Abstract
Language use in different situations and contexts and the roles played by languages in different social contexts during communications are the main thrust areas of the present field of study. In the words of Fishman (1972), the founder of this field, the core issue coming under this is: “Who speaks what language to whom, when and where?” Other also add ‘- - why’ along with the previous. Language use is a domain specific and is systematically carried out its user keeping in mind the specific domains, the target group, context or situation and other social factors.
Mahali is an Austro-Asiatic tribal language and its native speakers, also called Mahali, live not in one particular area but in different parts of Indian states and Bangladesh in small numbers. As a result, the Mahali tribal community is not an organized one. Mostly living sporadically in small villages, Mahalis face several crises in terms of linguistics and culture which hinder their socio-economic, socio-academic and socio-cultural prosperity. The present paper is an attempt to address the issues relating to means and ways of the Mahali language planning which is badly needed for the development of the language and community as well.
Keywords: linguistics, language planning, tribe, bilingual, multilingual etc.
Introduction
History of language and its speakers has shown us that the dominating linguistic communities in terms of economy, literacy, arts and culture have survived and ruled the most part of the world. In the face of competition so many small linguistic communities along with their languages and cultures have been and are being lost in the abyss of (un)written history. Same fate is now waiting for the Mahali language spoken in India and Bangladesh. The present paper, as the title suggests, is a humble but sincere attempt on the part of the present researcher to address the issues relating to the means and ways of the Mahali language planning which is badly needed for the development of the language and its community as well.
With this idea we will attempt in Section 2 to analyse the present status of the Mahali language and community in the light of (socio) linguistics. Section 3 deals with the concept of language planning, its need for the maintenance and development of Mahali and suggestions for the materialization of the same.
2 Language Study and the Mahali Language
Language use in different situations and contexts and the roles played by languages in different social contexts during communications are the main thrust areas of the present field of study. In the words of Fishman (1972), the founder of this field, the core issue coming under this is: “Who speaks what language to whom, when and where?” Others also add ‘ - - why’ along with the previous. To drive home the matter, let us illustrate this with an example given by Fishman. According to him, a Belgium functionary generally speaks Flemish at home, Dutch at his club and French at his office. If we look into the code choice phenomenon in the Indian context at large, we can easily trace how this takes place in a systematic and regular manner. In this multilingual setting an individual speaker speaks local or dialectal variety of his/her mother tongue Bengali/Hindi/Marathi -- at home, the standard variety of that at the formal level, Hindi or English at the national level. Even the situation is more interesting when we start observing the language use of the people of the minority linguistic community. The Santhali people in West Bengal speak their mother tongue at home and within their community, Bangla at the market, academic arena and office within the state, Hindi/English (whichever possible or acceptable) at national level. The picture may be the same in case of almost all minority linguistic communities in India, where multilingualism has become a widely accepted phenomenon. Thus from sociolinguistic as well as broader socio-cultural perspective, language use is a domain specific and is systematically carried out by its user keeping in mind the specific domains, the target group, context or situation and other social factors. The sociolinguistic study of Fasold (1984) corroborates what has been stated here:
A large number of countries are so linguistically diverse that it is not uncommon for even children to be bilingual or multilingual. Many countries in Africa and Asia (for example, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, Indonesia and the Philippines) have literally hundreds of languages within their borders. It’s not the case that these countries have one language that almost everyone speaks, with the rest belonging to small isolated tribes. - - - - - - - Canada, in addition to English and French, has numerous Indian and Eskimo languages within its borders as well as substantial populations of immigrants who maintain their own languages to one degree or another (Fasold 1984: 1-2).
