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MOTHER INDIA and MODERN INDIA
The Mother Tongues or a National Language?
Krishen Kak |
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A "mother tongue" is quite literally the language of
the speaker's mother. However, a child is not born with knowledge of this
language nor is it something which is genetically transmitted. According to
linguists, children can learn easily whichever languages they are exposed to
till around the age of twelve. Few children are formally taught the mother
tongue. They pick it up mainly through imitation, and it is environmental
influence rather than heredity that determines their linguistic performance.
For instance, a child of Hindi-speaking parents brought up by a Tamil-speaking family in Chennai is likely to know Tamil far better than its
"mother tongue" Hindi (which it may not know at all). But such instances are
very rare. In the Indian context, for other than an elite minority (led by
what Kaveree Bamzai felicitously calls "resident non-Indians - RNIs") in
which mothers choose to speak in English to their children, the overwhelming
majority of Indian mothers communicate with their children in an indigenous
language or dialect. Therefore, for the overwhelming majority of Indians
brought up in environments congenial to learning their mother tongue, their
language is still not only of great cultural importance and sentimental
value to them, but it also provides a community identity that protects them
from the anomie so characteristic of modern society.
The creation of a modern society appears to be our
national objective. Our models for a modern society are the so-called
advanced societies of the West. It is well-established that to achieve
modernity, mass literacy is a requisite. It is equally well-established that
for the achievement of mass literacy the mother tongue is the appropriate
first medium.
In India, according to George Grierson's 1903-1928
linguistic survey and according to the Report of the Official Languages
Commission 1956, there are 179 languages and 544 dialects. According to the
1951 Census of India, there are 845 languages or dialects spoken in India.
The 1962 Census of India reported 1,652 "mother tongues" including 103
foreign ones. Shashi Tharoor reports 35 languages, each with over a million
speakers, and over 22,000 dialects. In other words, there can be said to be
in India at least 723 mother tongues, if not more than 22,000!
Conventional wisdom echoes Madame Bhikaiji Cama about
the role of language in nation-building as a medium for maintaining the
political unity of the country: "India must be free/ India must be a
Republic/ India must remain united/ India must have a common language/ And
India must have a common script". The assumption, as reflected in Article
351 of the Constitution, is that only a single language can both politically
and culturally hold the country together. This view emerged from strong
sociopolitical compulsions related to the desire for political independence
closely linked with linguistic independence. It was a view strongly espoused
by the Founding Fathers and subsequently generally held by the government
and its language and education advisors, the differences being mainly over
the relative importance to be given to an exoglossic language (English) over
endoglossic ones, and of one endoglossic language (Hindi) over the others.
It is the view typified in the relegation of Bharat to one single (and
parenthetical) mention in the entire text of the Constitution of India.
In retrospect, the development of a dominant common
Indian language for Modern India hasn't quite worked the way Madame Cama or
the Founding Fathers envisaged. Modern India requires one tongue, Mother
India has many. Linguistically, what is today the Republic of India is an
unfragmented, multilingual, part-exoglossic, multinational State. This means
that it is a bounded territory comprising more than three largely entire
speech communities, with the status of a national official language being
awarded to an imported language as well as to an indigenous one. India being
(arguably) multinational, this means that one language could very well be
"foreign" for the others, and so (just as English at one time was resented
as an imposition) Hindi becomes an imposition for, say, Tamil speakers.
Ignoring this linguistic perspective resulted, for example, in Modern India
having to experience the tragedy of language riots and Tamils burning
themselves in defence of their mother tongue against "Hindi imperialism".
Political scientists draw a useful distinction between
nationalism and nationism. The former is a sociocultural manifestation, the
latter a politico-geographical one, and they need not necessarily coincide.
A nationality may acquire its own nation (Israel) or a nation may compress
many nationalities (again arguably, India). Our language policy arose in
nationism but continues to be modified because of nationalism (e.g., the
formation of linguistic provinces and acceptance of minority group claims
for self-governance based on linguistic autonomy). At the popular political
level, while nationalistic forces press for the official use of indigenous
languages, global forces successfully promote a demand for English,
resulting in the increasing spread of mixed speech such as Hinglish and
Tamlish, even in government-controlled media. Three examples of these forces
at work were the Prime Minister of India in September 1998 announcing,
significantly in Chennai, that a committee would be set up to study the
feasibility of treating all 19 languages in Schedule 8 of the Constitution
as official languages and, some weeks earlier to that, the Punjab government
announcing the introduction of the teaching of English from class 1 in its
primary schools. Contrariwise, in November 1998, the Tamil Nadu government
announced Tamil as the medium of instruction in all its primary schools.
| Given that various Indian "nationalities" must be melded
to make a modern Indian nation of the Western type, it is instructive to
see whether there are other linguistically comparable States whose
example can educate us. The cases of the so-called advanced States can
be ruled out not only because their politico-linguistic evolution has
been different from ours but also because in none is the triple
combination of unfragmented-multilingual-multinational so complex. Put
simply, what would be the common language for a united Republic of
Europe? The politico-linguistic evolution of the so-called developing
States has been heavily influenced by colonialism, so that
nation-building sees a tension between what in the jargon are called
architectural forces and what are called organismic forces, that is,
between the process of conscious integration and that of conscious
differentiation. The closest linguistic examples to ours are of
Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, undivided Pakistan, and the erstwhile
Soviet Union. |
'A "mother tongue" is quite literally the
language of the speaker's mother ... Few children are formally taught
the mother tongue. They pick it up mainly through imitation, and it is
environmental influence rather than heredity that determines their
linguistic performance. ... In the Indian context..the overwhelming
majority of Indian mothers communicate with their children in an
indigenous language or dialect. Therefore, for the overwhelming majority
of Indians brought up in environments congenial to learning their mother
tongue, their language is still not only of great cultural importance
and sentimental value to them, but it also provides a community identity
that protects them from the anomie so characteristic of modern society.
... The mother tongues are the roots of the vatavriksha, the banyan
tree, of our civilisation. If they flourish, this tree will flourish.
Without them, this tree will die ...'
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Mother India and Modern India:
Student's
Meet: A Memorable Event of My Life:
Devendra
Vasave's:Adivasi Poems:
Translated by Prof. B.P.Jadhav
