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 Ashraf Kamal: The Imperialism of Sudan North Arabic language and Culture
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The Imperialism of Sudan
Northern Arabic Language and Culture
I was tantalisingly tempted to respond to a patronising and seductive argument held by a handful of elites. In its simplest form, the elites argue that the failure to OFFICIALLY recognise the pride place of Sudanese indigenous languages along with their cultural practices is not one of the NECESSARY factors that led to the socio-political marginalisation and mass murdering of minority and disadvantaged groups in Sudan. One of the devastating repercussions of such a destructive ideology is the fact that local languages and cultures have been assigned a minor consideration in the process of planning the life of local and plural polities in Sudan. Everybody with mind in the right place would see the fact that such an ideology holds its destructive seeds in its womb. Firstly, it is crystal clear that the marginalisation of local cultures and languages indicates that there’s a politically-driven package of principles put in place to serve the interests of a few elites-and power holders in Sudan. In other words, the elites’ ideology does not only disrespect consciously and intentionally the voice of peripheral groups outside the Khartoum-based centre of power, but also attempts to wipe them out of the Sudan map of existence . In their view, linguistic and cultural representations are not a priority in any LONG-TERM planning for peaceful co-habitation. More specifically, The Northern elites’ conceptualisation of human language and culture works sisterly with the ideology of the hegemonic project of nation-building. Sudanese power holders who are inspired by the venomous slogan of ‘One language, one nation, and one…..etc) are operating now under another different but related guise: a multicultural planning for unity. It is no surprise that they define language in the way that it appeals to their own socio-political needs. They think of language as no more than a vocalic tool of communication. Khartoum-based elites and even the elites of the virtual reality have employed language to brain-wash and mind-control the masses in Sudan throughout the entire post-independent history. The different types of media have institutionalised and promoted a particular language grappled with a particular culture and people (i.e. Northern Arabic culture); although some accommodation could have been offered to the ‘Other’. The elites claim that they are pro-democracy and human rights; however, it seems that they have adopted to take the wrong route. In fact the elites have recently poured much ink defending the concept of ‘International Human Rights’. They have lost sight of the fact that ‘language right’ is a fundamental human right. I can not claim that they do not have the slightest idea about what’s known as ‘fundamental linguistic human rights’. Rather, I do prefer to explicate that the Northern elites simply refuse to accept that the current dominating linguistic culture has a navy, an army and a militia. It bugged me listening to them taking the mickey out of the mannerism of those who consider language as part of the power struggle for existence. ‘NO’ categorically has been constantly our reply; this is not a Mickey Mouse stance, rather it is an ethical commitment inspired by a professional motivation to empower the powerless masses in Sudan. They misleadingly believe that we’re just ‘reversing words’, putting them up side down to make a sense out of nothing. Such a belief is an index of the fact that the Northern elites and the ruling sector who hold the same ideology suffer from a kind of imperial amnesia - The refusal or inability to confront the complexity of history from which emerged various discourses on language and education in the Sudan. I do not think I need to cite the countless instances of the imperialism of Arabic language and culture in the Sudanese arena. It may suffice to mention some of the unforgivable linguistic and cultural criminalisations conducted by Khartoum-based power holders and institutionalised by a handful of elites. We should be very well aware of the fact it is not fixed-given that Arabic language and the Northern culture are dominant but rather ideologically made to be the dominating spectre by politicians who take or snatch office. As evidence I may need to quote the first attempt to implement the Arabicisation language policy publicly promoted and ideologically funded by the first Sudanese minister of education in Sudan in 1953:
‘As the Sudan is one country sharing one set of political institutions, it is of great importance that there should be one language which is understood by all its citizens. That language could only be Arabic and Arabic must therefore be taught in all schools’ (cited in Nyombe 1997: 112: Survival or extinction: The fate of the local languages of the Southern Sudan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 125, 99-130)
It is absolutely clear that power holders and elites have been obsessed with the ‘One Country’ since the first days of independence. To achieve that project they opted to choose ‘ONLY’ Arabic language. The minister has forgotten that they are countless instances of countries which use the local languages as means of instruction at least in the first primary years of education. This position which supports the spread of only one language hand in glove with ‘one’ culture is not unique or special to a particular Northern political party. Here is a second example of the stance of another major Northern political party (i.e. the Democratic Unionist Party) towards the status of Arabic language and Islamic religious culture in the South and West Sudan:
‘It is extremely important to spread the use of Arabic language in the Southern Sudan and the Nuba mountains. Arabic is the most effective instrument for spreading Arabic Islamic culture. The spread of Arabic language in those areas [south and Nuba Mountains] is one of the most important arenas for struggle in the name of the God and the Arabic nation’ (Source Yokwe E. M. 1984. Arabicisation and Language Policy in the Sudan. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 14, 2, 149-170)
Here the power holders who took office some time ago picture the effort to spread Arabic language as a thing that is mandated by heaven and surprisingly under the name of Arab nation. In reality, the ruling elites wield the Arabic language as a social mobilisation strategy to establish or maintain their privileges and power in Sudan. Nationalists and some elites want to wipe out local identities from the grassroots for the sake of the sacred cow of ‘Arab nationalism’ through the abusive manipulation of power and the implementation of aggressive assimilatory policies. It has been their dream, but it’s a dream that has/and will never come true. History tells that power holders have been aware of the power of language, and that is why they liquidise whoever opposes their power. Some of them have told the big lie that Sudan is exclusively part of an Arab nation, and they brain-washed the people to buy into their lies. The first minister of education concludes his seductive speech in a flagrantly racist tone:
‘The Sudan is an integral part of the Arab World …. Anybody dissenting from this view must quit the country’ (Parliamentary Proceedings: second sitting of the First session of Parliament, 1958, p.3. cited in Yokwe E. M. 1984. Arabicisation and Language Policy in the Sudan. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 14, 2, 149-170)
I am aware that my great grand parents used to speak one of the languages of the former Nubian Kingdom; however the question has never stricken my mind whether they may have had to leave their home-land since they did not speak Arabic language and they did not consider themselves Arab. They were purely Nubian in the full sense of the word with their Nubian practices and languages. A third example of the same ideology is of Uma Party; they characterise Sudanese national image in:
‘The dominant feature of our nation is an Islamic one and its overpowering expression is Arab, and this nation will have entity identified and its prestige and pride preserved except under an Islamic revival( part of the speech of Sayed Saddig El-Mahdi (1965), cited in Yokwe 1984: 155: Yokwe E. M. 1984. Arabicisation and Language Policy in the Sudan. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 14, 2, 149-170).
