International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back
Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back
Pages 531-568
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From page 531... ...
Selig Harrison wrote ominously about the "dangerous decades" that India would face because of its conflicts over language. Popular representations of language conflicts in Belgium, Quebec, and Catalonia suggest that cultural issues of this sort unleash irrational passions, leading otherwise sober people away from the realm of civic engagement.
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From page 532... ...
The findings are stunning: · The greater the language difference between the language of the minority group and that of the dominant group, the lower is the probability of violence. · Language grievances held by the minority regarding the official language of the state or the medium of instruction in state schools are not associated with group violence, but there is a weak negative relationship between language grievances and rebellion.
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From page 533... ...
In the fourth section I formalize an "official language game" and then speculate on why the relationship between language grievance and group violence is not positive. Central mechanisms have to do with the ability of the state to commit to compromises and the inability of minority language entrepreneurs to solve collective-action problems.
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From page 534... ...
politicized language in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain, it is historically remarkable how painless rationalization was; and even though nation building was never a full success in Spain,9 by the twentieth century virtually all Spanish citizens were fluent in Spanish. It is for states that consolidated rule in the modern era that language rationalization became a grave political problem.
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From page 535... ...
, under conditions in which greater access to the official language translates into higher prospects for social mobility, has led many analysts to link language conflict with the potentiality of inducing ethnic violence. Nevertheless, their blunt theory is unable to make specific predictions about levels or types of conflict.
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From page 536... ...
Examination of the list of cases in each of LANGSIM's categories helps show why an important cultural difference such as language does TABLE 13.1 Language Similarity and Rebellion (1945-1995~: Comparison of Mean Scores on REBELLION LANGSIM Mean Value of Rebellion Number of Cases Entire population 2.49 244 1. Different family 2.06 111 2.
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From page 537... ...
Language Grievances and Violence The Gurr dataset has two variables measuring language grievance, each measured for two-year time periods (1990-1991, 1992-1993, 19941995~. The first variable measures the level of demands by the minority to have its language given greater official status.
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From page 538... ...
But, as we will see, as I analyze Table 13.2, language grievances do not add to the straws on the camel's back, fostering violence. The intuition behind the camel's back approach to ethnic violence is that language grievances alone are not a sufficient cause for rebellion but in conjunction with other factors can add to an atmosphere that induces rebellion.
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From page 539... ...
that a Muslim-dominated country where Arabic is the official language dominates over a Christian region whose people speak a variety of languages, but none of them have Arabic as their mother tongue. Further suppose that the majority imposes Shari'a (i.e., Muslim law)
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From page 540... ...
, but most are quite peaceful (Russians in Uzbekistan, Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka, Germans in Kazakhstan, Malays in Singapore)
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From page 541... ...
In fact, language conflicts, under conditions where religious grievances are powerful, are associated with lower levels of ethnic violence than under conditions where religious grievances are weak. We might therefore turn the usual question on its head: Why does language conflict moderate ethnic violence?
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From page 542... ...
FIGURE 13.1 Official language game. neutral colonial language)
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From page 543... ...
I described the outcome in these terms: "The Union authorities promote Hindi but deny that they will impose it; the people from non-Hind) zones learn Hindi but deny they can use it." To a considerable extent, that analysis is consistent with the official language equilibrium proposed here with a Union commitment to Hindi coinciding with the continued use of English in virtually all official domains.
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From page 544... ...
Therefore, one theoretical reason why language conflicts are associated with lower levels of violent conflict is that it is possible for the government in a language conflict to commit to a compromise without the minority fearing that the commitment hides a secret plan to overturn the status quo when conditions are more propitious for full-scale language rationalization.22 The ability to credibly commit is largely due to the fact that a language shift takes generations, and it is impossible for a state to impose a new language of education, administration, or certification without a long lead time.23 In Figure 13.1's game this means that the move to "accept" by the majority group is not a simple choice but a coordination dynamic among fellow majority-language speakers that might take a generation to complete. Thus, the breaking of a commitment by an emboldened rationalizing state would require myriad new regulations and teaching programs, consuming years of effort, thereby giving the affected linguistic regions a chance to mobilize in opposition.
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From page 545... ...
As seen in Table 13.2, compared to religious grievance, under conditions of high ethnic potential for violence, language grievances are more conducive to peace than rebellion. This is not to say that religious grievances cannot be negotiated.
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From page 546... ...
The language game encompasses features that show how the commitment problem, and the difficulty faced by language entrepreneurs in punishing defectors, work to reduce the incentives for intergroup violence over language issues. Along with backward induction giving majority speakers incentives to defy language laws passed in their name, these additional strategic factors provide plausible reasons whv language ~rievances do not add fuel to the ethnic fire.
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From page 547... ...
In this section I first look at language grievances articulated by the Telugu speakers (who initially did not have a state of their own) in reaction to the emergence of government-supported state languages throughout the Indian federation.
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From page 548... ...
there were six separate incidents, with separatists claiming more than 250 deaths caused by police shootings.27 These incidents were far more disruptive than the one death associated with the movement to create a linguistic state in the first place. Intralinguistic agitation over job reservations was more violent than was interlinguistic agitation.28 The concession of statehood to Andhra induced yet a third language commission in India, the States Reorganization Commission, which now had to develop a revised long-term policy in regard to language and state boundaries.
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From page 549... ...
, the final chapter addresses some broader questions concerning language, democracy, and violent conflict. With the reduced political power of the Hindi proponents in Congress after the 1962 elections, Das Gupta writes, Congress proposed an Official Languages Act in 1963 that would remove the requirement that English give way to Hindi for all administrative affairs by 1965.
