Languages in deep distress

Peggy Mohan, linguist and author of Jahajin went for research in Bihar in the seventies to understand how languages are superseding each other in any state. “I met children who struggled to speak in Bhojpuri. In school, the children studied in Hindi and hence they were already out of touch with their mother tongue for the larger part of the day,” recalls Mohan.

“I have even met Hindi PhD and MPhil students who feel cheated as jobs are not available for them,” says Mohan.

According to Mohan, if Hindi is our official language for a more unified vision of the Indian state, and also creates employment, then English overpowers it as a language for  high-level jobs.

Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet and a noted arts administrator, says he has unsuccessfully proposed to the government that there should be a permanent body to keep track of knowledge production in various languages.

“We should know how many films, books and knowledge production in information technology, law, jurisprudence and education are done in other Indian languages,” he says.

“World over, educationists, academics, linguists, psychologists, experts have been saying that those who do not get educated in their mother tongue in their early years are unlikely to produce any substantial knowledge of any kind in any other language,” he adds.

Vajpeyi laments that all our language scholars are teaching abroad at Oxford and Harvard, and we don’t even have any Pali scholar at home anymore. He says the reasons are the lack of political will and bureaucratic hindrances.

“In the education system there has been a serious devaluation in language teaching. The three language formula is not adopted appropriately. English authors are celebrated over those writing in other languages,” he says.

Sohail Hashmi, history buff and geographer,  complains that children in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, are being taught in Hindi, a language alien to the local community. “As tribals all their mythology and tradition will be lost with the loss of the language,” he says.

A girl from Delhi University says, “I was born in Delhi, and I speak Hindi more fluently than Tibetan, which is my mother tongue. All our sacred books, texts, and tales, I cannot read anymore. My grandmom and mom are afraid what will happen to the next generation. You see, Tibetan is already a dying language. I feel responsible to save it.”