Remedy via SOP and Criterias for Recognition of Pending Indian Languages

By Melarbor L Thabah

Language is one of the most fundamental components of culture. It is the primary vehicle through which traditions, values, beliefs, and histories are expressed, transmitted from one generation to the next and preserved with the passage of time. India is a diverse country with a diverse group of people of all races ranging from Negrito, Proto Australoid, Mediterranean, Western Brachycephals, Nordic and Mongoloid with its sub races Indo – Tibetan and Austro Asiatic. Commensurating with these different races is the contiguity of different languages which exist in each and every state of India. Over the decades, the people of these states speaking these different languages have pleaded to get recognition by the Central Government since there are certain perks associated with getting recognized into the 8^th Schedule of the Constitution. In a span of 79 years, after more than 7 decades had passed, 22 Languages have been recognized by the Union Cabinet on the recommendation of the Home Ministry which in my view, should have been recommended by the Culture Ministry since language is culture, arts, tradition and heritage. The Home Ministry must no longer dealing with culture. This logic has been absent ever since the inception of the 8^th Schedule in 1950.

After the recognition of these 22 languages, there is still a plethora of Indian languages of the genuine citizens of India that have been left unrecognized. To mitigate the concerns of states, the Indian government set up the Pahwa Committee (1996) tasked with establishing guidelines and criterias for determining which languages could be added in the 8^th Schedule. Seven years later, another committee called the Sitakant Mohapatra Committee (2003) was formed for the same purpose with aims as the former committee. Both committees were constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Let us first gaze below, the benefits of being recognized as a Language into the 8^th Schedule:

1. Recognition & Status: The recognized language is granted official status by the Indian Government and gains representation on the Official Languages Commission, which advises the President on language policies.

2. Cultural Preservation & Linguistic Development: The Central Government is under obligation to take proactive measures to develop these languages so they can grow in richness and serve as effective modes of modern communication thus preserving cultural heritage and tradition.

3. Literary Promotion: Recognized languages are automatically recognized by the National Academy of Letters, The Sahitya Academy, boosting native literature, in publishing, grants, awards and translation services to promote the recognized regional literature.

4. Equal Representation: Recognition provides marginalized groups with a sense of pride, historical identity, prevents marginalization and legally empowers the linguistic community.

5. Competitive Examinations: Recognized languages can be used in central examinations like the UPSC, SSC, Departmental exams using their mother tongue as medium.

6. Financial Aid: Recognition enables eligibility for developmental funds, aiding educational infrastructure, research and linguistics from the Union Government.

7. Technology & Accessibility: Promotes development of local software, translation technology and government websites accessibility in regional dialects.
8. Parliamentary Rights: Parliamentarians are permitted to address the House in any of the Eighth Schedule languages, with the government providing official translation services.

Vexingly, the 1996 and 2003 committees could not establish clear objective guidelines, could not come up with any suggestion and were inconclusive regarding how languages can be distinguished from dialects leaving the selection process for languages to be included in the 8^th Schedule without a clearly defined framework and blueprint. This failure to distinguish language from dialect is because both these committees never went to those states from which those languages who are vying for recognition emerge from.

Cavalier styles of just sitting in the Home Ministry office in Delhi with few telephone calls, emails and faxed documents to verify whether it is a language or dialect or to develop criterias exemplifies in the highest of standards, a lackadaisical attitude of the erstwhile committees. Neither committee travelled to states to conduct on-the-ground linguistic surveys and field research. Instead, the Pahwa and Sitakant Mohapatra Committees operated from Delhi as expert panels. No wonder they both failed miserably. Due to the pecuniary losses incurred by these committees and time consumption no committee should be formed ever again.

In their stead, my cogent solution for a mandatory, compulsory and fundamental application by the Home Ministry of the Standard Operating Procedure and Criterias must be established and implemented as stated below:

Standard Operating Procedure: The Home Affairs Ministry Officials should form 5 Recommending Groups (RGs) respectively to travel to each and every state where the 38 shortlisted languages are vying for recognition in the 8^th Schedule. Each of these groups should perform hands on field research in those states and finish within this year. One group will to one state and the other to the other states and so on.

The Languages Official Groups of the Home Affairs Ministry should by staying for not less than one week in each and every state whose language is vying for recognition. While staying in that state for one week they should undertake the following activities: (a). To conduct an official one-day meeting with state government officials, ministers, most importantly opposition members, the state education and the state arts and culture departments about the language being actively considered at hand; in which these entities will make a case about the language and that it is a language and not a dialect. (b). They should have an official one-day meeting with State Language Society, Academicians of that Language, Community leader’s association, NGOs and eminent social activists of the state to interact with them and for them to make a case and submit presentations. (c). To have a joint interaction with a consortium of Faith and Traditional Leaders whether preaching or performing of religious ceremonies is done in that language being considered (d). They should visit educational institutions starting with two rural schools (1 community and 1 government school), 2 colleges (1 community and 1 government college and 2 universities (1 state and 1 central university) to interact with students and faculty members in a joint setting.

All the aforementioned SOP activities of meetings and visits within this one week are to ascertain about one thing, with one goal that is to find out and establish grounded facts whether the proposed language(s) into the 8^th Schedule are really Languages or merely Dialects in which dialects are basically derivatives of the parent language.

10 Fundamental Criterias in which each of these five groups visiting the states respectively must evaluate are:

1. Whether they are recognised as Modern Indian Language (MIL) which has books to be studied from Class 1 to Masters to PhD which is most important from the 10 Criterias?
2. Whether they are languages or dialects known through interactions with students and faculty members of  schools, colleges, universities, ITIs and informal private training institutions?
3. What percentage of the indigenous people of the state speak the language?
4. Whether public events like massive religious gatherings, movements on the ground by NGOs, political parties, pressure groups and religious meetings are conducted in that language?
5. Whether it possesses well robust literacy tradition in the form of print and media?
6. Whether it is officially recognized as a state language by the state government?
7. Whether it is spoken in the Autonomous District Council sessions if the language considered falls in a 6^th Schedule state?
8. Whether it is used as a qualifying paper or any paper by the District Selection Committees?
9. Whether any search engine like google has a translation of the language concerned?
10. Whether the history, arts, culture, tradition and folklore are transmitted in this language concerned through the generations?

If they are confirmed that they are languages from the SOP and Criterias, then they should be recognized without any doubt and delay. Being a Khasi man, my language has fulfilled all these 10 criterias. Delay in recognition of this language of the genuine Khasi citizens of India may allegedly have a blatant racist angle to it. The reason who I am insinuating this not only as a Khasi man wanting to get my Khasi language recognized is because of the fact that a foreign Language, Nepali; from the sovereign nation of Nepal who has a lingering land dispute with India in three places namely Kalapani, Lipulekh and Lampaduria is recognized as an 8^th Scheduled Indian Language whilst genuine Indian Languages have not been recognized for 79 years in spite of us being genuine Indian citizens, is a shameful humiliating experience that we, the Indigenous Indians had to endure.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Using the cogent SOP and 10 Criterias that I had developed, I exhort for the absolute implementation of this blueprint in toto without a shadow of a doubt thus overcoming the failures of the two erstwhile committees whilst enabling addendum of languages into the 8^th Schedule to be effectively and easily solved.