D.G. Rao, director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), has cautioned that recent government policies in some States, introducing English as the medium of instruction in schools, will pose a threat to official languages as well.
He was speaking at a national workshop on multidisciplinary perspectives on indigenous languages, cultures and societies, organised at the University of Mysore, on Monday.
Prof. Rao said Andhra Pradesh recently announced that English as a medium of instruction would be introduced in government schools to offset the decline in student enrolment. He said this could pose a threat not only to indigenous languages which are already on the verge of extinction, but also to the official languages in the next 50 years. Hence, it is vital to take measures to save indigenous as well as the “main” languages and train researchers on these aspects, he said.
Prof. Rao also said that UNESCO had declared 197 languages in India as endangered. He called the disappearance of a language obliteration of the knowledge corpus, culture and heritage enshrined in it. Research on languages should not end with field studies; it should be backed up by publication of primers and dictionaries to help preserve indigenous languages, he added.
Loss of knowledge
Rajendra Chenni, social thinker and writer, who delivered the keynote address, said loss of language is not merely the end of a medium of communication, but the disappearance of an entire world of experience, including the oral history embedded in it. “Most importantly, it is a loss to human knowledge accumulated over centuries,” he said.
Indigenous languages have been harmed by the interventions made in the name of progress, civilisational advancement and acculturation, all supported by the discourses that control the cognitive understanding of the indigenous communities, Prof. Chenni added.
Umarani Pappuswamy, deputy director of CIIL, Mysuru, said the workshop was being held in the context of languages disappearing across the world. She said that at least one language dies every fortnight. She also said there was a consensus among experts that 50% of living languages would disappear while another 40% were in danger of dying. Only 10% of the existing languages are truly safe, she said.
The workshop is being conducted in association with the Department of Computer Science, University of Mysore, All-India Researchers’ Association, Mysuru, CIIL, and the Department of Studies in Linguistics, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, UoM. The focus is to bring together researchers and academicians from different disciplines to deliberate and present their work on indigenous languages, cultures and societies, and train participants in thrust areas pertaining to oral history, translation and indigenous languages, linguistic and cultural diversity, dictionary-making and grammar writing in indigenous languages, culture, food and medicine.
