India's multilingualism faces threats

The theme of UNESCO's International Mother Language Day for 2021 was ‘fostering multilingualism in education and society’. It emphasised the need for teaching the child in the mother tongue for a sound foundation in learning.

With a diversity of cultures and diverse ecological zones from the Himalayas to the coastal regions, linguistic diversity, too, runs deep in the Indian psyche. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PSLI) has documented 780 different languages in the country. Unfortunately, this diversity stands threatened as almost 400 of these languages are at risk of dying, according to Ganesh Devy, the Chairperson of PSLI, who provided the leadership for this monumental study.

India is the only country to have declared 22 languages as official ‘scheduled’ languages, and six languages as ‘classical’ languages, which have a history and lineage of more than a thousand years.

Though our Constitution provides rights to speakers of minority languages, the ground reality shows that the dominant languages like Hindi and English are gradually entrenching in the minds of the younger generations as they get lured by these languages that provide livelihoods, prestige and social status.

This diversity emerges from different linguistic origins that often include diverse scripts. We have language families of Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan and Austro-Asiatic origins. These longstanding traditions of diverse languages existing in different regions have given birth to Indians’ multilingualism. For an ordinary Indian citizen, speaking, reading, doing business, and writing in more than one language comes very naturally.

After Independence, the formation of states was based on languages spoken in each specific region. The ‘identity’ politics of language was one of the modes of political and democratic struggle. One of the objectives was to facilitate the active participation of the people in developmental and cultural programmes through the usage of their local languages.

However, in recent years, the spontaneous trait of multilingualism has come under threat from a central government that is keen to propagate Hindi as the ‘national language’ and to revive Sanskrit as the ‘heritage language’. Attempts to impose Hindi in the southern region, especially in Tamil Nadu, resulted in the launching of strong agitations, forcing the central government to adopt the Three Language Formula (TLF). English and the regional language of the state get priority in governance and education, in addition to Hindi.

Recently, there was outrage on social media about the way the Kannada language was ignored by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the Karnataka government while laying the foundation stone for a Rapid Action Force unit in Bhadravati in Shivamogga district. This kicked off a minor language war. Instead of accepting its mistake in not following the well-accepted formality of TLF, the Centre issued a statement saying that “in all central government programmes,” they follow a two-language formula, sidetracking the official language of the state.

The threat to multilingualism is also inherent in the present digital era. Most of the communications and business is carried out online. Invariably, English is the dominant language on the internet, forcing people to become, at most, bi-lingual, rather than multilingual. Though the government has launched a national mission to develop digital content in the scheduled languages, it is doubtful if this can provide equitable access to people who use multiple languages.

China has the largest number of internet users in the world, and they use Mandarin. Compare this to the second largest internet user, India. Though the central government prefers Hindi as the national language, the presence of Hindi-speakers on the internet is miniscule. It reveals the power of the dominant languages online.

Though India is the second-largest digitising population in the world, the ordinary people are forced to consume digital content in English as the cyber presence of Hindi or any of the other scheduled languages is negligible. The human brain has evolved to be multilingual, and that allows learning of multiple languages. Multilingual persons not only reap the social benefit of being better communicators with different sets of people, but multilingualism also brings career benefits. It enhances cognitive skills, improving the efficiency of brain functioning. Multilingual persons are keen observers of the world around them and adept at interpreting their social environment.

Multilingualism is the way of life in India as people in different parts of the country speak more than one language from birth and learn additional languages during their lifetime.

D P Pattanayak, the first director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages said, “In the developed world…two languages are considered nuisance, three languages uneconomical, and many languages absurd. In multilingual countries, many languages are a fact of life, any restriction in the choice of language is a nuisance, and one language is not only uneconomical, it is absurd.”

Lack of internet access for 70% of the population in our country may be a blessing in disguise! People in the hinterland have not yet abandoned the multiple languages they speak. Maybe this will help in the conservation of the country’s linguistic diversity.