From the Chief Editor: Ms.Sharada Nayak -

Mother India and Modern India: Krishen Kak

Ruling By The Pen:Dr.Ganesh Devy

CDI Student Workshop:Constitution, State Policy and Politics:Tribal Perspective

CDI Program at the college

Student's Meet: A Memorable Event of My Life: Prakash Barku Bhoi

Devendra Vasave's:Adivasi Poems: Translated by  Prof. B.P.Jadhav

Folk Theatre:Habib Tanvir and Chattisgarhi Folk Theatre: Lasting Romance

The CDI Camp: A Golden Moment in My Life Bhushan Nikam

Neither Suited for the Home nor for the Fields:Inclusion, Formal Schooling and the Adivasi Child

ERC News, Visits &  Events

All animals were there. They were close to the earth and moved together. One of them learnt to straighten the spine to walk erect. This species thus moved away from the close contact to the earth. We humans started worrying about losing touch with other things around. How do we keep close to other objects? How do we form cognition about them?

We had another problem. Things that are far away, like the sky, stars, tall trees and mountains, the seas and oceans, things we cannot physically touch, have to be understood. What do we do about these?

Then came a third problem. That of movement. With movement comes a sense of space. Anything that moves from one place to another develops a sense of space. How does one understand space?

To come to terms with these three problems, sounds were created, which we call Swar or Bhasha – a regulation of our breathing with the help of vocal chords, using the lips, teeth, throat, and sometimes, the belly. Regulation of breathing happens in all animals – sometimes even in trees. But for this animal we call Man, cursed with an erect spine, this exercise had to be very intense, very innovative and very immediate. And so language evolved. It was language that allowed us humans to name objects, which we could not immediately experience. At first we named objects that we could immediately see and contact. But things and experiences with which do not have immediacy were also identified, and that is how Language developed, the human voice developed. It is now a very great strength to the human race in the process of evolution. Language is not just a social institution, but an evolutionary gain that we have made and that is why we tend to think that Language is a marker that distinguishes humans from non-humans.

There is another story, and that is related to the pen – Writing. Writing is not a natural part of language. We think that what is written is correct language – but that is a notion that came much later, constructed for us rather mischievously. There are languages where writing is neither known, nor necessary, nor invented – not because people using such language are stupid, less inventive or less intelligent. Writing has a purpose. If you look at scripts and if you try to analyze them, - it is much better if you cannot read the scripts, then the analysis will be improved! Look at the script from the eyes of an illiterate person – those of you who do not know Telugu or Tamil, or Bengali or Gurmukhi script. What you see are geometrical figures. You don't see sounds, or characters representing sounds. All over the world, scripts are a combination of about five kinds of geometrical figures. Play around with them, mix them as children do, and scripts can be created. In the last seven years I have created scripts for ten languages, which never had scripts before. They are all tribal languages, so I studied how scripts are formed. But scripts are not created as child's play, merely a fanciful creation with geometrical figures because someone's fingers needed movement. They have a great social function. 

When humans learnt that the earth could return that which is sown, they learnt that agriculture is an important activity for human survival. They learnt that when animals are killed for food the meat decays very fast, so there has to be a transaction so that surplus must be used, not wasted. The notion of surplus came into their thinking. Everyone collected from the earth what was available. But there was a devious person who thought differently. He knew that that if he ate less for one year – ate one meal instead of two – he would save that much food grain. At the end of the year he could use this grain that he had saved to pay someone else advance wages, to do his work for him. This was a great idea! This man who invented surplus also made use of the labour of other people. Now, labour is very closely linked with the factor of the erect spine. Human beings find it very painful to bend. Man is the only animal that stands vertical to the earth; all others walk close to the earth. Our entire relationship with the earth is therefore somewhat perverted. Because bending is difficult, sometimes painful, you cannot bend beyond a certain limit, you cannot do it for eight hours a day, or 60 years of your life. There is a limit. So labour was created and surplus became wages to pay someone else to do this. So there came one who hires labour and people prepared to be hired, and the need for keeping a record of payment of wages required that markings be made. For the purpose of marking, and recording the amount of wealth created, – wealth saved and transacted, animals won from another group of humans – for the purposes of keeping these records, scripts were invented.

Scripts and languages have no logical relationship. They are not natural allies of one another. Script is artificial, almost unnatural. Language is a very natural gift through the process of evolution. When scripts developed those who could write became synonymous with those who possess wealth. In the course of time, for anybody to form a State, it required support from people who could write, and those who knew scripts also announced to the world that to know scripts is Knowledge, that knowledge of the word through a script alone is Knowledge, and the rest is all trash.

But here is a logical error, a delusion created, because actually knowledge comes through experience of the world. Not experience of travel to the city, becoming successful and all that. I am talking about the experience of consciousness, the experience that one has of the phenomenal world, the world of things surrounding one, because one is born in space, within space, and one has to know all objects in space. That is how Consciousness is formed. Human consciousness is nothing more than a dream world, a fantasy of the cosmos. While language is natural, and the voice is a right of evolutionary human civilization and culture, writing is artificial. It has a vested interest in State formation, in capital formation, in exploitation and control and monopoly of all that is produced collectively by people. As and when the monopoly of the written word increases, a group of human beings with this innate ability to develop words and invent names, rebels against the stranglehold of the written word. And the voice of the people returns and allows the group to return to that elemental experience of life – just as in our dream world.