Why many Indigenous languages ​​are on the verge of Extinction?

"If the light of language does not exist, we will be groping in a dark world". – Acharya Dandi

Language is a tool for intellectual and emotional expression. Language is a vehicle for the transmission of culture, scientific knowledge and a worldview across generations. It is the vital, unseen thread that links the past with the present. We must emphasis the importance of protecting and conserving our linguistic heritage. Our languages are a crucial part of our history, our culture and our evolution as a society.

Ours is a multilingual country where more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken. However, almost 97 per cent of the population speaks one of the 22 scheduled languages. Modern Indian languages have ancient roots and are derived in some way from the classical languages. There is a rich literary tradition in many languages, especially the ones recognised as classical languages by the Government of India. Sanskrit, of course, is one of the oldest Indo-European languages, dating back to the second millennium BC. Indologist William Jones said in 1786: “The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar.”

Ganesh N Devy (Cultural Activist), who documented 780 Indian languages while conducting the People’s Linguistic Survey of India in 2010, also, shockingly, found that 600 of these languages were dying. He added that more than 250 languages have disappeared in the past 60 years.

When a language dies, “a unique way of looking at the world disappears”.

4,000 of the world's 6,000 languages face a potential threat of extinction, out of which 10 per cent is spoken in India, In other words, 400 Indian languages out of our total 780 languages may get extinct. According to the UN Human Rights four in every ten indigenious languages across the world may disappear or die.

According to UNESCO, any language that is spoken by less than 10,000 people is potentially endangered. In India, after the 1971 census, the government decided that any language spoken by less than 10,000 people need not be included in the official list of languages. In India, therefore, all the languages that are spoken by less than 10,000 people are treated by the state as not worthy of mention and treated by the UNESCO as potentially endangered. 

India has around 196 endangered languages, including about 80 in the Northeast, according to the Unesco Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger 2009.

Examples of such languages would be Wadari, Kolhati, Golla, Gisari. These are languages of nomadic people in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana. Then there several tribal languages as well, such as Pauri, Korku, Haldi, Mavchi. In Assam, there is Moran, Tangsa, Aiton. As we discussed above that more than 250 languages have disappeared in the past 60 years. There used to be languages called Adhuni, Dichi, Ghallu, Helgo, Katagi. The Bo language in Andaman disappeared in 2010 and the Majhi language in Sikkim disappeared in 2015. But we need to remember that it is impossible to show a language dying in the last moment of its life. A language is not a single life system. It is a very large symbolic system. When the symbols collapse they do not do so in a single moment. The collapse is sprayed over a large time.

Table of the number of endangered languages with the states that they are spoken in according to INDIA TODAY.

Indian states	No. of languages	Endangered Languages
Andaman and Nicobar Islands	11	Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Lamongse, Luro, Muot, Onge, Pu, Sanenyo, Sentilese, Shompen and Takahanyilang
Manipur	7	Aimol, Aka, Koiren, Lamgang, Langrong, Purum and Tarao
Himachal Pradesh	4	Baghati, Handuri, Pangvali and Sirmaudi
Odisha	3	Manda, Parji and Pengo
Karnataka	2	Koraga and Kuruba
Andhra Pradesh	2	Gadaba and Naiki
Tamil Nadu	2	Kota and Toda
Arunachal Pradesh	2	Mra and Na
Assam	2	Tai Nora and Tai Rong
Uttarakhand	1	Bangani
Jharkhand	1	Birhor
Maharashtra	1	Nihali
Meghalaya	1	Ruga
West Bengal	1	Toto

Last year, An Indian language went extinct with the death of an 85-year-old in the Andamans, while one apparently extinct tongue was rediscovered as being still spoken by about 1,000 people in a corner of Arunachal Pradesh.

“Koro, a tongue apparently new to the world and which is spoken by just 800 to 1,200 people, could soon face extinction as younger speakers abandon it for more widely used Hindi or English.”

In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Onge is spoken only by 96 people and Shompen by about 200.

Few days later, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu released a book titled Tangams: An Ethnolinguistic Study Of The Critically Endangered Group of Arunachal Pradesh. “Language loss is the reason for cultural erosion,” CM Khandu had said, emphasising how the book will help the future generations of the Tangam community, which has reportedly 253 speakers concentrated in one small hamlet of Arunachal Pradesh.


