Page i

Multilingualism in India
Edited by
Debi Prasanna Pattanayak
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 61
Series Editor: Derrick Sharp

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD

Clevedon Philadelphia

Multilingualism in India Multilingual

title:
Matters (Series) ; 61
author: Pattanayak, Debi Prasanna
 publisher: Multilingual Matters
isbn10 | asin: 1853590738
print isbn13: 9781853590733
ebook isbn13: 9780585126128
language: English
Multilingualism--India, Sociolinguistics--
subject
India.
publication date: 1990
lcc: P115.5.I4M85 1990eb
ddc: 306.4/46/0954
Multilingualism--India, Sociolinguistics--
subject:
India.
 Page ii
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 Page iii

Contents
Introduction v
D. P. Pattanayak
1 1
A Demographic Appraisal of Mutilingualism in India
B. P. Mahapatra
2 15
The Regional Language vis-à-vis English as the Medium
of Instruction in Higher Education: The Indian Dilemma
Bh. Krishnamurti
3 25
Linguistic Dominance and Cultural Dominance: A Study
of Tribal Bilingualism in India
E. Annamalai
4 37
Multilingualism and School Education in India: Special
Features, Problems and Prospects
A. K. Srivastava
5 54
Psychological Consequences of Mother Tongue
Maintenance and Multilingualism in India
A. K. Mohanty
6 67
Literacy in a Multilingual Context
R. N. Srivastava And R. S. Gupta
7 79
Multilingualism from a Language Planning Perspective:
Issues and Prospects
H . R. Dua
8 101
Language and Social Identity
Jennifer Bayer
Index 112
 Page v

Introduction
D. P. Pattanayak
Inequality has many faces. Giving recognition to a single
language variety as standard creates a cadre of people who
through various controls gain from the acquisition, processing,
storage, transmission, retrieval and other manipulations of the
language. Similarly, giving recognition to a single language as the
language of education, administration and mass communication
in a plurilingual society bestows advantages on the speakers of
that language. As the recognition of standard requires that
cognitive strategies and discourse styles are learned through
special schooling, so does acceptance of a unilingual standard in
a multilingual world. With the advent of literacy a special group
was created who eked out their living by the preservation and
interpretation of written information. In the case of a
monolingual standard in a plurilingual world, the elite was twice
removed from reality as the choice of a single language as sole
medium of communication usurped the right of different
language speakers to participate equally in the developmental
process of the state or society concerned. It further limited this
societal resource to the cleverer among the manipulators of the
standard.
Whether, as in some cultures, we emphasise the distinction
between child language and adult language, or treat child
language as apprentice to the skills and practices of adult
language, the difference is a matter of degree. In neither case is
attention given to the cognitive and societal reorganisation or
transition necessary on the part of a child to enter the world of
literacy, and of the standard. Every child, irrespective of its sex,
parental education and language, has to make the transition from
home language to school language. However, it must be noted
that the strategies needed for such transition would largely
depend upon the code distance between the variety spoken at
home and that in school, or in the case of two languages the
convergence or divergence between the languages concerned. To
name this cultural difference for all as cultural deficiency for
some is to divert attention from issues. To treat the characteristics
of written code which is
 Page vi
elaborate and explicit as characteristics of a particular social class
is, to say the least, discriminatory.
The adults who grow up with oral socio-cognitive strategies, but
lack discourse strategies appropriate either to the literate or the
standard, have to be provided not only with diverse discourse
strategies but also with devices linking the two. In a multilingual
society where the communication zone is shared by many
languages it poses added questions and creates added problems.
The discontinuities in communication existing among different
oral and different literate modes need bridging as between
sociocognitive strategies and discourse strategies. How to move
from contextsensitive language use to context-free language use,
how to move from the oral interpretation style to the somewhat
decontextualised literate interpretation style are issues which must
be discussed in this context. Movement from the prosodic and
intonational cueing to a lexical syntactic cueing marks the
progression of a child. For an adult, the progression is from
multimodal oral cues to multimodal written cues.
It is said that functionality is a major feature of language. Defined
functionally, Bhojpuri or Mewati are L1, languages of cognition,
whereas KhaRiboli provides institutional identity for those who
are classified as Hindi speakers. One can similarly say that
Cheshire or Devonshire are L1, whereas RP provides institutional
identity for English speakers in the United Kingdom. From
another perspective one can speak of four functions of mother
tongue: auxiliary (teaching Telugu to Hindi speakers),
supplementary (English in Japan), complementary (societal
bilinguals, as in India), equative (bilingual education
programmes, where both languages are given equal importance).
There could be different ways of approaching equality in
education in a multicultural situation, which for convenience can
be seen as sequences of bilingualism.
1. Reciprocal bilingualism leading to the transformation of the
total system of education. Bilingualism characterises the
mainstream of education and side streams are not
distinguished. The Welsh system of British education is said to
have achieved this to a great extent. All types of schools,
elementary, secondary (modern, grammar or comprehensive)
and tertiary education are bilingual.
2a. Systemic modification leading to transformation of parts.
This results in a series of bilingual programmes rather than an
integrated system of bilingual education.
 Page vii
The Gaelic speakers in Scotland and the system in the
United States of America come in this category.
2b. Another aspect of systemic modification is 'positive
discrimination' in favour of historically disadvantaged groups.
This requires a distinction between bilingual education and
minority education.
3. Separate system or systems of bilingual education parallel to
the main stream. This is said to lead to a segmented system of
education. The FlemmingWalloon rift in Belgium and
FrenchEnglish tension in Quebec and Canada come under this
heading.
4. Linguistic apartheid providing for different tracks for
different ethnic groups.
South Africa, which mandates separate development for
different groups, comes in this category. In this system some
element is more prestigious in the total system.
The approach to blacks in the USA, and linguistic minorities
in the heartland of USSR come under this. Paying better
salaries to teachers, ensuring better teacher/pupil ratio,
providing better grants come under this heading.
Fishman & Lovas (1970) speak of four broad categories of
bilingual education.
1. Transitional bilingualism, which aims at language shift. No
support is given to the mother tongue and no attention is given
to fluency and literacy in both languages. In America Spanish
is used 'to adjust to school' until skill in English is developed
to the point that it can be used as medium of education. No
consideration is given to the institutional development of
Spanish.
2. Monoliterate bilingualism, which develops aural/oral skills
in both languages but literacy in one. In the American context
mother tongue is used as link between home and school, but
the system does not encourage use of mother tongue in the
context of work, government, religion, book culture. This
leads to language shift.
3. Partial bilingualism, which permits use of mother tongue
restricted to ethnic group or cultural heritage. Mother tongue is
grudgingly used for social sciences and humanities, not for
science, maths and technology.
4. Full bilingualism aims at maintenance of both languages. It
aims at development of all skills in both the languages in all
domains. This is supportive of minority languages.
 Page viii
Deveriev (1974) argues that 'language policy should aim at the
full development of the human being as well as the full
development of each language community and region.' Glyn
Lewis says that, 'This statement is meaningless. Nothing could be
more satisfactory than the achievement of such a double aim, but
that consummation is impossible.' He further goes on to say that
'Deveriev implies that individual and group aspiration are not
only compatible but synonymous', he imagines that 'the
consequences of achieving the one are identical with the
consequences of achieving the other. In fact, so far as concerns a
democratic society, they may be irreconcilable.' (Glyn Lewis,
1981)
Whether or not Deveriev implied what is suggested, the fact
remains that Glyn Lewis sees individual and group aspirations to
be in perpetual conflict. He also sees human beings, language
community and language regions to be in conflict. He does not
understand that in multilingual settings where functions are
allocated to different languages, a non-conflicting type of societal
bilingualism ensues. (Srivastava, 1976)
In the West many books are written on bilingualism. They view
bilingualism as a static structure where two languages are at war
with one another. They do not see that under the pressure of
heteroglossia or polyglossia situations change and decisive
movements take place in the lives of speech communities. They
do not see that bilingualism is an abstraction, the nature, content,
function and domain of which are constantly changing in relation
to one another and in relation to other structures in society. Each
language is heteroglossic in the sense of the complex stratification
