By Shubhangi Agarwal 

“We, the people of India….”, a statement that promptly upsurges a rage in every Indian binding the nation as ‘one’. India is the largest democracy in the world with more than 1.3 billion people and a thousand indigenous languages living in harmony. But the question is whether we are selflessly promoting ‘our’ indigenous languages or not!

 India is an independent country for 73 years from British rule but we are still chained down by the British language i.e. English and the astonishing fact is that people have an inferiority complex if they know only the indigenous language and not ‘English’. We cannot contempt that English has become inevitable as well as an influential part of us but does that mean that we should disregard our culture and ourselves by marginalizing our own language?

The year 2019 has been declared as the ‘International year of indigenous languages’ that aims to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world, with an aim to establish a link between languages, development, peace, and reconciliation. In many parts of India, many languages are at the verge of being extinct. According to UNESCO, it is an endangered language if it is spoken by less than 10,000 people and it need not be added in the official list of languages. There are more than 190 languages in India that are classified as either vulnerable or endangered. The languages include Wadari, Kolhati, Golla, Gisari (spoken in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Telangana), some tribal languages as well, such as Pauri, Korku, Haldi, Mavchi, other languages such as Moran, Tangsa, Aiton (spoken in Assam). The Bo language in Andaman disappeared in 2010 and the Majhi language in Sikkim disappeared in 2015 and many more…

It is unequivocal that if the extinction episode goes on then we will not be ‘diverse’ anymore, India will be a ‘diluted diversity with no essence of indigeneity’. The worst impact of endangering languages is that people tend to migrate and they migrate to other regions and opt their languages leading to the extinction of their own language. Secondly, the traditional pattern of livelihood goes down and we lost another view of looking the world while every language gives a new worldview and we are left with zero native speakers who certainly had some typical tools of communication. When a language dies, we also lose a part of who we are, we lose a culture, we lose ourselves. The International Congress of Linguists has declared that "...the disappearance of anyone language constitutes an irretrievable loss to mankind..." 

We are to support our indignity and our language to prevent any further ‘language death’. The Endangered Language Fund is holding international conferences on the safeguarding of indigenous and minority languages. We can also ensure that the native speakers should get employment opportunities to promote their language and earn a livelihood. We can also make sure that some of these languages are taught in the regional schools at the elementary levels.

Language is the foremost trait of an individual, hence we are bound to preserve our languages to promote ourselves as diverse as we actually are!!