Speaking in mother's tongue

(bdnews24.com, February 25, 2011)

My mother tongue is Tamil, the native language of much of South India. Having been brought up in Mumbai, many miles north of the state of Tamil Nadu, and parts beyond, it was hard enough to keep pace with the many languages that I was exposed to and had to communicate in, let alone one that was, in many ways, alien to me. The only person who spoke it with any degree of accuracy or authenticity was my mother, and that was not assertive or sustained enough where input was concerned to keep me linguistically rooted. And, of course, like any good single child with a strong minded and independent streak to her personality, I was not about to listen to anything a parent said, especially if it smelled even slightly of authority. As a result, like so many people I know, while I take great pride in my own personal heritage and am immensely privileged to be an Indian in today’s progressive and futuristic world, I cannot speak to the very ethnic group to which I actually belong. Is this a good thing? Not at all. After all, I am a Tamilian and should know how to speak my own mother tongue.

This is perhaps the result of an urban upbringing. Almost everyone I know communicates – and prefers to communicate – in English mixed with a touch of the local idiom, a kind of everyday Esperanto. It gets the job done, it makes life easier and it works all around. But is it a good thing, long-term, especially in a time when people are moving further away from their origins and becoming amalgamated, homogenous, even anonymous, none any different from the other, linguistically speaking. Unfortunately, in most cases, this tends to mean that local languages, dialects, even idioms are often lost, as is happening in much of the sub-continent, especially in northeastern India, where some languages are so esoteric and obscure that they are limited to just one small tribe – and the death of the last member of that extended family implies the extinction of the very word itself!

This could conceivably happen in Bangladesh as well, especially if children are not taught and encouraged to use their native language. A recent report tells me that textbooks in their mother tongue and teachers who can use that to communicate with the youngsters are in short supply in the country, particularly in Chapainawabganj district. Children are finding it difficult to deal with classes – and the teachers involved – in Bangla, which they are not as fluent in and cannot manage to catch up with too easily. Some prefer to drop out rather than struggle with not only lessons, but also in building relationships with others of their age who speak either Bangla or English. Santali, for one, is not used in textbooks, so it has to be taught using the Roman alphabet, which makes things a lot more difficult for the youth.

It is indeed a matter of irony that the country itself has signed the United Nations charter that gives “all communities of the world the right to receive education in their mother language”. The charter was ratified in Parliament by the passage of a bill, but the law in this case has not yet been implemented. Which means that these children will have to wait even longer for their lives to be made more comfortable – to a point where they can earn and living and be valuably contributing members of society. Of course, the question does arise: why should the youngsters bother if the government doesn’t? If it is not important enough to provide them with ways and means to be educated, to become self-sufficient and more global citizens, beyond their immediate ambit, why should the children themselves bother to muster up enough motivation and initiative and effort to get the job done without help?

Eventually, it is not a battle that can be fought, leave alone won, by the school children alone, or even by the small community to which they may belong. It has to be a concerted effort by many people – those directly involved, those that run the local schools, the government and, perhaps most important of all, those who care about keeping the culture and traditions of the nation alive, healthy and flourishing. And it is not just a matter of textbooks, but about a lifestyle, a way of living, a style of communication, a route to the future – a future of not just young people and individuals, but also of a country that wants to look into tomorrow. A tomorrow that is the story of success, of development of achievement, of progress. That same tomorrow which we all look forward to, whether we are in Bangladesh, in India, or anywhere else in the world.