In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a surprising development in the Western European world was the emergence of spirited debates on the identity question. This rethinking of the identity question was propelled by two major transformations, one external and the other internal. The external transformation was in relation to the formation of the European Union, which aims to integrate the various European nation-states into a supranational state of sorts. In this supranational state, questions were raised about what will happen to the cultures and languages of the individual nation-state as it evolves. The internal transformation refers to the fact that many of the individual nation-states have over the years and with the arrival and settlement of non-European immigrants, become multiethnic societies.

Increasingly, the identity debates in Europe have revolved around the concept of “multiculturalism”. According to Bhikhu Parekh, multiculturalist perspectives recognize the cultural embeddedness of human beings, the inescapability and desirability of cultural plurality, and the plural and multicultural constitution of each culture. It follows that a multicultural society values its cultural diversity and respects the rights of its members to their cultures and languages. The multicultural perspective is indeed a stark contrast to the traditional concept of the nation, also a European construct, which imagines a nation as a homogenous cultural entity. It is in fact the overwhelming dominance of this concept of nation that historically made and transformed the various Western European nation-states into largely culturally homogenous entities. Thus, in Europe now the move is to shift from the culturally homogenous nation to one that accommodates multiculturalism.

Ironically, in the post-colonial world, including Southeast Asia, the nation-building processes continue to be largely influenced by the prevalence of the traditional concept of the nation. In this regard, language was and remains a key site of contention. In the early years of nation- building, attempts to build a monolingual nation was the overriding policy in the Southeast Asian region even though the inhabitants in all the countries spoke a variety of languages.