The forest of languages and hope

I have just planted a sapling with nice long leaves. That’s Shina. It has Bavaria and Koch for neighbours, and is right opposite Multani. I chose this neighbourhood for Shina because if there is anyone that can match Multani’s muscle and spirit, it’s her. And Shina would get along with Koch, they are both from the hills — though Kashmir and Cooch Behar aren’t exactly alike. As they all grow up, they will make up the Bhasha Van — the forest of languages.

All 320 of them, with each tree representing an Indian language. Together, they would stand for the amazing linguistic diversity of our country, offering a forest of hope, reminding us of our rich cultural roots and our distinct identities.

Yes, there are hundreds of Indian languages. Thousands, if you are lenient with your definition of ‘language’. The 1961 census mentioned 1,652 mother tongues in India. But there is a matsyanyaya in language. Bigger, more powerful languages are swallowing up smaller ones, thus wiping out the identities of speakers of those mother tongues, creating language refugees who move to the dominant languages displaced from their beliefs, their cultural roots, their worldview, which were all embedded in their lost mother-tongue.

The Bhasha Van is an attempt to counter this dreadful cultural erosion. An initiative of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre at Vadodara, this was part of the Bhasha Confluence that brought together 600 delegates from far-flung corners of the country. Participants ranged from the writer Mahasveta Devi, veteran Gandhian activist Narayanbhai Desai, linguist DP Pattanayak and several academics and activists, to hundreds of representatives of different tribal and minority languages and dialects. And of the 320-odd saplings planted at the Bhasha Van in the sprawling campus of the Adivasi Academy at Tejgarh, around 300 represented tribal languages.

The brainchild of Ganesh Devy, the man behind the Bhasha Centre and the Adivasi Academy, this forest of languages aims to remind us of the lush linguistic heritage that we need to nurture, the sheltering cultural space that we must not allow to wither and die. The tribal languages are at greatest risk and need special care.

The saplings were blessed by the guests. “Get the government to deliver, especially in the tribal areas,” said Mahasveta Devi. “Don’t let government officials get away with doing nothing just because they don’t know the local language. They must know it. They need to understand the needs of the tribals. There must be no forgiveness if they don’t understand what the locals are saying.”

Implementation of government policies is possibly our biggest problem. Failure of the government to deliver, especially in the tribal belt, is responsible for the rise of the Maoists. I wonder if the Adivasi Academy could produce primers for administrative officials to introduce them to the language and cultures of each tribal area so that they could indeed understand the problems better and have no excuse for not doing their job.

Another pragmatic suggestion came from DP Pattanayak. “Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan cannot be successful unless it becomes Sarva Bhasha Abhiyan,” he said. Government policies need to reflect the fundamental importance of the mother tongue in education.
Languages, like the saplings planted in Bhasha Van, need to be nurtured, watered, at times even sheltered. That’s the only way to protect our various linguistic identities.

For when a language dies, we lose a part of our invaluable collective heritage. Like when Boa Sr, 85, the last speaker of the ancient Bo language of the Andamans, died in January, Bo — the language that embodied cultural and knowledge traditions of 65,000 years — died with her.

We may not always be able to keep languages alive, but we can prevent them from being killed by neglect. Hopefully, the Bhasha Van would be an important reminder of this.