LANGUAGE IN INDIA

MINORITY RIGHTS AND EDUCATION
QUESTION OF SURVIVAL OF MINORITY LANGUAGES
S. Imtiaz Hasnain, Ph.D.

MAN VERSUS ANIMALS - LANGUAGE A DISTINGUISHING MARK

If one were to address the question regarding the greatest invention of humankind, the answer of most laymen (and more informed one, as well) would be technological breakthrough on which hinged the material progress of the species: creation of modern vaccines, wheels, and the microprocessor. However, these breakthroughs would not have been possible without language - but language is always taken for granted, just like walking or breathing. It seems ability to speak is an entirely natural function. But all languages are inventions. The words we speak or write, the system, which underlies their use, have all been made up.

It is this act of making up, which separates humans from animals - 'us' and 'they'. In fact, the possession of language, more than any other attribute, distinguishes man from other animals. To understand man's humanity one must understand the language that makes him human. According to the philosophy expressed in the myths and religions of many peoples, it is language, which is the source of human life and power. For example, the tradition among the people of Mali in West Africa is that a newborn child is a kuntu, a 'thing', not yet a muntu, a 'person'. Only by the act of learning language that an inanimate becomes an animate - the child becomes a human being. Thus according to this tradition, we all become 'human' because we all know language (at least one language).

I TALK, THEREFORE, I AM

I talk, therefore, I am. This connection along the line of 'I' (as 'human')-'talk' (as 'language')-'am' (as 'being' or 'existence') can be traced to the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer. Expounding and elaborating the insights of the 19th century German thinkers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Herder, Gadamer has reminded as that language and human existence are inseparable from each other. The use of language is part of the essence of human being: language is essentially human and the human being is an essentially linguistic being. According to Gadamer, language is indispensable to human beings' understanding of the world. For the world that human beings experience, or the world that presents itself to human being, is constituted by language. Hence "language is a medium where I and world meet" (Gadamer, 1995: 474) and language introduces its users to "a particular orientation and relationship to the world". (Gadamer, 1995: 443).

The philosopher Charles Taylor (1994) has also established the connection between language and human existence. He points out that human identity is not constituted "monologically" but "dialogically" through the interactive relationships, contact, and dialogue with other persons.

To quote Taylor:

We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expressions… But we learn these modes of expression through exchanges with others. People do not acquire the languages needed for self-definition on their own. Rather, we are introduced to them through interaction with others who matter to us…" (Taylor, cited in Chen, 1998)

Gadamer has also given the idea of dialogicality for acquiring the language of human identity when he says:

... language has its true being only in dialogue, in coming to an understanding [emphasis in original]… Coming to understanding… is a life process in which a community of life is lived out… human language must be thought of as a special and unique life process since, in linguistic communication 'world' is disclosed… Thus the world is the common ground… uniting all who talk to one another. All kinds of human community are kinds of linguistic community: even more, they form language. For language is by nature the language of conversation. (Gadamer 1995: 446)

DIVERSITY, A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

If all kinds of human community are kinds of linguistic community, as Gadamer points out, then the diversity of language and cultures becomes a foregone conclusion. Since every language is a view of the world which is shaped by the historical tradition embodied in that language, the diversity of languages and cultures is to be celebrated as something which is intrinsically valuable and enriching to the world.

Each people is justified in having a sense of pride in its history, culture, tradition and language. This sense of pride gives him an identity, destiny and the sense of being. And if the pride is snatched away from him, his identity will be lost. Cultural invasion leading to loss of cultural heritage and language is being witnessed all over the world.

It may be Narmada for us or it may be destruction of forests in Malaysia. For the Penans, destruction of the forests represents far more than the loss of subsistence. It implies the death of a people and, anthropomorphologically speaking, the death of a language. It also brings with it a sort of collective amnesia where by generations of Penan have forgotten that the use of the word 'thank you' is alien to their culture, for sharing in their culture is an obligation; they have six words for 'we' and only one word for 'he', 'she' and 'it' which underlines the solidarity and sense of sharedness among a people; they have further forgotten that there existed over 2000 names for streams alone, each imbued with its own history, representing the cultural significance of the land. Language is not merely a cluster of words or a set of grammatical rules. It is a "flesh of the human spirit by which the soul of a culture reaches into the material world." (Davis, 1999: 65)

It is, according to Michael Krauss, an anthropological linguist from the university Alaska, "a supreme achievement of a uniquely human collective genius, as divine and endless a mystery as a living organism." (1992:8) What will be the significance of such diversity from linguistic human rights and pedagogical points of view?

