Bring back our literacy in local dialects

Atmakusumah, Jakarta

How many times in a week, or even in a day, is it that I stumble in a conversation in my own national language, Bahasa Indonesia.

I realize at such moments that I am unable to finish my sentence because I could only find the proper words for certain thoughts in my mother tongue -- the Bahasa Sunda spoken by the majority of the West Javanese ethnic group -- but which may not be understood by my companions.

Those particular words only exist in Bahasa Sunda, and most likely other people have encountered the same difficulty in their own local languages and dialects, because those languages are richer in vocabulary than the Indonesian language.

With over 17,000 islands, Indonesia is home to more than 300 ethnic groups comprising 250 languages and dialects. But many of the languages are no longer spoken fluently by the indigenous groups, a category that also includes myself and my children.

My wife, by the way, still speaks fluently in both Bahasa Sunda and Bahasa Indonesia, as well as in Bahasa Jawa, the language of Central and East Javanese ethnic groups.

Under the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika or "Diversity in Unity", the culturally diverse country, however, has been transformed into a politically united entity since the day we proclaimed independence.

To live in this unitary state -- which was haunted for decades by the specter of political and territorial disintegration -- we have been inculcated to learn and speak the national language rather than our local dialects or ethnic languages, both at school and in society. In adhering to this, however, we have gradually lost our cultural heritage -- that is, our literacy in ethnic languages.

For example, only a very few senior citizens with the ability to write in Sundanese or Javanese script remain. Media publications in Sundanese and Javanese have also disappeared rapidly over only a few decades. I believe this is also the case with other ethnic languages in other regions.

What does this mean?

It means we are losing, bit by bit, the diversity and plurality of our precious culture, linguistically and otherwise -- just as we are losing our indigenous wildlife and hence, our biodiversity.

Cultures have their own value systems and views on life, and it is therefore important to maintain pluralism in our national culture. Being pluralistic, we expect our society to have respect and a deep understanding of differences, tolerance and goodwill.

It is believed that by recognizing and valuing differences, we can build a peaceful and sustainable society, Anton Sudarisman, coordinator of the Indonesian Peace Education Center, wrote in an Oct. 8 article in The Jakarta Post, titled "Why peace education is urgent for Indonesia".

JC Kapur, publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Delhi-based World Affairs-The Journal of International Issues, says that culture and civilization have often been considered interchangeable.

Culture is a refined appreciation of the religious traditions, customs, institutions or aesthetic achievements of a nation or a group. Without respect for other cultures, a culture of global harmony with an unexploitative compassionate and humane order cannot be realized, he wrote in "Transcending the clash of civilizations" in the New Delhi journal's April-June 2003 edition.

Meanwhile, for the first time ever, an environmentalist, Wangari Maathai from Kenya, won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, said for the first time, the environment set the agenda for the prize, and the committee had added a new dimension to peace. The Nobel committee expanded upon the peace concept to include environmental issues because it believed that good quality of life on Earth was necessary to promote a lasting world peace.

"Peace depends on our ability to secure our living environment," Mjoes was quoted on Oct. 17 as saying by the Guardian News Service, London.

Because of the increasingly sophisticated and rapid advancement of communications technology, our lives today are more easily exposed to other cultures than ever before -- regionally and globally. It seems, therefore, that we should also add another new dimension to peace by expanding the peace concept to include the broad issue of cultures, which could certainly contribute to the promotion of lasting peace in the world.

The writer is a lecturer in journalism at the Soetomo Press Institute, or the Lembaga Pers Dr. Soetomo, in Jakarta. He is the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.