The hallmark of our Vedic civilization is that diversity is considered a natural order. From the stars and planets to animals and plants, diversity is a natural phenomenon. And even with all this diversity, a sense of order prevails. Just like a forest which is full of diversity and yet has a natural order.

 

A LANGUAGE

To sustain culture, language plays the most important role. It is the means to communicate one’s thoughts to others, it is how a person perceives the world, it is the vocabulary in which history is preserved and the script of a language tells about a society, its culture and even the kind of material on which that language was written.

 

 BASICS OF LANGUAGE

What is the difference between a language and a dialect? Simply put, there is no difference. A language is considered a dialect if it is somewhat understood by speakers of the other language. Since the classification is a bit vague, most linguists have stopped using it. Nowadays every different form of speech with its grammar and vocabulary is considered a language. e.g. what is considered as Hindi actually includes multiple languages.

 

 MPORTANCE OF LANGUAGES

1. Perception

Language gives a unique perspective of looking at the world. It is how a community understands this world and how they interact with it. Simply put, each language is a different perspective. If we preserve our languages, we preserve all those perspectives. e.g. to some the Earth is a piece of rock and to others it is Mother Earth.

 

2. Traditional Knowledge Systems

The traditional knowledge systems of India were not only preserved in Sanskrit but also in local languages. Since a lot of our Sanskrit repository has been destroyed by invaders and colonizers, the local language repositories provide a good secondary source to reconstruct this knowledge. e.g. medicinal treatments, metallurgy, mathematics, astronomy, biology, irrigation etc.

 

3. Spirituality

Many local communities have teachings of enlightened and wise men and women of India. We must collect and preserve their teachings and add to our existing knowledge of spirituality. This is the ancient wisdom of India.

 

4. Folklore

Folklore is not only significant culturally as a means of song and dance but is also a repository of Indian history. As many important historical events find their way into folklore. India’s history has mainly been documented by the British, but when these accounts are inspected closely, one finds that they do not match with the local accounts of the same events. Hence folklore are extremely valuable to determine India’s history accurately. On a lighter note, many of the gods and heroes in these local legends can be included to create present day Puranas. They can be India’s own characters and superheroes, for our next generation books and movies.

 

5. Dance Music

India has a long tradition of songs, dance, drama and music. All these languages contain a repository in these art forms, which we must record for preservation.

 

 STATUS OF LANGUAGES

In the 1961 census the number of mother tongues was 1652, but on close scrutiny, the actual number of languages was found to be around 1100. In the 1971 census, the policy adopted was that only those languages whose speakers are more than 10,000 will be listed and hence the number came down to 108 languages plus others. In 2010, People’s Linguistic Survey of India under the guidance of Ganesh Devy documented 780 living languages in India and 68 scripts. They estimated that the number of languages may be as high as 850, but were not documented during this survey. Lastly they stated that in the past 50 years, 250 languages have died out in India.

  

PRESERVATION OF LANGUAGES

 

1. Demographics

The first group of languages is those whose speakers are less than 10. The government of India should immediately dispatch a team to these speakers to document their languages e.g. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation etc. Once we have ensured that the language has been well documented, the government should work with these people to draw out a plan to increase their numbers. Population management for borderline communities is not a new thing, governments are known to do this to keep traditions and cultures alive. Hence via dialog, a workable solution can be established. The goal is to get the population number to around 10,000. Then there are languages with speakers less than 100, 1000, 5000 and 10,000. After which they are considered mainstream languages, which are 108 in number. Hence there are almost 672 languages that the government needs to work on.

 

2. Geography

Since our idea is to increase the population to at least 10,000, I would suggest that having a home base for any community is important, as most of these communities are dispersed across different states. This is important because it gives a separate administrative unit for the speakers of a language. This is one of the best ways to ensure that a language survives. Yes, there will need to be some adjustments in the current distribution of towns and districts. But the whole purpose of the political system is to ensure that the culture of the nation flourishes and not become extinct to facilitate the political process. Even if the area is 10 sqkms, it gives a language a complete unit in itself including government, education, business and a cultural ecosystem. This is a very doable solution and should take around 5 years to complete.

 

3. Grammar Dictionary Script

Out of the 780 languages, around 300 languages have no formally recorded grammar and dictionary. The first thing that the government should do, is to document the grammar and dictionary for all these languages. Another attribute that ensures the longevity of a language is its own script. For scripts, there are multiple cases that can come into consideration.

