The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the highest decision-making body of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, will pass a resolution in its ongoing session here to make efforts to promote and revive the dialects of India.
In addition, it will also make efforts to revive Indian languages in general.
“Indian dialects and languages are vehicles that carry Indian tradition. But unfortunately they are disappearing. People need to nurture these vehicles of tradition. We will pass a resolution to this effect and RSS volunteers throughout India will endeavour to promote these dialects as also languages — with their folklore, prayers, stories, etc. We must save our dialects and languages,” said RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal.
While a language has a script and systematic literature, dialects are spoken tongues that generally do not have separate scripts. A modern language is often created to subsume several dialects, choosing one of these as a standard. For instance, Hindi that uses Devnagari script has taken Khadi Boli — the dialect of Delhi and parts of western UP — as its standard, but it subsumes a large geographical space, called the Hindi belt, that has several spoken tongues, like Khadi Boli, Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Magahi and Rajasthani.
George Grierson's 12-volume linguistic survey of India (1903-23) had identified 179 languages and 544 dialects in India.
At present, there are 22 officially recognised Indian languages but the number of dialects is far more.
Sources in RSS feel that the ambitious programme can expand the Sangh’s influence among people in villages and towns which still feel attached to their dialects. And this is also likely to address the belief that the RSS has celebrated Sanskritised Hindi at the cost of other languages and tongues.