ASSIGNATION OF POWER THROUGH LANGUAGE

Although in making a startling pronouncement that language is disciplined, i.e. "controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its power and dangers" (1972:216) Foucault has carefully avoided the assignation of power in any restricted sense to a particular group, he did concentrate on the system of education for studying the dissemination of power. In fact, one of the most successful means of destroying and retarding languages has been education. Post-Arnoldian cultural criticism is suggestive of a consensus that 'domination' through coercion has given way to 'intellectual and moral leadership' achieved through the manufacture of consent by means of ideology and discursive practices. Force has been replaced by technology supported by education, which comes with its own textbooks. These textbooks may not necessarily be in the language of the minorities.

Education is an "important medium for imparting not only pedagogic instruction but attitudes, values and behaviours" (Black 1996). It is through education that transmission of language, culture and moral values is possible. Hence, the right to education has been recognized as an important right in the Indian Constitution as per 86th Constitutional Amendment (Dec. 2002). In a multilingual set up, education for the linguistic minorities is a highly sensitive and politically controversial topic, although socially relevant and important to most societies in the world. It invokes a tension between minority's cultural identity and national loyalty. While at one level there is a need to give autonomy to the linguistic minorities to have their educational freedom for maintaining cultural and linguistic identity. On the other hand, it is believed that too much of autonomy will lead to separation. It will contribute to divergence between the norms and values of the minority and majority groups.

RIGHTS OF MINORITIES TO TRANSMIT THEIR VALUES

It has long been recognized in international standards that minorities should have a right to transmit their values and worldview through the medium of education. In fact, the minority's treaties of the League of Nations made explicit provision for education much before the installation of human rights as a universal concept of law through the United Nations Charter.

The Polish Minorities Treaty (1919) deserves worth mentioning here not only because it "served as a model for the range of league instruments" (Thornberry 1994:10) but also because it placed emphasis on the linguistic medium of education by treating language as an integral part of minority identity. In fact, reference to Polish Treaty was made by K.M. Munshi in the Constituent Assembly where he pleaded for inclusion of right to "mother tongue and the script thereof" as a fundamental right.

INDIAN CONSTITUTION

Indian Constitution provides certain rights to the minorities to preserve their language, religion and culture and even enjoins upon the government under special directives to use and safeguard the interest of minority languages in education. But when it comes to defining the term 'minority' or even providing certain criteria for determining a minority, the Constitution remains silent. Even instruments at the international level have not been able to arrive at any consensus with regard to the definition. It is only on the basis of cases that came up before the Supreme Court that principles and guidelines for deciding about the minority status of a community can be formulated. For example, the Kerala High Court, after observing that the Constitution granted specific rights to minorities, declared that "in the absence of any special definition we must hold that any community, religious or linguistic, which is numerically less than 50 per cent of the population of the state is entitled to the right guaranteed by the constitution" (Hingorani qtd. in Capotorti 1991: 9).

Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution provide certain rights to linguistic minorities and also make provision as to how these rights can best be safeguarded and realized and Article 350 enjoins upon the state governments to safeguard the interest of the linguistic minorities.

THE CONSTITUTION IS SILENT ABOUT DETERMINING MINORITY STATUS

While Constitution remains silent with regard to providing criteria for determining a minority, even the minorities' education has remained at the crossroads. In the absence of any coherent attempts in any of the various commissions, committees and panels appointed by the central and state governments from time to time " no clear-cut policy or guidelines were framed to regulate the education for minorities..." (Thakur 1999: 28) Even in the National Policy on Education of both 1968 and 1986, a passing reference has been made on minorities' education. In fact in National Policy on Education, 1986, the only notable reference to minorities' education was:

Some minority groups are educationally deprived or backward. Greater attention will be paid to the education of these groups in the interest of equality and social justice. This naturally includes the constitutional guarantees given to them to establish and administer educational institutions and protection to their language and culture. Simultaneously, objectivity will be reflected in the preparation of textbooks and in all school activities, and all possible measures will be taken to promote an integration based on appreciation of common national goals and ideals, in conformity with the core curriculum. (quoted in Thakur 1999:28)

This reference to minorities' education had a very limited purpose and in the subsequent program of action no pronouncement related to policy guidelines on education for minorities was ever made. "Even the highest national document on education did not pronounce any policy guidelines..." (Thakur 1999:29).

