[LINK] "Serbia’s Bosniaks Rediscover Their Roots"

[rfmcdonald]

Uffe Andersen's recent Transitions Online article describing how Bosniaks--briefly, ethnically Muslim speakers of Serbo-Croatian concentrated in but not limited to Bosnia-Herzegovina--living in Serbia makes for interesting reading. It's not only on account of the differences between the Serbian and Bosniak variants of Serbo-Croatian being minor, but on account of the potential implications for borders in the area. Bosniaks in Serbia are concentrated in the Sandžak region, a region with a slight Muslim preponderance straddling the current Serbian-Montenegro border. If Bosnia came apart, what might happen here?

In late February, high school student Ajla Bugaric took the stage in this city of roughly 100,000 to recite “Why Venice Is Sinking,” the poet Abdulah Sidran’s tribute to multiculturalism and the Bosniak nation.

“I look up into the sky above Venice,” Bugaric recited. “Nothing’s changed, in the last / seven billion years. Up above, is God. He / created the universe, in the universe seven billion / worlds, in each world numberless peoples, a multitude / of languages, and for each world - a Venice.”

The poem goes on to describe the Bosniak people, Slav Muslims who make up the majority in Serbia’s Sandzak region on the border with Montenegro, as “meek” or “peaceful.” It’s a message of national identity few Bosniak children will have heard in Sandzak schools, where the curriculum has traditionally focused on the Serbian nation and where – optional – classes in their mother tongue, Bosnian, are offered only twice a week.

But that's about to change. When the new school year begins in September, Bosniak primary and secondary students in Sandzak will be able to study in Bosnian and take new “national culture” courses in Bosniak history, literature, music, and art.

The poetry reading was part of a celebration on 21 February, International Mother Language Day, to mark the launch of the pilot program in 12 schools. The day was carefully chosen to start this “new era for the Bosniak people in Serbia,” Bosniak National Council President Esad Dzudzevic said in a speech.

Responsible for shaping local policy on culture, media, and education, the council is one of the several state-financed bodies representing Serbia's ethnic minorities. Dzudzevic called the new Bosniak curriculum – nine years in the works – among its most significant achievements, returning to Bosniaks “their self-confidence and self-respect as they get to know and value their language, history, and culture.”

And despite longstanding international concern that such a change could reinforce ethnic division in a region still struggling toward reconciliation after the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, everyday Bosniaks are also enthusiastic.