What can we learn from languages before they go extinct? And why should we lift a finger to help rescue them?
By Amir Ullah Khan
There are six thousand languages spoken around the world today, though the estimate is hotly debated. The Atlas of World Languages says there are 6796. What is being forecast by some social scientists is that nearly 5000 of these will die in the next hundred years.
A large number of these are spoken by communities that have between 25 to 500 speakers. There are eight languages with more than 100 million speakers each and these are Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese. What this translates to is that nearly 96 per cent of the world’s population speaks 4 per cent of the languages. Meaning a minute percentage speaks a large number of the languages that exist.
Across the world, there are groups of people who find their languages decline, as native speakers migrate, children learn new languages that are dominant, and functional roles of these languages recede. Governments across the world have identified national, scheduled, dominant and majority languages and also made note of regional, minority and classical languages. In India we also have mother tongues identified. While we wait for the 2011 data on languages, figures from the 2001 census show that 29 languages have more than a million native speakers, 60 have more than 100,000 and 122 have more than 10,000 native speakers.
The Seventy-First Amendment to the Constitution added some languages to the Eighth Schedule and now there are 22 languages listed as scheduled or official languages. Within these, the estimates are that Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu are languages spoken by more than 50 million each in India. We will soon have updated numbers coming in as the results of the 2011 census are tabulated, but all indications are that these numbers would have gone up in varying degrees. The language issue in India is interesting and rather complex. There have been few serious studies on these issues and these rare attempts throw up some intriguing facets.
The United Nations categorizes languages as majority and minority languages and in another classification as dominant and non-dominant languages. In India, after the states were reorganized on linguistic grounds, we have various permutations coming up. Kashmiri is the majority language in Jammu and Kashmir, but the dominant language is Urdu which is the state language. While Kashmiri is spoken by 55% of the population, Urdu is spoken only by about 1%. Urdu in that sense is a unique language, while it is spoken by more than 5 crores, it is not a majority language in any state. In Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, UP and Bihar between 6 to 10 per cent of the population has Urdu as its mother tongue.
For languages like Urdu, Sindhi, Konkani therefore, the fear of being marginalized is high. The language policy we have used in India has, in several ways, actually heightened this threat perception. A large number of small languages spoken by small groups or by tribes have actually started getting hurt as numbers drop considerably. Languages like Telugu face a different issue. While it is a majority language in AP, sizable numbers of people speaking Telugu in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka now find their minority statuses rendering them vulnerable as the language policy discourages non majority languages.
There are Constitutional safeguards on minority languages. However, because of the Education Commission that allowed and encouraged local language education in primary and secondary schools, minority languages got sidelined. The big blow came with several state Public Service Commissions, when in most states knowledge of the official language was made mandatory for employees. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana were the first states to go this way and when most states followed suit, regional, tribal and minority languages started seeing their users fall as successive generations moved towards learning, speaking and using the official state language. Articles 29 and 30 give minorities rights to use their languages and protect their institutions. Articles 347 and 350 encourage states to use minority languages in official communication. However, these have done little to help the situation.
However, in the larger analysis, languages like Urdu are not under any immediate threat. In most analysis done with languages around the world, the worry is more with indigenous languages in North America and Europe where there are less than 500 speakers today. Nearly 500 languages have less than a hundred speakers left today and nearly 1500 have less than a 1000 speakers. These are clearly very close to extinction. A figure of 20000 is taken as uncomfortable, and with that figure, we have about 4000 languages today where the number of speakers has fallen below 20000. In India too, sheer numbers are causing nearly a hundred languages to die. But it is languages like Urdu that find themselves vulnerable because of policy measures gone awry.
My immediate trigger for taking up this issue in this week’s column was a most amazing concert that I attended last week in Delhi. The Ibadat foundation had organized an evening to remember Majrooh Sultanpuri, a pre-eminent poet of the twentieth century with 4000 film songs to his credit, most of them blockbusters. Titled, Rooh-e Majrooh (Majrooh’s soul or the Essence of Majrooh), the almost flawless rendering of the event, the packed house and the appreciation it earned made the audience realize the role that a responsible corporate sector can play, even in the preservation and celebration of culture, tradition and knowledge. Ibadat is a foundation set up by a motley group of corporate heads, sharing a common passion for poetry and a shared sense of responsibility towards poets.
The literary quotient was high and the mood lyrical. >Rahen na rahen hum mehka karenge, banke kali, banke saba, bagh-e-wafa mein< set the tone. Majrooh’s timeless lines that translate to “Whether I am alive or not, I will remain, like the morning breeze, the fragrance in the air, in the garden of loyalty, forever.” Using the symbolism of a market place, Majrooh writes, >Hum hain mataa-e-koocha-o-bazaar ki tarah, uthti hai har nigaah khareedar ki tarah<. “We are like items of barter at the market. Each one who passes by wants to bargain and buy.” Then on to the old rebel in Majrooh who declared — >Hum ko junoon kya sikhlate ho, hum the pareshaan tum se zyaada<…. What lessons in passion can you teach us, we who have been immersed in pain far more than you know of. And the sombre hope with which he declares in words I will not attempt translating here – >Shab-e zulm nargha-e rah zan se pukarta hai koi mujhe, Main faraz daar se dekh loon kahin karvaan-e sehar na ho<.
The big point however that I must make here is that this show exemplified the manner in which corporate social responsibility can play its part in maintaining and nurturing public goods that need to be preserved. Private sector must also play a part in paying for what its citizens deem important enough to treasure and if they value poetry and the arts they must put their money where their mouths are. This event was ample proof. There was no seeking of government help or looking to the state to provide money or support to what essentially is a private campaign to save a language and an art that has provided entertainment to millions. The simple point is that if there is merit in this and if a market exists, then money will flow in. Seeing the reaction and the effusive praise for this event among the well-heeled, the future seems bright. To paraphrase Majrooh’s own words — >Mein akela hi chala tha jaanib-e-manzil magar log saath aate gaye aur karvaan banta gaya.< (I had started on my journey by myself, but people kept joining and adding to the caravan).