The age old conflicts, as experienced by us as common users of language(s), between languages being used as the native ones by the people living within the same geo-politically shared area. Mahali (also called Mahale or Mahli) is an Austro-Asiatic tribal language and its native speakers, also called Mahali, live not in one particular area but in different parts of Indian states such as West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar and the neighbouring country Bangladesh in small numbers. Notice that Mahali tribe is one of the twelve tribes constituting the Kherwal tribal race in India: Kurmi, Santal, Deshwali, Kora, Oraon, Munda, Mahali, Kole, Bhil, Gonda, Bidhya and Birhor. The total Mahali population is 26,400 in India (2011 census). It is worthy to mention here that the total Mahali population in all countries is approximately 29,400. As a result, the Mahali community is not an organized and congregated one as found in the case of Santhal community. Mostly living sporadically in small numbers in small distantly located villages, the Mahalis face several crises in terms of linguistics and culture which hinder their socio-economic, socio-academic and socio-cultural prosperity. Keeping in mind the crying need for language planning so far as the Mahali language is concerned, we will continue our discussion in the following sections.
Let me here share my own experience as the NSS (National Service Scheme) Programme Officer of a Unit of Suri Vidyasagar College (in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal, India). As a part of the special Camp of NSS volunteers a survey was conducted at the Primary School of the adopted village and a very bleak picture appeared before us. The more than 50% of the students belonged to Santal community and there was no teacher belonging to this tribal community. As a result, a huge communication gap in terms of teaching-learning used to take place, as openly admitted by the then teachers. The worst victims of such situation coupled with poverty and superstitions are the innocent learners and their knowledge does not expand, consolidate and inevitably they cannot cope with the studies at higher classes and thus are forced to stop going to school. The same fate is no doubt with the Mahali children and even their problem is worse than that of Santali linguistic community. Literacy rate among this community is in miserable condition and the children are deprived of their basic right to primary education in their mother tongue, as spelt out in 2009 Right to Education Act.
Moreover, language awareness among this tribal community is very low in terms of linguistic right and language use. Native speakers of Mahali tribe show or have less interest in using Mother Tongue even among themselves during socio-cultural interactions, except during the observation of their own rituals or festivals. Again, as mentioned above, they are forced to use the languages of the majority communities of the regions where they live. As a result, they use the New Indo-Aryan languages Bangla, Oriya, Hindi, Assamese, etc. Mahali, we find, does not have particular written script and consequently, the native speakers who spread over distantly located different places (villages, districts, states) use different scripts for writing in their own language depending on learning the language of the majority community of the area. Literary works so far produced by the Mahalis, though these are very few in numbers due to the less number of (highly) educated persons among them, are evidently available in scripts of the above mentioned Indian languages and Roman script.
In addition to the above discussed internal threats imposed on the way of the progress and advancement of the Mahali language and community as well, there are also several external threats. Here, these are mentioned, not discussed in details as it is assumed that mentioning will suffice our purpose. The sincere initiative on the part of the governments is absent to promote this language. The financial, academic and administrative support from the government for the establishment of academy, use of the language as a medium of instruction at least at the primary level, publication of books in the language, building socio-cultural and socio-political and socio-academic connections among the people spread in distant regions, promotion of research on different aspects of the tribe and provision of incentive for the youths pursuing higher education, etc., is not found.
Is Mahali an endangered or threatened language? Saha (2019) argues that the Mahali language is endangered basing on his study of this language within the framework of UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010). The said atlas puts forward six degrees of language endangerment on the basis of intergenerational transmission of the language: safe, vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct. As the language is endangered so far as the study of its vitality, use and attitude of its native speakers is concerned, it is high time to undertake various relevant well-planned initiatives for the preservation, development and promotion of this endangered language of an indigenous tribe of our motherland. To put it in other words, the Governments and (inter)national (Non)government organizations at present should come to undertake Language Planning in the true sense of the term and allocate funds for its proper execution. In this context we may refer to the deep sense of concern regarding the fate of the endangered languages and their cultures expressed by the eminent linguist Pabitra Sarkar in the inaugural address at the ‘Workshop on Endangered Languages’ (March 27-28, 2018) organized by the Department of Linguistics, University of Calcutta. Sarkar makes a very poignant and relevant remark on this subject of language endangerment which is also related to our present study:
As we can see, scholars have later begun using anthropomorphic terms like ‘killing’, ‘genocide’, ‘death’ etc. and made other languages responsible for these calamities. They call some languages ‘killer’- English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, etc. for example. Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) has called the phenomenon ‘language genocide’ or ‘language murder’. This sounds somewhat melodramatic to other scholars, and the latter therefore bends over backwards to see it as a normal event, and call the extinction of a language ‘a language shift’ (see Crystal, 1987: 360). It depends on the way you look at it. Some of us are deeply concerned about what is happening, and some think it as a normal course of events and no tears are to be shed if a language dies. Because, the ‘shiftwallahs’ say, ‘Why, Sir, people who were speaking the lost language still go on speaking, only it is another language. So no harm is done. They do not become dumb or speechless. They still have a language (Sarkar 2018:1).
