Contesting imagined communities: Politics of script and Tai cosmopolitanism in upland Vietnam

Who are the Tai?

In addition to the Vietnamese majority, official records maintain that Vietnam has 53 ethnic minorities making up approximately 14% of Vietnam’s overall population. Ranked the second-largest ethnic minority (Asian Development Bank, 2008: 1), living in the northwest upland region, ethnic Tai (referred to in Vietnamese as Thái) inhabit an area covering more than 30% of the landmass of northern Vietnam (Figure 1). As reported in 2002, the joint populations of the Tai are 1,444,000 (Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 2010 [2002]).The Tai speak a dialect of Tai languages and are an indigenous group of northwestern Vietnam. They formed chieftain-based polities with a certain degree of autonomy in the valleys until the French annexed the area to French Indochina in 1890. After the fall of the French regime in Vietnam in 1954, the Tai became part of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). From 1955 to 1975, the DRV granted autonomous zones to the Tai. After the fall of Saigon and the reunification of the country, the autonomous zones were dissolved and areas where the Tai live are simply divided into provinces like the rest of the country.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Map of northern Vietnam.

Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the Tai are diverse. Although the present government classifies them into two groups, the Black Tai (or Thái Đen in Vietnamese, Tai Dam in Tai) and the White Tai (or Thái Trằng in Vietnamese, Tai Don in Tai), international linguists usually divide them into three groups – the Black Tai (Tai Dam), the White Tai (Tai Don) and the Red Tai (Tai Daeng). Their population figures are 764,000, 490,000 and 190,000, respectively (Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 2010 [2002]). These Tai groups differ not only in their language but also in many other aspects ranging from costume, house style, wedding ceremony, funeral ceremony to literature and political formation. Furthermore, each group is divided into two to three subgroups.

The Tai have shared their space with many different ethnic groups. If we take language as a means to illustrate this diversity, there are five language families spoken in the area. These are Austroasiatic (e.g. Khmu, Muong and several Mon-Khmer languages), Hmong-Yao, Tai-Kadai (e.g. Giay, Tay and Nung), Chinese and Tibeto-Burman (Ha Nhi). This linguistic and ethnic complexity fertilizes this upland space turning it into a cosmopolitan society.

Script and cosmopolitan space

Language is significantly involved in the formation of political space. In discussing modern nation-state formation, scholars contend that standardization of language and literacy is a key to modern political spaces (Anderson, 1992; Gellner, 1983; Scott, 1998). Many countries, however, have encountered the dilemmas in maintaining a national standard language while retaining minority languages or local dialects (Esman, 1990; Zaman, 1984). Accordingly, anthropological studies have shown that standard literacy even within a nation-state may not successfully replace either traditional literacies or even oral traditions. Consequently, the complexity of the local imagined community remains (Kulick and Stroud, 1997; Schieffelin, 2000: 316–320). Hence, it is possible to create multiple sociopolitical spaces out of the diversity of linguistic practices.

As for the Tai-speaking societies, Charles Keyes observes that pre-modern literacy played a significant role in the formation of the traditional literate Tai polities (Keyes, 1996). Given the fact that a system of Tai orthography had been used to record texts commonly distributed in a certain region, such a literate Tai region shared extensively in what Benedict Anderson terms an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1992). Rather than the imagined community emerging out of the print capitalism argued by Benedict Anderson, however, Keyes’ work suggests the idea of ‘proto-imagined community’, a relatively large political space that shares identity, history and linguistic device and practice. The case of the Tai provides an example for an exploration of this proto-imagined community. Not only does the proto-imagined community facilitate establishing the pre-modern Tai community, but it also coexists actively with the modern national imagined community. As the Tai are diverse, it is my contention that they are constantly contesting within and across their different groups and subgroups as well as with the state and global forces to define their sociopolitical space. Besides, because Tai scripts play an important role in Tai sociopolitical formation, the contestation of the use and reform of Tai scripts reflects and refracts the formation of the sociopolitical space.

The processual and heterogeneous spatial politics of the Tai script can be characterized as cosmopolitan. According to Appadurai (2011),

the cosmopolitan is often identified with the exiled, the traveler, the seeker for the new, who is not content with his or her historically derived identity, biography and cultural values. In today’s world, cosmopolitanism is loosely associated with post-national sensibilities, a global ethos, multicultural politics and values and a generalized openness to cultural experimentation, hybrid identities, and international cultural transfers and exchanges.