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From page 550... ...
Das Gupta recounts the language battles of the 1960s, including the Report of the Education Commission of 1966, which gave a much greater role to the state languages in higher education (leading in 1967 to a situation in which 35 universities allowed the regional language to be used in examinations, and in 15 universities, a majority of students opted for their regional language as the medium of lectures) , and including as well the Official Language (Amendment)
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From page 551... ...
. The route to the 3+1 equilibrium in India was in no way guaranteed to avoid violence; but as I have argued, there are many attributes of language politics leading up to 3+1 or related equilibria that politicize rather than militarize ethnic conflict.3~ Language-Based Violent Confrontations in Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka, of course, the judgments of scholars lead to the opposite conclusion, namely, that language conflict can play into economic, religious, and territorial conflicts to exacerbate tensions, making violence more likely.
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From page 552... ...
Under British colonial rule, English was the language of social mobility, and Sri Lankan Tamils (many taking advantage of missionary education) , despite colonial restrictions putting geographic and demographic constraints on Tamils and keeping them from achieving as many coveted positions as they might have gotten by merit alone, achieved excellent government positions and settled into good middle-class lives in Colombo.
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From page 553... ...
He recognized their Ceylon Workers' Congress, the union of plantation workers and had Tamil awarded the status of national language (though not the official language)
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From page 554... ...
Systematic vandalism was aimed at Tamil businesses and factories. Not only Sri Lankan Tamil interests were targeted but "all Indian enterprises." The motivating idea was "that every Indian is a Tamil and that every Tamil is a terrorist." The police and army either actively participated or passively encouraged the rioting.
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From page 555... ...
My alternative story line is that the language conflict was one of the factors that worked to ameliorate violence, but other factors outweighed the language issue to drive Sri Lanka into large-scale ethnic war. Let us now return to the language issue with an eye toward its bureaucratization.
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From page 556... ...
Training classes in the official language were abandoned because of low attendance and lack of interest by both Sinhalese and Tamils. Meanwhile, the commissioner for official languages issued circular after circular demanding that government contractors develop a plan to switch over from English, that retirement schemes be worked out for non-Sinhala speakers still in the service, and that proficiency tests in Sinhala be standardized.
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From page 557... ...
It again sought to develop policies and incentives that would make the official languages the principal means of official communication in their respective regions, but its impact on sociolinguistic reality can only be regarded as minimal. In Sri Lanka the ethnically charged politics of language had become the bureaucratically entrenched subversion of state language policy.
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From page 558... ...
But there is no indication in my sources that Tamil officials from the south were moving to laffna.45 It is not possible in this context to prove a counterfactual, but it seems at least plausible to argue that with the politicized Sinhala Buddhists in alliance with the rural Sinhalese elites there would easily have been induced pogroms against both Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils as both religious and economic threats. The populating of the Eastern Province with Sinhalese peasants going back to the colonial period continued to threaten the Tamils' hope for a majority in both the north and east of the island.
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From page 559... ...
The grievances themselves cannot therefore be held to motivate Sri Lankan interethnic violence. A closer look shows that many aggrieved Tamils were drawn by the language policy to bureaucratic insurgency and political protest, peacefully.
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From page 560... ...
Good policy cannot ignore this finding. In this section I analyze official language policies of states to see if Here is a clue as to which policies are associated with the lowest levels of violence.
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From page 561... ...
These are the states most subject to problems establishing an official language, many having relied on the colonial language as the official language of modern government. From this set the mean score for REBELLION is 2.51.
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From page 562... ...
This means that bringing groups into the official language formula is not a prescription for peaceful ethnic relations and that fomenting language grievances (by ignoring a group's plea for official recognition of its language) is not a prescription for violence.50 SUMMARYAND CONCLUSION The purpose of this paper was to explore the relationship between language-based political conflict and ethnic violence.
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From page 563... ...
My argument is not that even with government intransigence language conflicts will reduce the likelihood of large-scale violence; rather I believe that language conflicts allow for extensive and successful bargaining without making it seem as if either side is a traitor to its group's interests. But absent utter intransigence by government authorities, the hypothesized route from discriminatory language policy to ethnic civil war and state breakdown is not supported by the comparative data.
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From page 564... ...
The international gendarmerie must distinguish those policies that are merely unfair from actions that plant the seeds of civil war. The analysis in this paper helps make that distinction.52 Policy makers for states that face language conflict and for states that provide support for an international gendarmerie when ethnic conflict spills over into ethnic violence should be made aware that language conflict, even if it is not threatening to states or democratic regimes, can be extremely dangerous for incumbents.
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From page 565... ...
In fact, the politicization of language ameliorates the violent potential of religion-based conflict. To understand that the politicization of language issues may be the straw that strengthens the camel's back would be to take an important step in understanding language, politics, and ethnic violence.
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From page 566... ...
, "Weak States, Rough Terrain, and LargeScale Ethnic Violence Since 1945," paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Ga. 18Users of the MAR database will want to know: there is no rural base for rebellion (RURBASE = 0)
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From page 567... ...
, "The Implementation of the Official Language Policy, 1956-1970" in Gunasekera, op.
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From page 568... ...
51Users of the MAR dataset might want to note that the threshold for democracy of high quality is ndem89 = 8; the threshold for substantial language grievances is MAXLANG > 1; and the critical threshold for REBELLION is rebel90x > 3. 52For Lieven's position, see "No Russian Spoken Here," The New York Times, July 16, 1999.
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