The above quote aptly substantiates the degree of crisis being faced by \=a major section of languages and their speakers. Mahali is evidently no exception to that.
3 Mahali and Language Planning
Regarding Language Planning Prof. D. P. Pattanayak (2000: 18-26) in his essay ‘Reflections on Language Planning’ has made an incisive critical comment on this issue which is very relevant here. He has concluded his essay with the following comment:
There are many who believe that one-language-one script is the order of the day. Although English, French, German, Spanish are written in the Roman script, the Chinese script anchors mutually unintelligible varieties of the Chinese language. In India, Bengali, Assamese and Manipuri are written in a single script with minor modifications. Still the one language one script myth persists. Konkani is written in four scripts-Kannada, Malayalam, Nagari, Roman; Santhali is written in five scripts-Oriya, Bengali, Nagari, Roman and Ol Chikki; Sindhi is written in Nagari and Perso-Arabic; and Sanskrit is written in all the scripts of India. Still arguments are put forward to replace all the scripts by one, Nagari, Roman or Esperanto. Language development has suffered as a result of each trying to push the other out. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee who pleaded for Roman to replace all Indian scripts for nearly 40 years was reluctant to set a model by writing Bengali in Roman script. This is one example of politicisation of language and related issues (Pattanayak 2000: 26).
In the same vein (Pattanayak 2000) further opines in favour of undertaking initiatives for language maintenance and planning of the tribal languages of India which are rich reservoir of heritage and culture:
The tribals are most vulnerable to the unitary as well as the federal structure. Both the centre as well the states, vying for development, are destroying the habitats, the ecology, as well as the cultures of the tribals. Whether it is building dams, exploiting minerals or consuming forest products, the tribals are unhoused and marginalized. Just as we consider the tribals as esoteric, the developed west views us as esoteric. We are called the Third world. The tribals are called the Fourth world. Whatever be their categorisation, unless multilayered societies are nurtured through multitiered distribution of power, destruction of cultures cannot be halted. (Pattanayak 2000: 25-26).
However, due to the initiatives undertaken by the UNESCO at the international level, repeated expressions of concerns by the linguists, anthropologists and social activists in the international fora, spread of education among the tribals, scenario of language use and preservation which is synonymous identified with preservation of indigenous culture of the natives has been changing day by day. For the purpose of Mahali language and culture, the educated youths of this tribe have come forward and established NGOs All India Mahali Association and its subordinate unit Indian Mahali Adivasi Society. Side by side scholars at the Indian universities (e.g., Jadavpur University, West Bengal) and the officials of the Department of Tribal Affairs, Government of West Bengal are also taking interest in doing project-based researches on the preservation and promotion of this language and culture. The attempts having made are praiseworthy as these have created interest among the native speakers in preserving their own culture and language as well as linguistic and cultural awareness to cherish pride in their own Mahali Adivasi identity though they are not settled in one demographic region.
However, the main and foremost aim of such academic efforts and the efforts being or to be made by the natives at the socio-cultural level is to expand or widen the range of the Mahali language use and its vitality. It is also known to us that the vitality of a language depends on the nature and extent of language use characterized in terms of
(1) Number of domains in which a language is used,
(2) Degree of language use in oral and written modes of communication and
(3) Pervasiveness with which a language is used in a particular domain.
