CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE

The linguistic LANDSCAPE OF India is a land of around 500 different languages, of which a majority are used even today. Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi talks about their diversity and traces their ancient global linkages

ndia’s society, culture, history communication need. Among these, Visitors next to the reproduction of an and politics have continuously 121 languages have more than 10,000 ancient - been shaped by the multiplicity speakers and 22 of these are officially inscribed stone slab marking the India stand of her languages. So, how many recognised in the Indian Constitution. at the 2006 Frankfurt languages are spoken in India? These include Assamese, Bengali, Book Fair IThe country is home to speakers Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, , , of about 461 languages. Of these, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, 447 languages are actively used in Manipuri, Marathi, Maithili, Nepali, daily communication, while 14 are Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, extinct - they no longer fulfil any Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and . These

are referred to as the ‘scheduled spoken by most number of people languages’ and according to the its official communication tool: nation-wide census conducted in Marathi in , Bangla in

2011, 96.72 per cent Indians speak West Bengal, Kannada in any one of these languages as their and so on. Hindi and the other

mother tongue. Hindi is spoken by scheduled languages are also used as a majority of the Indian population official languages in the states – they

(26.6 %), followed by Bangla (7.94 %), are used in regional administration Marathi (6.84 %) and Telugu (6.68 %). and education. Thus, unlike many Palm leaves served as the paper of the ancient Of the scheduled languages, Hindi monolingual countries that have a world for thousands of is recognised as the national official single official language (eg Japanese years. The manuscripts, that were used until language; English is used at the in Japan, French in France and so on), the 19th century often national level as a subsidiary official there is no single Indian language. contained jewels of ‘ ’ ancient knowledge language. Post-independence, Enumerating languages in India that are relevant even in contemporary times. several of India’s states followed the poses a unique challenge, largely Seen here are ancient linguistic line, making the language because of the blurred distinction Tamil manuscripts

EVERY LANGUAGE HAS ITS OWN SIGNIFICANCE, SANCTITY. INDIA TAKES GREAT PRIDE IN THE FACT THAT TAMIL IS THE MOST ANCIENT OF WORLD LANGUAGES. WE INDIANS ALSO FEEL PROUD THAT FROM VEDIC TIMES TO THE MODERN DAY, SANSKRIT LANGUAGE HAS PLAYED A STELLAR ROLE IN THE UNIVERSAL SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE. Narendra Modi Prime Minister of India

CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE

between language and dialect. Hindi Braj, Chhattisgarhi and so on. A and Urdu are regarded as separate large segment of Indians use their languages in spite of very strong multilinguality to index multiple

linguistic similarities between them, identities – local, regional, national as are Marathi and Konkani. The and so on. Very often the knowledge

Tangkhul dialects spoken in the of multiple languages is acquired Bottom: Ancient Tamil state of Manipur are not all mutually not in school but in multilingual inscriptions at the Brihadeeshwara temple intelligible, but the speakers regard neighbourhoods. For example, a child at Tanjavur. The temple these varieties as constituting a belonging to a Bengali family living was built during the Chola empire in around single language. According to the in will converse in Bengali 1010 CE census of 2011, 43.6 per cent of at home, speak the local language Inset: A stone the people speak Hindi as their Marathi with neighbours and friends, wheel with ancient engravings, carved in mother tongue – this includes more and learn English and Hindi in the walls of Konark Sun Temple (Odisha, India), than 40 dialects of Hindi such as school. This linguistic division is very believed to built around , Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhojpuri, characteristic of the Indian society. 13th century CE

Language in India has a complex relation with writing. Not all Indian languages are written, though they have a rich oral tradition built over many years

Ode to the Indian

languages

Hindi is the third most

spoken language in the world today after English

and Mandarin Chinese. In terms of the largest number of native speakers, Top: Former Union Minister for Education Hindi, Bengali and Marathi (formerly Human Resource Development), Prakash Javadekar, lighting the lamp to are ranked among the top inaugurate the 17th World Sanskrit Conference, 10 languages of the world. in Vancouver, Canada 2018 According to a study Bottom: India’s cultural strength lies in its diversity, a phenomenon highlighted with published by the UNESCO the use of multiple languages even today. in 2010, India, with 197 Newspapers in various languages at a news endangered languages, stand in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital had the highest rate of language loss in the world. 156 of Indian languages 10,000 persons and 93 of THE LAnGUAGE FAMILIEs North India. The Dravidian family of these languages are spoken in the Northeastern states Languages carry signatures of the languages includes four major, literary of India and in Jammu and varied ancestries of the people of the languages in southern India – Tamil, Kashmir. 2019 was declared land. Hence, like people, languages Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu - as by the United Nations as the International Year of can be classified into various ‘families’ well as a number of tribal languages Indigenous Languages, based on the genealogical similarities such as Toda in the Nilgiri Hills and with a resolution to continue fostering among them. The main language Gondi in central India. The Daic family indigenous languages and families of India are the following: of languages in Arunachal Pradesh pass on their knowledge to Indo-Aryan - this family includes major and in Assam and the Andamanese future generations.

languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, in the Andaman Tamil and Sanskrit are the Nepali, Marathi, Oriya, Bangla and islands are two smaller genealogical oldest attested languages Axomiya as well as tribal languages groups in the country. in India. Earliest records in Old Tamil include some such as Bhili and Katkari. These cave inscriptions (2nd languages have descended from the THE GLOBAL LInks century BC) and a long grammatical and poetic classical language Sanskrit via the Interestingly, all these Indian language treatise, Tolkāppiyam (1st Prakrits. In the present times, the groups share ancestry with languages century BC.) The Sangam speakers of this language family spread from other parts of the world: Indo- literature, a collection of 2,381 poems, is the most from Northwest India to the Northeast Aryan languages are historically ancient literary works in of India, occupying the plains of related to languages in Europe, which Old Tamil.

CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE

Did you were derived from Latin and Greek. perhaps, to the first migration of Thus, Bangla, Hindi, Persian, English, humans out of Africa into South and know? German and Dutch are all distant South-East Asia. In India, the study of cousins. The Munda or Austro-Asiatic language goes back to languages are genetically related to THE WRITTEN WORD the 4th Century BC. The first historical figure to languages in Vietnam and Cambodia, Language in India has a complex ever study language was while the Tibeto-Burman languages relation with writing. Not all Indian Sanskrit scholar Panini are relations of languages spoken in languages are written, though Tamil is recognised Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan and China. they have a rich oral tradition. The as the oldest living language in the world The Munda group of the Austro- development of writing is associated Asiatic languages includes Santali, mainly with commercial record- The earliest example of Sanskrit can be found in Mundari, Ho and a few other tribal keeping rather than any religious or the 2nd Century BC. languages spoken in central India. The social activity. Scripts used in the Tibeto-Burman family of languages present day for writing all Indian is represented by languages such as languages are predominantly derived Manipuri, Bodo and almost a hundred from the Brahmi script. or other tribal languages spoken in Nagari, its modern derivative, is used Northeast India. Speakers of the to write Hindi, Marathi, Konkani and different language families are said Sanskrit. The recitation of Devanagari to have arrived in the Indian sub- system follows a phonetic order in continent at different times in history; which vowels precede the consonants. the ancestors of the speakers of the Symbols of the are Great Andamanese language belonged, ordered such that sounds produced

Prof Malhar Kulkarni with Prof Ramsubramanian at the Sanskrit cell of IIT Mumbai. Premier institutions for engineering and scientific studies, including IITs, have a Sanskrit cell to help study ancient Indian literature

Perso-Arabic for Sindhi; Devanagari, Malayalam, Kannada, Perso-Arabic and Roman for Konkani.

Irrespective of their varying ancestries, the speakers of the various

Indian languages do not live in isolation. Over millennia, they have

intermingled for social, economic and other reasons. In the process, their languages have been enriched with

words and constructions from the Top: The new National at the back of the mouth cavity (ka, surrounding languages. Such processes Education Policy (2020) aims to reintroduce kha, ga, gha) are followed by those of assimilation and convergence regional/local languages produced progressively in the front define the Indianness of the multitude into the country’s education system of the mouth cavity (cha, chha, ja, of languages, highlighting the unity Bottom: Road and jha and pa, pha, ba, bha). Another underlying the country’s linguistic information signs in multiple languages are a characteristic of the writing system is diversity. common sight in India, a that the vowel is inherently present in marker for the country’s linguistic diversity the consonant symbol. Local scripts were devised and adopted for some languages – for example, Ol Chiki for Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi is Professor in Santali in Jharkhand, West Bengal and Linguistics at the Deccan College (Deemed University), Pune. She received her doctoral Odisha; Kaithi and Tirhuta for Maithili. degree in Linguistics at the Reading University in England. Her research interests include the Some Indian languages are written in study of language change, mapping of dialectal variation, more than one script – Devanagari and diaspora languages and the effect of migration on language.