Guests present at the event held in New Delhi on Thursday.
In a major step that could go a long way in documenting and preserving the language diversity of India, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India on Thursday launched the volumes on languages spoken across ten states in India. The volumes published by Orient BlackSwan publishers include the languages from the states of Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Karnataka.
Elaborating about the project, Dr GN Devy, General Editor and Chairperson, PLSI said, “The central idea of this survey is to document and preserve 780 languages which are being spoken in India today. Today is the day of celebration of language diversity for the country and we will ensure that these languages survive the test of time and place.” PLSI, an initiative of Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, plans to bring out 60 such volumes by the end of next year. The volumes will be available in both Hindi and English. A few will also be published in the regional languages of India.
The next step, he added would be the ‘Global Languages Survey’. Under this, approximately 6000 languages being spoken across the globe will be surveyed and documented before it slips into oblivion. “India will be the only country in the world with such a big repository of world languages,” he added. The survey will be completed by 2022.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who attended the event, appreciated the efforts taken by PLSI to preserve the Indian languages. He also talked about the fundamental importance of languages to human society, saying that, “innovative research related to languages” needs to be encouraged.
Apart from this, “Dakashinayana Indian Thought” (DIT) series which attempts to bring together discursive literature available in Indian languages and democratic culture was also launched. Also present at the event were Kapila Vatsayan, Asis Nandi, Ashok Vajpayee, Major General (Retd.) L.K. Gupta.