THE QUESTION OF MINORITY LANGUAGE

Emanating from the issue of minority/majority and minority's education, is the question of minority language. Whose language should be called a 'minority language? Are the languages included in the Eighth Schedule outside the scope of minority language? Or do we have an Orwellian dictum that some are minority languages but some are more minority than others. For example, Tulu, Dogri, Kodagu are minority languages compared to languages of the Eighth Schedule, but within scheduled languages, Sindhi, Konkani, Nepali, Kashmiri, etc. are more minority than Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, etc. Like the framers of Indian Constitution, even linguistic scholars have not provided any convincing argument regarding 'minority languages'. Some times it is suggested that languages outside the Eighth Schedule are minority languages, thus adding further confusion to the problem:

The languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, for example, enjoy certain privileges by virtue of their dominance, which are often denied to the minority languages. They are recognized media for education and administration in states, where several hundred-minority languages clamor for recognition. (Pattanayak 1986:25)

THE QUESTION OF LINGUISTIC MINORITIES

Corollary to the question of minority language is the issue of 'linguistic minorities'. The Court sought to explain the meaning of 'linguistic minority' as:

... one which must at least have a separate spoken language. It is not necessary that language should also have a distinct script for those who speak to be a linguistic minority. (quoted in Yaqin 1982: 70)

The Commissioner of Linguistic Minorities considers the question of linguistic minority with reference to state. In one of its Reports it suggests that linguistic minority "at the state level means any group of people whose mother tongue is different from the principal language of the state, and at the district or the taluk levels, different from the principal language of the district or the taluk. (Vol.28,p.8)

IDENTIFYING LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN INDIA

Since each of India's states has an official language, those who speak another language as their mother tongue regard themselves as belonging to a linguistic minority. However, if we broaden the scope of linguistic minority to include any group of persons whose mother tongue is different from the principal language of the state, then we may arrive at identifying two types of linguistic minorities belonging to two broad categories, namely:

1. Recognition category
2. Non-Recognition category

Recognition category has three sub groups:

1. The minority group whose language is officially recognized by the Union Government.
2. The minority group whose mother tongue is officially recognized in the State of its origin as a dominant regional language of the State.
3. The minority group whose mother tongue is included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution but not officially recognized in any of the States in India.

Non-Recognition Category can be sub categorized as:

1. Tribal
2. Non Tribal
3. Non-scheduled languages

If we look at the pattern of distribution of languages all over the country, four patterns of minority languages may be discerned:

1. Some minority languages have a conception of a territorial homeland. They are recognized dominant languages with concentration in specific regions, e.g. Hindi, Telugu, Punjabi, Manipuri etc. There are other minority languages which do not have any territorial affiliation and have the speakers dispersed all over India, e.g. Urdu, Sindhi.
2. There are some minority languages, which have the sense of cohesion within the Community across the trans-territorial boundary, as is the case of Nepali. It was included in the Eighth Schedule because of the political concessions given to the Nepalese of the Himalayan West Bengal. According to 1991 Census, it is one of the fifteenth dominant languages holding 14th position in the order of strength used in a good number of states, besides being an official language of specific region i.e. Sikkim.
3. The community may regard itself as a disadvantaged or as an achieving minority because its language lives in the shadow of a culturally dominant language and has become a marker of an increasingly smaller in-group communication. The dominance may be on account of certain political, educational, social or religious factors. Incidence of bilingualism becomes appreciably high. Shift and loyalty towards the dominant language of state becomes a characteristic of its speakers, e.g. Tulu, Kodagu. Thus, while Konkani remains dominated by Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam, Tulu is struggling under the shadow of culturally dominant Kannada language, despite the fact that both these language speakers have a glorious past.
4. Written versus Spoken: There are some minority languages, which cut across regional boundaries on account of being written, while there are other minority languages, which are merely spoken and remain confined to a particular region only, e.g. Juang in Orissa

PROBLEMS PRESENTED AND POSED BY MINORITY LANGUAGES

An array of problems may be presented by the minority languages, which differ from language to language.

