Doing it the ‘write’ way

A biologist, an army jawan, a homemaker and a geography graduate.

Off the busy road in Ranchi, this unlikely group of people have come together on a warm summer's day. They are all members of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and are participating in a writing workshop at Jharkhand’s Tribal Research Institute (TRI) in the capital city.

“I want our children to read in their mother tongue,” says Mavno-speaker Jagannath Girhi of the Mal Paharia community. The 24-year-old has travelled all the way from his village in Dumka more than 200 kilometres away to come to the TRI in Ranchi to write the grammar of his endangered mother tongue Mavno.

He has more plans: “we also want to publish a book in Mavno." He is the first and the only person in his village Baliakhora to have obtained an MSc degree in biology, and he did it in Hindi. “The language of the community which is in greater numbers is taught in the university,” he points out. “Even the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) syllabus is easily available in [Adivasi] languages ​​like Khortha, Santhali, but not in our language [Mavno].”

“If this [marginalisation] continues, my language will slowly disappear.” About 15 per cent of the Mal-Paharia speakers live in Jharkhand; the rest live in neighbouring states.

Their language Mavno is an Indo-Aryan language with Dravidian influences. An endangered language with less than 4,000 speakers, it does not have official language status. According to the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) Jharkhand, Mavno is not used as a medium of instruction in schools and neither does it have a separate script.

The Mal Paharia community survives on agriculture and forest produce. In Jharkhand they are classified as the PVTG and a majority of them live in Dumka, Godda, Sahibganj and Pakur districts. The community members speak Mavno only at home. With all official communication happening in other dominant languages like Hindi and Bengali, they feel their language may well die out.

Another Mavno speaker, Manoj Kumar Dehri agrees with Jagannath. The 23-year-old from Saharpur village is a geography graduate from Pakur district. He says, “the use of Hindi and Bangla as a preferred medium of education by the state is causing more harm than good to Mavno.” The medium of education in most Jharkhand schools and colleges is Hindi and even the teachers are Hindi speakers.

Other than dominant languages, there is also the issue of ‘link languages’ – languages used by the Adivasi communities to communicate with others – often serving as a bridge between the native and the dominant language of the region.

“It becomes an unsaid expectation from the child to speak in the same link language commonly understood by all.  This further takes the child away from their mother tongue,” points out Pramod Kumar Sharma, a retired teacher appointed by the TRI to assist the PVTGs.

In the case of Mavno, the link languages Khortha and Khetri are also influencing  speakers of the lesser-used Mavno. “We are forgetting our mother tongue under the influence of the languages ​​of stronger communities,” adds Manoj.

At the end of the workshop spanning over two months, each of the speakers of these endangered languages will come up with a primer — a basic grammar sketch for their respective mother tongues. This will be the first of its kind book written by people from the community and not linguists. They hope their efforts will rescue the situation.

“Other [non-PVTG] communities have access to the ​​books written in their language. They get better employment opportunities when they study in their language,” points out Jagannath. But this can happen only if his community members continue to speak their language. “Today only my grandparents and parents can speak fluent Mavno. Only if our children learn the language at home, will they be able to speak it.”

The 2011 Census lists more than 19,000 distinct mother tongues in India. Of these only 22 languages are officially recognized under Schedule VIII. Several mother tongues do not get the ‘language’ status due to the lack of script or diminishing fluent speakers.

With more than 31 mother tongues in the state that do not have an official language status, two Schedule VIII languages – Hindi and Bengali – continue to be the dominant languages in Jharkhand – they are taught in schools and used in formal communication by the state. Santhali is the only Adivasi language from Jharkhand that is listed as a Schedule VIII language.

For the speakers of the 31 other languages in the state, and in particular those spoken by PVTGs, there is a real danger of language loss.

“Humaari bhasha mix hoti ja rahi hai [Our mother tongue is getting mixed],” says Mahadeo (not his real name), an army jawan representing Sabar community.

He says the marginalisation of their language is also reflected in the lack of community representation in places like gram panchayats.  “Sabars are so scattered. In the village where we live [near Jamshedpur], we have only 8-10 houses.” The rest are people from other Adivasi communities and some non-Adivasi as well. “It hurts to see my language die,” he tells PARI.

Mahadeo points out that his mother tongue, Sabar, is barely addressed as a language, “The voice of the language which is in written form is always heard first.”

The TRI was established in 1953, ‘with an aim to connect the tribal communities with the other communities’ by researching their social, economic, cultural and historical aspects.

Since 2018, the TRI has published language primers of several vulnerable Adivasi groups including Asur and Birjia. The series of books further includes publishing the proverbs, idioms, folk stories and poems of the language.

Even though the initiative has published such language primers devised by the community themselves, it has not had much success. “If only the books from the TRI shelves reached the schools our kids would be able to read in their mother tongue,” says Jagannath.

The former director of TRI, Ranendra Kumar was at the forefront of initiating the publishing of these primers during his tenure but even he says, “the books should reach the schools where the children from the PVTGs study only then will the real purpose of this work be fulfilled.”

The biggest challenge lies in identifying the fluent speakers of the language. Pramod says, “People who are fluent speakers of their mother tongue are often unable to write.” But with no other alternative, people who may not be as fluent or may use mixed language and can write are called to prepare the grammar primers.

“We have not put a condition of being a language scholar for this work.” It is only necessary to know the language. “We believe that if grammar is prepared in the spoken language, it will be more practical,” says Pramod, a former faculty member of Jharkhand Educational Research Council (JERC).

Ironically, language primers, grammar books and resources of the languages of PVTGs use Devanagari script. If a language has a letter or a sound which is present in Hindi and not in their language, then they remove the sound from the alphabet system of that particular language. “The letter ‘ण’ is present in the Mavno language and not in Sabar. So, we ensure we do not write ‘ण’ in the Sabar alphabet, and write only ‘न’, Pramod explains. Similarly, when a sound or a letter is not present in Hindi and is unique to the Adivasi language under documentation, they introduce the subsequent letter and provide an explanation.

“But we only borrow the script, the letters and words are eventually written according to the pronunciation in their native language,” says 60-year-old Pramod.

It is evening now and Jagannath, Manoj and Mahadeo step out with other participants for a quick tea break at the Morabadi Chowk. The discussion of language has now started touching other aspects including the hesitation of speaking in one’s mother tongue.

Even when they speak, they are not always understood, as has been the experience of Class 8 drop-out Rimpu Kumari who belongs to the Parahiya community. After staying quiet for the entire day, she finally breaks her silence very hesitantly, “When I talk in Parahiya people laugh,” says the 26-year-old who has married outside her community, “What can I tell the world if my own in-laws make fun of me?”

She wants to end the ‘shame’ she and others in her community feel when they speak in their mother tongue. She signs off by saying, “I don’t want to talk about it here. If you want to know more, come to my village.”

The reporter would like to thank Ranendra Kumar for helping with the story.

PARI's Endangered Languages Project (ELP) aims to document the vulnerable languages of India through the voices and lived experiences of people who speak it.