It is a complex issue. Something we have been grappling with over the years. Ideally linguistic diversity must be protected at all costs. But pragmatically, in our increasing globalised world restricting people to their own language when only a few speak the language can be very limiting. This is especially true for tribals.
For them the choice is not so much between English and their mother tongue but more a choice between the language of the dominant society around them and their tribal language. In our case Tamil which is the medium of the government schools. It has been identified as an issue that Tamil is becoming more dominant. So for the tribal child whether it is English or the state language both are equally threatening to their own language. Tamil is as alien as English. Which was why we chose English in VIDYODAYA.
Children in India grow up bilingual often tri-lingual as a matter of course. (I grew up learning 6 languages as a kid and learnt 3 more as an adult) so teaching English per se is not a problem. The problem is when it dominates all else. And becomes the only language of learning.
Our challenge therefore is not ensuring that they do not learn other languages but ensuring that this is not at the cost of their own language.
This can be done only if a) the oral tradition is preserved – song, story telling etc. b) scripts are developed as we have done for languages that don’t have them and we bring out books in that language and the biggest challenge c) to have mass media communications in their own languages. Because finally it is the media especially TV that will threaten a language. In spite of huge resistance to Hindi from Southern states especially Tamilnadu, thanks to TV and cinema Hindi has become common in the South as well.
No easy answers but ensuring tribal languages thrive will be one of the cornerstones of our culture work.
Stan Thekaekara is Co-founder of Accord & Viswa Bharati Vidyodaya Trust, Gudalur (Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu)
Source: Stan Thekaekara, 28 September 2012, in response to “Let a hundred tongues be heard” by Sumanyu Satpathy (The Hindu, September 27, 2012)
‘Kaathadi’ is a YouTube channel collectively built by students and teachers from the tribal communities in the Nilgiris
The full story with more pictures | New Indian Express >>
Several empirical studies support what the New Education Policy is proposing about education in the mother tongue early on, adding English later. | Some excerpts:
Academic consensus
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has argued since 1953 that “every effort should be made to provide education in the mother tongue”. “Mother tongue-based bilingual schooling is seldom disputed on the basis of its pedagogical reasoning,” explained Carole Benson, a researcher at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism Stockholm University, in a paper half a century later.
In 2016, UNESCO reiterated the message as part of its Global Education Monitoring Report: “To be taught in a language other than one’s own has a negative effect on learning.”
UNESCO’s recommendation: “At least six years of mother tongue education should be provided in ethnically diverse communities to ensure those speaking a different language from the medium of instruction do not fall behind.”
Krishna Kumar, former Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, points out a bit wearily just how water-tight the academic consensus is on the matter. “This is a heavily researched area for decades now,” he said. “It’s so obvious a point that it really can’t be debated. Mother tongue is the best place to start a child’s education.” […]
Self-esteem boost
It is not difficult to see why students taught in their mother tongue would outperform students taught in a second language. For one, teaching a child in a language she doesn’t know leads to “lecture and rote response”, explains Carole Benson. On the other hands, starting a child’s education in the mother tongue “allows teachers and students to interact naturally and negotiate meanings together, creating participatory learning environments that are conducive to cognitive as well as linguistic development”.
Apart from the sheer barriers to learning a new concept in a new language, the existence of the latter also produces negative psychological effects. “English is aspirational but is also feared by children,” explained Shivali Tukdeo, Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies who has researched the sociology of education policy in India since the nineteenth century. “In my research with Adivasi students in Maharashtra, English and mathematics are the most feared subjects.” […]
The fact that India is unable to work out even the answers to basic questions such as medium of education even seven decades after Independence means that Indian children have some of the worst learning outcomes in the world. As per World Bank metric used to measure schooling quality, for 2018 India chalked up a figure of 355 – the same as war-torn Afghanistan. Some of the countries which have better schooling quality than India include Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Iraq.