1. A minority scheduled language in one state may be the dominant regional and official language of the majority. For example, Kannada in Kerala, Telugu in Tamil Nadu, etc.
2. A minority scheduled language which is a recognized official language in a particular state but numerically constitutes the language of the minority group, e.g. Urdu in Kashmir.
3. A minority scheduled language may enjoy status of official language due to high incidence of bilingualism in that language, e.g. Hindi in Himachal Pradesh, Marathi/ Kannada in Goa.
4. A minority non-scheduled language which is not a mother tongue of majority of the inhabitant of the states, but enjoys the status of official language, e.g. English in North East States.
5. A minority non-scheduled language which is the language of minority population in more than one state, e.g. Santhali in Orissa, Assam, Bihar and West Bengal.
6. A minority non-scheduled language which continues to remain a minority language is spite of being the language of majority population in the state, e.g. Bhili in Dadar & Nagar Haveli territory.
7. A minority non-scheduled language spoken only in one state, e.g. Juang in Orissa.

A CASE STUDY OF URDU AND TULU

For looking into how, despite the guarantees provided to minorities to conserve their languages and the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, languages of the linguistic minorities are still struggling for survival, we have largely taken the case of Urdu and Tulu, a non scheduled language.

STATUS OF URDU

Of all the myriad languages spoken in India, perhaps the most quintessentially Indian of them is Urdu. But strangely enough, Urdu occupies a rather queer position in the Indian linguistic scene. For some it is perceived as being a cause for meaningful antagonism, for others it is a culmination of composite culture, hence to be preserved in its entire entirety. In terms of numerical strength Urdu holds sixth position but its speakers are dispersed all over the country. This is true to Sindhi also. Further, like Sindhi, Urdu is neither a dominant regional language of any specific state nor it enjoys an official language status in any State (except Jammu and Kashmir where English is the working language).

There are several factors, which affect the survival of minority languages. One such factor is the New Economic Policy (NEP), which opened up the Indian economy in a big way for economic liberalization. In the wake of economic liberalization, Linguistic Darwinism has set in. Languages are suffering from the syndrome of Linguistic Darwinism whereby the "fittest" survive. Linguistic minority groups are under tremendous pressure to maintain their language and use it in the domain of education. Language maintenance as a process has to cope the demands rising out of economic imperatives. Unable to withstand the onslaught of economic forces, the speakers of the minority languages look to the state for support.

DECLINING SUPPORT FROM GOVERNMENTS

In a democratic polity the onus of educating its citizens rests with the state. It is the state's responsibility to provide basic facilities like school buildings, teaching and administrative personnel, appropriate teaching materials, textbooks, etc. presence of physical and social infrastructure such as roads, and maintenance of an environment conducive to education. Making provisions of these facilities for imparting education through mother tongue to the linguistic minorities largely depends on better economic resources of a state. Is the current level of educational expenditure by states adequate to meet contemporary educational needs and aspirations of linguistic minority groups? What is the level of resources devoted to education and what will be its implication on imparting instruction through minority languages at various stages of education?

A cursory look at the Human Development Report (HDR) prepared by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1991 shows a continuing decline in financial support for education. According to HDR, the declining trend is most evident in developing countries where the average educational expenditure dropped to 11.9% of the total public expenditure from 1988 to 1990.

THE STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM

The policy of structural adjustment program (SAP) on account of New Economic Policy (NEP) has also affected education in this country. The NEP has evoked apprehension with regard to the fate of marginalized groups in general and minor languages in particular. In a linguistically divided and socially segmented society, any effective implementation of reform will have contradictory consequences on different linguistic and social groups. One person's meat is another person's poison - an old adage that effectively conveys the contradictory consequences of any policy of reform. Language maintenance as against bare survival and loss, language growth and development as against language attrition and death are as much a truism as positive and negative impacts of policy reform. Obviously, if the dominant group is not going to get benefits from the new policy, the policy will not be implemented at all.

A CLASS THAT STANDS TO GAIN, AND A CLASS THAT STANDS TO LOSE

There is an ideological undercurrent with regard to impact of any kind of reform, for, there is a clear cut divide between a class which stands to gain and a class which stands to lose from the reform. Experiences of SAP in different countries are quite disheartening, particularly in the area of education. Since structural adjustment envisages the withdrawal of state involvement in economic management and social services, including education, the sector of education has been badly affected. Poverty, unemployment, decline in health and education have not only atomized the minority linguistic line and affected the minorities and their language, but have also heightened the counter-promise of equality through difference. Although Government decisions related to Globalization and other aspects of NEP may essentially be taken for non-linguistic reasons, implicitly there is an inherent language policy in such decisions, which have linguistic implications and linguistic consequences.

