Can language become a dominant factor in polarising politics of our time? Seemingly Assam education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s positioning of Assamese as a compulsory medium of instruction up to Class X is based on a sentimental ownership of the language and not by sound educational logic. As the choice of a language should be left to students and their parents, the minister is withdrawing options for them by declaring a kind of mono-lingual authority for Assamese that does not augur well for the multi-lingual state of Assam.
Of course, the minister left two small options — one, Bodo for tribal areas of Bodoland and Bengali for the Barak Valley. The overwhelming emphasis on Asomiya is reminiscent of the earlier emphasis on Sanskrit, which was later given up and revised. The issue here is not just about policy-making but also recognising linguistic diversity in Assam and allowing free choice of a language as a medium of instruction.
It is important to understand why the imposition of language and using it in a certain way becomes the hallmark of state policy towards the minorities. It won’t be out of place to mention that recently the West Bengal government in North Bengal initiated a committee to research into the status of the Rajbangshi tongue as a language and proposed to recognise it in the context of North Bengal. The West Bengal government intended to address the question of the Kamtapur demand by recognising Rajbangshi language.
Unfortunately no Rajbangshi scholar is included in the committee and only scholars with a particular language and scientism were included in the committee. It has scholars like Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri, Ananda Gopal Ghosh, Subodh Sarkar and Bijay Sarkar, all of whom are known for their theoretical inclination to undermine languages that are minority languages as part of Bengali.
The two cases of Assam and West Bengal run parallel to each other. In the case of Assam minorities are subjected to a compulsorily learning the major language of the state. In case of West Bengal a recognition of Rajbangshi as a language qualified to become a medium of instruction sounds far-fetched, as many of the these scholars believe that Rajbangshi is a dialect of Bengali. Again in Assam, tribal languages which are used as a medium of instruction will now face a fear of extinction if Assamese has to be compulsory up to Class X. In both cases, there is a clear attempt to bulldoze minority languages.
The question is, why should a state policy be so biased that it has to establish superiority of language of the dominant cultural identity? What is the compulsion of the ruling group to secure the dominance of the dominant language while the languages of marginalised groups are left to languish and probably to die out? This act of immiserisation of marginalised languages constitute the policy of ensuring dominance of a ruling elite often formed on the basis of language, religion, caste and tribe.
The other question is can the ruling elite be homogeneous in language and culture? Seemingly Biswa Sarma and the West Bengal government are carrying out an implicit agenda of setting up dominance of the language of the majority. The justification for such a language policy remains in the linguistic division of states and provinces in India. Similarly, the recent approval of the President of India for ministers and top officials to speak only in Hindi creates a similar situation in Parliament and the high echelons of power.
It is definitely important to understand how a particular state treats its linguistic and cultural minorities as there is no alternative to giving a fair and equitable treatment to minorities at every level of our national life. If we have to build up a national identity based on “unity in diversity” as a principle, it is to be recognised that a majority linguistic group in one state is necessarily a minority in another state. The way minority languages are denied a fair treatment in West Bengal, it has its immediate backlash in states where Bengali is a minority language. Needless to say it will induce a sense of alienation and iridescence for those perceived majority languages in places where they are in minorities.
In case of Assam’s multicultural and multilingual mosaic, imposition of Asomiya as the only medium of instruction has a bitter history of falling apart and fostering mistrust. Similarly in North Bengal, leaving out smaller linguistic groups while giving a partial and not-so-acceptable recognition of Rajbangshi as a language, creates mistrust for smaller groups like Rabha, Bodo, Dhimal, Santal and others. This kind of a skewed policy of recognition to some and disrecognition to immediate others creates a double trap. On the one hand, it creates challenges for a language as it gets identified with dominance and on the other, it leads to appropriation of smaller linguistic groups. In the context of Assam, such a skewed policy creates a lot of unease among Non-Asomiya linguistic groups, as they are constantly threatened by such linguistically aggressive state policies.
The government remains insensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity. As there is an increasingly racist, linguistic and culturalist fundamentalism fanned by state policies, the latest diktat by the governments have a serious fall-out. In bigger countries like the US and Canada, there is an official policy of multiculturalism that India never has. It has been emphasised by the Centre that the Constitution guarantees fundamental rights of freedom of conscience and recognition of everyone’s religion and language and prevent discrimination on the basis of race, caste, sex and religion, which is a foolproof arrangement towards cultural and linguistic equality. As things emerge, the government and the ruling elite and the state policy become the biggest source of casualty in this constitutionally-given mandate of protection and propagation of minority cultures.
The justification that comes from Assam government for making Asomiya, Bengali and Bodo compulsory for schoolchildren, is the reason that children are forgetting their mother tongue in private schools. While this aspect of policy framing is for the good of future generations, imposition of a dominant language on other language groups causes an equal obstruction to learning of their mother tongue. In the Brahmaputra valley, where there are many tribal languages, the policy needs to be corrected by a rider that children from tribal groups will also have the right to learn their own mother tongues. This recognition of tribal languages will be in line with various articles of the Constitution, while the imposition of a state language on ethnic and linguistic minorities goes against the grain of Constitutional intent.
The policy of the West Bengal government to give a political recognition of Rajbangshi as subsidiary language but without situating it in its proper historical and cultural context creates a deeper sense of anxiety and alienation among Rajbangshi speakers. The rationale for such a onesided decision stems from a majoritarian sense of belonging to a dominant language as part of a democratic power game and reduces language to a mere political tool of statecraft. One needs to remember that language is the finest expression of human essence and hence entry into any language is taking part in a form of life. If the interest of building up a unified nation is to be formed, the governments of Assam and West Bengal need to be extremely sensitive to the ground reality of tribal and minority languages. Bereft of this, turning language into a tool for politicisation is a polarising act that has a terrible fall-out in breakdown of common and shared faith in living together in mutual co-existence.
The writer is an author and a philosopher based at the North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. His latest book is Bet Thought and Consciousness, Notionpress, 2017