Source: “Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against scientific consensus?” by Shoaib Daniyal (Scroll.in 6 August 2020)
URL: https://scroll.in/article/969356/why-is-india-obsessed-with-english-medium-education-when-it-goes-against-scientific-consensus
Date visited: 9 August 2020
[Bold typeface added above for emphasis]
Ādivāsi [ādibāsi] may be used in accordance with local conventions; and increasingly so for official purposes (e.g. in “Conserving Tradition and Practices of Adivasi Communities in India” published on NIDM.gov.in); Dr. Ivy Hansdak clarifies:
“Adivasi – which is derived from Sanskrit – is applied to the dark-skinned or Austro-Asiatic indigenous groups of India (usually those from Eastern India). It is a commonly-used term in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. It is also used by the local Mongoloid tribes of North Eastern India for the migrant workers who were brought in as indentured labourers to work in tea plantations during the colonial period. ‘Tribal’ is a very broad term in the English language and includes all the different indigenous groups of India. The terms ‘indigenous’ and ‘aboriginal’ are not used often as the government claims most groups are indigenous in India. ‘Denotified Tribes’ is only used for those nomadic tribes who were notified as ‘criminal tribes’ during the British Raj [colonial rule]; later they were ‘denotified’ but still bear the stigma.” (emails dated 2020 & 2023)
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[*] Some clarifications on caste-related issues by reputed scholars
Understanding “caste” in the context of Indian democracy: The “Poona Pact of 1932”
“Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar differed over how to address caste inequities through the electoral system. Their exchanges led to the Poona Pact of 1932, which shaped the reservation system in India’s electoral politics. […]
Two prominent figures who have significantly contributed to this discourse are Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Father of the Constitution. The two stalwarts of Indian politics, while revered equally by the public, had contrasting views on the caste system. Their subsequent debates have shaped the course of Indian society and politics. While Gandhi denounced untouchability, he did not condemn the varna system, a social hierarchy based on occupation, for most of his life. He believed in reforming the caste system through the abolition of untouchability and by giving equal status to each occupation. On the other hand, BR Ambedkar, a Dalit himself, argued that the caste system disorganised and ‘demoralised Hindu society, reducing it to a collection of castes’. […]
And yet, despite their differences, they developed an understanding to work for the betterment of the marginalised.” – Rishabh Sharma in “How Ambedkar and Gandhi’s contrasting views paved way for caste reservation” (India Today, 6 October 2023)
URL: https://www.indiatoday.in/history-of-it/story/ambedkar-gandhi-caste-system-poona-pact-1932-reservation-2445208-2023-10-06
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“That upper caste groups should declare themselves to be OBCs [Other Backward Castes] and want to avail of the reservation policy is a pandering to caste politics of course, as also are caste vote-banks. It is partially a reflection of the insecurity that the neo-liberal market economy has created among the middle-class. Opportunities are limited, jobs are scarce and so far ‘development’ remains a slogan. There’s a lot that is being done to keep caste going in spite of saying that we are trying to erode caste. We are, of course, dodging the real issue. It’s true that there has been a great deal of exploitation of Dalit groups and OBC’s in past history; making amends or even just claiming that we are a democracy based on social justice demands far more than just reservations. The solution lies in changing the quality of life of half the Indian population by giving them their right to food, water, education, health care, employment, and social justice. This, no government so far has been willing to do, because it means a radical change in governance and its priorities.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University) interviewed by Nikhil Pandhi (Caravan Magazine, 7 October 2015)
URL: https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/discipline-notion-particular-government-interview-romila-thapar
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“Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage, privilege, or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you …. For this reason, many people—including those we might see as good and kind people—could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or that group.” – Book review by Dilip Mandal for Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (The Print, 23 August 2020)
URL: https://theprint.in/opinion/oprah-winfrey-wilkerson-caste-100-us-ceos-indians-wont-talk-about-it/487143/
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“The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent years. [However] caste is in no sense disappearing: indeed, the present wave of neo-liberal policies in India, with privatisation of enterprises and education, has strengthened the importance of caste ties, as selection to posts and educational institutions is less based on merit through examinations, and increasingly on social contact as also on corruption. There is a tendency to assume that caste is as old as Indian civilization itself, but this assumption does not fit our historical knowledge. To be precise, however, we must distinguish between social stratification in general and caste as a specific form. […]
From the early modern period till today, then, caste has been an intrinsic feature of Indian society. It has been common to refer to this as the ‘caste system’. But it is debatable whether the term ‘system’ is appropriate here, unless we simply take for granted that any society is a ‘social system’. First, and this is quite clear when we look at the history of distinct castes, the ‘system’ and the place various groups occupy within it have been constantly changing. Second, no hierarchical order of castes has ever been universally accepted […] but what is certain is that there is no consensus on a single hierarchical order.” – Harald Tambs-Lyche (Professor Emeritus, Université de Picardie, Amiens) in “Caste: History and the Present” (Academia Letters, Article 1311, 2021), pp. 1-2
URL: https://www.academia.edu/49963457
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“There is a need for intercultural education. We all need to work together to bridge these divides not only between religions and castes but also regions. It is not correct to think that one part is better than the other. Some of the limitations of India as a whole are due to our common heritage, say the one that has restricted women from having a flourishing life for themselves.” – Prof. V. Santhakumar (Azim Premji University) in “On the so called North-South Divide in India” (personal blog post in Economics in Action, 13 April 2024)
URL: https://vsanthakumar.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/on-the-so-called-north-south-divide-in-india/