It is also observed that the use of language in a particular mode may be more pervasive in terms of the frequency and duration of use as compared to another language. Thus, both the quantitative and qualitative language uses are to be maintained and expanded for the preservation and development of a language like Mahali. Moreover, the different domains of language use largely generate different salience from the points of view of language development on the one hand, and language maintenance and shift on the other. Thus the use of a language in the home or informal domain provides space for a high degree of salience for language maintenance, but it does not lay a strong basis for the language development. Hence the dynamic language use which is cumulative in nature should be given more focused importance. The use in one domain reinforces that in another domain. The extensive and pervasive language use in different domains like administration, art, literature, humanities, science, etc., makes it dynamic and it inevitably contributes to the vitality of language. The nature and scope of materials produced in that language is not only the sign of intellectual creativity, knowledge growth, cultural growth, modernization and overall prosperity of a society but also consolidates vitality of language use and development.
In the backdrop of the above thread-bare discussion on aspects of general linguistics and aspects of the present state of the Mahali language in particular, it is clearly evident that several constructive proactive steps for the preservation and development of Mahali language as well as culture are urgently needed to be taken both from the side of the educated native speakers, NGOs and the governments. As a researcher of tribal linguistics in general, the present writer thinks that the following commandments or steps must be undertaken without delay for the said purpose:
i. It has already been mentioned that Mahali does not have written script and it creates hindrances in communication among the natives residing in far flung areas. One particular script, be it Devnagari or Roman, must be adopted by them on the basis of consensus among them.We should remember that the adopted script ‘should be simple, hopefully linear and demanding less manual effort’ (Sarkar 2018: 4) and hence the process of ‘graphization--the development of a system of writing’ (Ferguson 1968) needs to be rightly decided to rescue the language from the edge of extinction and its future development.
ii. The natives should be encouraged to use the adopted scripts for all sorts of written communications among themselves. All the documents relating to their own rituals, festivals and indigenous herbal medicines which represent their rich heritage are to be recorded using that script. The government or private signboards put in the Mahali villages are to be written in Mahali using the adopted script.
iii. Efforts must be there to develop a computer software for writing by using that script. This printing software, it is hoped, will contribute immensely to the printing and publication of (non)literary manuscripts and writings written by the Mahalis in the Mahali language.
iv. The Mahali netizens are to use Mahali for communication among themselves by using the ICT enabled scripts.
v. A comprehensive Mahali-to-English Dictionary must be written. The proposed dictionary will have the Mahali words in the adopted script, the etymological information, if traceable, the phonetic transcriptions, classification, English meanings, usages, etc. For this project a committee of experts in lexicography, linguistics and educated native speakers is to be constituted with a concrete plan of the work to be done with sincerity.
vi. A group of linguists need to be engaged in a major project for the purpose of writing a comprehensive detailed architecture of the Mahali Grammar covering its phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics following the linguistic principles and theories established so far. For this purpose, the softwares available in the arena of computational linguistics can be of better use with ease.
vii. Recording of Mahali folksongs sung during their own cultural festivals should be done for the preservation of their cultural heritage and also for the future research in the areas of the prosodic structure, rhyme, stress and intonation.
viii. The task of ‘corpus planning’ (see Klein, 1997) is the necessary step to be taken by the government. The state should decide what status is to accord to the language, here Mahali. By honouring the Right to Education Act 20009 efforts to cater at least primary education in mother tongue to the Mahali children can be undertaken on the part of local governments. Then gradually, initiatives can be undertaken to expand its role in higher education until the highest goal is touched. In a word, academic expansion in a language is the primary condition of the standardization of a language.
