Today is 'Bhasa-Diwas' for all Bengalis of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Here is some thought to ponder about our Mother Tongue with a soulful poem of Miloz (a Polish Poet) on the theme:

Inheritance of a varied climatic zone, successive foreign incursions of various races of whom some made India their permanent home, rules and rulers of different flocks who were not only alien in their habits of heart but were also different in their physical appearances and behavioural disposition, make India an unique case of the great Digital Divide. 5 groups of languages (Austro-Asiatic – 14 languages with a total population of 1.13%, Indo-European – 19 languages of Indo-Aryan group with a total population of 75.28% and Germanic 1 language with a total population of 0.02%, Semito-Harmitic 1 language with a total population of 0.01% and Tibeto-Burman 62 languages with a total population of 0.97%) and rich development of regional literature and customs like Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Braja, Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Punjabi and Khadi Boli (Hindi) continuously nourished the roots of regional affinities and its various social manifestations. The Independent India with its tampered scripture-based education system and mauled social structure grew even more regionally sensitive than that of pre-independence India which witnessed a good interaction and mingling of languages and cultures across the nation amidst the Freedom Movement led by leaders of various regional colours.

Modern India, as per the 1971 count, has more than 1650 mother tongues. They are rationalized into 216 mother tongues and grouped under 114 languages by the 1991 census. According to an assessment, there were 51 languages with a population of 1 million or more speakers.

Although, much is being done to incorporate, protect, preserve and develop the resources available with the Scheduled 18 languages, a world of it still remains discriminated and endangered.

                                                    My Faithful Mother Tongue!

  Poem written by Miloz, a Polish poet in which I visualize both the complexity of the problem and the resolve to find a solution. The poem reads as follows:

Faithful mother tongue,
I have been serving you.
Every night, I used to set before you little bowls of colors
so you could have your birch, your cricket, your finch
as preserved in my memory.

This lasted many years.
You were my native land; I lacked any other.
I believed that you would also be a messenger
between me and some good people
even if they were few, twenty, ten
or not born, as yet.

Now, I confess my doubt.
There are moments when it seems to me I have squandered my life.
For you are a tongue of the debased,
of the unreasonable, hating themselves
even more than they hate other nations,
a tongue of informers,
a tongue of the confused,
ill with their own innocence.

But without you, who am I?
Only a scholar in a distant country,
a success, without fears and humiliations.
Yes, who am I without you?
Just a philosopher, like everyone else.
I understand, this is meant as my education:
the glory of individuality is taken away;
Fortune spreads a red carpet
before the sinner in a morality play
while on the linen backdrop a magic lantern throws
images of human and divine torture.

Faithful mother tongue,
perhaps after all it's I who must try to save you.
So I will continue to set before you little bowls of colors
bright and pure if possible,
for what is needed in misfortune is a little order and beauty.

The aforesaid poem radiates a mosaic of emotions and feeling ranging from gratitude and love to language and homeland, the feeling of isolation, hopelessness, resignation, aversion and protest to the pride of assuming the role of the moral order and mother tongue defender. It aptly justifies the views of Skutnab-Kangas that instruction through a language that learners do not speak is analogous to holding learners under water without teaching them how to swim. She calls it “submersion”.

Inheritance of a varied climatic zone, successive foreign incursions of various races of whom some made India their permanent home, rules and rulers of different flocks who were not only alien in their habits of heart but were also different in their physical appearances and behavioural disposition, make India an unique case of the great Digital Divide. 5 groups of languages (Austro-Asiatic – 14 languages with a total population of 1.13%, Indo-European – 19 languages of Indo-Aryan group with a total population of 75.28% and Germanic 1 language with a total population of 0.02%, Semito-Harmitic 1 language with a total population of 0.01% and Tibeto-Burman 62 languages with a total population of 0.97%) and rich development of regional literature and customs like Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Braja, Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Punjabi and Khadi Boli (Hindi) continuously nourished the roots of regional affinities and its various social manifestations. The Independent India with its tampered scripture-based education system and mauled social structure grew even more regionally sensitive than that of pre-independence India which witnessed a good interaction and mingling of languages and cultures across the nation amidst the Freedom Movement led by leaders of various regional colours.

The linguists have described India as a “sociolinguistic giant”. It represents languages and cultures of diverse linguistic and ethnic groups on the one hand, and a “linguistic area” on the other, where languages of different families have fused with each other to make it an integrated linguistic whole.

Linguistic diversity is apparent on a variety of levels. Major regional languages have stylized literary forms, often with an extensive body of literature, which may date back from a few centuries to two millennia ago. These literary languages differ markedly from the spoken forms and village dialects that co-exist with a plethora of cast idioms and regional lingua franca. Part of the reason for such linguistic diversity lies in the complex social realities of South Asia. India’s languages reflect the intricate levels of social hierarchy. Individuals have in their speech repertoire variety of styles and dialects appropriate to various social situations. Speech is adapted in countless ways to reflect the specific special contacts and the relative standing of the speakers.

Determining what should we call a language or a dialect is more a political than a linguistic question. Sometimes the word language is applied to a standardized and prestigious form recognized over a large geographic area, whereas the word dialect is used for the various forms of speech that lack prestige or that are restricted to certain regions or casts but are still regarded as forms of the same language. Sometimes mutual intelligibility is the criterion: if the speakers can understand each other, even though with some difficulty, they are speaking the same language, although they may speak different dialects. However, the speakers of Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi can often understand each other, yet they are regarded as a speaker of different languages. Whether or not one thinks Konkani (spoken in Goa, Karnataka and the Konkan region of Maharashtra) is a distinct language or a dialect of Marathi has tended to be linked with whether or not one thinks Goa ought to be merged with Maharashtra. The question has been settled from the central government’s point of view by making Goa a state and Konkani a Schedule Language. Moreover, the fact that the Latin script is predominantly used for Konkani separate it further from Marathi, which uses Devanagri script. However, Konkani is also sometimes written in Devanagri and Kannada scripts.

Modern India, as per the 1971 count, has more than 1650 mother tongues. They are rationalized into 216 mother tongues and grouped under 114 languages by the 1991 census. According to an assessment, there were 51 languages with a population of 1 million or more speakers. 

(Mrityunjay)