into genres, registers, styles, sociolects, dialects, and mutual
interanimation among these categories. Each state or country is
heteroglossic in the sense that it contains many such structures
which provide differing identities to various sociolinguistic
groups. In the dialogic relationship between languages, one trying
to extend its influence, another trying to avoid, negotiate or
subvert that influence, an equilibrium is reached which holds
societies together. In the recontextualisation of borrowed lexical
and semantic features, discourses are reinterpreted and assume
new meanings which revitalise languages. The tension between
the highly patterned and the highly diverse language, speech
community and region constantly leads to readjustments, which
cannot be captured by a linear and binary view of elements, but
needs a cyclic and spiral perspective.
The unity of mankind must be built upon a recognition and acceptance
of mankind's diversity and not merely upon the diversity of one social
group or another; upon the diversity that exists internally in each group
itself. It is this diversity of both
 Page ix
kinds that creates and recreates societal multilingualism and that makes
it part and parcel not merely of society but of humanity per se.
(Fishman, 1978: ix)
There is a good deal of ambivalence in the writings of Fishman.
In spite of the lofty ideals expressed about multilingualism,
Fishman in most of his writings has chosen the camp of usurpers
of mother tongue rather than the users. Western scholars are
sensitive to the use of language and dialect and are allergic to the
use of mother tongue, ethnic language and community language.
It is not at all strange that social scientists in the West permit
variation on the axes of age, sex, economic status, but do not
admit variation in language. Language, which is the primary
expression of diversity, is, therefore, completely ignored.
Mother tongue is the expression of primary identity and of group
solidarity. One is identified with a linguistic, ethnic, religious or a
cultural group through one's mother tongue. It is the language of
early concept formation and the language through which the
environment gets a habitat and a name. The designation or
nominal function of language, which names objects, events and
stages, is a crucial function on which the superstructure of
further learning is built. The early socialisation function, identity
function and psychic function are rooted in the mother tongue.
Myths and symbols, systems of beliefs and practices are
transmitted naturally through the mother tongue so that living and
learning become a seamless process. Mother tongue anchors the
child to culture, the loss of which results in the loss of intellectual
and aesthetic creativity and results in intellectual impoverishment,
emotional sterility and cultural perception blind spot. For
example, the three dimensionality of kinship terms in Indian
languages links the limited ego with the social ego. Their
substitution by generic English terms like uncle, aunt, cousin not
only neutralises this perception but creates strains in the system.
The majority mother tongue is always in a privileged condition.
Because its standard form is taken for granted as norm, all
minorities are required to conform to this. Because of this
attitude, minority languages are called community languages,
mother tongues, ethnic languages, dialects, and language
varieties. English in the UK, for example, is not a mother tongue,
not an ethnic language, and it is taken for granted that there is
very little dialect variation in the language. This is absurd. A
language, unless it is a dead or petrified language, has to be the
mother tongue of some speakers. Variation is the sign of any
living organism and language cannot be an exception. When
AMMA statement on 'Multicultural and anti-racist education
today' says that, 'We have concluded, however, that we could
 Page x
not support the concept of exclusive mother tongue teaching
throughout a child's school life' (p. 34), it obviously excludes the
majority mother tongue, English. Nobody is worried about the
separateness of the Englishonly educated child in a multilingual,
multicultural setting. If English children are sensitive to their
multicultural environment, then they also could make an effort to
study a language of the neighbourhood. Sensitivity is a result of
goodwill as well as knowledge. If there is neither goodwill nor
adequate knowledge about various languages and their speakers,
then the language teaching/learning process is bound to be
vitiated.
If we consider minority mother tongues, it would be ridiculous to
suggest that those who divide the spectrum into two colours are
colour-blind or cannot discriminate shades of colours elsewhere.
There is no doubt that those who grow up in categories which
provide for two divisions of the spectrum instead of seven, 32
divisions of snow instead of two words, snow and ice, 20
divisions of the wind instead of wind and air, and many divisions
of rains, have different perceptions of life and culture.
The logic underlying the principle of relativity expounded by
Whorf distinguishes between language and concept as a
'relationship of a "whole to part"' (Lucy & Schweder, 1979). Such
a view does neither deny the ability of a person to change his
linguistic repertoire, status or both, nor does it take a static view
of language. While the categories organising experience into
concepts do not exhaust the linguistic potential of a person, it
cannot be denied that 'ontology is a cultural inheritance reflected
in the way members of a speech community to one another'
(Lucy & Schweder, 1979: 603).
The question of use of English in the context of the UK by dialect
speakers and minority language speakers needs to be discussed
here. English is spoken in different regional accents in the UK,
e.g. Devon, Cheshire, Midlands, Northumbria, East Anglia.
Unless this is appreciated, English spoken with Jamaican and
Indian accents would continue to be considered deficient and
would be used as a discriminatory feature. From their variety
through the regional standard to the academic standard of English
is a progression which must be seen as expansion of ability to
cope with the peer group and the wider group. For example, 'A
Yorkshire child may say nowt and summat both among friends
and the family, but may switch to nothing and something in the
classroom. It is "regular" in West Indian speech to say he go
rather than he goes, just as some regional English usages dictate
he do rather than he does' (Sir John Kingman, 1988). However, it
may be noted that the higher SES groups are likely to use more
English and the maintenance of their mother tongue is likely to be
far less in comparison to
 Page xi
those in the lower SES categories. Their attitudinal urge for
cultural identity may be expressed in favour of maintenance of
the language. Thus one could find situations where (a) retention
of mother tongue is perceived to be impeding social mobility and
therefore generates linguistic insecurity, and (b) where social
upward mobility provides linguistic security and a favourable
attitude towards retention or revival of mother tongue. These are
related to (a) where loss of mother tongue does not loosen ethnic
cohesion. Although mother tongue is given up in the name of
communication efficiency and social mobility, emotional
attachment to the group is maintained. And (b) where loss of
mother tongue does loosen ethnic cohesion resulting in the
loosening of the bond between ethnic content (language) and
emotional attachment solidarity.
When one looks at the language scene in the UK from this
perspective one is filled with anger and anguish anger at the
subtle monolingual colonialism, and anguish at the doubtful
loyalty of the community groups in maintaining their languages
and cultures. Anger at the following statements by
multiculturalists:
The goal of education for culturally different children should be to
produce a bi-cultural child who is capable of functioning both in his
sub-culture and in the mainstream. (Bartz and Bartz )
The education appropriate to our imperial post cannot meet the
requirements of modern Britain. (1.11) The curriculum of the schools
must also reflect the needs of the new Britain. (1.12) Our society is a
multicultural, multiracial one and the curriculum should reflect a
sympathetic understanding of the different cultures and races that make
up our society. (10.11); more recently a committee of enquiry was set
 up to look into 'the education of children from ethnic minority groups'.
(Department of Education & Science Green Paper, 1977)
These statements seek to segregate the majority from the
minority. This does not distinguish culture of deprivation and
privilege from mere bringing together children from different
culture groups.
One feels anguish and agony when one looks at the views of
educationists, parents, teachers and suffering students. Anguish at
the confusion of teachers and parents as to whether they are
assimilationists or preservers of separate cultures.
Swann says, 'The English language is a central unifying feature
"in being British".' Although English may take some unifying
function as lingua franca, the real unifying factor is respect for
multiplicity.
 Page xii
Those who desire conflict-free education must understand that
colourblindness is not likely to achieve this aim for them. People
have to be told that there are those who divide the spectrum into
two and those who divide it into seven. Neither of them is
colour-blind. It is difference in perception.
Use of language can become a major factor in creating unequal
societies in multilingual contexts. As long as this inequality
persists education cannot be conflict free. The assumption that
variation is disintegration is unfortunate. Such an attitude equates
different with deficient. It must be emphasised that it is not the
recognition, but non-recognition of different identities that leads
to disintegration. Multilingualism can thrive only on the
foundation of respect for the different.