Cosmopolitanism is neither necessarily an urban nor a modern phenomenon. What makes a society cosmopolitan is its heterodoxy, a society of differences, diversity and otherness without any impulse to incorporate them into a single whole. However, in theorizing Tai cosmopolitanism, heterodoxy and otherness many misread Tai lived cosmopolitanism. To understand the case of the Tai, one needs to investigate the historical process of political space formation, their politics of identity and the complex power relations between various levels: local sub-ethnic groups, ethnic minorities and the state and globalization.

Cosmopolitan Southeast Asia has been extensively studied by scholars. In discussing ‘some prominent cultural features or patterns associated with the region’s past’, Wolters (1994), for instance, identifies Southeast Asia as an ‘“outward lookingness” … which promoted the sense of belonging to a wide world’ (pp. 2, 4). Thus, Wolters (1994) stresses the ‘Southeast Asian experience of a widely open world’ (p. 12). Similarly, Reid (2008 [1992]) argues that many ports in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Southeast Asia were highly urbanized and cosmopolitan.

Nonetheless, this characteristic of cosmopolitanism was not limited to maritime Southeast Asia and its port cities connected to regional and international trade. On the contrary, it is my contention that upland Southeast Asia is also an area where cosmopolitan societies are found on the mainland. In his recent book, James Scott describes ‘Zomia’ as ‘nonstate spaces.’ These areas cover a ‘great mountain realm on the margin of mainland Southeast Asia, China, India and Bangladesh [that] sprawls across roughly 2.5 million square kilometers … Lying at altitudes from two hundred or three hundred meters above sea level to more than four thousand meters’ (Scott, 2009: 13–14). Scott points out that mainland Southeast Asia from the first century to 1950 saw a ‘symbiosis relation’ between lowland state and highland stateless societies. In the highlands, lives were more independent than they were in the lowland. Living under the state’s power, lowlanders were taxed and subject to corvée. In general, Scott (2009) characterizes Zomia as follows:

The population of the hills is far more dispersed and culturally diverse than that of the valleys. It is as if the difficulties of terrain and relative isolation have, over many centuries, encouraged a kind of ‘speciation’ of languages, dialects, dress, and cultural practices … As a general rule, social structure in the hills is both more flexible and more egalitarian than in the hierarchical, codified valley societies. Hybrid identities, movement, and the social fluidity that characterizes many frontier societies are common. (p. 18)

In this way, there is scope for expanding Wolters’ notion of a littoral cosmopolitan Southeast Asia to highland Southeast Asia. As people in Zomia embrace diversity, differences, hybridity and connectivities of languages, culture and identity, I argue that Zomia is an area where cosmopolitanisms are lived by indigenous people of mainland Southeast Asia. Moreover, instead of disconnecting littoral and highland Southeast Asia, the Tai case in fact demonstrates interconnections between the two areas. In addition, due to their identity politics, the Tai resist national policy as well as expose themselves to global forces via their diaspora community. Tai cosmopolitanism is thus a lived cosmopolitanism defined from the perspective of an indigenous people. Below I shall describe this cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the politics of writing systems from the precolonial period to the present day (Figure 2).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

A Tai Village in Vietnam, photographed by Yukti Mukdawijitra, 2004.

Precolonial Tai Dam literacy

Pre-modern Tai society in Vietnam saw the interplay of literate and oral traditions. I shall review here the pre-modern Tai Dam traditional literacy, thereby providing a crucial background to understanding how traditional literacy formed the pre-modern Tai proto-imagined community (Figure 3).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Tai Dam Book, Museum of Ethnic Groups, Thai Nguyen, photographed by Yukti Mukdawijitra, 2004.

Historical study of the South Asian–based alphabets widely used by the Tai-speaking people in Southeast Asia shows that Tai script in its many forms was derived from the Sukhothai alphabet, which in turn was created from a South Asian–based script known as Pallava around the thirteenth century (Penth, 1986). According to Hartmann (1985), the alphabets of ethnic Tai in Vietnam may have arrived in Vietnam via the ancient city-states in northern Thailand and Laos as early as the fifteenth century. As far as the study of Vietnam’s ethnic Tai alphabet is concerned, at least eight Tai writing systems can be found (Cam, 2002; Tran, 1999).

