International Mother Language Day 2023: Adivasi children in India unable to study in their own tongues needs redressal

As the world celebrates International Mother Language Day February 21, 2023, the situation in India in this regard is grim. One of the most linguistically diverse areas of the planet, India nevertheless is losing many of its tongues fast owing to the forces of modernisation and globalisation. One of the main drivers of language death in the country is lack of education in them.

Abhijit Mohanty, a development professional who works in Odisha’s tribal areas, knows this reality only too well. Odisha has 62 tribal groups including 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

“When tribal children go to primary school, they find most of the teachers do not belong to that particular district or locality. They are not even tribal,” Mohanty told Down To Earth.

The teachers expect the children to speak the Odia language. The tribal students, who are not that familiar with Odia, make an effort but it does not come out well.

“Imagine their plight. They can’t speak their mother tongue because the teachers are not fluent in it. And when they start to learn the dominant language, they face a lot of challenges,” Mohanty points out.

This is just one of the problems. He gave another example.

The mass education department of Odisha has a mandate to provide literature and learning material in various tribal dialects or languages. But the irony is that for the 62 tribal groups in the state, including 13 particularly vulnerable ones, literature and education material is available only in Santali and Ho.

“What about the rest? It is the duty of the government to script the mostly oral tribal tongues. Unless such a tongue is documented, scripted and mainstreamed in a proper format, everything else is a waste of time and resources,” Mohanty said.

Only six tribal languages — Santali, Ho, Soura, Munda and Kui — have a written script in Odisha.

“In the last two years, I have seen linguistic teachers being appointed. That is a welcome step. But what will such teachers do if they do not have a script or literature? They can only facilitate the communication process of the student in his/her mother tongue. But unless these children learn their mother language in its script, they will lose that by the time they reach college,” he added.

This is something UNESCO too is stressing on this International Mother Language Day.

A statement by Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, noted:

While mother-tongue-based education is essential to the full development of individuals and to the transmission of linguistic heritage, 40 per cent of the world’s students do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best. Such a situation severely undermines  learning,  cultural  expression  and  the  building  of  social  relations, and significantly weakens the linguistic heritage of humanity.

That linguistic heritage of humanity is priceless, according to UNESCO. The statement added:

Each of the more than 7,000 languages spoken by humanity carries within it a unique view of the world, of things and of beings, a way of thinking and feeling — so much so that each disappearance of a language constitutes an irretrievable loss.

The United Nations agency initiated the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) in a bid to mobilise the international community for safeguarding a major part of the world’s cultural diversity.

The statement ended by saying that the world must commit to the preservation of the diversity of languages as a common heritage and work for quality education — in mother tongues — for all.

There is hope for India’s mother tongues though, according to Arup Kumar Nath from the Department of Linguistics and Language Technology, Tezpur University, Assam. 

“From the survival point of view, I can tell you that the current scenario is bright. The National Education Policy 2020 advocates mother tongue-based education from the early stage to higher education. Gradually, we can integrate more mother tongues in the academic curriculum. That is a great sign as it will help these tongues to survive in the long-term,” he told DTE.

Nath said the question of linguistic justice should be addressed immediately. “Everyone in India, from the frontier to the heartland, should get access to everything and language should not be a barrier. It is high time we should work in this direction,” he said.

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