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The lingua franca

The violence and arson in Darjeeling against the West Bengal government’s decision to introduce Bengali in schools as the third…

The lingua franca

(Photo: Facebook)

The violence and arson in Darjeeling against the West Bengal government’s decision to introduce Bengali in schools as the third language is somewhat reminiscent of the vehement opposition in Nepal when Hindi was given the status of the second language in the Constitution a few years back.

Indigenous ethnic organisations in the Himalayan country revived the anti-Hindi protest triggered by Vice-President Parmananda Jha taking the oath of office in Hindi. In East Pakistan, the struggle for freedom and democracy ~ which culminated in the emergence of Bangladesh ~ was embedded in the movement for the right to mother tongue.

Language is an effective tool for communication; it is also the medium of a community’s culture and identity. Language can serve as an emblem of membership in the community or a means of exclusion. This is an iconic use of language.

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The rebirth of Hebrew in modern Israel is an example of an iconic victory of language. Hebrew had become virtually extinct 2000 years ago. To proclaim what has been called “Jewishness”, the language was revived both in eastern Europe and Palestine in the late 19th century. By the 1920s the majority of Jews living in Palestine spoke Hebrew only to find this language as an icon for Jewishness. When Israel gained its independence from the British, the new Israel did not adopt Yiddish, or English, or German, or Ladino as the language of the nation.

It was Hebrew which came to be its icon, indeed its symbol of hope, aspirations and rejuvenation. In the world of politics, however, language has always been a contested terrain. In India, the existence of many languages and cultures has been at the root of a variety of controversies. The diversity of languages is most definitely not indicative of India’s unity.

The British, or even before that the Mughals, devised an administrative solution to this diversity. The language of the rulers was automatically made the language of the administration. All official communications were carried out in Persian during the Mughals and in English during the days of the Raj. They did not in any way interfere with the language of the provinces.

This, militated against languagebased conflicts; on the other hand, it marked a distance between the rulers and the ruled. Populism was not on the agenda of either Mughal or British absolutism. Moreover, the British in their 19th century anxiety for improvement had introduced a specialised cadre of administrators.

At the core of the training of the members of the ICS was the mastery of English. India’s struggle for free nationhood, as expressed in the national movement, was a struggle to gain political freedom and to escape from cultural domination. What was perceived to be at the root of that cultural domination was the imposition of English.

To remove the influence of English, the leaders of the Indian national movement carried out another act of imposition. They declared Hindi to be the national language of India. All the provinces resented this steamroller solution to diversity.

A movement or a government claiming to represent the entire populace and their cultures could hardly afford to identify itself with one particular region. Given the historical legacy of imperial administration and colonial education, English was deemed as a common language. However, a kind antediluvian anti-imperialism stood in the way of such a decision.

The Government of West Bengal had also decided that all official communications and announcements, including car number plates, would be in Bengali. One of the most controversial aspects of the state still relates to its language policy at the primary level.

Interestingly, while a hue and cry has been, from time to time, raised about the importance of English in the curriculum, a deep-seated smugness has always greeted matters relating to the mother tongue.

For a fairly long span of time, the framers of our language policy have parroted a line from Tagore ~ “Mother tongue is like mother’s milk”.

But, regretfully, the government has neither given Bengali the passion and planning that are its due, nor has it made sincere efforts to implement the constitutional rights given to the tribal children to be instructed in their mother tongue at the lower primary level.

The grim reality is that fewer tribal children go to primary schools compared to those belonging to the general category.

Though the middle class was opposed to the abolition of English at the primary level, we have not taken serious note of the large number of children in the state with different mother tongues. They belong to tribes such as Santhali, Munda, Shabar or other linguistic groups in North Bengal as also in the hill areas.

The government has given recognition to a few languages in the school curriculum, but in reality there are only a few primary teachers to teach in these languages. Bangla is the lingua franca in all parts of the state except in the hill areas. People across the state,cutting across ethnic origins, learn it naturally at an early age. But the fact remains that tribal children in rural Bengal cannot speak and understand any language other than their native tongue.

They have been given the constitutional right to be instructed in their own language at the lower primary stage. The Kothari Commission stated: “The medium of education in the first two years of the school should be the tribal language and books should be specially prepared in these languages for use at this stage.” In spite of various government schemes such as Sarva Siksha Abhijan and district primary education projects covering the tribal population in many districts, something more needs to be done to actually bring the tribal children to class.

In fact, sincere efforts are yet to be made to address the language problem among the tribal populace. There can be more Sishu Siksha Kendras in tribal areas where locally educated personnel can teach the basics of learning in their mother tongue. In the absence of a clear policy on the medium of instruction, they sometimes find themselves marginalised in the classroom.

This was revealed in Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Trust education report, 2002. The linguistically deprived area of Darjeeling district bears witness to almost relentless violence in the wake of the government’s three-language formula and the inclusion of Bengali in the curriculum.

The writer is a former Associate Professor, Dept. of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata

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