Tai Dam oral and written literatures have been carefully reviewed by Cam (1993) and Cam (1978: 402–475). ² Cam (1993: 51) classifies Tai Dam literature into five genres: songs, lyrics, epics, histories and ritual handbooks. Apart from the literature originally written by the native Tai Dam, Cam (1993: 115–128) also mentions the Tai Dam translated versions of Chinese and Vietnamese literature. Cam (1993: 105) argues that poetic literature develops from rhymes (Kwaam khong khai), proverbs (Kwaam chian lang) and lyrical stories (Kwaam bak), respectively. To him, ‘legends and myths orally distributed are the genre mediating oral tradition and literate tradition’ because of the fact that in Tai Dam literature, oral legends and myths are long stories that are usually recited in poetic form. Accordingly, Cam (1978: 438–475) classifies Tai Dam oral and written literature as follows: (1) folk literature including oral tales, proverbs and folk songs; (2) literature serving social activities, including historical records and materials documenting ritual texts and customary law and (3) translated literature.

Cam Cuong and Cam Trong not only classify the traditional literature by the way in which the materials are formed, but both also document the way the materials are used in different social contexts. For instance, Cam (1993: 113) holds that Kwaam Tay Pu Soek (‘Exploring the march of great ancestors’) and Kwaam Faeng Muang (‘Chronology and genealogy of the great chiefs’), recording the mission of the great Tai Dam warriors, were written to be performed with special melodies. Likewise, Cam (1978: 402–438) shows that many written works of literature, especially lyrics, were components of a performance, for entertaining, religious or political purposes.

Pre-modern Tai Dam literacy is the outcome of a class-based society. ³ The core of the ruling class was composed of anya and fia (the chiefs of the domain and its satellites of a principality) and thao kae hang muang (the elder committee). In theory, anya and fia are titles reserved for the members of Lo Cam clan. Among the elder committee members, apart from ong hmo muang (the literati chairman), the position theoretically being reserved for the Luong clan, individuals from any clan could be awarded the titles. Moreover, the hierarchy of social and economic status between the ruling class and the ruled class was not clearly delineated (Condominas, 1990) (Figure 4).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

A Tai Dam Chief’s Family.

Presumably, most of the people in the ruling class were literate. Many informants who grew up in the age before the revolution claim that they studied Tai Dam alphabet with the chief of the hamlet or from mo ban (village ritual specialists). Meanwhile, those who are nowadays active in the revival of the traditional Tai Dam alphabet say that their parents who worked with the chief or a leader were literate. Interestingly, although most of the people in question were male, many claim that the number of literate women was also high (Cam, 1978: 113). Among the literate people, nonetheless, mo-chang (the literati) were believed to be the most highly educated. Their principal expertise lay in compiling ritual, historical and lyrical texts as well as a principality’s decrees and the chief’s ancestor list. Mo-chang were also responsible for arranging a principality’s performances and rituals. In other words, mo-chang were the ideological institution maintaining the psychological and theatrical ground of a principality.

Some commoners were educated just enough to work as ritual specialists serving their fellow villagers, although alphabet reading and writing skills were in fact not required to be a highly respected ritual expert. To anyone whose everyday life was primarily devoted to paddy field and slash-and-burn agriculture, however, learning to read and write was too great a luxury and most probably unnecessary.

Despite the fact that the alphabet and literacy played a significant role among pre-modern Tai Dam, knowledge of the alphabet was in fact limited; literacy was prohibited and, perhaps, highly sacred. For example, texts compiled in a variety of genres recording the chronology and genealogy of a principality chief were not to be commonly read, and some were even kept outside the major literati circle or mo-chang committee. These ‘historical records’ were preserved for the mo-chang’s recitation on special occasions, such as the principality’s rites, or for specific use, as, for instance, in a chief’s funeral. Some claim that knowledge of the alphabet was life threatening to those who acquired it: the highly educated ones were the targets of assassination. Many claim that was the reason why the authors of lyrics popularly recited throughout the Tai Dam community never signed their names.

Nevertheless, the pre-modern Tai Dam literate community did not separate elite literacy from popular literacy. In other words, textual practices coexisted and corresponded to illiterate or oral performances. Because traditional Tai writing was not standardized a key informant insists that ‘in the old days, one wrote the way one wanted.’ Another adds that normally it takes him weeks just to decode the spelling of a page from an ancient text, regardless of whether he understands the content. In my own experience of reading ancient Tai texts the word nam (water), for instance, is sometimes spelled with the letter ‘mo’ by some writers, while it is spelled without a ‘mo’ by others. In addition, some initial consonants are systematically replaced by others: for example, ‘d’ and ‘w’ can be replaced by ‘l’ and ‘b’, respectively. Another difficulty lies in the use of similar letters for writing different consonants. For example, ‘m’ and ‘n’ are written with the same letter, and low ‘k’ looks like high ‘t’.

Writing and reading, though not officially prohibited, required therefore sophisticated skill; consequently, only a limited number of people could acquire alphabetic literacy skill. Alphabetic literacy was, however, not only simply related to individual reading but also to public performing. Take Kwaam To Muang (KTM) as an example (Dang, 1977: 2–198; Kwaam To Muang Tay, 1989). Written in both verse and prose, it records a principality’s chronology as well as the chief’s genealogy. Before the chronology and genealogy proper, KTM begins with a message addressing the audience, particularly the deceased person. In principle, thus, unlike modern historical records, in pre-modern Tai Dam society, KTM was to be read out loud to the deceased person in front of his/her relatives. In other words, KTM was a historical record written for a reading performance on the occasion of a funeral ceremony. ⁴ Not only do the nuclear family members or close relatives attend the funeral, Tai Dam funeral requires participation of both the deceased person’s side (lung ta) and his/her son-in-law’s side (ying sao). Sociologically speaking, KTM thus plays a significant part in maintaining social bonds and networks of social exchange between lung ta (the daughter-in-law’s parents and her male sibling’s nuclear families) and ying sao (the son-in-law’s parents and his male sibling’s nuclear families). ⁵

The ability to memorize long texts, over 1500 sentences long, has been as highly respected as, and among some even more respected than, reading and writing skills. According to Cam (1978: 422), traditional Tai Dam poetics written in any form are for the purpose of singing. Cam (1978: 428–429) divides reciting/singing into khap sue (text/alphabet singing), khap bao sao (youth singing), khap mo (literati’s singing) and khap mod (magicians’ singing). Khap mo and khap mod are the tunes sung in ritual contexts only. In my observations, mod and mo seem to be very concerned about the sacredness of religious texts and the ritual melodies used for reciting texts since they normally decline a request to recite the text melodically outside a ritual context.

In conclusion, pre-modern Tai Dam literacy saw the interplay of different ways of performing texts. Writing, reading, memorizing and singing not only coexisted but were also intimately related to one another. Contrary to our modern Western practices, for the pre-modern Tai Dam writing was changeable, correctable and thus lasted only a short time; however, writing was also restricted, almost prohibited and sacred. On the other hand, memorizing was unlikely to be changeable, not to be corrected, and it lasted a long time; nonetheless, memorizing was popular and profane. In this account, pre-modern Tai Dam textual practices, despite being seemingly restricted, were actively involved in the whole network of communication; in other words, literacy played significant roles in sociopolitical space formation. Literacy, seen from the perspective of the intertextual performances, together with memorizing and singing, produced and re-produced the pre-modern Tai Dam political community in a powerful way.

Proto-imagined Tai communities

Apart from the Tai Dam literacy previously discussed, pre-modern northwestern Vietnam saw at least two further semi-independent communities of literacy. Drawn from my ethnographic and archival research, the three literary communities can be summarized as follows:

Geographically, the Tai Don live between the border of China and Vietnam; Tai Dam and Tai Daeng settlements are further south, but Tai Daeng are the southernmost. The formation of the three communities of literacy corresponds largely to political power. Historical documents record that before the revolution, Tai Don settlements were maintained by the Deo clan, Tai Dam settlements were under the Lo Cam clan’s influence and Tai Daeng were the Sa’s or Ha Cong’s domain. While the elite clans of the three political domains inter-married with each other, the pattern of marriage was in principle that each dominant clan married their women out in order to maintain the polity under the men’s clan.

The three communities differed from one another by the dialect of spoken language and also by their local orthography and literature (Figure 5). In terms of orthography, Tai Dam, Tai Don and Tai Daeng alphabets were all adapted from the Sukhothai-based alphabet. However, in details, many characters and spellings of words are so dissimilar that a literate person from the Tai Dam community will be illiterate in the Tai Don and Tai Daeng community and vice versa. Among the Tai in Vietnam, then, community of literacy to some extent is a basis for identifying sub-ethnic groups. A good example of the association between texts and ethnic identity is the content of indigenous Tai historical records. For instance, KTM, as previously discussed, consists of a list of a chief’s ancestors’ names and the chronology of a Tai Dam principality, whereas Piat Muang, a similar kind of text, records the chronology of a Tai Daeng principality.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Tai Script of Quy Chau, transliterated by Yukti Mukdawijitra.

As for the Tai Dam case, KTM records the chronology and ancestor genealogy of a principality chief. As the pre-modern Tai Dam polity consisted of 10–12 principalities, the Tai Dam then possibly had between 10 and 12 versions of KTM. In terms of the content, however, the first 40% of every version is similar, whereas the next 60% records the events and genealogy of the specific principality. The first 40% is devoted to the original myth, the beginning of Tai Dam polity, and the original chief whom every chief of a principality succeeded. In principle, thus, KTM connects Tai Dam principalities together with memory recorded to be read out loud at an elite funeral. Seemingly, during the moment of death or separation from an individual, KTM reproduces or solemnly maintain social bonds: it links those who are dead with those who are still alive into a more extensive social network for many, many generations back.

The ‘we-ness’ of Anderson’s (1992) account on imagined community consists of the commonality of people significantly generated by literacy over an extensive region. In a similar fashion, a kind of imagined community emerged in the pre-modern Tai polity. Nonetheless, rather than the ‘print capitalism’ of the modern nation-state, the interplay of writing, reading, memorizing and singing powerfully produces and reproduces the ‘we-ness’ of pre-modern Tai polities.

Standardization and homogenization of Tai literacies

During the French period, different Tai dialects were Romanized and the French language was taught to the native Tai. As for the Tai alphabet, in 1941, the French reformed it in order to disseminate the Bible in local languages. This reformation seems very minor as the French merely added the tone markers used for Romanized Vietnamese to the traditional Tai alphabet. In 1949, after the French returned to power in Vietnam, a Romanized version of the Tai Don alphabet was invented (Cam, 2002: 810–811). According to people in their seventies and eighties, however, the Tai Don alphabet and Tai Dam alphabet were taught at home. Although various kinds of Tai alphabets were not taught at the French school, a large number of Tai commoners acquired the alphabet through private classes.

The Tai Dam alphabet played an active part in the revolution period (1930s–1950s). To a great extent, Tai was the medium of communication between the active Tai youths and the political prisoners in Son La, one of the most important prisons of northern Vietnam during the French period. Accordingly, some high raking imprisoned Vietnamese Communist Party cells spoke and wrote Tai fluently. Important evidence of the significant role of the Tai alphabet during this period can be seen in the publication of Bao Lac Muang (The City Pillar, a newspaper) handwritten in both Tai Dam and Vietnamese. This bilingual newspaper was distributed in northwestern Vietnam in 1941 under the Party’s guidance. However, its distribution lasted only a short time (Figure 6).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 6.

Bao Lac Muong newspaper.

Early in the 1950s, after the eastern part of northwestern Vietnam came under the Party’s control, the process of Tai alphabet reform began. Apart from demonstrating the extent to which the ethnic orthography was more highly regarded by the new regime than it had been by the French, the reform aimed to homogenize the multiplicity of ethnic identities by means of mass education and mass media.

The first reform began in 1953 with the research on Sue Tai Kao (the Old Tai Alphabet or Chu Thai Cu in Vietnamese) of different regions. The reform committee claimed that the reform aimed to scientifically systematize the ‘confusion’ of the Old Tai Alphabet. The committee members were chosen from every Tai region in the northwest and included modern linguists. After the committee agreed on the new alphabet and system of writing, the draft of the reformed alphabet needed the approval of the central government and ministries, most importantly the Ministry of Education and Training. ⁸

The first reformed version was called Sue Tai Long Lian (Unified Tai Alphabet or Chu Thai Thong Nhat in Vietnamese). The Unified Tai Alphabet was launched for mass education, mass media and administrative uses in 1956. In 1960, the alphabet was once again reformed. The second reformed version, entitled Sue Tai Pian Paeng (Alternate Tai Alphabet or Chu Tai Cai Tien in Vietnamese), was launched in 1962. The reformed alphabets were used only in Khu tu tri Thai Meo (Thai-Meo Autonomous Zone) and later in Khu tu tri Tay Bac (Northwestern Autonomous Zone). It should be noted that the Autonomous Zone covered the present-day Nghia Lo district of Yen Bai province, Son La province, Dien Bien Phu province and Lai Chau province; Nghe An province and Thanh Hoa province in the middle region of Vietnam were not included.

The major characteristics shared by both sets of the reformed alphabets are as follows: they were derived from the Old Tai Dam Alphabet, the difference between each letter is clarified, each word is written separately, newly invented tone marks are used, the spelling is standardized and the central Tai Dam dialect is chosen as the standard dialect. However, the great dissimilarity is that while the Unified Tai Alphabet preserves the traditional positions of vowels written above and below the consonants, the Alternate Tai Alphabet includes newly invented forms of many vowels and writes the vowels on the same line as the consonants.

Texts of various kinds serving the formation of the national imagined community were published both in Tai and Vietnamese; in addition, reinterpretations of the ancient texts aimed to serve the state’s socialist ideology were distributed. Textbooks for educational purposes, developed from the handwritten version into the printed materials provided for mass printing, were published in the Tai alphabet. Along with the publication of poems, lyrics and songs supporting the socialist ideology, Bao Tay Bac and Bao Son La, both newspapers printed in the Tai alphabet, were distributed continuously from 1963 to 1969 (Figure 7).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Son La Pian Mau in 1969, New Son La.

Nevertheless, the reformation of the Tai alphabet brought tremendous agitation throughout the Tai settlements. Apart from the confusion brought by the many new devices and writing systems, particularly the newly invented vowels and tone marks and the alternate position of vowels, a more serious source of unrest came from the fact that the Tai Dam alphabet and dialect were chosen as the basis for reform. The reform committee claimed that this was due to the fact that the Tai Dam were the majority in the northwest, Tai Dam culture and economy were the most developed in the region and the Tai Dam had long and firmly supported the Party. However, many argued that the Tai Dam-based reformed alphabet disregarded the local alphabets. In addition, more years of education were required for students speaking different local dialects to finish primary school.

Moreover, the central government, particularly experts in the Ministry of Education and Training, disagreed with the teaching of the reformed alphabet. Although the students studied the alphabet for only the first 5 years of primary school, the education experts argued that learning the ethnic language and script delayed the standard education mainly aimed at training in the national Vietnamese language.

The criticisms thus led to the abandonment of the Unified Tai Alphabet within 1 year after it was launched in 1955, as well as the postponement of mass use of the Alternate Tai Alphabet and any other Tai alphabet since 1969. Late in 1969, while all sets of the Tai alphabet were removed from mass education and mass media, the central government introduced to the Tai community a newly invented Romanized Tai. This time, the Romanized Vietnamese (called quoc ngu or the national alphabet) ⁹ was the basis for the Romanized Tai, which was entitled Sue Tai Mue (New Tai Alphabet or Chu Thai Moi in Vietnamese). However, the New Tai Alphabet was not brought into use because of the fact that Tai and other ethnic languages were no longer taught in primary school. Nonetheless, recent publications of Tai literature still use Romanized-based Vietnamese script for transliterating Tai.

In sum, the reformation of various local Tai alphabets implies to a large extent the replacement of pre-modern imagined communities by the national imagined community. The reduction of previous Tai Don, Tai Dam and Tai Daeng imagined political spaces into a more generic ethnic group called Nguoi Thai o Tay Bac Vietnam (the Tai of northwestern Vietnam) is extremely important for the creation of a Vietnamese homogenous ‘we-ness’ centralized in Hanoi.