 

a. old common script

There are languages that have historically common scripts e.g. Hindi and Sanskrit have Devanagari.

 

b. new common script

Many of the Indian languages had their own scripts. But during the British raj, they found using these different scripts a problem with the printing press. So the British decided to replace many of the scripts with Devanagari and this is what we follow till today. e.g. Devanagari is used for Jammu Dogri and Himachal Pahari languages, whereas the native script is Takri

 

c. multiple scripts for one language

Many languages in India were written in multiple scripts, due to being used in large geographical areas and multiple kingdoms. e.g. Kaithi and Devanagari were used to write Bhojpuri. Here I would recommend Kaithi to be used for Bhojpuri, as it is native to this area and gives a separate identity to the language. Having a dedicated script for a language is always a good thing.

 

d. retired scripts

Many scripts are those which are no longer used by any present day language. These are like extra scripts that India has, with no associated language. We must check if these can be reused for a language which does not have a dedicated script. It will help in fulfilling the script gap and also be like living with ancient history. e.g. Brahmi can be used for a local language that does not have a dedicated script, that is linguistically very old and located in the same geographical area as the original script. The script may be slightly modified as per requirements.

e. roman, arab scripts

There are many languages in India that had Indic scripts or did not have scripts at all, which later changed to Roman or Arab scripts. e.g. Kashmiri from Sharada script to Arabic script, some north east languages from no script to Roman script. Efforts should be made to use an Indic script for these languages, as the languages are Indian.

 

f. new scripts

Conlang is the study and art of creating a new language and is a booming field these days, because of language requirements of virtual worlds for gaming and movies. e.g. Bahubali, Game of Thrones have characters that speak in artificially constructed languages. These artificially constructed languages have their own artificially constructed vocabulary, grammar, and script. If this can be done for an artificial language, surely we can do this for real languages which do not have a script. I request the Government of India to work with linguists and develop new scripts for the oral languages. Such script building exercise has happened in India in the past, but for a few languages only.

 

g. fonts

CDAC is one of the government institutions involved in developing fonts for the scripts of India. I would suggest that CDAC work with ASI which has full knowledge of a script and develop fonts for all Indic scripts that cover all 780 languages. These fonts should be similarly styled, such as the Google Noto fonts and released in public domain.

 

4. Economics

Having 780 languages is actually beneficial for India. This increases the synergy in society as we are communicating with communities in their native language. Having so many languages will provide huge economic opportunities, for translators, authors, artists and musicians. Also the government can work with these communities to develop the local culture, art, craft, songs and drama for tourism. The contribution of different ideas will also increase business activity e.g. variety of themes from different cultures for writing books or making movies.

 

5. National Recognition

To give all languages national recognition. e.g. currently there is no support for the 22 official languages for even a music streaming service. The government should introduce a policy that requires all music, video and internet TV streaming services to include categories for all 780 languages. It just takes a few lines of code. Even though the category may not have any music or movies to begin with, the fact that they are recognized will get the conversation started. Content for each language will start being populated over time, as people these days connect and collaborate on such projects via social media.

 

CONCLUSION

I would like to emphasize that this article is a request for action. I would like to see the Government of India work with the best team of linguists in the country to develop this entire system of languages and scripts. Especially for the languages where the number of speakers is below 10, or else they will be added to the list of languages that India will lose forever, and the untold history of India along with it. Some actionable tasks are:

 

•   Sanskrit as the link language of India

•   English words replaced with local language words e.g. breaking news

•   Each language community population increased to a sustainable 10,000

•   Assign each town an official local language for education, governance and business

•   Assign each Indic language a script

•   Ramayan translated in each of the 780 languages

•   All school education in local language with Sanskrit as a subject. All college and university education in Sanskrit.

•   A week long semi annual Mela, where literature, music, dance, movies from all 780 languages can be shared

•   A regulatory policy making it mandatory to provide option to set any Indian language as the OS, keyboard or menu language in mobile phones, computers and consumer electronics e.g TVs

•   A regulatory policy requiring all Indian movies and TV shows to include option of Sanskrit subtitles

•   A regulatory policy requiring all music, video and internet TV streaming services contain categories for all 780 languages

 

For India to be a world leader, India must lead the way. I am sure that there are many linguists, writers, artists etc. that can connect with the government via social media to achieve this grand task. This entire system needs to be set up once. After which there can be iterative improvements. The time to act is now.

 

.Credits: Language information via People’s Linguistic Survey of India by Ganesh Devy.