A final example is of the ideology of the current political party (National Congress Party, formerly known as the National Islamic Front). The cultural and linguistic atrocities practiced by the current power holders need not be looked for in references of documented speeches, it just needs looking for in the current reality. The present totalitarian regime has reached the extreme by implementing the policy of Arabicisation at higher educational institutions by a means of an overnight military decree. One question that may impose itself here is: what happens to those university students who are from the South or those whose linguistic background is not Arabic language? Do they have to leave the education altogether? The above four examples show that the Northern power holders in Sudan have paid most of their attention to legalise the use of one language and one culture; and thus they have automatically constituted a secret network of power. Those who are not part of the discourse of power find themselves immediately excluded if not denied the right to remain on the surface of the Earth. Thus, the output of such a utilitarian policy is that a new social class of Sudanese bourgeois has emerged at the price of those who dig the land day and night to win their bread. The ownership of SUDATEL AND MOBTEL by a few people in an arena that’s riven with power inequality and insecurity has increased the poverty of the poorer and the wealth of the richer. I do know that some of the elites have refused the accusation of being identified as a ‘nationalist’, but unfortunately their conceptualisation of language and culture falls into the same category. They fall short to recognise the fact that a language can have an imperial power. In other words, the elites do not believe that the spread of Arabic language and culture was at the price of the exclusion of innumerable cultural practices. The Northern elites do not open their eyes to see that the media in Sudan makes use of one language and the higher education system has been dictated by a top-down diktat to use Arabic language as part of the hegemonic project of the Arabicisation policy. Although power holders and the Northern elites theoretically talk about Sudan as a multicultural home-land; practically they failed to remember that there are some non-Arabic speaking groups who can not make their voice heard simply because Arabic is not their mother nor their father tongue. The Foucault’s wisdom of ‘knowledge is power’ is a reality and not a myth and is very much with us. Those who do not speak Arabic language can not get an employment in the centre of Sudan; the judicial system in Sudan makes no linguistic accommodation to non-Arabic speaking defendants. How could we expect justice to be done in such an unfair situation? Even within the three short-lived attempts to democratise the country, non-Arabic speaking groups couldn’t make their choices because the whole democratisation process was conducted almost exclusively in Arabic language. Language is more than a means of talking and communicating, it is the power itself when used to manipulate, exploit and control the masses. The Arabicisation policy that’s championed by the Independence icons and enforced by the current regime is an indication of the fact that they are power seekers at the price of the local languages and cultures of powerless people. Now, the Northern elites and current power holders have ended up with a battle on their hands as a result of introducing and perpetuating unilaterally evil policies that go in the line of their own self-interest. The political #######isation of local voices that is practised by the Northern elites can no longer be sustained. Their flagrant disregard of the importance of local identities has resulted in the degradation of children and women in the deserts of Chad. The Western Sudanese families will have no genealogies to produce any more, because families’ members are lost count of. The current disastrous condition in the West Sudan is a proof beyond a single shadow of doubt that the elites’ long-held belief in the putative enigmatic creature of ‘nationalism’ has failed them and turned the area into a dog-eat-dog situation, and a Tarzan jungle in which only the fittest could survive. I do not have a patriotic flag to raise because I do not believe in patriotism and nationalism which serve the interests of those who are part of the power network, and who want to dictate their style of life by employing whatever Machiavellian and Darwinian tactics available at their disposal. The power holders rationalise the cannibalistic war in West Sudan by having recourse to the language of the sacred myth of the patriotism and nationalism to make the people in the Centre believe that the war is against the big WEST and not the small west. Wantonly, the ruling elites have still maintained mass loyalty by employing and perpetuating particular national slogans, myths, symbols and tribal allegiances so as to legalise hunger and human catastrophes of elderly women and children in the West Sudan. The current ideology of the ruling elites has produced not only new wars but also new war entrepreneurs, commercial vampires and marauding soldiers. The rhetoric orchestrated by the environmentalists, peace makers/lovers, women/men/children rights activists, Pos-structuralists, neo-Marxists and critical theorists against the pretensions, supremacy and the flagrant triumphalism of Sudanese Northern culture and language may have failed to lead to a nagging guilt complex among the Northern elites in/outside of the Khartoum-based Centre. Yet, hats off to their outright refusal to bury their eyes ostrich-like to the very political evils and ideological temptations of the power holders; and to their rejection to divorce their moral sensibility and social consciousness from their profession and style of life. The message to the Northern ruling elites is that it is too late to get involved in the culture of guilt and romantic despair for the simple fact that physical and mental damage has been done to innocent children and women which history will never forgive nor forget. The conspiracy of silence over the mass murder and burning of thousands of mums and kids is a pure act of cowardice and is a crime of complicity; let alone giving hand in the blood-bath. The innocent and peaceful use of the human WORD has failed to get heard; now it is the language of war machines that is preaching and the WORLD is listening;
Ashraf Kamal
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محمد اشرف
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست