IN THE 1935 Constitution, the idea of One-Nation One-Language became evident. The 1935 Constitution mandated the formation of a national language based on one of the Philippine languages.

(A controversy surrounds this provision. The records of the 1935 Constitutional Convention showed that the delegates eventually approved a national language based on all the Philippine languages. The draft went to the style committee, but after alleged manipulation by Tagalistas, the final draft showed a provision that mandated a national language based on one of the Philippine languages.)

1935 Constitution

ART. XIV, SEC.3. The Congress shall take steps toward the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages. Until otherwise provided by law, English and Spanish shall continue as official languages.

After the promulgation of the 1935 Constitution, the Institute of National Language was created by the National Assembly. It was heavily influenced by leading Tagalog nationalists including Claro M. Recto and President Manuel Luis Quezon himself.

This Institute recommended to President Quezon the choice of Tagalog as the basis of the ‘common national language’ mandated by the Constitution. Quezon then proclaimed Tagalog as the national language of the Philippines on November 30, 1937, supposedly based on the Institute’s recommendation, although it was known that Quezon himself had influenced the Institute’s recommendation.

In brief, Quezon influenced the Government that he led to recommend a National Language that he later officially approved.

Naturally, educated non-Tagalog Filipinos who saw the implications of Quezon’s actions protested. Before World War II, Tagalog was never taught in Philippine schools on a national level. It was evidently clear to the educated non-Tagalogs that allowing the teaching of Tagalog (even a Tagalog honey-coated as ‘Filipino’) would marginalize their peoples, turn them into second class citizens.

Then World War II came, and with it the anti-American Japanese. English, a socially neutral leveling tongue in use all over the Philippines, with the added bonus of being the international language of commerce and science, was banned, inasmuch as it was the language of the American enemy.

In 1942, Executive Order 44, issued by collaborationist President Jose P. Laurel, ordered the integration of Tagalog into the core subjects of the University of the Philippines. In short order, Tagalog became a permanent course in all Philippine schools, and a symbol of anti-Americanism.

The Japanese subsidized the creation of Tagalog literature. Whereas during the American period Philippine literature consisted of almost equal parts of Cebuano, Tagalog, and Ilonggo writings, plus a smaller but substantial quantity of Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Bicolano and other non-Tagalog works, Philippine literature during World War II and its aftermath consisted of practically pure mono-cultural monolithic Tagalog. The dearth of non-Tagalog literature post-World War II is one of the signs that these languages are dying.

The Philippines essentially was in the state of affairs described above by the 1960s, after a generation of Filipinos had grown up brainwashed by their own educational system to regard themselves as ‘Pilipinos’ only if they could speak Tagalog (honey-coated as ‘Pilipino’).

Then came the 1973 Constitution. (To be continued)/PN