LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT : THE CASE OF INDIA
National development can be seen from the perspectives of standard of life and quality of life. Standard of life can be qualified in terms of GNP, NNP, and such like. Quality of life is inter-related with the standard of life but can be seen as distinctly different. Soft indicators such nutrition, life expectancy, child death at birth, and food distribution make up factors that measure quality of life. Creatively, innovativeness originality of thinking in economic, scientific and cultural expressions form parts of it.
Economics is network of relationship. This network extends form the Wall Street to the backyard of a farmer at home. Why brinjal rate goes up when there is bombing in Iran, why no pumps could be set up for irrigation or supply of drinking water even as payment of kickback of 200 millions for Bofors gun deal is made are topics to be explained and understood by all concerned. More important for our purpose is the interdependence of network of economic relationships and the network of communication channels. A coal miner can become a Prime Minister only if channels of communication are kept open between the two levels. In a country with a single language such communication takes place exploiting the language and its varieties, whereas in a multilingual country it can only be achieved by exploiting the resources of many languages.
International trade is an important mechanism for the increase of GNP in any country. In a pluricultural world, many languages are an assent for international trade and commerce. The Japanese, for example, use English for trade negotiations, but fall back on Japanese for mutual consultations. This gives them an advantage over their adversaries who are not familiar with the Japanese language. The same can be said of Chinese and Russian negotiations for trade and commerce. Under these circumstances, not knowing many languages acts as a handicap, and knowledge of many languages is a resource.
As in the case of international trade, so is the case with internal trade. A feature of urbanisation in India is the creation of multilingual communities. One has a better chance of commerce if one can meet one's multilingual clientele in their home languages.
Ability to defend borders is another indicator of national development. In matters of defence also, knowledge of many languages is a necessity. Not to speak of negotiations for defence equipments, messages coded in different languages. The American Defence Language School, which teaches over 400 languages at any one time, is the recognition of the need for multilingual capability by a monolingual country.
It is said that the world has shrunk. People speak of a global village. By attaining the capacity to travel 20,000 miles per hour and by our accent on speed, we have made the distant familiar, but we have made the neighbour a stranger. We have acquired a language to communicate with the distant, across nations, but we have no language to communicate with the neighbour.
It will, thus; be seen that even if the world is constituted of monolingual member states, for tourism or trade, for diplomacy or defence, learning of many languages is a necessity. For a multilingual and pluricultural country, it is all the more a need, not only for national development, but for the very being of such a state.
In a multilingual country there are dominantly monlingual territorial units. But one of the characteristics of these units is that they are multilingual. This multilingualism is nurtured by internal trade, tourism, pilgrimage and good neighbourliness. The country is safe to the extent the multilingual character of the units is recongnised. Non-recognition of multilingualism gives rise to identity assertion movements, links linguism with ethnicity, and promotes separatism. National symbols come into constant conflict with regional symbols, and regionalism triumphs over nationalism.
Take for example, Assam and Karnataka, in India. In both the States, approximately 64 per cent of the population speak the dominant language as mother tongue, Assamese in the case of Assam and Kannada in the case of Karnataka. In both the States insensitivity to the minority mother tongues has resulted in the majority assertion, exploitation of the minorities, and erosion of nationalism. Assam, already divided into seven states, is threatened by further possible division. After the establishment of the Konkani State, there is demand for Darjeeling as a separate unit, Uttarkhand, Jharkhand and plains Tribal region as separate units.
India, a country with 1652 mother tongues, approximately 700 languages belonging to four or five language families, written in 10 major script systems and a host of minor ones, presents the biggest challenge of language management, and the most important alternative to dominant monolingualism. If one looks at the map of India, three distinct picture emerge. There are some States, where the majority language is spoken by between 85 and 95 pre cent of the population. There are some States, where no language is spoken by more than 20 pre cent of the population. Even the dominantly monolingual areas are communicationally heterogeneous. Dialects, sociolects, styles and register mark communication in different regions and strata of society. Many people interpret this diversity as divisive and call the Indian society a stagnant society. But, on the contrary, this has been a vibrant society for the past thousands of years. There has been tremendous immigration due to internal calamities. Artisans from one region have worked and settled in another region. Pleating of different strands has resulted in national intergration and recongnition of India as a single linguistic and culture area. The homogenisation, attempted at different regions, threatens to bar the confluence of different streams, and is the greatest threat to national development.
Quality of life is measured through cultural efflorescence and the value system of communities. We have an educational system in India which is antithetic to the multicultural value system and promotes lesser number of languages at the higher echelons of education. India is the eighth country in terms of world publishing. Of the approximately 15000 titles published per year, fifty per cent are in English and the other fifty per cent account for all the Indian languages put together. This in itself shows one aspect of distortion. The good Indian writers in English can be counted on the finger tips. Not a single Indian writer or critic is mentioned in the history of English literature. Most English publishing, due to lack of innovative use of language is derivative, and pale replica of life in India or abroad. With the lack of competence, which would permit creative use of the language, and with equal attachment to English, the development of regional languages is blocked and we have the making of an average society, non-creative, non-innovative and, not at all, original in thought and action.