Survivals and revivals of pre-modern Tai literacy

‘Every nationality/ethnicity (dan toc) has the right to use its own language and system of writing, to preserve its national/ethnic identity, and to promote its customs, habits, traditions and cultures,’ states the constitution of Vietnam. ¹⁰ Thanks to the constitution, even though the postponement of promoting the Tai alphabet has continued for more than 30 years, the practice of speaking and writing Tai languages is not discouraged. In this way, the use of the Tai alphabet and its pre-modern textual performances survive to some extent; and thus, as many local Tai leaders claim, it benefits the local Tai as well as the central government officials working on the spot to revive the use of the Tai alphabet. The surviving and reviving Tai indigenous textual practices discussed here are drawn from field experiences in Son La town and Mai Chau district.

In terms of the Tai alphabet, those literate are limited to ritual experts, local poets and the remaining population who went to primary school during the reformation campaign in 1953–1969. Of those who are Tai literate, a few continuously practise Tai literacy. The secular Tai Dam textual practices I found consist of notes, poem and song writing, literature copying, letters and greeting cards. The Tai Dam textual practices in religious contexts are the use of KTM (principality chronologies), So Phi Huan (family genealogies), Pap Mue (divination handbooks) and records of the dates on which houses were built. ¹¹

In this way, Tai writing, if it is continuously in use and appropriately promoted, could serve contemporary life a great deal, as I found that the writing of letters, poems and songs in the Tai alphabet remains an important part of communication.

Therefore, under the Renovation (Doi Moi) policy and the welcoming of foreign support, it is not surprising that revival movements of the Tai alphabet have gradually been flourishing throughout the Tai settlements of northwestern Vietnam. However, the emerging movements involve a negotiation between local, national and global forces. In this sense, the revival of Tai alphabet class at Mai Chau district in Hoa Binh province deserves our attention.

Mai Chau is now well known for its tourist attractions. Unlike the Tai Dam, the Tai of Mai Chau speak the Tai Daeng dialect and have moreover independently developed a version of the Tai alphabet. When the Thai-Meo Autonomous Zone was founded in 1955, Mai Chau and other Tai principalities in Thanh Hoa province and Nghe An province fell outside the Autonomous Zone. Mai Chau then did not take part in the reform and mass education campaign experienced by the northern Tai districts. Thus, none of the Mai Chau populations acquired the Tai alphabet from the public school. Privately taught classes however remain, and a number of Mai Chau populations, despite their very limited numbers, are literate in the Mai Chau traditional Tai alphabet. Apart from the private class, in the 1990s Mai Chau twice opened an official class teaching the local populations. The one brought into this discussion is the third public class in 2003/2004. This ‘school year’ taught adults, primarily local officials, voluntarily participating in the program. A review of textbooks prepared for the class provides a great illustration of the politics of ethnic identity and the interplay of local, national and global forces related to choice of orthography.

The class at Mai Chau rose from the communication between the local (Mai Chau) leaders and the central (Hanoi) scholars. The orthography chosen was supposed to be agreed on by the local government and the central scholar. There are two textbooks of importance here. The first was prepared by the central scholar, highly educated in Tai Dam literacy, and mainly involved in the Tai alphabet reformation movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It was agreed between both parts that the Alternate Tai Alphabet (1962–1969), ¹² instead of traditional Mai Chau alphabet, would be taught. The first edition of the book even acknowledges the guidance of a Tai Dam alphabet and writing system textbook mailed from the United States. This acknowledgement, however, was later deleted. Most importantly, when it came to the opening ceremony, nonetheless the textbook prepared by the central scholar was replaced by another textbook prepared by the local intellectuals. The local textbook is also prepared in the Alternate Tai Alphabet. However, the spelling and vocabularies used in the local textbook significantly follow the local pronunciation and dialect. The choice of orthography and writing system in this case demonstrates negotiations between local, national and global powers as described below.

First, for the Mai Chau district leader, cooperation with the central scholar is a means of raising his place to national attention. The local leader feels that the alphabet and writing system chosen by the central scholar were formerly promoted for mass education in the Thai-Meo Autonomous Zone; it is therefore arguably more scientific, suitable for the future, and thus better accepted nationwide or region-wide than the traditional Mai Chau orthography. However, the local leader maintains that the textbook prepared in Tai Dam pronunciation, vocabularies and literature does not suit local use. The local educational leader thus prepared another textbook in the Tai Mai Chau dialect. As a result, the words and the use of tone markers are totally different from Tai Dam-based spelling.

