Mon Culture: Dying or Reviving?
During his defense hearing at a court in the Mon State capital of Moulmein, Mon Buddhist abbot U Palita refused to speak in Burmese, even though he knew it well enough. "This is Mon-land," he argued, "where I should be able to speak Mon in official matters." The authorities eventually acquiesced and arranged for an interpreter to translate his words into Burmese. That was 1975, a year after Burma's socialist government granted statehood to the Mon in Burma's southeast. Yet despite this concession, the Mon were without any real autonomy. Rangoon continued to control many of the state's affairs and insisted that the Mon speak Burmese in all official matters. The following year, U Palita wrote a poem for the magazine Gatab Ket (Modernization). His poem warned the Mon that their state was not genuine and advised them "not to taste the tasteless Mon State."
The poem landed him in jail. In 1976 he was sentenced to seven years, but he served only three. And his incarceration did nothing to erode his fierce nationalism. Now aged 79, U Palita has written more than 30 books in Mon and heads the monastery at Kamawet village in Mudon Township, Mon State. The abbot chairs a summer school program in Mon literacy, and through his work he has inspired hundreds of young Mon to continue writing in their native tongue.
"U Palita is the greatest Mon patriot of our time," says Nai Kasauh Mon, editor of the Thai-based Independent Mon News Agency. The editor describes the abbot as the Mon equivalent of Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, the Burman nationalist and cultural leader from the independence movement. Assimilation, dislocation and suppression have put a strain on Mon identity, and the people rely on Buddhist monks to preserve what they can of it. "Several well-known (and not-so-well-known) Mon Buddhist monks play an important role in fostering Mon identity, giving life to our people," says Nai Kasauh Mon.
The largest group of ethnic Mon live in Burma's Mon State, but large Mon communities also reside in western Thailand, Karen State and in various Burmese villages. And their increasing fragmentation has led experts to say that their language is dying and their culture is in serious decline. It was not always thus. "Mon-land" once covered the wide green plain of what is now central and western Thailand and southern Burma. Perhaps the most important legacy of Mon civilization is Theravada Buddhism, which became the dominant religion in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
Regional languages were also influenced by Mon. Said to be the oldest literary vernacular among Burmese languages, Mon is of the Mon-Khmer linguistic group. The Mon script, which can be traced back as far as the fifth century AD, influenced the development of character sets now in use in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Burma.
While the Burmese language is considered a derivative of Tibeto-Burman, its script borrows heavily from Mon as well. Mon abbots mentored the Burmese kings after King Anawrahta sacked the Mon capital of Thaton in the 11th century and carried its king, monks and cultural treasures to Pagan. Until the following century, Burma's royal edicts were inscribed in Mon.
Mon kings ruled from Pegu until they capitulated to Burmese King Alaungpaya in 1757. Burmese invaders decimated the Mon and founded "The End of Strife", or Yangon (Rangoon), on the site of the small Mon town called Dagon. The city later became the Burmese capital.
Under colonial rulers after the 19th century, Mon identity was further repressed. British administrators made Burmese the language of government and encouraged a mass migration of Burman, Indian and Chinese workers into Lower Burma. These moves had a particularly devastating effect on Mon identity, writes Burma expert Martin Smith. Vast areas of Mon-land were also cleared for rice cultivation, Smith adds.
I think Mon will be a dead language within 40 years - Dr Nai Pan Hla Within two generations Mon civilization in Lower Burma was virtually erased. In 1891, the census found that "the process of [Mon linguistic] decay ... has ... advanced too far to be checked by any transient revival of national feeling." After independence in 1948, the Mons were one of many ethnic minorities to join the armed insurgency against Rangoon. Under a 1958 ceasefire, the democratically elected U Nu government agreed to work towards the creation of a Mon State. According to Dr Emmanuel Guillon, a scholar on Mon history, Mon culture flourished again under U Nu, as people were allowed to publish periodicals and celebrate traditional ceremonies. U Nu's government continued to allow schools with Mon-language instruction, but when Gen Ne Win's military government seized power in 1962, teachers of Mon literature were forced to resign. These days, teaching in Mon occurs only in monasteries across lower Burma and a few hundred Mon National Schools in areas under the control of the New Mon State Party (NMSP). "The language policy applied by successive military regimes has been to Burmanize at the expense of the language and culture of indigenous nationalities," explains Dr Thein Lwin, a Burmese education scholar. He says that the Mon are but one of many ethnic groups fighting for language rights along with political autonomy.
In June 1995, the NMSP signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese military junta. Under the agreement, the party was permitted to operate Mon-language "National Schools." But many critics say the ceasefire failed to guarantee the cultural rights Mon people had expected. "I'm afraid that the Mon people went chasing after rainbows," says Guillon, when asked about the language concessions Mon people demanded. U Palita agrees that the ceasefire was unjust. "There are no advantages for us," he said.
A crackdown in November 1998 illustrates the ongoing repression of Mon rights. According to reports, military authorities banned Mon classes in 18 schools in Kawareik Township, Karen State. Around 50 teachers were fired, affecting more than 3,000 students.
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi spoke about the restrictions on language rights for the Mon in an address to the UN Commission on Human Rights in April 2000. "Since this military regime came to power, the teaching of Mon language in schools has been prohibited. Now if that is not an infringement of the cultural rights of an ethnic people, what is?" Suu Kyi said. "Language is important," she added.