Mother tongues are the fountain head of creative thinking
Approximately 10,000 hours are spent on the acquisition of mother tongue upto the age of five. This gives time to acquire a sense of identity and cultural rootedness to the child. the sense of identity can be expanded by grafting it with a larger identity. In the Hindi region of the country, the natural grafting has resulted in double socialisation, dialect socialisation at home and standard socialisation outside. Konkani, being written in four scripts, and Santhali in five have both extended identity and integrated identity.If instead of extending the identity, attempts are made to supplant one of another, there develops a rootlessness and anomie which distracts one from the value base of the community. In case of tribal education, this is evident. The tribal children, divorced from their value system, are seldom integrated with the value system of the dominant structure to which they are sought to be assimilated. The worst example is provided by English, where early English education supplanting mother tongue education, results in culture perception blind sports, dissociation form the myths and symbols of society and non-creative use of the mother tongue as well as the second language. It results in unbalanced relation with the immediate environment and inhibition of the interaction of society with science. If science is accumulated knowledge of mankind, and philosophy is what we do not know, then, the alien language blocks the creative exploration of both the known and the unknown. In the process, even if some sectional or regional development takes place, national development is thwarted.
When one scans through national literature, one finds that Bilhana from Kashmir flourished in the court of Karnataka, and a scholar from Orissa received the patronage of the King at Trivandrum. One finds Bendre (a Marathi mother tongue speaker), Masti (a Tamil mother tongue speaker), DVG or Kailasam (Telugu mother tongue speaker) were in the fort of Kannada literature as much as Radhanath and Annanda Shankar (Bengali mother tongue speakers), Madhusudan(a Marathi mother tongue speaker) were in the forefront of Oriya literature. One also finds that artisans form Madurai worked in the Konark temple, and artisans from Tamilnadu built temples in Gujarat. Leaders of almost all sects established their Maths at Puri, and Brahmins form Karnataka manage the Pashupatinath temple at Kathmandu. Freedom of the people to live in peace with their language and culture in any part of the country bound the country as a whole. 'Sons of the soil' restricting admission to outsiders, majorities exploiting the minorities by forcing them to be assimilated, castes and communities transforming into political pressure groups maintaining their boundaries are responsible for restricting the scale of communication and thereby hinder national development.
Although India consists of small zones of communication they merge into one another in a unique way. If one marks every ten miles from the north to the south or east to the west in a map of India, one finds no break in communication at contiguous points of the scale. Communication breaks down only at distant points. Each language merges into another at the linguistic border, creating a bi-or multilingual zone.
If science, technology and economic development are to be linked together for the benefit of national development, then the community must participate in the developmental debate. This debate cannot be carried on in a second or foreign language. Use of second and foreign language may result in aping or borrowing technology, but does not lead to the development of problem solving technology appropriate to a situation. Appropriate technology results from the interaction of science with society. Many languages of a multicultural society must be exploited towards opening up channels of multilingual communication. This is the only way to ensure coordinated national development.
National development and language development are irrevocably connected. If India has to continue as a democracy, many languages need to be nurtured as a defence of democracy. Advice and consent of the polity is needed for the funning of dimocratic institutions. Centrally controlled media is bound to give rise to autocracy. Language education is the core of general education, as subjects cannot be taught and learnt without language competence. Publishing for children, neoliterates and school drop-outs can only be meaningful in their many languages. In India, multilingualism is the norm. Bilingualism from this perspective is a handicap, a restriction of facilities. Bilingualism at successive stages should be seen as a step towards maintenance of multilingualism and pluriculturalism. It is possible to discuss economic development, scientific or technological development and cultural development in isolation. But national development entails all these and more. Language development forms core of this discussion as it is around languages that societies and civilisations have grown.
Language gets interwoven with religion, region, caste, ethnicity, profession, socio-economic status in course of cultural interaction. Urbanisation, industrialisation, and modernisation bring people together in a speed which was hitherto unknown. Delimitaion of boundaries of States, Districts and Constituencies tend to separate and unite people in newer combinations, which creates tremendous strain on the structure of society. In migration and immigration change the polity so that demographic balance is disturbed resulting in anxiety among the people about the retention of their language and culture. These have often far reaching consequences on the social, psychological, economic, political and administrative state of peoples and societies. If not properly handled, these may result in communal, ethnic and language movements which distract people from all development, economic, social or scientific. Under these circumstances, national development will remain a far cry.
National development is more than block development sectoral development or regional development. The whole is greater than the aggregate of parts. National development presupposes coordinated and concerted development of all blocks, sectors and regions. India is a country of minority languages, small communication zones, diverse faiths and multiple ethnicities. All of them must be encouraged to develop in such a way that each can contribute to the welfare of the nation, and through the nation, to humanity without feeling threatened by any one. By respecting the different, they can grow in concentric circles, intertwining with one another, enriching each other, and be justly proud of belonging to a nation.