References
DEVERIEW 1974, Social linguistics. Language in Society 9.
FISHMAN, JOSHUA A. 1978, Preface. In Joshua A. Fishman
(ed.) Advances in the Study of Societal Multilingualism. The
Hague: Mouton.
FISHMAN, JOSHUA A. and LOVAS, JOHN 1970, Bilingual
education in sociolinguistic perspective. In Bernard Spolsky (ed.)
The Language Education of Minority Children. Rowley, Mass.:
Newbury House Publishers.
KINGMAN, Sir JOHN 1988, Report of the Committee of Inquiry
into the Teaching of English Language. London: HMSO.
LEWIS, GLYN E. 1981, Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
(Pergamon Institute of English). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
LUCY, JOHN A. and SCHWEDER, RICHARD A. 1979, Whorf
and his critics: Linguistic and non-linguistic influences on colour
memory. American Anthropologist 81(3), 581-615.
SRIVASTAVA, R.N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality.
In GOPAL P. SHARMA and KUMAR SURESH (eds) Indian
Bilingualism. Agra: Central Institute of Hindi.
SWANN, MICHAEL 1985, Education for All: The Report of the
Committee of Inquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic
Minority Groups. London: HMSO.
 Page 1

1
A Demographic Appraisal of Multilingualism in India
B. P. Mahapatra
Linguistic diversity, or multilingualism, is found to be more the
rule with the vast majority of present-day nations than not, and it
is claimed to be of 'enormous consequence for the very
maintenance of a nation-state' (Lieberson, 1975: 48). It is only
vaguely understood how the nation-states have reached this
situation, except by pointing at such accidental processes like
immigration, colonialism and territorial conquests. Lieberson
elsewhere claims that, 'It is as if there are two clusters of nations,
with one cluster consisting of pre-World War II nations that are
generally more developed and less diverse than the second
cluster of post-World War II nations' (1974: 37). With reference
to the latter group of states, what needs to be appreciated is that
the very basis of nation-making has changed.
Linguistic diversity is not merely reached by accidental processes
but is inherited and is an integral part of the nation-making
philosophy and history for many (Glyn Lewis, 1972: 17). India is
such a state. Sir G. A. Grierson identified 179 languages and 544
dialects for India in his Linguistic Survey of India carried out
between 1886 and 1927. India inherited this language multiplicity
and the 1951 censusthe first carried out after the country reached
independencelisted 845 languages including the dialects, 60 of
which (13 scheduled languages, 23 tribal languages/dialects and
24 other Indian languages/dialects) were spoken by not less than
100,000 persons each for the redefined territory known as the
Union Republic of India (Census of India, 1951).
A much more dependable account of the language multiplicity in
India was presented in the 1961 census based upon the language
classificational scheme of the erstwhile Linguistic Survey of
India. The list presented 193 classified languages corresponding
to 1,652 mother tongues actually returned. The list was exclusive
of unclassifed and foreign mother tongues. The languages were
identified as belonging to four families of languages
 Page 2
Austric (20), Dravidian (20), Indo-European (54), Tibeto-Chinese
(98)and one of doubtful affiliation. There has been more than
one attempt if not to wish away this diversity totally at least to
underplay its magnitude to a more acceptable position. For
example, Ishwaran (1969: 124) says, 'This bewildering variety of
languages may be misleading if it is not noted that 91% of the
population speak one or the other of the 15 languages specified
in the Indian Constitution'. In fact, in 1981 the percentage of the
speakers of the 15 scheduled languages had risen to 95.58% of
the total household population. Table 1.1 gives the scheduled
languages for India in descending order of speakers' strength
with percentage to total household population. (See, Note on the
language data, Census of India, 1981: 3).
TABLE 1.1 Scheduled languages in descending order of speakers'
strength
Language Number of Percentage of total population
speakers (excluding Institutional
population)
1. Hindi 264,188,858 39.94
2. Telugu 54,226,227 8.20
3. Bengali 51,503,085 7.79
4. Marathi 49,624,847 7.50
5. Tamil 44,730,389 6.76
6. Urdu 35,323,481 5.34
7. Gujarati 33,189,039 5.02
8. Kannada 26,887,837 4.06
9. Malayalam 25,952,966 3.92
10. Oriya 22,881,053 3.46
11. Punjabi 18,588,400 2.81
12. Kashmiri 3,174,684 0.48
13. Sindhi 1,946,278 0.29
14. Assamese 70,525 0.01
15. Sanskrit 2,946
No census was taken in Assam.

Further, it can be seen from Table 1.2 that except for a few small
states such as Manipur, Meghalaya, Negaland, and Sikkim, and a
few union territories such as Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar
Haveli, and Mizoram, all the states are overwhelmingly
dominated by the scheduled languages.
 Page 3
TABLE 1.2 Distribution of 1981 household population by scheduled languages
(inclusive of variants grouped under each)
India/State/Union Total household Speakers of Speakers of other
Territory population Schedule VIII languages and the
(excluding languages percentage to the
Institutional and the total household
household percentage to population
population) the total
household
population
India 661,497,149 632,290,615 29,206,534
(95.58) (4.42)
States
Andhra Pradesh 53,175,277 52,754,352 420,925
(99.21) (0.79)
Assam (No census was taken) 69,638,725 65,440,524 4,198,201
Bihar (93.97) (6.03)
Gujarat 33,919,882 33,361,388 558,494
(98.35) (1.65)
Haryana 12,873,434 12,861,460 11,97
(99.91) (0.09)
Himachal Pradesh 4,257,299 4,084,570 173,005
(95.94) (4.06)
Jammu & Kashmir 5,947,575 4,325,961 1,621,338
(72.74) (27.26)
Karnataka 36,839,222 34,801,429 2,037,793
(94.47) (5.53)
Kerala 25,244,369 25,024,913 219,456
(99.13) (0.87)
Madhya Pradesh 52,000,069 47,884,931 4,115,138
(92.09) (7.91)
Maharashtra 62,230,282 59,153,116 3,077,166
(95.06) (4.94)
Manipur 1,409,239 32,570 1,376,669
(2.31) (97.69)
Meghalaya 1,326,748 181,113 1,145,635
 (13.65) (86.35)
Nagaland 747,071 69,726 677,345
(9.33) (90.67)

(table continued on next page)

 Page 4
TABLE 1.2 (continued)
India/State/Union Total household Speakers of Speakers of other
Territory population Schedule VIII languages and the
(excluding languages percentage to the
Institutional and the total household
household percentage to population
population) the total
household
population
Orissa 26,171,262 23,535,237 2,636,025
(89.93) (10.07)
Punjab 16,723,153 16,689,494 33,659
(99.80) (0.20)
Rajasthan 34,130,701 32,518,743 1,611,958
(95.26) (4.74)
Sikkim 308,262 19,570 288,692
(6.35) (93.65)
Tamil Nadu 48,089,281 48,041,159 48,122
(99.90) (0.10)
Tripura 2,034,242 1,459,299 574,943
(71.74) (28.26)
Uttar Pradesh 110,549,826 110,506,761 43,065
(99.96) (0.04)
West Bengal 54,207,652 51,570,921 2,636,731
(95.14) (4.86)
Union territories
Andaman & Nicobar 178,885 143,748 35,137
Islands (80.36) (19.64)
Arunachal Pradesh 597,862 103,037 494,825
(17.23) (82.77)
Chandigarh 440,837 437,301 3,536
(99.20) (0.80)
Dadra & Nagar 31,213 70,605
101,818
Haveli (30.66) (69.34)
Delhi 6,174,632 6,136,683 37,949
(99.39) (0.61)
Goa, Daman & Diu 1,059,012 446,406 612,606
(42.15) (57.85)
Lakshadweep 39,709 33,687 6,022
(84.83) (15.17)

(table continued on next page)

 Page 5
Table 1.2 (continued)
India/State/Union Total household Speakers of Speakers of other
Territory population Schedule VIII languages and the
(excluding languages percentage to the
Institutional and the total household
household percentage to population
population) the total
household
population
Mizoram 476,439 43,523 432,916
(9.14) (90.86)
Pondicherry 599,384 597,780 1,604
(99.73) (0.27)