ix. A government sponsored Mahali Academy for looking after the works for the promotion of language and culture is needed. This academy will be entrusted with the work of framing the rules and regulations for research projects, preparation of plan and estimate for the projects on language, education, economy and culture of the community, standards and allied issues related with the preservation of language and culture of the community. Moreover, academy will introduce awards for the outstanding works on these aspects.
x. To develop Mahali community socio-culturally, socio-academically and socio-economically, we need to encourage the educated native speakers to translate the (non) literary works of other race/country into Mahali. These translations will definitely expand and enrich knowledge of the Mahali people in general.
xi. Seminar-cum-workshop on different aspects of the Mahali language and culture, socio-cultural and socio-economic situations are needed to be organized regularly. Such academic endeavours will provide platforms for the scholars inside the community and outside the community to interact on the issues and problems affecting the community and means to overcome those.
4 Conclusion
To conclude, however, for the materialization of the above mentioned steps, what is much needed is the fund. Our governments (both Centre and State) and international organizations like UNESCO engaged in the works on the endangered communities are expected to provide adequate fund for the projects needed to be undertaken not only for the Mahali but also for the human civilization at large. It is hoped that some sensitive broad-hearted administrators and scholars within and outside India will come forward with their benevolence for the preservation and development of Mahali language and culture. Otherwise, Mahali as a tribe may exist in future but Mahali as language will be extinct (as it has happened with several languages) in near future because the natives use and will have to use the language of region where they live. Let us conclude with the very touchy as well as rational appeal made by Sarkar (2018):
‘Love for a language’ as a term has many edges. Many people are not aware that their language is a valuable possession, and should be maintained at all costs. Some show a love for the language for political reasons, in order that they can, in near or distant future, claim a statehood on the basis of the language. We can however see that there has arisen an alert middle class which cherish their language as something precious and refuse to part with it. Deaths, self-inflicted or other-inflicted, for the cause of the mother tongue have been quite well-known in history. Although language is a rather complex phenomenon (in most cases the language is a bundle of mother tongues, while only its standard variety is often indentified as ‘the language’) but the most of the speakers do not bother about such niceties, and identify themselves with the standard form. Still, love for the language is essential for its preservation. Without love, there is no urge for its vitalization or revitalization, hence it is - - -virtually doomed (Sarkar 2018: 5).
Work Cited :
Crystal David. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press.
Fasold, Ralph. 1984. The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Ferguson, Charles A. 1968. "Language Development", in Charles A. Ferguson, Thom Huebner (1996), Sociolinguistic Perspectives: papers on language in society, 1959-1994, Oxford University Press US, pp 40-47.
Fishman, J. A. 1972. The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to Language in Society. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
Klein, Michael J. 1997. On the Undoing and Redoing of Corpus Planning. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter.
Moseley, C. 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Retrieved from http//www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas.
Pattanayak, D. P. 2000. ‘Reflections on Language Planning’. In R. S. Gupta (ed.). Directions in Indian Sociolinguistics. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Saha, A. 2019. ‘Language Vitality and Preservation: A Case Study of Mahali’. A paper presented in International Seminar on Threatened Language and Culture of Mahali Community (TLCMC-2019). Santiniketan, West Bengal.
Sarkar, Pabitra. 2018. ‘Endangered Languages and What we’re going to Do about it’. Inaugural Address at the Workshop on Endangered Languages, Department of Linguistics, University of Calcutta, Kolkata.
Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education—or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights (Indian Reprint). Bengaluru, etc.,: Orient Longman.
Web Resources :
https://www.ethnologue.com/language-development (accessedon 04.06.21)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning (accessed on 04.06.21)
Acknowledgement:
The present study has derived from my paper ‘Language Planning and the Mahali Language’ presented in the International Seminar (28-29 June 2019) on Threatened Language and Culture of Mahali Community (TLCMC-2019) at Santiniketan, West Bengal. Let me thank the Organizing Committee of the International Seminar for giving me opportunity to interact with the native speakers of Mahali. I also thank Folk and Tribal Culture Centre, Government of West Bengal for providing all kinds of support for the success of the seminar.