In the second place comes the role of the local community. The villagers are reluctant to accept this choice of orthography. Criticisms from local intellectuals and different local factions argue that the traditional Mai Chau alphabet is much more appropriate for transcribing the local pronunciation and dialect. Furthermore, for local intellectuals, the new script will reduce the villagers’ pride in traditional texts written in the Mai Chau alphabet.

Third, the central scholars, believing in the sophistication of the Alternate Tai Alphabet, claim that it is suitable for any Tai pronunciation. They maintain that the experiments in the Mai Chau case will demonstrate that the Tai alphabet is as essential and acceptable to local villagers as it is for the whole nation. Furthermore, the central scholars hope that the Mai Chau case will provide a remarkable experience for the future extensive revival of the Tai alphabet throughout the Tai settlements speaking different dialects.

Fourth, as for the central government, there is an agenda to open Mai Chau classes to demonstrate that Vietnam is in principle a culturally pluralist state. The governmental delegate maintains that the language policies, particularly in recent circumstances, are closely associated with political movements. However, the Ministry of Education and Training delegate suggests that as long as the Tai community of different dialects and orthographies cannot agree on the standard dialect and orthography, a mass education program taught in ethnic Tai language cannot be established.

The last party is the overseas Tai community, which has had a powerful, though quiet, part in the revival movement. A guidebook to Tai writing written in the United States and mailed as a personal gift to a relative in Vietnam became a significant guideline for the preparation of the textbook taught at Mai Chau, despite the fact that this was not the sender’s intent. The receiver was a close relative from the mother’s side; the sender was then, for the Tai Dam, the receiver’s lung ta, namely, the great patron of the receiver. It is important to note that the sender formerly held a high ranking post in the American regime, whereas the receiver is working as a high ranking official of the present government. The first textbook prepared by the central scholar then arises from family ties formerly established in the traditional Tai polity and maintained through the political conflict of the Cold War. The acknowledgement of the guidebook mailed from the United States was thus eventually deleted.

In sum, the case of Mai Chau demonstrates how different parties ranging from local intellectuals, local officials, national intellectuals, the government, to the global communities play roles in orthographic choice. As orthographic choice is never neutral but usually involves sociopolitical spatial formation, the politics of the writing system is thus a politics of imagined Tai communities among contesting groups and political agents.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the script and textual practices, both traditional and contemporary, play significant roles among the Tai. Prior to the revolution, several Tai political spaces were established. Today, despite the replacement of the various Tai alphabets and the standardized Tai alphabet by the national script established in the Tai communities, Tai alphabets and traditional textual practices continue to play a part in the communication process. Accordingly, various imagined Tai political spaces exist concurrently with the national imagined community. Additionally, as the Tai community abroad begins to influence its home country, the flow of texts and textual practices from overseas is establishing another kind of community. Overseas Tai reconstruct their formerly established proto-imagined community with the local Tai community back in their home country.

As a result, the interplay of local, national and global forces on Tai populations is establishing different locations for the imagined community. Instead of a homogenous and standard literacy, the current situation sees the multiplicity and expansion of textual practices, the revival of Tai alphabets, a negotiation between the local, the centre and the global impacts and a negotiation between the localities. Hence, the case of the Tai scripts indicates how a mainland cosmopolitan society seeks to create a sociopolitical space through the formation of a literary community. As the contestation is everlasting, Tai spatiality has long been diverse and shifting. There is also the interplay of sub-ethnic groups inside each Tai ethnic group as well as between Tai ethnic groups themselves. Moreover, the particular case of the Tai in Mai Chau shows how the Tai negotiate to identify themselves against the state under global conditions in many ways ranging from the re-imagining of Tai localism, the creating of a universal pan-Tai-ism to a transnational Tai diaspora community.

In this way, issues of cosmopolitanism among Tai polities though not visible enough in the current literature on Southeast Asia (e.g. Scott, 2009; Wolters, 1994), nor directly addressed by the theories on cosmopolitanism (Appadurai, 2011), are nonetheless worthy of our attention. A space for Tai cosmopolitanism should therefore be found in both discussions of cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia and general theoretical discussions about the theme. I hope my piece will be a contribution in this direction. Moreover, I also hope that Zomian populations such as the Tai in Vietnam will become more visible in future discussions on cosmopolitanism.