This situation, however, does not make Indiaor the stateslinguistically

less diverse, but merely shifts the attention from imponderables to a
more acceptable arena of a competing few. The census tables gives the
break-up for the scheduled languages (see Annexure, Census of India,
1981) for India and the states and the union territories. Table 1.3 shows
the scheduled languages with their 'demographic centres of gravity' (see
Kloss & McConnell, 1984: 15).
A second argument that is usually advanced by linguists
(Khubchandani, 1978; Pattanayak, 1981: 44) in the name of the 'existing
realities in the country is that communication in India is unimpaired in
spite of the great linguistic diversity. Pattanayak (1981: 44) claims that 'if
one draws a straight line between Kashmir and Kanyakumari and marks,
say, every five or ten miles, then one will find that there is no break in
communication between any two consecutive points. Communication
breaks down only at extreme points of the scale'. Being in no position
either to prove or disprove this statement, however, the question that the
linguist would like to ask first is: is India communicating in languages,
and no dots and dashes involved in it? Both Pattanayak and
Khubchandani agree that communication in India is in languages and
the latter goes on to say that, 'bilingualism serves as a communication
bridge between different speech groups'.
The only official estimate of bilingualism in India is the decennial
census of India. But both Pattanayak and Khubchandani find the census
statistics of Indian bilingualism as per the 1961 census totally frustrating
and Pattanayak rejects it outright saying that, 'The country average of
9.70% of bilingualism gives a distorted picture of the facts'.
Khubchandani says,
 Page 6
TABLE 1.3 Scheduled languages with their demographic centres of gravity, 1981
State/Union territory Total Schedule VIII Single largest
languages language and the
percentage to the percentage to total
total house-hold household
population population
States
Andhra Pradesh 99.21 Telugu (85.13)
Assam (No census was taken
in 1981)
Bihar 93.97 Hindi (80.17)
Gujarat 98.35 Gujarati (90.73)
Haryana 99.91 Hindi (88.77)
Himachel Pradesh 95.94 Hindi (88.95)
Jammu & Kashmir 72.74 Kashmiri (52.73)
Karnataka 94.47 Kannada (65.69)
Kerala 99.13 Malayalam (95.99)
Madhya Pradesh 92.09 Hindi (84.37)
Maharashtra 95.06 Marathi (73.62)
Manipur below 25%
Meghalaya below 25%
Nagaland below 25%
Orissa 89.93 Oriya (82.83)
Punjab 99.80 Punjabi (84.88)
Rajasthan 95.26 Hindi (89.89)
Sikkim below 25%
Tamil Nadu 99.90 Tamil (85.35)
Tripura 71.74 Bengali (69.59)
Uttar Pradesh 99.96 Hindi (89.68)
West Bengal 95.14 Bengali (86.34)
Union territories
Andaman & Nicobar
Islands 80.36 Bengali (24.68)
Arunachal Pradesh below 25%
Chandigarh 99.20 Hindi (55.11)
Dadra & Nagar Haveli 30.66 Gujarati (23.84)
Delhi 99.39 Hindi (76.29)
Goa, Daman & Diu 42.15 Marathi (25.18)
Lakshadweep 84.83 Malayalam (84.51)
Mizoram below 25%
Pondicherry 99.73 Tamil (89.18)
 Page 7
On the basis of the fact that only 9.7% of the total population of the
country claims to be bilingualthat means virtually 90% of the
population claims to be monolingual according to the figures provided
in the 1961 census one is led to the conclusion that the degree of
interaction among 200-odd speech groups must be pretty low and the
diversity of languages must be putting up strong communication
barriers in the growth of a nation. (Khubchandani, 1978)
Happily enough, the gross rate of bilingualism in India is on the
increase as in 1971, i.e. 13.04% of the total population as against
9.7% in 1961 claims to be bilingual. Bilingualism can be viewed
in two ways: (1) bilinguals who are part of mother tongue
strength, and (2) second language speakers who are added to the
strength of a mother tongue. In the Indian context, English sets
the highest limit for (2), i.e. 99.24% of English speakers are
second-language speakers. For other Indian languages second
language strength is marginal. Only four languages Assamese
(17.1), Kannada (17.55), Tamil (10.89) and Tulu (19.03)could
claim a 10% and above addition to their strength by second
language speakers. For a large number of languages the addition
is almost nil, i.e. there are no non-native speakers of these
languages. Therefore, Indian languages in general reach their
strength mainly by native speakers of the languagea fact which
perhaps could have been reasonably countered by citing the case
of Hindithe first claimant for the position of the national link
language, but for the recent decisions taken by the Government
in changing the definition of Hindi (see flyleaf, c-v, Mother-
Tongues of the 1971 Census; see also Mahapatra, 1986a).
The other dimension of bilingualism, i.e. (1) above, can be
measured on a three-point scale of high-average-low. This scale
has no strong rationale behind it except for the fact that national
average of bilingualism is fixed on 13.04%. The higher and lower
limits are fixed based on this average (Census of India 1971, Part
II-c(iii), Vol. I).
Table 1.4 might help us to re-examine the myth of Indian
bilingualism created by the national average; rather it goes on to
show that communication in terms of bilingualism is not a
national issue and cannot be solved by promoting one or more
languages at the national level. In fact, contrary to the view held
by some, the trend of bilingualism following the census statistics
is reasonably healthy and at the same time community centred
and need based. It might not show any national goal, but it is
highly purposive in the sense that if India is communicating it is
doing so in no extra-linguistic means and in terms of a highly
developed pattern of
 Page 8
TABLE 1.4 High, average and low bilingualism by mother tongue
groups
High Average Low
(30-50% and above) (13.04-30%) (below 13.04%)
Bishnupuriya (52.38) Assamese (13.20) Angami (N)
Bhumij (40.93) Ao (N)
Bodo/Boro (54.62) Dogri (21.88) Bengali (12.01)
Bhili/Bhilodi (5.21)
Coorgi/Kodagu (78.62) Garo (13.26) Bhotia (N)
Dimasa (31.00) Gorkhali/Nepali (28.69) Hindi (6.41)
Gadaba (75.51) Gujarati (13.05) Hmar (N)
Gondi (41.93) Ho (22.27) Kabui (N)
Jatapu (63.59)
Kharia (51.72) Halabi (15.78) Khasi (9.35)
Konkani (57.49) Kannada (17.11) Kheza (N)
Konyak (N)
Kurukh/Oraon (46.69) Kashmiri (16.00) Ladakhi (n)
Korku (36.69) Khandeshi (14.42) Lotha (N)
Korwa (43.42) Lushai/Mizo
(11.62)
Nicobarese (N)
Khond/Kondh (38.62) Malayalam (18.67) Oriya (8.46)
Kisan (47.42) Phom (N)
Kolami (47.63) Manipuri/Meithei Sangtam (N)
(19.03)
Koya (51.10) Marathi (14.66) Sema (N)
Kui (35.60) Punjabi (20.97)
Lepcha (52.25) Tamil (13.85)
Mikir (30.07) Telugu (17.00)
Miri/Mishing (64.79) Urdu (27.92)
Mundari (36.33)
Parji (50.11)
Rabha (37.89)
Santali (31.72)
Sindhi (42.95)
Savara (48.29)
Tangkhul (43.46)
Thado (40.01)
Tripuri (30.48)
Tulu (45.09)
N = negligible
 Page 9
bilingualism. The high-average-low bilingual groups help us to
draw this pattern of communication in India in no uncertain
terms. The highly bilingual individual communities actually
characterise the nature of multilingualism in India whether or not
they contribute to the gross national average of bilingualism or to
the theory of so called 'contact languages' as advocated by
Khubchandani in an overly simplified scheme (1978).
Another aspect of the linguistic diversity in India is the deliberate
suppression of linguistic data on the extent of Indian
multilingualism. The 1961 census presented data on all the 1,652
mother tonguesa complete inventory with statistics for individual
mother tongues. The 1971 census, however, thought it fit to
present statistics on only the 15 scheduled languages (inclusive of
mother tongues grouped under each, Part-A) and 91 other
languages/mother tongues (inclusive of mother tongues where
grouped, Part-B) including a category called 'other mother
tongues'. The flyleaf mentions a total of 132 languages/mother
tongues without statistics for individual mother tongues. Thus,
the multilingualism in India is contained, or so it is hoped for all
practical purposes, by restricting it to a list of 105
languages/mother tongues.
The 1981 census presentation of language data is in the same
format. Instead of working it failed when it was put to test
recently to one of the very high priority societal missions of the
country, the National Literacy Mission. The Mission has a goal of
imparting 'functional literacy' to 80 million illiterate persons in the
15-35 age group by 1995. Unless immediate steps were taken to
tackle the problem, in the next century one-third of the world's
illiterate peopleabout 50 crorewill be Indians. Though there had
been several programmes to promote mass literacy in the country
since independence, these had not achieved the success expected.
In 1951, there were six crore illiterates in the country and in 1981
it rose to 24 crore. Reportedly, no less a person than the Prime
Minister of India observed that ' ''To relate itself to the lives of the
people, the mission would teach them in their own languages and
dialects." He conceded that this would magnify the mission's
problems since it is easier to prepare materials in one, two or 14
major languages, but this was essential if the mission was to be
effective.' (The Hindustan Times, 6.5.88). There have been many
other cases of a similar nature and magnitude that highlighted
multilingualism. Even when passions were roused, both positive
and negative, there was rarely if at all call for serious stock-
taking, fact-finding or academic reappraisal. It is needless to say
that the linguistic picture of the country cannot be drawn by
myths, common knowledge and half-truths. Only a complete
picture of the existing multilingualism can give the planners a
chance towards developing a national goal.
 Page 10
When considering the linguistic picture of the country, it is
natural to reflect upon the linguistic composition of the units on
the basis of 'communication environments' at the district level as
proposed by Khubchandani. To quote him-
Linguistic composition of all the 330 districts, distributed in 26 states
and union territories (at the time of the 1961 census) reveals the
prevalence of linguistically pluralistic societies in many parts of the
country. The population of nearly half of the total number of districts
(152, i.e. 46%) is exposed to heterogeneous surroundings where
minority speech group exceed 20% of the total population (District
profile in the Appendix, Table H, p. 580). Such a widespread
heterogeneity can potentially be considered as a significant factor
promoting bilingual interaction among different speech groups. But the
low returns on bilingualism do not testify to the intensity of such
interaction. (Khubchandani, 1975: 571)
Khubchandani goes on to divide this environment to
homogeneous and heterogeneous on the basis of their linguistic
composition, i.e. whether the minority language speakers form
less than 40% of the total population of the district or not (1975:
583). It is interesting to note that he reserves the term
'multilingual' only for those districts which have no predominant
language, i.e. minority languages form more than 40% of the total
population. Khubchandani gives no reason how he stumbled
upon this 40% threshold. From the point of 'minority languages'
the State Reorganisation Commissions' recommendations are that
Where there is a substantial minority constituting 30 per cent or more
of the population of a state, the state should be recognised as bilingual
for administrative purposes and that, if 70 per cent or more total
population of a district is constituted by a group which is a minority in
the state as a whole, the language of the minority and not state language
 should be the official language in that district. In districts, municipal
areas and smaller units when there are minorities constituting 15 to 20
per cent of the population, Government notices, Electoral Rolls etc.
should be printed in both the languages and documents in minority
languages should be permitted to be filed in Courts. (6th report, 1965:
73; Mahapatra, 1986b)
The advantage in taking the criterion of the State Reorganisation
Commission in identifying the linguistic composition of the
country is that it enforces necessary measures to build the
communication environment of
 Page 11
TABLE 1.5 Linguistic composition of districts
India/State/ Total no. Unilingual Bilingual Multilingual
Union territory of districts: districts: districts
districts 70% 70% more than
or moreone or moretwo two
language languages languages
India 402 325 53 24
State
1. Andhra Pradesh 23 21 2
2. Bihar 31 25 5 1
3. Gujarat 19 17 2
4. Haryana 12 11 1
5. Himachal Pradesh 12 10 1 1
6. Jammu & Kashmir 14 11 3
7. Karnataka 19 11 5 3
8. Kerala 12 12
9. Madhya Pradesh 45 38 5 2
10. Maharashtra 26 22 2 2
11. Manipur 6 2 4
12. Meghalaya 5 3 2
13. Nagaland 7 4 1 2
14. Orissa 13 9 3 1
15. Punjab 12 11 1
16. Rajasthan 26 25 1
17. Sikkim 4 3 1
18. Tamil Nadu 16 13 2
19. Tripura 3 1 2
20. Uttar Pradesh 56 53 3
21. West Bengal 16 13 3
Union territory
22. Andaman & Nicobar 2 1 1
Islands
23. Arunachal Pradesh 9 3 2 4
24. Chandigarh 1 1