IMPACT OF THE MARKET PROCESSES

While NEP has its consequences on the fate of Minority Languages, linguistic minorities are also suffering on account of market process. Market process plays an important role in deciding the fate of a minority language. They act as a push and pull factor for the growth or neglect of a language. No language can escape the wrath of linguistic market - a metaphor deliberately used to suggest that language circulates in the same way as commodities do and there is a supply and demand sides in the use of language in education. If the commodity has a low surrender value its demand goes down and so does the supply. Language also has high and low surrender value depending upon its utility in the linguistic market. Although aesthetic motivation does play a role in language use, market forces are shaping language preferences and even bringing about attitudinal differences in the use of language.

The metaphor "linguistic market" also brings us close to Bourdieu and his problematization of language and education. Bourdieu looks at the link between language and education and places it in a larger dynamic of material conditioning and symbolic power. Central to his account of that linkage and the larger dynamic are concepts of capital, accumulable social-symbolic resources, field, the arena of social life and struggle, and habitus which he defines as "embodied social structures" that serve as principles organizing practice. These concepts help us critically look at the role of language in the reproduction of class position. (In fact, these concepts have been used by Bourdieu to reformulate the 'linguistic deficit' question in interesting and radical way. He views language as a code providing an index of 'class cleavage'. He describes class code in terms of 'bourgeois' and 'common parlance' - terms, which have closeness with 'elaborated' and 'restricted' codes of Bernstein.)

Linguistic capital is a matter of class dialects and its usage is diacritic of status. Linguistic habitus is the class-linked relation to language. In both, the linguistic capital and linguistic habitus, one group possesses what the system expects and is able to appropriate what the system offers, in the forms it expects, whereas the other group lacks what the system expects and is less able to appropriate what it offers.

Linguistic market is a field or social domain within which language use is valued. It determines the specific values of the linguistic capital at a given time and place. State and its educational apparatus creates a unified linguistic market in which language becomes the norm for linguistic speech and all other forms of speech become devalued. This is one side of the predicament of minority language speakers where the standard-non standard debate emerges evoking issues regarding language dialect and educational failure on account of mismatch between language of home and school.

THE SYNDROME OF LINGUISM

The other side of the predicament is where the minority language speakers get ideologically metamorphosed to suffer from the syndrome of Linguicism where minority children are not allowed to identify positively with their mother tongue and culture. Associated with linguicism is an `invisible' ideology, which makes an appeal to learn a single dominant language. If linguistic minorities learn the dominant language then they will not suffer economic and social inequality. Ideology of language policy and historical process of state-driven and school implemented linguistic standardization have helped the linguistic minorities to devalue their linguistic resources.

This becomes evident if one looks at the educational statistic provided by All India Educational Survey (1992 and 1998) with regard to the use of minority languages as medium of instruction, first language, second language, and third language in different stages of school education. It reveals that, by and large, for most of the minority languages the takers are very few (exception being Urdu). Some attitudinal studies conducted by scholars suggest that inspite of the demand for using mother tongue at pre-primary and primary levels in state-run schools, minority language speaking parents, because of socio economic reasons, prefer to send their children in English or regional language medium schools for, they believe, market ties with English or dominant regional language. Some minority languages have succumbed to or are in the process of succumbing to pressure from market forces, which is evident from the incidence of bilingualism prevailing in languages like Sindhi, Tulu, Konkani, Kodagu etc.

SURVIVAL OF LANGUAGES

Survival of language also depends upon the conducive language policy of the state and ethnolinguistic vitality of the language group. Languages of the linguistic minority groups are suffering on account of language policy implementation in the schools. In fact, their exists a serious gap between policy pronouncement, demands and slogans of those championing the cause of minority languages and the success that has been achieved in making minority languages as the medium of instruction in primary schools.

Keeping in view the language policy of India embodied in part XVII of the constitution of India along with the Eighth Schedule (Articles 344 and 351) and in the Articles dealing with the Fundamental Rights, a formula, called three language formula, was introduced with the sole purpose of giving emphasis to mother tongue in imparting instruction to a child.

THE THREE-LANGUAGE FORMULA

The three-language formula which was evolved to uphold the plurilingual and multi-cultural fabric of the country has not been preserving and supporting the educational rights of linguistic minorities. The three languages formula, which is being implemented practically in all over the country (except Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry) envisages the use of mother tongue of the child. But majority of the schools at all stages of school education are imparting education through one medium only. The number of schools using two or more than two mediums of instruction is very small.

If one looks at the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan's Annual Report, one finds that instruction is imparted only through the medium of Hindi and English. Although provisions are there to teach regional languages and mother tongue, if 20 or more students are willing to study the language, KVs has language teachers only in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. This is obvious from the status report on number of posts of language teachers sanctioned as on 31.10.1995.

