A literacy class for Indian women,
accompanied by their children.
|
Preservation is what we do
to berries in jam jars and salmon in cans. . . . Books and recordings can preserve
languages, but only people and communities can keep them alive.
Nora
Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, historians of the Tlingit oral tradition
(Alaska)
|
|
India is one of the world’s
leading multilingual countries, but today many of its minority languages are facing
extinction as majority languages gain ground
 India,
with a population of around one billion people, is often regarded as a model of harmonious
linguistic coexistence within a single state. It has two official languages (Hindi
and English), 18 major languages Scheduled in the Indian Constitution, and 418 “listed”
languages, each spoken by 10,000 people or more. All-India Radio broadcasts in 24
languages and in 146 dialects; newspapers are published in at least 34 languages;
67 languages are used in primary education, and 80 in literacy work. The constitution
guarantees all citizens the right to “conserve” their language, and all religious
or linguistic minorities have the right to establish and administer educational institutions
of their choice.
But organizing multilingualism in a land whose multilingual tradition goes back several
thousand years is no easy matter. The Indian Union today consists of 26 states and
six Union territories, a number of which were formed in 1956 on a unilingual basis
to reduce the number of linguistic minorities by bringing together people who speak
a common language. But the official languages adopted by the states and territories
are not necessarily spoken by all their respective populations; not one of them is
completely monolingual.
English,
a social status symbol
This structure has
encouraged the development of some languages at the expense of others. There are,
for instance, over 1,600 languages known as mother tongues, the great majority of
which have no official status and therefore lack protection. Further complexity is
added by the fact that every language community consists of at least three interlanguages.
Hindi alone has 48 variants. In this country where nationhood is a recent phenomenon,
language has become a focal point of socio-political action. Unsurprisingly, language
policy has always been a subject of debate and controversy between politicians, educators
and planners.
Today in the official domain there is a strict hierarchy of Indian languages. At
the top are Hindi and English. Next come the official languages of the states and
territories, followed by languages which, although not used for administrative purposes,
are spoken by more than a million people. Hundreds of others at the foot of the ladder
are monitored by a Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities who only has advisory powers
and cannot force state governments to follow his recommendations. Some state governments
are optimistically hoping that minority languages within their jurisdiction will
die out before they get a chance to be used in education.
Meanwhile, English is gaining ground. In 1949 constitutional provision was made for
parliamentary business to be transacted in Hindi or in English but that after 15
years only Hindi should be used. However, after this time had elapsed, Hindi was
just as much a foreign language as English for two-thirds of the population. Regarded
as a “neutral” language for wider communication, and the language of technology,
modernity and development, English is also a social status symbol. The resultant
Anglomania is detrimental not only to the growth of Indian languages but also to
the “normal” development of Indian society. It sometimes reaches grotesque proportions.
Politicians who decry the use of English sometimes send their children to the best
schools in which English is the medium of instruction.
It is up to the intellectual elites of minority communities to promote their mother
tongues. Often bi- or trilingual, they must initiate projects to keep out the neo-colonial
intruder, give a new impetus to dying languages and adapt them to the modern world.
|