(table continued on next page)

 Page 12
TABLE 1.5 (continued)
India/State/ Total no. Unilingual Bilingual Multilingual
Union territory of districts: districts: districts
districts 70% 70% more than
or moreone or moretwo two
language languages languages
25. Dadra & Nagar 1 1
Haveli
26. Delhi 1 1
27. Goa, Daman & Diu 3 2 1
28. Lakshadweep 1 1
29. Mizoram 3 2 1
30. Pondicherry 4 4

the country. As it is, out of a total number of 402 districts in the

country in 1981 (Assam excluded) as many as 325 districts are
overwhelmingly populated by single language speakers. In these
districts, not only does a single language constitute 70% or more
of the total population, the language in the vast majority of cases
is also the official language of the state. For example, in Andhra
Pradesh, out of 23 districts 21 are overwhelmingly Telugu, and
Telugu is also the official language of the state. From the point of
a communication environment, these districts should be
considered as good as unilingual, i.e. single language oriented.
The other two districts of the state are bilingual, i.e. any two
languages together constitute 70% or more of the population in
this case Telugu and Urdu. All other cases may be treated as
multilingual. Thus from the point of linguistic composition of the
districts, they fall into three types unilingual, bilingual and
multilingualand this pattern has a significant bearing on the
course of communication. Table 1.5 gives the classification and
number of districts for India and the states.
The present approach does not view geographical coexistence
alone as the whole of the communication environment and,
therefore, linguistic composition is not just geographical
distribution of language speakers but the vitality of the language
as well (see Mahapatra, 1986c: Introduction). Given the above
format, most languages do not have demographic centres of
gravity of any consequence and when they have they are so far
removed from the main nerve-centres of the country that they
hardly contribute
 Page 13
TABLE 1.6 Main developing multilingual districts of India
Urban centre Main language Percentage of
main language
speakers
Hyderabad Telugu 48.12
Bangalore Kannada 48.22
Greater Bombay Marathi 45.97
Calcutta Bengali 58.49

anything to the communication environment of the country. For

example, the languages other than the scheduled languages that
have a unilingual majority in a few districts are (number of
districts are shown in brackets): Kinnauri (1), Ladakhi (1), Dogri
(2), Bhili/Bhilodi (3), Manipuri/Meithei (1), Tangkhul (1), Khasi
(2), Garo (1), Lotha (1), Sema (1), Ao (1), Konyak (1),
Nissi/Dafla (2), Adi (1), and Lushai/Mizo (2). Their impact upon
the communication environment of the country as a whole is
minimal. With regard to bilingual and multilingual districts, a
difference has to be made between those that are traditionally
multilingual and those that are developing as multilingual
districts. To the latter category belong some of the great urban
centres of India, which act as trend-setters for a vast and complex
multilingual country. These centres are shown in Table 1.6.
Delhi and Madras do not strictly come under bilingual or
multilingual district categories for Delhi has 75.73% of Hindi, and
Madras 74.46% of Tamil; their composition is yet to reach an
overwhelming proportion, though there are no lack of
movements for turning the cities increasingly unilingual. If the
urban centres of India turn to unilingualism, i.e. if the
communication environment of Bombay changes to Marathi, of
Calcutta to Bengali and of Delhi to Hindi, it would be as
Lieberson said, 'of enormous consequence for the very
maintenance of a nation-state', for it might not change the actual
character of multilingualism in India, but it will certainly affect
the very aspiration of multilingualism in India.
References
CENSUS OF INDIA 1951, Paper, I, Table I, II, III. Delhi.
CENSUS OF INDIA 1961, 1964, vol. I Part II-c(ii), Language
tables. Delhi.
 Page 14
CENSUS OF INDIA 1971, Series I, India Part II-c(i), Social and
cultural tables. Delhi.
CENSUS OF INDIA 1971, Series I, India, Part II-c(iii), vol. I,
Social and cultural tables. Delhi.
CENSUS OF INDIA 1981, Series I, India, households and
household population by language mainly spoken in the
household, Paper-I of 1987. Delhi.
GLYN LEWIS, E. 1972, Multilingualism in the Soviet Union.
The Hague: Mouton.
GRIERSON, G. A. 1927, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. I, Pt. I.
Delhi: Motilal Banarasi Dass (Reprint, 1967).
ISHWARAN, K. 1969, Multilingualism in India. In NELS
ANDERSON (ed.) Studies in Multilingualism (pp. 122-50).
Leiden: E. J. Brill.
The Hindustan Times 6.5.88, P. M. Launches Compaign. Delhi.
KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1978, Distribution of contact languages
in India. In J. A. FISHMAN (ed.) Advances in the Study of
Societal Multilingualism (pp. 553-85). The Hague: Mouton
Publishers.
KLOSS, H. & MCCONNELL, G. D. 1984, Linguistic
Composition of the Nations of the World: 5: Europe and the
USSR. International Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Les
Presses de l'Université' Laval, Quebec.
LIEBERSON, S. 1974, National development, mother-tongue
diversity and the comparative study of nations. In A. S. DIL
(Intro.) Language Diversity and Language Contact (1981)
(pp.19-47). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1975, The course of mother-tongue diversity in nations. In
Language Diversity and Language Contact (1981) (pp. 48-82).
A. S. DIL (Intro.) Stanford: Stanford University Press.
MAHAPATRA, B. P. 1986a, Language planning in census. In E.
ANNAMALAI, B. H. JERNUDD, J. RUBIN (eds). Language
Planning. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
1986b, The problems in learning minority languages with special
reference to tribal languages in sociolinguistics in India. The
International Journal of Sociology of Languages, Vol. 75.
Amsterdam: Mouton.
1986c, The Written Languages of India: A Joint Collaboration
Project between the Registrar General of India and the
International Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Laval
University, Quebec. Quebec, Canada: Laval University Press.
PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1981, Multilingualism and Mother-Tongue
Education. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sixth Report of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in
India. 1965. Allahabad.
 Page 15

2
The Regional Language Vis-à-vis English as the
Medium of Instruction in Higher Education: The
Indian Dilemma 1
B.H. Krishnamurti

Assumptions about Language Development

As a linguist and as a sociologist of language, I would like to
present certain assumptions about language development which
are either tested or testable with empirical data from ancient or
modern societies.
(i) There are primitive societies but no primitive languages.
Almost all languages are equipped with necessary structures
optimal to handle any domain of human communication.
(ii) A language besides being a vehicle of communication is also
a cultural institution which is an integral part of the social,
emotional and intellectual life of its speakers. Living languages
with centuries-old literary traditions cannot easily be relegated to
a secondary status by other languages in a given society.
(iii) A language develops appropriate registers (i.e. styles and
terminologies) in new domains, if its speakers make an effort in
an appropriate manner. Language development and language use
go hand in hand; one does not precede or follow the other. A
language is as good or as bad as its users make it.
(iv) Language development in new domains occurs if and only if
necessary and sufficient conditions are created (by planners and
policy makers) for its uninhibited use (by its speakers) for a
considerable period of time. This means that any normative
measures taken for language development turn out to be counter-
productive.
 Page 16
(v) Standardisation of styles and terminology should follow and
not precede the extensive use of a language in domains in which
it has not been used earlier.
(vi) Language development and vitality are measured in terms of
the range of domains in which it can be used effectively, viz.
socialisation, education, government, courts, trade, industry,
defence, managerial decision making, etc. Such domains can be
covered by more than one language used complementarily.
(vii) Language development is central to educational
advancement on a mass scale. Educational development is central
to economic, cultural, and political development. Language
development, therefore, is a corollary to national development.
(viii) There is hardly an economically and industrially advanced
nation that is based on education exclusively imparted through
the medium of a foreign language.

