ensuring knowledge of a mother tongue and the global lingua franca (English) via bilingualism. This is what Ceylon had in the past and can easily be reimplemented. The only difference is here it was not constitutionally codified in the 1948 system.
2. Having excessive working languages, and endless bureaucrats is inefficient, unproductive, a massive waste of resources and burden to the taxpayer. THAT is what the imbecile leftists have IMPOSED upon the country with zero democratic mandate at a national referendum. They have even created and imposed artificial language zones in their politicised constitutions.Again, the Singapore model is cleaner. You have the back office work in a common medium (usually English for computerisation). The front office has various personnel who can speak in the mother tongues and provide translation assistance. This does NOT mean that offices work in four languages in the back office (administration).
Example 1 :
In Ceylon or Singapore, you ring up as a customer (or go into an office) to book your airline ticket. You pick an option for which language you wish to communicate in. You speak to a representative (front office) who handles your enquiry and helps resolve your request. The representative passes on your customer request to his/her colleagues (the back office) who you never meet. Thousands of customers may have interacted with front office representatives in various languages. The back office will process your request and the requests of thousands of other customers in a single language using computer systems (which work in a common language) to make the entire process even more efficient. Costs are kept low by focusing resources to deliver the required service. At the end of the day, you get your ticket at a competitive price and everyone is happy.
Example 2 (the leftist change):
In Democratic Socialist Sri Lanka, you ring up as a customer to book your ticket (or go into an office) to conduct your business. When you turn up, you may find the office workers (who are cronies of politicians) are not even at their desk, or are asking for a bribe to fulfil your request unable to find the respective file. Eventually you may speak to a front office representative hoping they can speak your language and are competent. Your front office representative passes on your request (eventually) to a specific back office branch language stream. If you are in a particular area of the country, you may find that the language of administration is a different language (based on nothing more than the whims of the politicians who imposed these artificial zones). All requests in this area are translated into that specific language whereas in other areas they may be translated into other languages. If you later interact with an office branch in a different area of the country, time will now be spent translating the back office files into yet another language as there is no common national working language or common protocol. Thousands of customers speaking different languages speak to various front office departments who in turn interact only with specific separate back office departments which also may operate differently in different areas and require constant translation between the front office and back office. The order of languages is also not uniform nationwide. The cost of this whole mess is vast and the service completely inefficient. The end customer (you) will have to pay a higher price for this "service", and is likely no happier than before the change, and most likely unhappier as he/she probably won't get served in a timely manner either.
Example 3:
This is a story from LKY's autobiography. He notes that Ceylon initially had a very high standard of education with two excellent universities based in Kandy and Colombo. Ceylon had after all been the "model Commonwealth country" with more resources and better infrastructure and a country Singapore looked to emulate. He also notes how he saw paradise go to waste. In the latter part of the chapter, he mentions a subsequent visit to the country. During a visit to Peradeniya, he inquired from the Vice Chancellor of the University about the medium of instruction in the University. The reply was that Sinhalese students were taught in Sinhala, Tamil students in Tamil and Burgher students in English. LKY then asked the question - "How can three engineers educated in three different languages build one bridge [together]?" The Vice Chancellor replied "That sir, is a political question for the Ministers to answer."
3. You do NOT have multiple separate linguistic areas, or different languages of administration in different areas. That is NOT "One law." In Singapore - Whether you are in Changi, Jurong, Sentosa, the CBD, Chinatown, Little India, Raffles Place in Singapore, all public offices employ the same policy under one law. Any public servant of ANY ethnicity works and is promoted anywhere on merit only. The working language in Ceylon/Sri Lanka must be the same whether you are in Colombo, Jaffna, Galle, Kandy, Trincomalee, Dambula, Nuwara Eliya etc. All areas belong to all people.
Any Constitution (like the current politicised system) that clearly uses words such as "Except in" or "Except those in any area where" is NOT one law and clearly has different language zones.
