Scholar, historian and cultural activist Dr. G.N. Devy has extensively worked with the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes and Adivasis, and initiated the People’s Linguistic Survey of India in 2010. A Padma Shri recipient, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award (1993) for his book ‘After Amnesia.’ In 2015 he returned the Akademi Award protesting the growing attempts to stifle freedom of expression, democracy and secularism in India. ‘The Indians -Histories of a Civilization’ edited by Dr. Devy, Tony Joseph and Ravi Korisettar was released on 18 July.
Excerpts from an interview:
Our leaders have been pushing for ‘one language one nation’ from time to time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made a renewed pitch for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) recently. As multiple such attempts are made under the pretext of ‘unifying’ the nation, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) acquires new relevance. Will there be another PLSI?
Be it UCC or ‘One Nation One Language,’ all those have two clear intentions. One is to use language, identity and the idea of law or civil code as polarizing tools. The second is the idea of citizenship which is rooted in a faulty understanding of history.
To correct this is a big challenge. People will have to understand that these identity issues - be it linguistic, religious or ethnic identities - don’t matter in relation to livelihood, development, education or healthcare. In Karnataka, we saw that a lot of polarization was attempted, but people saw through it. One cannot hope to counter such attempts only through intellectual initiatives or popular movements. They need to be countered by people who are the main stakeholders in the being of a nation and its citizens.
The repeat of PLSI is a very good goal. But the question is how practical it would be. I started working towards it in my early 30s. Now I’m in my mid-70s. So, somebody from the next generation has to take it forward.
When I started thinking of the People’s Survey, the issues were relatively less challenging. There was an arbitrary imposition by the state that only those languages spoken by more than 10,000 people would be recognised as languages. That had knocked out a number of languages from the government list. But those languages were still around. My team started gathering information and we found 780 living languages.
But today the situation has changed and become far more serious. From 1971 to 2021, about 280 languages have disappeared. There are five reasons for it.
“In Karnataka, we saw that a lot of polarization was attempted, but people saw through it,” says Dr. Devy | Photo Credit: The Hindu
One is that interstate migration has increased a lot more. That means steady location, fixed language and the possibility of schooling for children in the mother tongue are becoming dimmer now. So, the vulnerability of languages has exponentially increased.
Secondly, the unlimited use of artificial memory has impacted the human desire to engage with natural languages. If out of the 140 Crore population of Indians, 125 or 115 Crore already have mobile phones with them, the question is no longer restricted to schooling or mother tongues being taught to children. It has gone beyond that.
The third reason is even larger. Globally biodiversity is depleting at a very high rate. Curiously enough, throughout the entire history of languages, biodiversity has had a very intimate direct and proportional relationship to natural languages.
The fourth reason is somewhat less visible but very severe. On the coasts of India, marine rights have been sold by the government to big corporates. The fishing communities or communities dependent on sea farming have been displaced. Due to this, the coastal communities in India have migrated inland and they have lost their languages. The number of these communities has not been counted accurately in the last census, but it is significantly large and this particular phenomenon will result in the death of at least 50-60 languages.
Surekha (academic, former professor at MS University of Baroda, and wife of Dr. Devy) and I have seen a coastal community named Kharwa in in southern Gujarat. They used to get together once a year. Men and women found their partners there and got married. Every year for eight days they used to camp together. That convention has disappeared. Kharwas no longer speak Kharwa. They have become a diaspora.
The fifth reason is even more invisible. Neurologists say the human brain has developed a language fatigue and is very rapidly shifting to visual signals rather than oral signals.
These five things are recent developments. Therefore, if somebody wants to do another linguistic survey the parameters will have to be different. The PLSI, however, has inspired other movements in places like Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and North Bengal where new language associations have been formed and new journals have come up. So, people will take it forward.
The deterioration of languages is a process which began with print and industrial capitalism, and in the times of corporate control over governments, the situation has become even worse. And if microchip becomes the central point for international relations, then natural language will become a universal tragedy.
Realistic white book with a blank cover. Mock up of rotated book. Isolated vector illustration. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Do you think there is chest-thumping around the cultural richness of India by certain parties, but a refusal by the same to acknowledge the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country?
They see culture in a predefined and deterministic framework, and not as an ever-evolving and liberating force. So here culture is not the problem, but their misunderstanding of it is.
Think about Rabindra Sangeet. Tagore was inspired by Kabir’s dohe and translated them into English. Using Kabir, church music, Brahmo Samaj, and Upanishads, he created a new liberating cultural movement – the Rabindra Sangeet of Bengal.
Another example is Narayana Guru. He was rooted in tradition but was open to receiving ideas from fellow Jews, Muslims and Christians, and that helped him to inspire so many ordinary people in the community to transcend their own limits. That is what culture ought to do.
What are your thoughts on the stark divide between those who consider English language skills as a sign of intellectual superiority and those who shun the West entirely?
There are two types of distortion of realities our history suffers from. One maintains that everything that is in the West is superior to what we have. The second believes everything that is in the past is superior to what we have in the present in India. Both are not based on reality.
Can you talk about your work currently as the Obaid Siddiqi chair?
I initiated a discussion on what is science to us in India, and what are we doing with it. How are we doing our science education? Why is it that despite having over 1,000 universities and about 2,000 colleges where science is taught, students are not clearly aware of what scientific temper is? If they are aware, how do they tolerate so much circulation of myth, fiction, and propaganda? Those are the questions I raised.
We are bringing outstanding scientists from all over the country together to carry on this conversation, and later will produce a documentary which will in detail outline the ideal relationship between science and society, and science and the idea of a nation. Science does not understand nation; It is universal. Science has to be useful nationally and meaningful globally. So how to maintain that balance?
That is the question I’m raising. In about a year’s time, the treatise will be ready, and we will have several Nobel prize-winning scientists contributing to it. We will bring it out for India. It is my commitment to the country.
