On the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, observed worldwide on February 21, we look at the rich cultural and linguistic heritage of India and how this valuable repository is being revitalised.
Adi, Nyishi, Galo, Noce, Tangsa, Chakru… these are just a few of the 19,569 languages or dialects spoken as mother tongues in India. India’s linguistic diversity, as per the last census, ranks fourth in the world. However, that’s just one part of the picture. Only 121 of these are spoken by over 10,000 people and just 22 are recognised and promoted as Schedule Languages. Alarmingly, just three on the list are tribal languages.
These minority languages are rare and under threat of extinction. According to Unesco’s ‘Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger,’ India has the maximum number of endangered languages. Estimates suggest that nine indigenous languages in India have already become extinct.
For instance, Akabo, an ancient language from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands became extinct in 2010 with the demise of Boa, its last speaker. Similarly, in 2016, Majhi language breathed its last when octogenarian Thak Bahadur Majhi passed away in Sikkim.
The uniqueness of each language and its cultural contribution can be semantically gauged from the instance that Khasi, one of the languages spoken in Meghalaya, has 66 different ways to express ‘style of walk’ alone.
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The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) has been trying to address this concern by encouraging schools to use mother tongue/local language/regional language as the medium of instruction until at least Grade Five.
Currently, according to government data, only 28 languages are being used for teaching-learning. These include, apart from the widely spoken Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, and Hindi, lesser-known languages such as Hmar, Karbi, Bhodi and Purgi.
NEP’s move, if institutionalised in the right spirit, can go a long way in supporting languages. More so in light of the fact that only 0.14% of India’s mother tongues are used as a medium of instruction in India’s schools and just 0.35% are taught.
In the absence of any institutionalisation, a gradual shift towards adopting major languages occurs, thus pushing rare gems into oblivion. India’s 104 million tribal population, with their rich reservoir of languages and dialects, is finding itself in the throes of such a shift.
Tribal children tend to drop out of schools when they are not able to bridge the language gap between mother tongues spoken at home and the language of instruction at schools.
An innovative experiment has been bridging this gap.
Vasantshala, a mother tongue and multilingual centre, set up by Bhasha, a trust working for conservation of marginal languages, has been teaching out-of-school tribal kids with the help of material specially designed in local languages. Once the learning gap is closed, the children join mainstream government schools.
Documentation is an important tool to preserve languages. Several initiatives are currently underway in this space. While Bhasha Publications is creating scripts for several adivasi languages that existed only in the oral format earlier, the Sahitya Akademi is promoting indigenous languages and literature.
Similarly, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is documenting and digitising India’s linguistic and cultural heritage through Loka Parampara for oral traditions, Adi Drishya Programme for indigenous languages, and Kala Nidhi Digital Library for rare manuscripts. The National Mission on Cultural Mapping (NMCM) and the National Manuscripts Mission (NMM) are also documenting regional languages and preserving ancient manuscripts focusing on linguistic and cultural heritage.
The North-East India Documentation project–recording oral histories and linguistic structures of communities like the Nagas, Bodos, Mizos, and Khasis–is an interesting one. So is the project by Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages centering around Munda languages such as Korwa, Asuri, Birhor, Turi, Koda, Didey, Remo, and Gorum amongst others.
Spoken by approximately 10 million people spread across the states of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, the project found some Munda languages to be stable but many to be endangered. In a bid to save the languages, the initiative has even documented the lexica and grammar of the modern Munda language family.
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Bodo language also was revived as the result of a successful language movement in the 1960s, following the establishment of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha in 1952. It led to its inclusion as an associate official language in Assam.
Technology is playing a crucial role in the preservation and development of languages. Take the case of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland. It has three lexical tones. Not just that. Even the acoustic tone assignment on scores of lexical words differs in Chungli, Mongsen, and Changki, its three different dialects. Technology can play a big role here through automatic dialect identification (DID).
On its part, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated Technology Development for Indian Languages programme to develop information-processing tools to facilitate human-machine interaction in Indian languages and to develop technologies to access multilingual knowledge resources.
Digital India Bhashini, India’s AI-led language translation platform, is enabling citizen engagement to build multilingual datasets through a crowd-sourcing initiative called Bhasha Daan.
In terms of mass media, All India Radio (AIR) continues to broadcast programs in 23 languages and 179 dialects. Print media is also playing a seminal role. Fagun is the only newspaper published in the Santali language in the Ol Chiki script. The number of native vernacular dailies, like Mizo Daily ‘Vanglaini’ and Naga daily ‘Ao Milen’ in Ao language, are quite limited.
And recently, platforms like YouTube and Instagram are also giving space to marginal languages. Thanks to patronisers, Tribe TV, Mundariversity, and others, are helping Santhali and Mundari languages thrive. Members are also using Wikimedia tools to create communities for supporting languages. In today’s day and age, for a language to live for posterity, digital presence is indeed indispensable.
Losing a language means losing a knowledge system comprising customs, traditions, and valuable indigenous wisdom. It means losing a part of history; losing memories. International Mother Language Day is the perfect opportunity to reinvigorate this multitude of initiatives for saving our linguistic diversity and collective cultural heritage.
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The lead image at the top shows students taking a cart ride to school. Learning in one’s mother tongue enhances comprehension, engagement, and retention. Unesco believes that multilingual education holds the key to quality and inclusive learning. (Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)
Kiran Yadav is a Delhi-based freelance journalist.
