International Mother Language Day (21 February): “Multilingual education is a pillar of intergenerational learning” – Unesco

One’s mother tongue is closest to any person as is one’s mother. It is from the mother that a child learns language skills. No mother ever teaches a newborn the rules of grammar; yet all those extremely complicated rules are internalised by the child by merely watching the lip movements and gestures of its mother and by imbibing the tones and textures of her speech. There is a somewhat wrong and widespread impression that children learn languages in school. That may be true of the languages other than the language of one’s home. One has to “learn” through grammar and translation the second or the third language, or more. But, the making of the human brain allows a child to learn most of the complexities of the mother tongue by the time the child is three years old. Writing is another matter. In any case, in the several million years history of Homo sapiens, writing emerged as an apparatus of expression, communication, and memory-storing just about seven thousand years ago. Language is essentially speech; writing is an additional feature that enables long-distance and inter-generational language transactions. 

Ganesh Devy in “Languages not liked by Hindutva ideology suffer existential crisis”, Frontline Magazine, 15 June 2023 >>

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Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) – www.atree.org

Freedom United – www.freedomunited.org

Government of India (all websites ending on “.gov.in”)

Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group – https://kalpavriksh.org

Shodhganga (a reservoir of Indian theses) – https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in

Survival International – www.survivalinternational.org

UCLA Digital Library – https://digital.library.ucla.edu

Unesco – https://en.unesco.org

Unesco digital library – https://unesdoc.unesco.org

Unicef – www.unicef.org

United Nations – www.un.org/en

Video Volunteers – www.videovolunteers.org

WorldCat (“the world’s largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online”) – https://worldcat.org

Combine the name of any particular state, language or region with that of any tribal (Adivasi) community.

Add keywords of special interest (music, poetry, dance just as health, sacred grove and biodiversity); learn about the rights of Scheduled Tribes such as the “Forest Rights Act” (FRA); and the United Nations “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, “women’s rights”, or “children’s right to education”.

Ask a question that includes “tribal” or “Adivasi”, for instance: “Adivasi way of life better?” (or “tribal way of life worse?”)

Specify any particular issue or news item (biodiversity, bonded labour and human trafficking, climate change, ecology, economic development, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, global warming, hunter-gatherers in a particular region or state, prevention of rural poverty, water access).

For official figures include “scheduled tribe ST” along with a union state or region: e.g. “Chhattisgarh ST community”, “Himalayan tribe”, “Scheduled tribe Tamil Nadu census”, “ST Kerala census”, “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group Jharkhand”, “PVTG Rajasthan”, “Adivasi ST Kerala”, “Adibasi ST West Bengal” etc.