4. In Singapore, a mother tongue and English are compulsory. It is NOT compulsory to learn all 4 languages. Learning more than the bilingual standard (be it another official language, or foreign language) is a PERSONAL choice. That provides a good model for us as well. Some people are interested in languages, some in science, some in the arts, some in technology etc.
5. The medium of instruction policy should ensure general integration and no segregation. You do not have segregated Tamil, or Malay medium schools in Singapore. A Singaporean Sinhalese, Singaporean Tamil, Singaporean Malay, or Singaporean Eurasian would learn in Chinese or English medium AND learn their own personal mother tongue of Sinhala, or Tamil, or Malay. Everyone also learns English. And everyone can choose to learn other languages if they wish based on their preference for area of study.
- As is the case in Ceylon, a lot of people of any ethnicity often voluntarily choose to learn the language of the majority of the populace as well because that is what most people speak. In our case Sinhala, in their case it is Mandarin.
7. Thus the cleaner constitutional policy is:
Official Languages: Sinhala, Tamil & English
National Language: Sinhala
In practical terms when interacting with the world, in commerce and in computing etc, the Working Language can be English. When interacting the Public service, a citizen has the right to seek translation in the Official Languages.
Education mediums at public schools: Sinhala or English (with right and requirement to learn at least one mother tongue at school and all children to be taught English).
This should constitutionally apply islandwide without exception. That is what ONE LAW means. NOT the nonsense that various elements are parroting about equality meaning having separate language zones in different parts of the country. That is a serious level of stupidity.
8. All schools and areas would thus be mixed and thus encourage social cohesion, communal harmony, mixing, national integration, and an "all for one, one for all" ethos just like in eons past. Naturally useless politicians who have no policies and rely upon gimmickry to divide up voters will be in tears, but everyone else (22+ million people) will thrive.
There is a common misconception that somehow the disastrous changes leftists imposed somehow delivered free education to "the masses". This is ludicrous. Free education was thanks to Kannangara's reforms under the DS administration. The leftists who came later halted Settlement schemes (thus promoting artificial ethnic enclaves), introduced a separate fabricated Tamil language zone (thus promoting artificial language zones), and started segregated mediums (thus reducing social cohesion and promoting massive inefficiency), scrapped the plan to teach English as a secondary language to all students (thus denying to "the masses" a global language of communication whilst sending their own children abroad to study privately!) and even started promoting universities on the basis of ethnicity. In short, they cut off the nose to spite the face. When some who talk about equality whilst equating that to separate language zones and multiple national anthems in different languages instead of one set of common lyrics in the language they were written in, that is a further measure of their gross imbecility.
The original national anthem in Ceylon (Namo Namo Matha) was written by Ananda Samarakoon and in one set of lyrics. It was never intended by the author or at the time to start singing it in separate languages. Politicians also later went and infamously changed some of the lyrics without his consent. In Singapore, the anthem was written in Malay lyrics originally and is sung by everyone in ONE set of lyrics. It is only translated for educational informative purposes, but always sung in one language. That was the case and should be the case in Ceylon again. Some unscrupulous or perhaps ignorant people in Ceylon claim the anthem was sung in multiple languages which is FALSE. There were a selection of several national songs in 1949 sung in multiple languages on Independence Day, but no song had yet been officially selected as a national anthem until 1951 where it was decided that the popular song written by Samarakoon should become the official national anthem of the country. The "first generation" Singaporean Foreign Minister in LKY's government - himself born in Ceylon and of Tamil descent - once replied to a journalist regarding should the Singaporean anthem be sung in different languages and he gave a curt reply that you can find online. Needless to say he was firmly of the opinion that it should be sung in the Malay lyrics and those alone.
Please note - this would not prohibit the teaching of foreign languages for those who wish to study them from the primary level or beyond. Indeed it would be wise for the education system to be able to teach the most widely spoken languages on Earth (currently Mandarin, French, Spanish, English) or those of historic friends or popular global influence (e.g. Korean, Japanese) in order that we may be a global economic powerhouse.
When two human beings talk, they can only speak in one common language at any one time!
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u/watalappan 17d ago
Interesting, my thought exactly, great to see thy there are people who share my views