Rescuing languages

Sir — This refers to the article, “Mother Language Day: The Bangla connection” (February 21). Extinction of hundreds of languages indicate the disappearance of diversity from the face of earth. With loss of languages, we lose entire societies, their culture and a storehouse of indigenous wisdom. The social scientists and concerned authorities should rise to the occasion to rescue dying languages and cultures to keep heterogeneity and spirit of “equality of all languages” alive, else it will not reflect the Indian democracy in a glorifying light.

Mother tongue remains the basic identity of an individual or a community. This is primarily the reason behind UNESCO’s decision of designating 21st day of February( a red-letter day of Bengalis fighting against Urdu imperialists in erstwhile East Pakistan) as International Mother Language Day, thereby stressing the importance of mother tongue in one’s life.

Also it is high time we realise that no language has been solely declared as the “National Language” of India. Hindi is also another language of the multi-lingual democratic nation named India; the latter’s right over the country is neither superior nor inferior to the other languages. This is the very reason why  the division bench of Gujarat High Court comprising of Chief Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya and Justice AS Dave has categorically stated that there is no national language in India. Again the bench of the very same High Court,  comprising of Justice VM Sahai and AJ Desai, has opined that Hindi is nothing but a foreign language for Gujaratis who were  protesting against the National  Highway Authority of India who had dared to issue a notification in Hindi only right on the soil of Gujarat. This directly proves that the indigenous languages in the non-Hindi speaking regions are superior in status than Hindi which is actually nothing but a mere regional language spoken in the North Indian states, but absolutely foreign outside it.  Thus, if an equitable distribution of Central resources is ensured, it would benefit the cause of all languages and dialects(specially the endangered ones)  to a great extent.