LITERACY MATTERS

MINORITIES used the Bengali . Where Hindi or Nepali are more common, they opted for , which is related to, but differs Divided by scripts from the . Where Oriya is the lingua franca, however, that language’s was chosen, which is entirely differ- ent. Santali is one of ’s many Adivasi lan- signed reading primers, especially in order The sad truth is that guages. Today, seven different are to teach Santal children. and literature started to develop in six dif- used to write in it. Some argue that this great ferent scripts. To some extent, those alpha- variety does not help the community’s devel- THE SEVENTH ALPHABET bets were modified to better suit our lan- opment. guage, but none of them accurately reflects Education began to spread among Santals, Santali . The more depressing By Boro Baski and was not only driven by Christian mis- problem, however, is that Santal writing in different alphabets does very little to unite Script is important for the sustainabil- our community across the regions. It nei- ity and development of a language. In ther helps us communicate among one an- the long-term, writing requires a codi- other nor does it foster a stronger sense of fied grammar, precise definitions of what self-confidence. words mean and standardised spelling. This pattern persists however. The Without those rules, texts are hard to read. main reason is that it makes sense for They become established as a literary tra- a minority community to use the region- dition evolves. At the same time, that liter- ally prevalent script. In West Bengal, most acy tradition helps to define the values and Santal children attend state schools where norms of the people whose mother tongue Bengali is the language of instruction. In the this language is. Writing thus shapes the neighbouring states, other languages are identity of the community concerned. All prevalent. At the same time, Latin letters are of these trends are reinforced if and when still in use as well, not least because some of a formal education system uses a written the books prepared early on by the mission- language. aries are still in print. They are indeed very For us Santals, however, the debate on useful. what alphabet to use has become divisive. Things have become even more com- We have too many options for writing in our plicated in the past two decades because language. government agencies started to approve Among South Asian Adivasis, we are a seventh script. It is called Ol-chiki and was the largest homogenous group. More than designed to more accurately represent San- 10 million people belong to Santal tribes in tali phonemes. Since the turn of the millen- India’s eastern states as well as in Bangla- nium, state institutions have been promot- desh and Nepal. Our tribes are outside the ing this innovative alphabet consistently, Hindu caste system and have been margin- and they now consider it the only legitimate alised historically. way to write in Santali (see box below). Santali, for example, has survived and While many Santals wanted that to evolved over the millennia in oral tradition. happen, the results are unconvincing. It It is an Austro-Asiatic language that is relat- is ironic, to put it mildly, that many well ed to Vietnamese and Khmer, but not to the educated Santals who assertively endorse Indo-European languages prevalent in our Ol-chiki as a token of Santal pride prefer part of South Asia. to send their own children to schools that In the 1890s, Christian missionaries teach in Bengali or English. They know that found it helpful to write in Santali. They their kids will have more opportunities in used Roman (Latin) letters. This alphabet, life if they are taught in Bengali, Hindi or of course, has been used in many parts of Bengali letters used in non-formal Adivasi English. Europe since the days of the Roman Empire. school. The missionaries wrote down folktales in OUR CHOICE Santali and documented traditional medi- cine as practiced by our community. They sionaries. Typically, people opted for the The community-based organisation I work codified the grammar of the language and scripts that were predominant in the region. for runs a non-formal school for Santal chil-

compiled dictionaries. Moreover, they de- Where most people speak Bengali, Santals dren. We have chosen to use the Bengali al- Foto: Boro Baski