Thein Lwin, who conducted field research into Mon language rights, says that the future of the Mon language doesn't look good. "It will be difficult for Mon language and literature to survive without official recognition by the government," he said.
A prominent Mon historian, Dr Nai Pan Hla, agrees. "I think Mon will be a dead language within 40 years," he says. Now in his 70s and living in Rangoon, Nai Pan Hla remains one of the best informed sources on Mon identity.
But Ashley South reads the situation differently. A specialist on ethnic politics and author of Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma, South acknowledges serious constraints and setbacks, but insists that there has been some real success in Mon education initiatives since the ceasefire. "Most of what is published and said about language and education rights in Mon areas focuses on the 'bad news' only," South says.
According to South, the NMSP ran 187 Mon National Schools and 186 mixed schools in buildings shared with state-run schools during the 2002-03 school year. The Mon National Schools taught more than 50,000 students, with around 70 percent of the students coming from government-controlled areas that had no access to Mon language education before the ceasefire.
Summer vacation courses also started after the ceasefire. With support from local and international donors, more than 55,000 school students have attended courses in Mon language, culture and history in townships across lower Burma this year. Seventy percent of the students were girls. "Regarding Mon education since the ceasefire, I'd say that it's a case of three steps forward, and one step back," South explains.
Not everyone is so upbeat. Descriptions from local Mon people highlight the scale of the regime's institutionalized assimilation. Sources say that when the military forces Mon youth to join the junta's civilian wing, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), they must list their ethnicity as Burman. "If you give up your identity, you will be rewarded with a Burmese outfit," says a villager from Ye Township in Mon State.
At schools and in Burman villages, children with Mon names are open to ridicule, pressuring Mon parents to give their children Burmese names.
Continuous migration and dislocation threaten the survival of the Mon language. "Seventy percent of Mon people under the age of 40 do not live in Mon villages," say U Than, an ethnic Mon reporter for the BBC Burmese Service who is based in Sangkhlaburi, western Thailand. "Young Mons have to migrate to escape harsh economic and human rights conditions in their homeland."
With Mon people on the move, their language proves less useful. Many young Mon, particularly those living abroad, realize that being able to speak and write well in Burmese, Thai or English is more advantageous once they leave home.
But even in Mon areas inside Burma the language is losing ground. Nai Kasauh Mon estimates that only 20 percent of the Mon vocabulary is used in conversation by people in Mon State. Words and phrases borrowed from Burmese and Thai are increasingly common.
"In villages, Mon people will refer to 'the economic situation' using Burmese words, because they don't understand the Mon expression," U Than explains. "Sometimes in the city, people use Mon only to curse."
Some scholars have argued that the Mon language needs to be modernized to remain relevant. Paphatsaun Thianpanya, a researcher from Bangkok's Assumption Commercial College, says that orthographic problems have emerged in the Mon language over the past two centuries, causing the development of the language to cease.
But harsh restrictions and censorship make modernization difficult. Nai Ork Pung, a well-respected Mon cultural specialist living in Sangkhlaburi, points out that the Mon people need resources to develop their language. "Most importantly, there should be a high-level board of scholars to do this job," Nai Ork Pung says. "We don't even have a Mon-Mon dictionary yet."
But Nai Ork Pung doesn't agree with Nai Pan Hla's prediction that the language is doomed. "The worst time in Mon history was under Alaungpaya and our language survived despite that," he argues.
Nai Sunthorn of the Mon Unity League, a group that promotes Mon solidarity, says Mon culture is undergoing a renaissance in Burma. But Nai Pan Hla's prediction holds true for Mon language in Thailand, he says. "Few Thai Mon can now read and write, although there are a huge number of old Mon scripts remaining in Thai Mon monastaries." The Thai Mon's cultural identity and language are unable to withstand the forces of modernization and subtle assimilation.
Foreign experts like Guillon and South avoid making any clear forecast on the future of Mon language in Thailand. But they agree with Nai Sunthorn's assessment that Mon culture in Burma is underoing a revival. Guillon points to the popularity of Mon karaoke singers in Burma and Thailand as evidence of the growing interest in Mon culture. Popular Mon singer Hong Chan had a hit recently with his song "Chan Mon Chan Nai." Sung entirely in Mon, it is laden with nationalist sentiments.
More and more patriotic Mons are now speaking out against the internal factionalism and disunity that makes efforts to preserve Mon culture difficult. Many Mon nationalists encourage their people to stop blaming others for the dissolution of Mon identity and instead play an active role in promoting it. Nai Ork Pung says that while many blame the junta, Mon people need to take some responsibility too.
Nai Tin Mon, once a leading member of the NMSP, believes that Mon people need to do more to ensure that their language survives. As he observed at a meeting of Mon cultural leaders in Moulmein last December, there is still reluctance to speak Mon on official occasions. "Everyone at the meeting was Mon, and can all speak Mon, but they all spoke Burmese," he says. "I do respect them, as some of the men were my teachers, but I don't know why they weren't communicating in their native tongue."
Provocations like U Palita's poem and his stand in court are rare now. With so many out to destroy it, Mon language needs more defenders. But U Palita believes that Mon identity is ultimately at the mercy of the political climate. "Unless the political system changes, the future of Mon identity will remain bleak," the abbot says.
