Death knell for diversity

We are in a pluralistic society where all cultures, languages, religions, and food habits have equal rights under the constitution. In many instances across the country, Hindi-speaking people are trying to push their own language over others. Why don't we let the people of our great nation decide what to eat, what to wear, who to worship, and what language to speak? This imposition will cause great disadvantages to the future youth of this nation who have global aspirations. I will call this a war on language. If you impose, there will be no regional pride. If Hindi is the national language, then the mother tongue of each tribe will fall into the second-class category, which will ultimately be diminished with time. Let me express freely what I feel in my heart on this controversial and emotional issue of language:

I was born and brought up here in Manipur. This is my motherland. My identity is Meetei because I speak Meiteilon, my mother tongue. Except for Manipuri/Meiteilon, every language which is not familiar to me, including Hindi, English, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, etc., is a foreign language to me.

Language is the carrier of society's culture. It is through one's own language that people are able to express themselves effectively. The disappearance of language due to the imposition of a non-native language will eventually lead to the sublimation of native culture and traditional knowledge. Language is much more than just something we use to communicate. A language has hope; a language has imagination; a language has a history; a language has culture and tradition in it. A language shares geographical features and is closely related to the culture, customs, and identity of people and things. Language is also a statement of relationships among the thoughts and expressions of a human being. India is a country of different languages, and every language has its own importance. The language question is not just about imposition but about the distortion of an individual's cultural identity. After the annexation of India, the British then tried to promote English for better governance. Even after India got independence, there were always two major language-related issues: (i) the dispute over the official language of the union and (ii) the linguistic reorganisation of the states. If India is to exist as a country under unity in diversity, as an Indian, one should be given the option and choice to learn any language one wants.

Different contexts may be mapped out regarding the history of language imposition. First, the context of colonisation, wherein colonisers threatened the languages of the land by advocating an ideology that aimed to "civilise" and "modernise" the colonial subjects so that they could serve their "tastes". Secondly, the context of the formation of the post-colonial nation-state, which had patronised the dominant language of the land as the lingua franca of the state (by adopting it as a national/official language) and of the education system (by adopting it as a medium of instruction or as a compulsory language). This process was driven by the political elite who often used linguistic nationalism as a weapon to achieve oneness, unity, integrity, and nationhood. Thirdly, in the post-independence era, the rise of sub-national linguistic identities challenging the national linguistic identity has also contributed to the marginalisation of the minority tongues within their sphere of influence. Fourthly, and most recently, has been the context of the market-driven process of globalisation, which sought to blur the boundaries between nation-states through the increasing use of English. The "majority" ethnic languages or English, as the case may be, depending on the context, are the culprits for the extinction of minority languages in any given society. For instance, the minority tribal languages in many states are taught in either the dominant language of the state or in English (as in the case of many or all of the northeastern states) and seldom in their own tongue. The immediate justification given for such policies is that the scripts of these native tongues are either not developed or do not exist. Even when they do exist, it is not "appropriate" for teaching and learning. Secondly, the much propagated and envisioned three-language formula has never gained ground except in a few states, leaving the goal of trilingualism or multilingualism a distant dream for most parts of the country. Thirdly, minority language speakers constantly face ridicule from peers and teachers when they speak the dominant school language or the language of their home. Usually, these are reflected in the informal or formal references to the minority tongues and peoples in talk, behaviour and in imitations that may indicate humiliation and discrimination toward the speaker of minority tongues. Even when a minority language speaker speaks the dominant language(s) with the accent of one's own native tongue, then also it is a matter of laughter and invites social sanction and hence social rejection of the minority language and its speaker. One of the consequences of poor education policies in education is that the child is far removed from his/her linguistic and cultural context and it may prove disastrous for the education of children from linguistic minority communities such as tribal, border or even the so-called dominant indigenous linguistic groups. The purpose of language policies in education is not to complicate this complex problem, but to address it convincingly without any further loss to the linguistic and cultural contexts of the linguistic minority children.

Denial of such educational experience in their mother tongue will bring about a power struggle between the national and regional, and in this, the minorities in their respective states will be stripped of their linguistic rights even further. Such a move can only be one of domination – of assertion of power. The forceful way of imposition, which can also be captured in the language stating "have to accept", is a serious threat to the autonomy and agency of people to choose their language. When the linguistic element becomes secondary and the cultural element takes precedence, then the interplay between the national and sub-national is bound to have a fresh dynamic. The creation of an official language also creates classes and social divides. First, a class of people who know that language and the rest who don't. In that specific sense, the point is not to kill other dialects and languages entirely but to make them subordinate and dependent on one or the other dominant form. One significant outcome of the dominance of a few languages is that linguistic minorities are assimilated into one or the other of these few dominant linguistic groups. Subsequently, they are forced to turn into bilingual or trilingual in order to appropriate themselves within the hegemonic linguistic situation. The dominant linguistic groups, on the other hand, remain largely monolingual and look down upon the minority tongues as primitive or not proper or uncivilised. The lack of instruction in the mother tongue for linguistic minority children in schools is often cited as one of the reasons for the diminishing numbers of minority tongues. The linguistic minority communities had to opt for the language of the school, which is usually the dominant language of the area or the state in which the school is located. For instance, a gond in Andhra Pradesh gets education in Telugu and a gond in Chhattisgarh gets education in Hindi or those in Maharashtra in Marathi. Similarly, a Marathi-speaking child living on the Andhra Pradesh side of the border will have to learn Telugu and on the Karnataka side of the border will have to learn Kannada, despite having provisions for transacting education in Marathi for such border communities. The situation is precarious for the tribal communities but they are seldom taught in that language. This fact cannot be overlooked as linguistic identity is identified with ethnic and cultural identity, which then threatens the emotional, social, and group affiliations of a child growing up in a multilingual society. We have witnessed several debates over the language question. However, each of these debates centres around a few dominant languages, leaving aside the numerous other minority languages, such as those of tribal communities, forcing them to join one or the other larger linguistic community.

Linguistic diversity is part and parcel of the diversity of life in nature and culture. Any loss in linguistic diversity is a loss in the vitality and resilience of the whole web of life. Every time a language disappears, along with the cultural traditions and cultural knowledge it conveys, it's a piece of the planet's living fabric that gets torn off, leaving all of the living world more fragile, more vulnerable, and with fewer options for the future. The government should try to promote and preserve regional languages in order to protect them from being mixed with other languages.

Views expressed are personal