Palghar school teacher pushes for Warli

In our village Palsunde, there are people from seven different tribes of which, the Warli are the largest. I have learned the languages of all seven tribal communities: Warli, Koli Mahadev, Katkari, Ma Thakur, Ka Thakur, Dhor Koli and Malhar Koli. It wasn't too difficult as this is my birthplace, my karmabhoomi [place of work]; my education took place right here. 

I am Bhalchandra Ramji Dhangare, a primary school teacher at the Zilla Parishad Primary School in Mokhada. 

My friends often tell me, “you quickly pick up any language you hear and start speaking it.” When I visit any community, people see me as someone from their own soil, speaking in their own tongue.

While interacting with the children of our Adivasi regions, I realised that they face many challenges during their school education. The Maharashtra government has a rule that teachers working in tribal areas are given a special grade. This grade is awarded because one is required to learn the local language used in day to day life. 

Here in Mokhada, Warli is the most widely spoken and there are many children who speak the language in school. If we want to teach them English, we first have to introduce the Marathi word for it and then explain the same word in Warli. And then we teach the word in English. 

This is not an easy situation but children here are very intelligent and hardworking. It is wonderful to communicate with them once they quickly adapt to Marathi – the standard language. However, the overall  level of education here has not reached the same pace as it should have. This is the need of the hour. Nearly 50 per cent of the population is still illiterate and development in the area is also relatively backward.

Until around the 1990s, there was hardly anyone in this area who had studied beyond Class 10. The new generation has slowly begun to pursue formal education. If there are, say, 25 Warli students enrolled in Class 1, only about eight students make it to Class 10. The dropout rate is very high. Out of those eight, only 5-6 pass the exams. Even more students drop out by the time they reach Class 12 so finally only 3-4 students finish school. 

Pursuing an undergraduate degree is possible at the taluka level – a journey of roughly  10 kilometres. But there is nothing more in the area and  students travel to places like Thane, Nashik or Palghar city for further education. As a result, only about three per cent of the people in this taluka have an undergraduate degree. 

In the Warli community, the rate of education is particularly low, and efforts are on to improve it. We are also making  greater efforts by visiting villages and communicating with the people in their own language, both to establish a connection and build trust.

PARI would like to thank Hemant Shingade from AROEHAN for his help with this documentation.

Interview: Medha Kale

This story is part of PARI's Endangered Languages Project which aims to document vulnerable and endangered languages of the country. 

Warli is an Indo-aryan language spoken by the Warli or Varli Adivasis in India residing in Gujarat, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa. UNESCO's Atlas of languages has listed Varli as one of the potentially vulnerable languages in India. We aim to document the Warli language as spoken in Maharashtra.