The National Language Debate
In May and June 2005, a number of prominent Fiji Islanders called for the status of Fijian to be upgraded. It was not an official language before the adoption of the 1997 Constitution, which made it co-official with English and Hindustani. It is still not a compulsory subject in schools, however; the present Education Minister, Ro Teimumu Kepa, has endorsed calls for it to be made so, as has Great Council of Chiefs Chairman Ratu Ovini Bokini. Similar calls came from Misiwini Qereqeretabua, the Director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture, and from Apolonia Tamata, a linguistics lecturer at Suva’s University of the South Pacific, who both said that recognition of the Fijian language is essential to the nation’s basic identity, as a unifying factor in Fiji’s multicultural society.
Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry also endorsed the call for Fijian to be made a national language and a compulsory school subject, provided that the same status be given to Hindi—a position echoed by Krishna Vilas of the National Reconciliation Committee.
Read more about this topic: Fijian Language
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