SEPTEMBER 18 — Every August and September, Malaysians return to all things quintessentially Malaysian, and that includes the language of our nation, Bahasa Melayu.

We speak of freedom, unity and belonging, raise the Jalur Gemilang, and remember the events that made independence and the formation of Malaysia possible.

These commemorations also invite the deeper question of what it means for a country to know itself. Independence is not complete simply because a nation governs its own territory. It must also possess the confidence and capacity to understand its history, explain its institutions, and decide how its inheritance will be carried forward.

For all intents and purposes, our national language is central to that task.

Bahasa Melayu is often discussed through rules: where it must be used, how it should be taught, and whether Malaysians speak it well enough.

This can make the language sound like an obligation imposed by the powers that be.

However, a national language is more meaningful when citizens recognise themselves within it.

Bahasa Melayu gives Malaysians a common, broadly diglossic medium in which formal and informal discourse may take place across different social contexts and levels of society.

Laws are debated, national concerns are expressed, stories are told, and even gossip is exchanged in the standard and vernacular forms of Bahasa Melayu.

Regarding the standard form, the importance of Bahasa Melayu lies not only in status, but in access as well, as citizens who understand the language of government, education, and debate are better equipped to participate. Therefore, strengthening Bahasa Melayu should widen that participation.

The Bahasa Melayu used today belongs to a history far longer than the modern state. Earlier inscriptions, manuscripts, poetry, and religious writing show a language repeatedly adapted to new political ecosystems, intellectual traditions, and social needs.

That history becomes visible in writing preserved in various media, be they stone, as in the Kedukan Bukit inscription; tree bark, as in the Tanjung Tanah manuscript; or copper, as in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

For example, the Old Malay inscription discovered in a cave in Lembah Kinta, Perak, late last year that reads “sahutku-di-bhāṭāra-īśvara-ya(ṁ)-dṅan prārthana”, which loosely translates to “I respond to Lord Shiva with prayer”, bears witness to our long history of literacy.

These sources remind us that Bahasa Melayu has long been used to govern, worship, negotiate, and imagine.

Yet historical depth should not be turned into a claim that Bahasa Melayu must remain unchanged. Its endurance comes precisely from adaptation as a living language does not protect its identity by refusing new ideas but it demonstrates its strength by finding ways to express them.

Political independence allows us to govern ourselves, whilst intellectual independence requires us to understand and describe ourselves on our own terms.

Malaysia should therefore possess the confidence and scholarly capacity to investigate the history of its national language.

This does not mean rejecting international scholarship or the languages through which knowledge has traditionally circulated.

Rather, it means ensuring that Malaysians can determine which questions should be asked, which sources should be preserved, and how our linguistic history should be interpreted.

Malaysia should not merely rely on knowledge produced and framed elsewhere; Malaysians must also be empowered to generate knowledge about themselves and contribute their perspectives to the world through Bahasa Melayu and the other languages at their disposal.

The continued development of Bahasa Melayu is part of the unfinished work of independence.

A national language cannot fulfil its purpose if it is confined to ceremony, administration, or the classroom.

It must remain capable of expressing the realities of contemporary life, from science and technology to law, culture, et cetera.

This requires the language to expand its vocabulary, registers, and intellectual reach without being cut off from its historical foundations. Neither does strengthening Bahasa Melayu require linguistic isolation or rigid purism.

Its long history demonstrates that it has always grown through contact, adaptation, and the creative agency of its speakers.

The task before us is to ensure that it remains both rooted enough to carry our collective memory and adaptable enough to articulate our shared future.

Hari Malaysia gives this discussion another dimension. Malaysia was formed as a multilingual federation, and its diversity is not a temporary problem awaiting correction.

It is part of the country’s character and charm. The national role of Bahasa Melayu need not diminish other languages. Iban, Kadazandusun, Bidayuh, the languages of the Orang Asli, and the many other languages used across Malaysia carry family histories, environmental knowledge and distinctive worldviews.

With that in mind, a confident national language can provide common ground while allowing these inheritances to flourish, given that unity does not require every Malaysian to sound the same.

It requires us to remain intelligible to one another while respecting the histories each community brings into the national conversation.

Hari Merdeka gave us the freedom to determine our future. Knowing our languages, in their history and diversity, gives us a clearer understanding of the nation whose future we are determining.

Furthermore, Hari Malaysia asks us to consider how different peoples chose to build a country together.

Both occasions should also prompt us to ask what kind of intellectual and linguistic inheritance we will leave behind for the next generation of Malaysians and those to come.

* Dr Amir Rashad Mustaffa is a senior lecturer at the Department of Malaysian Languages and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, and can be reached at armus@um.edu.my.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.