In fact, Sanskrit is being taught as compulsory third language from class V-IX in all KVs and it can also be offered as an additional optional subject in class X as an optional subject in Senior Secondary Class.

According to a report documented in Muslim India, if a non-Hindi speaking child wishes to learn Hindi and English in a capital city of India, he must sacrifice his mother tongue. This is because a child has the option to choose any two languages from a list in which, besides all other scheduled languages. Foreign languages, Hindi and English have also been included.

THE SYSTEMATIC DISUSE OF MOTHER TONGUE IN SCHOOLS

The situation arising out of systematic disuse of mother tongue in schools assumes far more critical and alarming proportion when it comes to the use of Urdu a scheduled language occupying 6th position in terms of numerical strength of its speakers. The highest percentage of Urdu speakers resides in the two major Hindi speaking states of the country namely Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. However, the state policy with regard to use of Urdu as mother tongue in educational system, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, has been detrimental to the growth of this language. Urdu has become a victim of language politics and its users have been forced to segregate on communal and linguistic lines.

Younger generation has been deprived of the opportunity to learn Urdu in schools because of the lack of basic facilities in the teaching of this language. Problems are created in opting for Urdu as a subject at Secondary level (at one point of time Urdu was bracketed with Science and Urdu speaking students could opt for Urdu only at the cost of Science). Facilities for Urdu Teachers Training are very rare. Hence, in the absence of trained teachers posts are left vacant, to be abolished subsequently or are diverted to some other subject (As per information provided in Muslim India, 9, 1983(Sep), out of 211 posts of Urdu medium teachers in Delhi Government schools, 158 posts have been filled and 53 are lying vacant. Out of 158, Urdu knowing teachers but are not trained teachers has filled 63 posts).

Any move to start new schools in Urdu areas or adding new sections for Urdu students is being resisted by the Departments (In fact, Deputy Director of Delhi Administration is on record to say that Urdu section can be allowed to open in certain government schools if guardians are willing to manage the salary. Hasnain, 2001). Urdu textbooks are not available. Sometimes books are not available all through the academic session or they are supplied very late, thus compelling the Urdu students to either study without textbooks or switch over to Hindi or English textbooks. This state policy of suppression of Urdu has not only contributed towards distancing the Urdu speakers from Urdu to the advantage of Hindi, but has also "resulted in almost total disuse of Urdu in the state of Uttar Pradesh, except for the backyard of the traditional madrasa - maktab system." (Ansari, qtd in Muslim India, 15 June, 1995)

DISUSE, MISUSE, AND UNDERUSE OF MINORITY LANGUAGES

The numerous records of complaints registered with the commissioner for linguistic minorities in India and the National Commission for Minorities by different linguistic minority group regarding use, disuse, misuse and underuse of their languages in the sector of education and reflect the state policy of institutional and cultural linguicism and discrimination in the use of minority child's mother tongue. The policy is open, conscious, visible and active (as in the case of Urdu) and hidden, unconscious, invisible and passive (as in the case of other minority languages).

NOT THAT GLOOMY!

The picture is not all that gloomy. There are some minority language speakers who have been able to withstand the process of painful or painless linguistic assimilation (depending upon one's point of view). This is because of the commitment demonstrated by the minority groups at both community and individual level in the use of language. The geographical distribution of the language data shows that commitment to minority languages is much higher among the rural speakers than the urban population, as in the case of Nepali, Manipuri, Dogri, and Urdu.

The warning and advice of an American judge, Learned Hand: "I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitution, upon laws and upon Courts. These are false hopes, believe me these are false hopes. Liberty is in the hearts of men and women, when it lies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." (Muslim India 155, 1995) has heightened the awareness of educational rights and instilled linguistic consciousness among the minority language speakers. For example independent organizations and NGOs being set up like Maulana Azad Research and Educational Foundation in Sikandrabad (which runs two Urdu medium junior high schools) or establishment of Madarsas or religious schools for imparting religious teaching in rural areas through the medium of mother tongue as in the case of Nepali, Manipuri, Urdu, etc. These are suggestive of linguistic consciousness required for a better future of the language. The members of linguistic minority group have woken up to the fact that their language is too important for their linguistic and cultural identity and hence, cannot be left at the mercy of the state for its protection and survival. It is for them to stand up and fight for their right in Education.

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Acknowledgement: I am indeed grateful to Prof. A.P.Vijapur for his valuable comments and suggestions.

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