[lg policy] Protecging language diversity in India

Sat Feb 18 15:30:29 UTC 2017

Protecting language diversity in India
*news.statetimes.in*/protecting-language-diversity-india/
<https://news.statetimes.in/protecting-language-diversity-india/>
2/17/2017

*  Pandurang Hegde*

India is one of unique countries in the world that has the legacy of
diversity of languages. The Constitution of India has recognised 22
official languages. Multilingualism is the way of life in India as people
in different parts of the country speak more than one language from their
birth and learns additional languages during their life time.
Though officially there are 122 languages, Peoples Linguistic Survey of
India has identified 780 languages, of which 50 are extinct in past five
decades.

The twenty two languages that are recognised by the Constitution are:
Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri,Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Konkani,
Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit,
Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdue are included in the Eighth
Schedule of the constitution.

Among these three languages, Sanskrit, Tamil and Kannada have been
recognised as classical language with special status and recognition by
Government of India. The classical languages have written and oral history
of more than 1000 years. In comparison to these, English is very young as
it has the history of only 300 years.

In addition to these scheduled and classical languages, The Constitution of
India has included the clause to protect minority languages as a
fundamental right. It states” Any section of the citizens residing in the
territory of India or any part of thereof having a distinct language,
script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.”

The language policy of India provides guarantee to protect the linguistic
minorities. Under the Constitution provision is made for appointment of
Special Officer for linguistic minority with the sole responsibilities of
safeguarding the interest of language spoken by the minority groups.
During the colonial rule the first linguistic survey was conducted during
1894 to 1928 by George A. Grierson that identified 179 languages and 544
dialects. Due to lack of trained personnel as linguists this survey had
many deficiencies.

In the post independence era Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL),
based in Mysore was assigned to carry out an in-depth survey of languages.
However this is still remains incomplete.
In 1991 the Census of India listed 1576 mother tongues’ with separate
grammatical structures and 1796 speech varieties that is classified as
other mother tongues’.

Another unique feature of India is the concept of protecting the interest
of children to get basic education in their mother tongue. The Constitution
provides” it shall be the endeavour of every State and of every local
authority within the state to provide adequate facilities for instruction
in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children
belonging to linguistic minority groups”.

Thus, even before the United Nations declared the International Mother
Language Day (February 21) the founders of the Indian Constitution gave top
priority to teaching in mother tongues’, enabling the child to develop its
full potential.
This concept is in total agreement with the 2017 theme of United Nations
World Mother Language Day “to develop the potential of multilingual
education to be acknowledged in education, administrative systems, cultural
expression and cyber space”.
In 1956 reorganisation of states in India was carried out with linguistic
boundaries that had its own script. Sardar Vallab Bhai Patel, the then home
minister played key role in formation and amalgamation of states based on
linguistic attributes.

The language policy of India has been pluralistic, giving priority to the
use of mother tongue in administration, education and other fields of mass
communication. The Language Bureau of Ministry of Human Resource
Development is set up to implement and monitor the language policy.

Supporting the cause of promoting and conserving the language diversity in
cyberspace, Union Minister of Electronic and Information Technology Ravi
Shankar Prasad cautioned the Internet providers “the language of internet
cannot be English and English alone. It must have linkages with the local
and local means local languages. I appeal to make local languages available
for more internet users”.
He said that the ministry has initiated Technology Development for Indian
Languages with the objective of developing information processing tools and
techniques to facilitate human machine interaction without language
barrier, creating and accessing multilingual knowledge resources.

The Government of India under the vision of digital India has mandated the
mobile phones sold from July 2017 should support all Indian languages. This
will pave way for bridging the digital divide, empowering one billion
people who do not speak English with connectivity in their own languages.
This will also enhance the capacity of large number people to be part of
e-governance and e- commerce.
Despite these efforts by the central government minority languages are
under threat of extinction due to multiple causes. In Andaman and Nicobar
Islands, the death of Boa, the last speaker of Bo language is one of those
instances that have lead to extinction of Bo language with the history of
70,000 years.

https://news.statetimes.in/protecting-language-diversity-india/

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its
members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or
sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write
directly to the original sender of any offensive message.  A copy of this
may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20170218/550e91d5/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list