Why are the languages at risk?

There are a few major reasons for this. One is that some languages as against other alternate languages in the area gain popularity because of an easier syntax.

Secondly, the social dominance by any group leads to the language of that group becoming more popular in that society. For instance, Sanskrit became popular in ancient India because of social domination by speakers of Sanskrit. Or English has become popular because of the colonial rule.

Thirdly, certain languages face the threat of extinction as they are not used as mediums of instruction in educational institutions, government transactions and the media.


How do we conserve a dying language?

1. We need to create livelihood support for the speakers of the language. If they have livelihood available within their language, nobody would want to switch from their language to any other language.

2. Another suggestion is to introduce these languages in primary schools in areas where they are spoken.

3. The proposed language departments in central universities can set up libraries or museums with audio and video material showing the oral traditions of these languages. Such documentation is expected to help preserve these tongues, and the audiotapes could be used as teaching tools within the communities.

4. The best way to keep a language alive was to prepare instructional material in that language and make it part of studies. For dialects that do not have scripts, then any other Indian scripts may be used when writing.

Conclusion

In every manner without any exception, the language we learn or use is the absolute condition of our narrative of the world and the way we see the world. There is no escape from it. A given language only has a certain kind of ability to narrate the world and the consciousness can enter the world only to the extent that languages can allow it to enter the reality surrounding it. If a language has seven terms for distributing colours, then the speaker of the language will see the world only in those colours. But if there is another language which has more colour terms, then the distribution of the world is more multicoloured. For instance, in Marathi, there is a colour term called Kirmizi that cannot be translated into any English term at all. It is brownish, greenish, bluish, it’s almost like the colour combination we see in a firefly. It is impossible to replicate that perception in the English language. But in the English language, we have navy blue or sky blue and many other languages might not have the exact colour term that translates the same. This is how language allows or disallows us in interpreting the world.

Is the Indian Constitution Anti-Indian ?

India is Hindu, Indian philosophy is Hindu philosophy, Indian nationalism is Hindu nationalism, Hindu culture and tradition is Indian culture and tradition. In another word India is a synonym of Hindu.

India became a nation in 1947, but ceased to be a civilisation. The archaeological record shows that Indian society first emerged in the Sapta-Sindhu (greater Punjab) region at least 9,000 years ago, along the banks of the now-defunct Sarasvati and other rivers of the region. It soon developed into a full-fledged civilization, and by around 5,000 years ago, had grown into the largest ancient civilization the world has ever seen.Until around a thousand years ago, India had a single, highly evolved culture, a single unifying civilizational language (Sanskrit), a very large and powerful economy, and all the other hallmarks of civilization.

After that, came approximately a thousand years of foreign occupation, which was a period of unprecedented and sustained demic and cultural genocide. 100 million deaths is probably an extremely conservative estimate. India’s culture was systematically attacked, weakened and eroded, and foreign cultures were introduced by force and coercion.The millennium of foreign occupation and colonization ended, technically, with Independence in 1947, when India assumed the form of a modern nation-state after the British handed power over to the Congress party.Independence was a priceless opportunity for India to dismantle the edifice of British colonialism and undo the harms and injustices of British occupation. That did not happen.

Instead, India adopted a constitution that is entirely foreign in origin and nature. The people of India were not given the opportunity to either accept or reject this constitution. Also Colonial British laws and institutions remained in place.

the Indian Constitution is ‘Un-Indian’ or ‘Anti-Indian’ because it does not reflect the political traditions and the spirit ofIndia. They said that the foreign nature of the Constitution makes it unsuitable to the Indian situation or unworkable in India. 

In this context,

• K.Hanumanthaiya, a member of the Constituent Assembly, commented : “We wanted the music of Veena or Sitar, but here we have the music of an Englishband. That was because our constitution-makers were educated that way”.

• Similarly, Lokanath Misra, another member of the Constituent Assembly, criticized the constitution as a “slavish imitation of the west, much more – aslavish surrender to the west”. 

• Further, Lakshminarayan Sahu, also amember of the Constituent Assembly, observed : “The ideals on which this draft constitution is framed have no manifest relation to the fundamentalspirit of India. This constitution would not prove suitable and would break down soon after being brought into operation”.

• Also H.V. Kamath declared, "Nothing is Indian in the proposed constitution of India".