Language Medium in Education in India Till 1947

By the time India became independent in 1947, the question of
the medium of instruction was resolved and a state of stability
had prevailed for at least three decades. Except for a very few
schools (meant for the English nationals and wealthy Indians),
the medium of instruction was the dominant regional
language/mother tongue from the primary to the high school
level. English was taught as a subject from the V or VI standard.
At the levels of the intermediate, the degree college, and the
university, English was the medium of instruction for all subjects
except for modern Indian languages or classical languages taught
as subjects. A century-long controversy which started in the early
nineteenth century ended with this scheme emerging as the most
satisfactory model by the 1920s. It was further stabilised during
the period of diarchy and provincial autonomy.
A brief review of the controversy would be interesting and
revealing. The orientalists wanted the revival and improvement
of oriental learning through the medium of classical languages -
Sanskrit and Persian. The Anglicists wanted the European
knowledge of science, letters and philosophy to be taught to the
natives in English. The vernacularists claimed that vernacular
languages should be the media of instruction so that modern
knowledge could reach the masses. A great social reformer and
an oriental scholar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1824), supported the
dissemination of European knowledge through English. A
considerable number of English scholars, missionaries and civil
servants along with their Indian cohorts participated in the
controversy.
 Page 17
The Anglicists won the day when Lord William Bentinck issued
his Resolution on 7th March 1835 that all funds be utilised only
on English education, based on the celebrated minute of Thomas
Babington Macaulay (on 2nd February 1835). The following
quotation from the minute was both forceful and prophetic:
We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters
between us and the millions whom we govern ... a class of persons,
Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals
and in intellect.
If we pardon Macaulay's impertinence in calling the vernacular
languages as 'poor and rude' and denigrating the wealth of
scientific literature in Sanskrit, he has practically inaugurated the
introduction of English education in India through the English
language. Brian Houghton Hodgson (a civil servant of the
company) supported by John Wilson (a great missionary scholar
of Bombay) championed the cause of the vernacular languages.
The controversy continued until the Education Dispatch of 1854
from the Court of Directors to the Governor General of India,
named after Sir Charles Wood, the President of Control. The
Dispatch forcefully directed the Government to promote the use
of vernacular languages as media of instruction in education to
cater to the middle and lower strata of the society. This Dispatch
is a landmark in the use of vernacular languages in education.
However, the recommendations were not implemented with
sincerity for the next seven decades.
After the Mutiny of 1857, the administration of India was
transferred to the British Crown. Even by 1882, over 60% of
primary schools still had English as the medium of instruction. It
was Lord Curzon's (Viceroy of India 1898- 1905) educational
policy, coupled with the national movement, that brought about
sweeping changes in the medium of education in the early part of
this century. In his speeches Viceroy Curzon said (some
excerpts):
Ever since the cold breath of Macaulay's rhetoric passed over the field
of Indian languages and Indian textbooks, the elementary education of
the people in their own tongue has shrivelled up and pined.
The main obstacle which primary education has to contend with
springs from the people themselves. As they rise in the social scale,
they wish their children to learn English.
By all means, let English be taught to those who are qualified to learn
it, but let it rest upon a solid foundation of the indigenous
 Page 18
languages, for no people will ever use another tongue with advantage
that cannot first use its own with ease.
Unless a good training in the vernacular is given in the schools, no
effort of the university will avail.
The Resolution on the Educational Policy of the Government of
India (21st February 1913) was a significant pronouncement
which led to the establishment of vernacular schools from
primary to the secondary level. It observes: 'There is much
experience to the effect that scholars who have been through a
complete vernacular course are exceptionally efficient mentally.'
A commission under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Sadler was
set up to 1917 to inquire into the affairs of the Calcutta University
in particular and the crucial problems of education in general.
The report gave serious thought to the medium problem and
observes:
We are emphatically of opinion that there is something unsound in a
system of education which leaves a young man, at the conclusion of his
course, unable to speak or write his own mother tongue fluently and
correctly. It is thus beyond controversy that a systematic effort must
henceforth be made to promote the serious study of the vernaculars in
secondary schools, intermediate colleges and in the university.
This resulted in restricting the medium of English only to the
college and university stage from the 1920s onwards throughout
the country.

Post-1947 Scenario of the Medium of Instruction

When the colonial countries became independent, a major
problem that they had to tackle was finding a national
languageboth as a symbol of national spirit and solidarity, and
also as a lingua franca. While it was easier for smaller nation-
states to find such a language (e.g. Pakistan, Burma and Sri
Lanka), in countries with diverse ethnic populations of sizeable
numbers with different languages, the problem became quite
difficult and complex. It is not possible to compare any two
countries in the complexity of their problems. The African States
and India have multilingual and multi-ethnic populations which
cannot be served by a single language as a lingua franca. The
situation in India is easier since it has 14 major modern Indian
languages, most of which are spoken in different geographical
regions whose boundaries can be marked.
 Page 19
The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, recognises 15
languages as the languages of India included in Schedule VIII (14
modern Indian languages and Sanskrit, a classical language).
English continues as an associate official language along with
Hindi, which is the recognised official language of the country.
The major Indian languages are spoken by 87% of the population
(according to the 1971 census). Linguistic states were formed in
1956. The University Education Commission Report of 1949
suggested, among other things, that 'English be replaced, as early
as practicable, by an Indian language as the medium of
instruction of higher education'. The Education Commission
(1964-66), in no uncertain terms, discussed the medium question
and proposed that the mother tongue (regional language) should
be used up to the highest level for instruction and examination,
but English should be taught both as a subject and as a library
language at higher levels.
The policy was implemented in a haphazard manner with many
states adopting the regional language as an optional medium
beside English up to the undergraduate level in arts and sciences.
But professional courses (like engineering, medicine, etc.)
continue to be in English at all levels. The optionality of medium
gave rise to two streams of students, those with the English
medium having a definite advantage over the regional language
medium students, both in employment and in postgraduate
education. Students from a regional language medium have
found it difficult to switch over to English at the postgraduate
level. Therefore, instead of becoming an advantage, the regional
language medium, in almost all cases, became a handicap to those
who had opted for it. This trend has led to a greater importance
being given to English medium right from the primary stage. The
trend during the past two decades has tilted in favour of English,
and English medium primary schools have cropped up as
mushrooms in both urban and rural areas with inadequately
prepared teachers. Children coming out of such schools have a
poorer knowledge of, and exposure to, the mother tongue, which
has made them culturally alienated and has stunted their cognitive
development.
The Commonwealth Universities Yearbook 1987 (Vol. 3)
provides information about the medium of instruction for only
some universities. Of the 154 institutions listed in the Yearbook,
there are 8 Central Universities, 5 Indian Institutes of Technology,
24 Professional (Agriculture, Technology, etc)
Universities/Institutes, 20 'Deemed to be Universities' and
Institutions of National Importance and 96 multi-faculty
universities.
The medium of instruction as could be gathered from the
Yearbook for each group of institutions is shown in Table 2.1.
 Page 20
TABLE 2.1 Medium of instruction at universities/institutes
Institutions No Medium of instruction
1) Central Universities 8 English1
2) Indian Institutes of
Technology 5 English
3) Professional
Universities/Institutions: 25 Not stated for most2
Agriculture Universities 22
Gujarat Ayurved Univ. 1
J. N. Technological Univ. 1
Indira Kala Sangit Univ. 1
4) Deemed to be universities 20 English (not Professional
Institutions), Sanskrit, Hindi,
English (for language
institutions)3
5) Multi-faculty universities 96 English at postgraduate level
and regional language as
optional medium at the
undergraduate level.
Total 154
1In Viswa-Bharathi, Bengali is an optional medium in postgraduate non-
professional courses.
2Agricultural Universities have generally English as the medium of
instruction.
3Gujarati Vidyapeeth has Gujarati, English and Hindi.

