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International Mother Language Day marks 25 years of celebrating linguistic diverseness and the value of parent tongues. (Source: un.org)
Feb 6, 2025 19:21 IST First published on: Feb 6, 2025 astatine 19:19 IST
This twelvemonth marks the 25th day of International Mother Language Day, celebrated connected February 21 each twelvemonth to sphere linguistic diverseness and beforehand parent tongues. My parent had drained her lingua of immoderate hint of rusticity to guarantee that my connection was sanitised. Growing up, each connection connected my lips felt inauthentic. The ceremonial Hindi I wrote successful my schoolhouse papers, the English I learnt successful bid to ascent up the ladder, the soundless connection successful my grandmother’s “dialect” that is stuck successful my pharynx and can’t find its mode to my mouth. Our cities were coloured with flags advertizing “Spoken English” classes. Our English-medium schools blackstarred america for each connection of vernacular uttered. Thus, we bowed to the Language Almighty and enactment successful the hard enactment to larn the connection of aspiration and ambition by internalising the rules of grammar.
In his Minute connected Education, written successful 1835, Lord Macaulay made a lawsuit for the instauration of a “class who whitethorn beryllium interpreters…persons Indian successful humor and colour, but English successful tastes, successful opinions, successful morals and successful intellect”. We fulfilled the intended relation by bartering our self-image and indigenous cognition for being the labour and user marketplace for the Western world. Our vernacular tongues remained inferior, unwritten if spoken, incapable of being a portion of immoderate superior knowledge-making oregon dissemination processes. English was the longest limb of modernity and we wanted to remainder successful its embrace.
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The National Education Policy successful 1968 archetypal came up with the “three-language formula”, wherever the archetypal connection oregon the superior mean of acquisition was expected to beryllium parent lingua oregon determination language. It called for “energetic improvement of Indian languages and literature”. The National Curriculum Framework, 2005 recognised the request for a renewed effort to instrumentality the three-language look and discussed widening entree and resources successful location language(s). The National Education Policy, 2020 besides reaffirmed the mantra of the three-language formula. The implementation of the look varies crossed states and crossed boards. Access to cognition successful determination languages remains limited, and contributes to the stubborn disagreement betwixt learners from municipality and agrarian schools, and learners from regional-language and English-medium schools.
Beyond the argumentation chatter of the formulae of languages are the schools affiliated to the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). These planetary schools, speedy markers of class, person suppressed the medicine and request to thatch the section language. We spot a caller harvest of learners, hybrid successful creation but with nary of their DNA containing immoderate Indian language. It is present imaginable for a four-year-old kid to turn up with Hindi-speaking parents successful a Gujarati-speaking metropolis to beryllium exclusively receiving instructions successful English and French. One wonders wherever these children volition flaunt their tongues embalmed with exotic European languages. The parents are arrogant of their inferiority complex, going from “my kid tin talk English” to “my kid can’t adjacent talk the vernacular language”. They person decided that these languages, not marketable and cashable successful the labour oregon presumption marketplace later, don’t request to beryllium taught formally.
This marks the commencement of a caller people of citizens who volition not beryllium Macaulay’s people of interpreters; rather, they volition request to put much clip successful interpreting their ain identity. Their alleged globalness detaches them from their section civilization and predisposes them to non-belonging. The municipality children of planetary boards volition recognize thing of the agrarian children of authorities boards — they person nary linking languages betwixt themselves. Conversation connected lit and cognition successful autochthonal languages is simply a thought beyond comprehension. The idioms of the autochthonal connection vanish from our mundane language, making mode for a connection often interpolated by English. The books successful the autochthonal connection are not ambitious capable to beryllium taken seriously.
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International Mother Language Day was initiated by Bangladesh successful the UNESCO General Conference successful 1999 and was welcomed into the UN General Assembly successful 2002. It is intended to beforehand linguistic diverseness and enactment the close of children to larn successful their parent lingua for amended comprehension, engagement, and captious reasoning skills. The time serves arsenic a reminder to spot however galore layers of repression are being borne by the languages that past wherever untouched by ceremonial education. The modern acquisition paradigm treats mothers and parent tongues arsenic incapable of earnestly educating their children and frankincense marginalises them.
There’s a acquisition worthy remembering successful a communicative by Alphonse Daudet called The Last Lesson, which is portion of the NCERT English textbook of Class XII. The communicative is acceptable during the Franco-Prussian War, and includes a moving oration by the protagonist connected the value of the autochthonal language, “…when a radical are enslaved, arsenic agelong arsenic they clasp accelerated to their connection it is arsenic if they had the cardinal to their prison”. We indispensable clasp connected to our key.
Upadhyay is simply a Delhi-based writer and researcher
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