Let's understand the un-indianness nature of Indian Constitution on the following grounds:

1. Democracy

The idea of democracy was not alien to India. one can find references of sabha and samiti in the Rig Veda and the Atharv Veda. The The Rig Veda tells us the position of king is not absolute. Kautilya's Arthasastra discusses different forms of republics and citizens' role in decision-making. During the Buddhist period, we find several kingdoms adopting democratic methods to elect their kings, history has it that Vaishali's king Vishal was elected by the people. When Mahatma Gandhi talked about establishing Village Republics' he was only aiming at revival of socio-political structures based on ancient yet robust principles of democracy developed by our forefathers.

But,  Today, we follow the Western model of democracy. Can there be an Indian paradigm? Sri Aurobindo has the answer. He writes :
"It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose their artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action, and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the  soul of Europe".

2. Secularism

The word secular was firstly raised by Nehru in a Constituent Assembly. But not added that time, In 1975 at the time of emergency Indira Gandhi deceitly added to this in the Constitution.

The Nehruvian version of secularism, which has done more harm to the polity than good. it has fitted one caste against another and one community against the another and prevented the so called minority communities from integrity with the national mainstream.

The word secular is defined in the dictionaries as "The belief that the state, morals, education, etc. should be independent of religion." But in India it means only one thing — eschewing everything Hindu and espousing everything Islamic.

The most pertinent and crushing critique of Nehruvian secularism was made by K.M MUNSHI. He states :
"In its (secularism) name, anti-religious forces, sponsored by secular humanism or Communism, condemns religious piety, particularly in the majority community. .In its name, again, politicians in power adopt a strange attitude which, while it condones the susceptibilities, religious and social, of the minority communities, is too ready to brand similar susceptibilities in the majority community as communalistic and reactionary. How secularismn sometimes becomes allergic to Hinduism will be apparent from certain episodes relating to the reconstruction of Somnath temple. ...These unfortunate postures have been creating a sense of frustration in the majority community. .If however the misuse of this word 'secularism' continues...if every time there is an inter-communal conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of the merits of the questions; if our holy places of pilgrimage like Banaras, Mathura and Rishikesh continue to be converted into industrial slums... the springs of traditional tolerance will dry up".

The fears expressed by K.M MUNSHI on the Nehruvian secularism are valid even today. 'More 'secularism" in India will end up feeding what is fights: the so-called 'Hindu fundamentalism'.

3. Constitution in written in Foreign Language

We had the opportunity to written the constitution in our own national language but we frame our Constitution in a alien language, even in free india. Even today we face many difficulties to interpretate the constitution. In this matter Seth Govind Das said:

"the Constitution of this ancient country has been framed in a foreign language even after the attainment of independence. I have always been drawing your attention to this shortcoming. You had assured us, not once, but more than once, that you also desired that our Constitution should be in our national language. In my opinion we would have definitely succeeded in this task if we had made an attempt. We have been sitting here for three years to pass this English draft. I think it would not have been either impossible or even inconvenient to have set for one month more and passed the Hindi constitution. I wish to say that our passing the Constitution in a foreign language after the end of our slavery and attainment of independence would for ever remain a blot on us. This is a badge of slavery a sign of slavery. You may publish the translation by the 26th January, still, I would say frankly that a translation will after all remain a translation. The translation cannot replace the original and whenever any constitutional difficulty arises, whenever any constitutional point arises before our Supreme Coun, High Court or any other Court, we would have before us a Constitution in a foreign language and therefore 1 feel the domination of that foreign language. This will always hurt us and I am thinking of the day, dreaming of the day when our country will form another Constituent Assembly and that Constituent Assembly will place our original Constitution before us in our national language".

Conclusion

The constitution of India is nothing but a vast copy of the provisions of the lengthy government of India act 1935. the constitution was prepared by rich persons for the interest of rich persons only in the name of people. It perpetuates oligarchy of limited person in name of democracy of the people. it could not appraise Indian problems and their solutions in Indian ways. It attempted to find the solution of Indian problem in western constitutionalism. clearly it is a plantation of Euro-American constitution. To put it plainly the constitution is  foreign to the people of India. The Indian Constitution does not include the philosophy and thoughts of India, so we can say without any hesitation that the Indian Constitution is an anti-Indian or un-Indian.