Out of the 96 multi-faculty universities the Yearbook has no

information on the medium of instruction for 33 of them, viz,
Agra, Doctor Harisingh Gour, Jamia Milia, Lucknow, Utkal,
Amaravati, Bhavnagar, Bihar, Cochin, Devi Ahilya, Gandhiji,
Garhwal, Goa, Gorakhpur, Gulbarga, Guru Ghasidas, Indira
Gandhi National Open, Jiwaji, Kameshwara Singh, Kanpur,
Kamaon, Lalit Narayan, Mithila, Mangalore, Meerut, Mother
Teresa, North Bengal, Ranchi, Rani Durgavati, Ravishankar,
Sambalpur, Sampurnanand, Shivaji, Vidyasagar.
In its introduction on India the Commonwealth Universities
Yearbook summarises the medium of instruction question as
follows:
The issue of the medium of instruction was settled in favour of English,
as explained earlier, by the time the first three
 Page 21
Universities were established in 1857. With the growth of the national
movement, however, a good deal of emphasis was put on the
development of Indian languages. When the Indian constitution was
adopted in 1950, it provides that Hindi should be the official language
of the country. For the first 15 years, however, English also was to
continue as an official language. When in the mid-sixties those 15 years
expired, there was a virulent anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu.
Consequently both Hindi and English continue to be official languages
of the country today and there is little prospect of any major change
occurring in the next few years.
In the University world, however, there has been some change. About
three-quarters of the universities in the Hindi-speaking belt spread
over five Indian states have switched to Hindi as the medium of
instruction. This pattern has been followed with one or two other
Indian languages too but the bulk of the universities continue to have
English as the medium of instruction with an option given to students to
use their own language also.
Most of what is said above relates to undergraduate courses. To a
lesser extent it applies also to postgraduate courses, but in professional
courses English continues to be the medium of instruction as in the
past. Of books written in English and published in India, about 8,000-
10,000 titles a year are published. Three-quarters of them are
textbooks while the remaining quarter or even less are either general
books or scholarly books. On the whole, English is more popular in
India today than it was in 1947.
It is true that there is a great demand for the study of English at
all levels, and by the same token the standard of English has been
declining at an alarming rate because the demand is outstripped
by supply of qualified teachers. Particularly, 'bad English'
acquired in childhood is more difficult to unlearn than at the
post-secondary level.
It would be very helpful if the Commonwealth Universities
Yearbook also provided the number of students enrolled in
different language media at the college and university level for all
universities.
The pre-1960s' situation was decidedly better when the switch
from the regional language to English at the initial stage of the
tertiary level for all or most of the students gave them adequate
preparation of four years
 Page 22
before they entered the postgraduate courses. All this confusion
has led to the expansion of higher education without a sense of
direction. The major employers are industry, banks and
government. No preference is given to language medium
graduates over the English medium ones. This had a backlash
effect on the whole structure of education right from the primary
level.
Suggestions
A proper planning should have led to the following alternatives:
(i) Ideally to extend the regional language medium to all levels of
education including professional coursesat the same time
stepping up the knowledge of English for spoken and written
purposes as the students moved higher up on the educational
ladder.
(ii) To go back to the pre-60s' model imparting education through
the mother tongue/regional language only up to the higher
secondary level and retaining English at all tertiary levels. This
would naturally restrict the benefit of higher education to a small
segment of the population and the gap between the élite and the
masses could never be bridged.
A great deal of time was wasted on such questions as the
preparation of textbooks and terminologies before the regional
language medium was extended to all levels of higher education.
As a linguist I can say that this was putting the cart before the
horse. A language grows in a given domain of knowledge when
it is used by its participants. It is not the terminology that offers
the greatest hurdle in learning English, it is the grammar and the
idiom.
Soon after independence, the regional languages should have
been progressively extended as instructional media, keeping the
textbooks in English. Over the next two decades, teachers who
had received their education through the English medium could
have used the syntax of the regional language with a free
admixture of English/international terminology. They would have
thereby developed styles suitable to teach different
subjectsparticularly those of science and technology. The
preparation of textbooks and standardisation of terms should
have followed in due course after employing styles involving free
code switching in the classroom for at least one decade.
Prescribing norms of style and compulsion to use the terms
prepared by scholars have slowed down language development.
Certain agencies like the textbook academies monopolising
preparation of the textbooks have curtailed the creative
 Page 23
participation of competent writers who could have prepared texts
on different subjects with the users market ultimately determining
the coverage and quality of the text books, as it happened
between 1920 and 1947.

Steps to Reverse the Present Situation

(i) Extending the regional language media to all levels without
insistence on the preparation of text books and terminologies.
(ii) Allowing teachers and students to freely use their variety/style
for acquiring modern knowledge through the mother
tongue/regional language, thus creating conditions for different
styles and terms to evolve through borrowing, semantic
extension, fresh coining, etc.
(iii) Standard English textbooks should continue to be the
sources of knowledge.
(iv) Specialised courses have to be developed to familiarise
scientific English relating to different fields.
(v) After at least a decade of such experimental classroom
preparation, teachers with the experience of teaching different
subjects should write books and there should be a free market for
such books to compete for quality.
(vi) Committees for standardisation of terminology should come
as the last step when, for each international concept, certain
criteria of usage would be available to guide in the process of
standardisation.
Notes
1 This article has also appeared in 'What Can We Do For Our
Countries?': The Report of the Proceedings of the Fourteenth
Congress of the Universities of the Commonwealth, Perth,
February 1988, published by The Association of Commonwealth
Universities, London.
References
BAMAN-BEHRAM, B. K. 1943, Educational Controversies in
India. Bombay: D. P. Taraporevala Sons & Co. Commonwealth
Universities Yearbook 1987 (Vol. 3). London: The Association of
Commonwealth Universities.
FERGUSON, CHARLES A. and DIL, ANWAR S. 1979,
Universals of language planning in national development. In
WILLIAM C. MCCORMACK and STEPHEN A. WURM,
Language and Society: Anthropological Issues (pp. 693-702).
The Hague: Mouton.
KANUNGO, GOSTHA BEHARI. 1962, The Language
Controversy in Indian Education:
 Page 24
An Historical Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago,
Camparative Education Center.
KRISHNAMURTI, Bh. 1979, Problems of language
standardization in India. 1979. In WILLIAM C. McCORMACK
and STEPHEN A. WURM. Language and Society:
Anthropological Issues (pp. 673-92). The Hague: Mouton.
MAHMOOD, SYED 1895, A History of English Education in
India (1781 to 1893). Aligarh: Honorary Secretary of the MAO
College.
NAGARAJAN, S. 1984, Children of Macaulay. New Quest, 46,
207-20.
NAIK, J. P. and NURULLAH, SYED, 1985, (6th edn. revised). A
Student History of Education in India 1800-1973. New Delhi:
Macmillan India Limited.
National Policy on Education 1986: Programme of Action, 1986.
New Delhi: Government of India (Ministry of Human Resource
Development, Department of Education).
Report of the Education Commission 1964-66: Education and
National Development. New Delhi: Ministry of Education,
Government of India.
WEST, MICHAEL, 1926, Bilingualism. Bureau of Education
(India): Occasional Reports No 13. Calcutta: Government of
India.
 Page 25