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phabet. We know for certain that our pupils beekeeping or herbal medicine. Of course, will have to be able to read Bengali later in Santal history figures too. We want our life, and we do not want to burden young young generation to be rooted in our spe- children with learning more than one script. cific culture and to have good opportunities When they start school, we introduce to take their fate into their own hands. Using Bengali letters and numbers for Santali our language is essential. What alphabet we words, and once they comfortably read the use in school, matters less. We tell our stu- primers we have designed, we gradually dents about Ol-chiki – encouraging, but not move on to teaching them Bengali and later forcing them to learn it. English as well. We do our best to make them proud BORO BASKI of our culture. We teach the kids traditional works for the community- songs and dances. We regularly take them to based organisation a museum of Santal culture which we have Ghosaldanga Adibasi Seva set up in one of our villages and which dis- Sangha in West Bengal. The plays more than 150 artifacts (see my con- NGO is supported by the German NGO tribution in Tribune section of D+C/E+Z e- Freundeskreis Ghosaldanga und Bishnubati. Paper 2016/06). He was the first person from his village to go Our curriculum covers topics that per- to college as well as the first to earn a PhD (in tain to our village lifestyle, including organ- social work). Wikipedia page in Santali with Ol-chiki script. ic farming, fisheries, vegetable gardening, [email protected]

schools. Other steps to promote language most people speak The pros and cons of Ol-chiki the script were taken, including in their region. On top of that, at the national level. In 2004, English often proves essential Santali became one of India’s 22 in India too. For decades, the Ol-chiki al- ly aware of Santals voting – and official languages. No other Ad- For these reasons, some phabet, which was invented to making up about half of West ivasi language has been grant- Santals disagree with how the represent the Santali language, Bengal’s tribal population. ed that status. There now even government is promoting Ol- was largely irrelevant. That Santal children were to is a Santali/Ol-chiki Wikipedia. chiki. They argue that other changed in the late 1970s. get a modern education, but However, not everybody scripts are at least as useful, The reason was that a Com- at the same time they would is happy with the progress of especially as they have a his- munist-led Left Front had won also be taught about the com- Ol-chiki. For one thing, Santali tory of Santali literature. They elections in the Indian state of munity’s language, history and schools proved less effective consider Santali writing in any West Bengal. It was keen to reach traditions. Ol-chiki support- than had been hoped. Reasons script to be valid. However, out to rural communities. The ers, moreover, hoped that this include a lack of Santali-trained authors who do not opt for Ol- new state government believed script would be adopted by all teachers and Santali textbooks. chiki are not even considered that acknowledging Ol-chiki as Santals in other Indian states as There were other infrastruc- for the Government of India’s the official script for the Santali well as neighbouring countries. tural challenges too. In India, prestigious literary Santali Sa- language would serve that pur- The Left Front govern- the capacities of government hitya Akademi Award. pose, so it promised to do so. ment, however, did not fulfil its schools are generally weak, and The scenario is not en- The script had been de- promise immediately. Among so is funding. So far, most San- tirely bleak however. As more veloped in 1925 by Raghunath Santals, a relentless movement tali textbooks are mere transla- teachers are trained to teach Murmu, an Adivasi intellectual. emerged. Agitation sometimes tions of Bengali ones. They do in Santali and more textbooks He wanted it to accurately rep- became quite aggressive, for not do much in terms of teach- with Ol-chiki writing appear, resent the pronunciation of the instance, when Ol-chiki propo- ing our youth about our com- educational results will im- language used by Santal tribes nents blocked highways, train- munity. prove. Moreover, there is scope (see main story). lines or access to government Experience shows, more- for publishing the same Santali The basic idea was that offices. Under such pressure, over, that students from Santal text in more than one script. Santal children should be West Bengal finally accepted schools often struggle to get ad- It is evident, however, that taught in their own language. the script for official purposes, mission to secondary schools a script that is not accepted by The state government accepted including education, in 2001. or colleges. Given that San- the entire community, will ul- that Ol-chiki would be appro- The state government has tals are a small minority, they timately not boost the commu-

priate for doing so. It was keen- since set up several Ol-chiki need a good command of the nity’s coherence. BB Screenshot: https://sat.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B1%A5%E1%B1%9F%E1%B1%B1%E1%B1%9B%E1%B1%9F%E1%B1%B2%E1%B1%A4_%E1%B1%AF%E1%B1%9F%E1%B1%B9%E1%B1%A8%E1%B1%A5%E1%B1%A4

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