Arunachal man scripts history with new tribal alphabet

In 2001, when a young Banwang Losu tried to translate a document from English, it struck him that his community, Wancho, one of the tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, lacked their own script. He was in class XI then.

That realisation provided Losu with his life’s biggest challenge: develop an independent Wancho script.

For nearly 18 years, Losu worked obsessively. And his tireless efforts have now borne fruit. Aided by research and collaborations, Losu, now a 37-year-old teacher in a government school, has not only developed an independent Wancho script but also put it in the US-based Unicode Consortium last week for its use on the Internet.

“It’s a dream come true for me and for my community,” an elated Losu told DH over phone.

“Some writers tried to translate the Bible into Wancho but they had to use the Roman script due to lack of our own written script. By using the Roman script, they could not translate it properly and had to compromise in quality of translation.”

The new script has come as a boon for over 56,000 people who speak Wancho in Longdeng and Tirap districts (bordering China) of Arunachal Pradesh and in parts of Assam, Nagaland, Myanmar and Bhutan.

The journey

After his graduation, Losu studied English linguistics and phonetics and gathered more information from the Internet on how to develop a new script keeping the phonetics intact.

“In 2012, I managed to print the alphabets in a A4 page. The printed page of our own alphabet gave me so much happiness and encouragement to research further. Wancho Students’ Union and Wancho Cultural Society helped me and finally I managed to publish a book of Wancho script in 2013,” he said.

The book is now available in at least 20 government-run English medium schools for the children to learn Wancho as a separate subject. Tata Steel helped him with a fellowship under its CSR initiative.

“In today’s world when parents are going for English medium education for their children, the only way to promote and keep our Wancho script alive is through the use of Internet. But it required registration in the Unicode Consortium in the US,” Losu said.

But he had no knowledge of how to go for the Unicode registration, till he got introduced to Stepehn Moreh, a professor in Australian University.

“Moreh helped me connect with Michael Everson, Andrew Cunnighum and Debbie Lotz and we submitted the proposal to the Unicode Consortium in March 2017. Our proposal was accepted last week. The project was funded by the US National Endowment for Humanities,” he said.

There are 28 major tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, including Wancho and several sub-tribes, but most follow the Roman, Tai or Tibetan scrip due to lack of an independent script of their own, Losu said.