Dying case of Indian regional languages
Languages are a significant part of any culture around the world. As India takes pride in declaring itself a Multi-linguistic Nation, a nation with more than 1000 languages, it does face wrath time to time because of the same. Linguistic clashes have been one of the prominent basis for reorganisation of States in India. While Hindi and English are the official languages (languages used by the government for its official business), no language has been given the status of National Language yet. State government can themselves decide the official language of their respective state.
‘Our languages are a great identity of our Liberal and Democratic Society. For centuries hundreds of languages, hundreds of dialects, have been moving forward in our country with a sense of co-existence and they still remain the mother tongue of millions of people. This diversity of India is the very basis of our Vibrant Democracy’ said Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Houston.
Even after having more than 1000 languages, Constitution recognises only 22 of them as major languages in India in what is known as ‘the 8th Schedule’. Besides Hindi it includes Assamese, Bangla, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Kannada, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Santali, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu. As per Ministry of Home Affairs, there are demands to include 45 more languages in the 8th Schedule.
Languages included in the 8th Schedule enjoy certain cultural incentives, employment opportunities such as candidates can write All India competitive exams like UPSC in these languages, benefits in Parliament such as translation, membership of the Official Languages Commission, and certain monetary and academic benefits too.
Six languages have been conferred the status of Classical Language. i.e., Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam & Odia. As directed by Article 351, Department of Official Language (Ministry of Home Affairs) is conferred with the responsibility to promote Hindi as an official language. Whereas Ministry of Culture is conferred with the responsibility to promote and promulgate the classical languages.
As per figures released by the Ministry of Culture On February 3, a whopping Rs. 643.84 crore has been spent on the promotion of Sanskrit in the last three years. Which is 22 times the total amount of Rs. 29 crore spent on the other five languages in the last three years. This submission by the Ministry of Culture has reignited the debate of uneven treatment of Indian classical languages. It is also important to note here that unlike other classical languages Sanskrit is not a prominent language (regional language) of any particular region. Also, absolutely nothing has been spent on Malayalam and Odia in last three years.
Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (RSKS) has been established in New Delhi, under Human Resource Development(HRD) Ministry, as nodal authority for promoting the Sanskrit. For Telgue and Kannada, HRD Ministry has established Centres of Excellence for Studies in Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore in 2011 for both the languages.
An autonomous organization namely Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT), Chennai has been established for the promotion of Classical Tamil Language. ln addition, University Grants Commission has approved a Centre for Classical Languages in Telugu in University of Hyderabad and a Centre for Classical Languages in Kannada in the Central University of Karnataka. Also, HRD Ministry is considering setting up of establishment of Centres of Excellence for Classical Odia and Classical Malayalam.
The debate on the preferential treatment given to Sanskrit and Hindi often takes place in Political parlance of this country. Recently, this debate reignited again when the names of the Railway stations of Uttrakhand which were written Urdu, with Hindi and English, was being changed in Sanskrit, which is the second official language of the state.
Irrespective of the party in power, Central Governments have often been accused of imposing Hindi as a language on the whole country. Narendra Modi led NDA governments time and again have officially backed Hindi as a language of the whole nation. In 2013, an RTI reply by the Department of Language created controversy which revealed that 348.90 crores were allocated between 2009 and 2012 to promote Hindi. In 2018, the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that 400 crores would be spent if Hindi was made one of the official languages of the United Nations.
These moves by Central Governments have often been accused to be a part of Hindi Imposition on Non-Hindi speaking States.
There is no official count of total number of languages in India. The 1961 census recorded that there were 1,652 languages in India. Since 1971 census, languages spoken by less than 10,000 people has not been included in the official list of languages. According to UNESCO, any language that is spoken by less than 10,000 people is potentially endangered. The census of 1991 and 2001 show not more than 122 languages in the country. Renowned literary critic and activist Ganesh Narayan Devy documented 780 Indian languages while conducting the People’s Linguistic Survey of India in 2010. He claims that out of these 780 languages, 600 of them are on the verge of extinction. 250 languages have already died in the past 60 years.
Dying languages is a matter of worry because any language is just not a medium of communication. Every language has a unique worldview. When a language dies a vast amount of knowledge and literature that is being written or spoken in that language gets lost on oblivion. Society is deprived of accessing the research on some particular subject that the forefathers who spoke that language did years ago. It also takes away the tradition livelihood pattern of the speakers of that language. They may have some social skills which might disappear with the death of a language. Therefore, when India claims to be a Multilinguistic society, it also needs to understand that it holds a vast amount of knowledge and skills in those languages. It also brings upon the responsibility upon India to preserve those languages. If India wants to achieve back the title of Vishvaguru (Preceptor of the universe), it will have to work more on the preservation of its languages. Merely spending on six classical languages won’t do be enough.