3
Linguistic Dominance and Cultural Dominance:
A Study of Tribal Bilingualism in India
E. Annamalai
Bilingualism 1 in India is a stable and a natural phenomenon. The
acquisition of an additional language does not commonly lead to
gradual loss of the first languagethe possession of an additional
language is like possessing an additional garment, or tool, needed
for a different situation or purpose. It is not transient as in the
case of migrant communities in some countries like the USA,
where it is an intermediate, temporary phase in the movement
from monolingualism in one language to monolingualism in
another. It is the expected behavioural norm when languages are
in contact, and not an exceptional one.
Bilingualism in India, however, shares some features with
bilingualism elsewhere. One such feature is that when the
linguistic communities are unequal socially, bilingualism is
unidirectional. The social inequality may be due to unequal
power or unequal population of the communities (Srivastava,
1984). The direction of bilingualism is not determined by the
inequality alone, but also by the type of bilingual acquisition in
the particular social situation.
Bilingualism may be acquired either through the process of
socialisation or schooling, and the nature of bilingualism in each
case is different. Bilingualism through schooling, for example, is
generally in the direction of the language of power and it gives
primacy to the literacy skills (Annamalai, 1986). The direction of
bilingualism through socialisation, on the other hand, is towards
the behavioural and perceptual norms of the group and the oral
skills are paramount. Bilingualism in the tribal communities of
India, which is the concern of this paper, could not have
 Page 26
been formally acquired through schooling as the level of
educational achievement of the tribals is, in general, very low
(with a few exceptions in the north eastern part of India).
According to the 1961 census, only O.1% of the tribals have
completed matriculation, i.e. ten years of schooling. The
description of tribal bilingualism in this paper, therefore, refers to
that acquired informally.
'Tribe', commonly called 'scheduled tribe', in the Indian context is
an administrative and legal term to label some ethnic groupsbased
on their socio-economic status, and religious and cultural
customsin order to give special attention to them as mandated by
the constitution. The demographic figures from the Census of
India given in this paper relate to these tribes. There are many
non-tribal minorities, who have sociolinguistic characteristics
which are distinct from those of the tribals. It is to be examined
whether their bilingualism is also different.
It must be noted that all tribal communities may not be
minorities. This is true of some tribal communities in the north
east, if the state is taken as the unit for defining a minority. In
these states the tribal language may be the dominant language,
being the language of adminstration and education along with
Englsih. The tribal population of India, according to the 1961
census, is 29.9 million, which is 6.87% of the total population
(51.6 million and 7.76% in 1981). Of them, 15.73 % (about 4.7
million in 1961)arebilinguals, which is one and a half times more
than the national average bilingualism (9.7%). 2
Any bilingualism can be properly understood only in the socio-
cultural and demographic context of its existence. The following
background information on the Indian tribes will help to
understand their bilingualism. One important characteristic of the
tribal communities in India is their heterogenity; the tribals cannot
be viewed as a single homogenous group of the Indian
population. There are 613 tribal communities (Government of
India, 1978) with their population varying from just 17 in the
case of Andamanese to 4 million in the case of Gondi. They have
304 tribal mother tongues (i.e. mother tongues not claimed by
non-tribal communities), which are reduced to 101 distinct
identifiable languages, which belong to four language families,
viz. Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan
(Govt. of India, 1964). They also have non-tribal mother tongues,
which are also mother tongues of non-tribal communities. This
may be due either to language shift among the tribals or to
division of a linguistic community into tribal and non-tribal on
the basis of the criteria mentioned above. Their literacy rate
varies from 4% in the case of tribes in Rajasthan to 27% in
Manipur (the national average is 8.53% for the tribals in 1961
(16.35% in 1981) and 23.93% for the entire population
 Page 27
(36.23% in 1981)). The tribal bilinguals are 0.2% of the tribal
population in Rajasthan, and 33% in Tripura (Itagi et al., 1986).
The ethnic boundary is coterminous with the linguistic boundary
for only a small number of tribal communities. In other words,
most of the tribal communities are linguistically heterogeneous
with reference to their mother tongue, and some tribal linguistic
communities are ethnically heterogeneous. This is obvious from
the difference between the number of tribal communities and the
number of tribal mother tongues mentioned above. For a specific
illustration of this fact, we can look at two representative
statesAssam in the north east and Madhya Pradesh in central
India, whose tribal populations are 7% and 22% respectively of
the total tribal population of the country. The 22 tribes in Assam
have 60 mother tongues grouped into 40 languages, and the 58
tribes of Madhya Pradesh have 93 mother tongues grouped into
38 languages (Itagi et al., 1986). The index of linguistic (i.e.
mother tongue) diversity worked out on the basis of the
proportion of the tribal speakers of each mother tongue to the
tribal population of the state using the formula devised by
Greenberg (1956) is 0.46 for Assam rising to as high as 0.70 in
one district (Lakhimpur), and 0.26 for Madhya Pradesh rising to
as high as 0.75 for one district (West Nimar) (Itagi et al., 1986).
The dominant languages with which a tribal community is in
contact are also diverse in some cases. This is due either (1) to
the fact that the geographical boundary of a tribal community
living contiguously may have more than one dominant language
around it, or (2) to the fact that a tribal community may live non-
contiguously in the midst of more than one dominant language.
Out of the three million Santals, for example, some Santals
(38%0) are in contact with Bengali in West Bengal, some (13%)
with Oriya in Orissa and some (49%) with Hindi in Bihar. The
second situation is quite common when a section of a tribal
community migrates to another linguistic area, for example the
Kurukh speakers went to tea plantations in Assam as indentured
labourers during the colonial period.
Given the linguistic heterogeneity of the tribals, their bilingualism
cannot be the same. Nevertheless, some common trends can be
detected in the tribal bilingualism. Socialisation is a process by
which one relates himself or herself to other members of a group
by accepting the norms and values of the group. If the language
of the group is different from that of the individual, he has to
learn that language and thus the other tongue of the bilingual is
socially determined. The domains of socialisation are home,
village or neighbourhood, school and work place. For the tribals,
school is not an effective domain, as pointed out above, as it has
not yet been
 Page 28
culturally well integrated with the tribal society for formal
education to become a significant characteristic of the tribal
population. Work place is not a sufficiently independent domain
for them as the separation of work place from home is a
development in a society of surplus economy (Hamilton, 1978)
and the tribal communities have subsistence economy. Thus there
are only two domains of socialisation for the tribals, viz. home
and village.
Homes will be bilingual when there are inter-tribal marriages.
There is no data on the percentage of inter-tribal marriage, nor on
whether the husband or the wife learns the language of the other,
or both a common language or each other's language. In a society
with gender hierarchy where women have a subordinate status, it
is likely that the wife learns the husband's language and becomes
bilingual, as he will set the norms of the home. In many tribal
communities, however, the women's position is not subordinate,
as indicated by lesser male control over women's sexuality and
economic activity. In bilingual villages, the communities which
have a lower status in the social organisation of the village
irrespective of their numerical strength will acquire the language
of the community with a higher status. When there is no strong
status difference, the bilingualism is likely to be in the direction
of the language of the numerically large group. It is likely to be
reciprocal when the population difference is not critical.
Reciprocal bilingualism has been reported for the major language
speakers living near linguistic boundaries (Gumperz & Wilson,
1971) and this is likely to be more between tribal communities.
Apart from socialisation, there are economic relations between
tribes and between tribes and non-tribes at the village level and at
the regional level. The different tribes may have a symbiotic
relationship for exchanging goods and services between
themselves and the non-tribals may have an exogenous
relationship providing money and materials to the tribals in
return for their labour and natural produce or resources (Misra,
1977). Both these economic relations are structural, unlike
socialisation, which is organic. The bilingualism necessitated by
these economic relations is likely to be of a restricted kind and to
be functional to serve the particular interaction.
If the above speculations were true, bilingualism of the tribes in
the tribal language would be societal and intensive, and
bilingualism in the non-tribal language would be individual (or at
best sectarian) and restricted.
The figures for tribal bilingualism in the 1961 census, however,
gives a different picture. Table 3.1 gives statewise other tongues
of the tribals which constitute more than 10% of their bilinguals.
(Govt. of India, 1966).
 Page 29
Table 3.1 Tribal bilingualism and their tongues, 1961
Sl. State/Union Tribal Other
No. territory bilinguals tongues
(%) (%)
1. Andhra Pradesh 19.21 Telugu 87.47
2. Assam 29.77 Assamese 75.71
3. Bihar 23.74 Hindi 59.37
Bengali 17.72
Sadri 11.38
4. Gujarat 1.37 Gujarati 44.84
Hindi 25.29
Marathi 16.82
5. Kerala 1.47 Kannada 53.74
English 29.88
Malayalam 13.21
6. Madras (Tamil Nadu) 3.76 Tamil 62.50
Telugu 18.90
7. Madhya Pradesh 12.41 Hindi 60.35
Chattisgarhi 11.54
Halbi 10.55
8. Maharashtra 8.43 Marathi 60.79
Hindi 20.61
9. Mysore (Karnataka) 16.23 Kannada 53.22
Tulu 33.98
10. Orissa 20.75 Oriya 88.39
11. Punjab (includes a part of 19.04 Hindi 44.82
present Himachal) Bhotia (unspecified)
26.38
Urdu 26.24
12. Rajasthan 0.18 Hindi 52.73
English 32.70
13. West Bengal 29.61 Bengali 86.94
14. Andaman & Nicobar 7.58 Hindi 84.11
Islands English 13.08
15. Himachal Pradesh 6.22 Hindi 90.60
16. Manipur 27.62 Hindi 80.17

(table continued on next page)

 Page 30
TABLE 3.1 (continued)
Sl. State/Union Tribal Other
No. territory bilinguals tongues
(%) (%)
17. Laccadive Islands 3.54 Arabic 51.21
(Lakshadweep) English 20.41
Malayalam 14.01
18. Tripura 32.70 Bengali 98.79
19. Dadra & Nagar Haveli 7.27 Gujarati 92.60
20. NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) 40.10 Assamese 72.59
Hindi 19.44
21. Nagaland 5.52 Assamese 48.36
English 29.26
Hindi 16.27

The most surprising fact in the above table is that no tribal

language figures in it. There are, of course, some tribal languages
in some states which are other tongues of tribal bilinguals which
constitute less than 10% of the bilingual tribals: in Gujarat, Varli
is the other tongue of 9.55% of the tribal bilinguals; in Madhya
Pradesh, Gondi is 4.49%; in Maharashtra, Gondi is 3.94%; and in
Manipur, Paite is 4.31%. These are small both from the point of
view of the number of tribal languages and the number of tribal
bilinguals. It is true that the census enumerators take down only
the first two other tongues reported by the citizen and the
department publishes the figures only for the first one. Even if
we assume that if all the other tongues had been reported, the
percentage of tribal other tongues would be higher, it may not
exceed the percentage of the non-tribal languages in the table,
which is quite high. This suggests that our speculated inter-tribal
marriages, linguistic diversity of the tribal villages and the
symbiotic inter-tribal relations are negligible; or the neighbouring
tribal languages are mutually intelligible; or the functions arising
out of these social situations are performed by the non-tribal
languages, which would be the case if they were in position of
power to provide socioeconomic gains to their users. The latter
case is similar to the instances of the use of Hindi or English as
the language of the household by the non-tribals in the inter-
lingual families, where neither of these two languages is the
mother tongue of any spouse.
 Page 31
The table shows two contact languages as other tongues, viz.
Sadri in Bihar, Halbi in Madhya Pradesh. Other contact
languagessuch as Desia in Orissa derived from Oriya, and
Nagamese in Nagaland derived from Assameseare not reported. It
is a characteristic of the tribal bilingualism that the contact
language which is the other tongue may not be the mother tongue
of any group. Though the contact languages mentioned above are
mother tongues of some tribals, they became so after those tribals
lost their native mother tongues, as shown by the fact that other
members of the same ethnic group still have their native mother
tongue. In the case of non-tribals, the other tongue is always the
native mother tongue of some group.
The largest other tongue of the tribal bilinguals is the dominant
language of the state or region they live in. In the case of 14
states, the other tongue is the state language spoken by the
majority of the people of the state and a major language. In the
case of Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Arunachal and Nagaland it is the
state language of the adjoining state and it can be called the
language of the region. It may be noted that these three do not
have a major language of their own. The second and the third
largest other tongues are also state languages of the adjoining
state or states and are major languages. The tribals with these
other tongues are likely to be living in the border areas. Kerala
and Punjab give a slightly different picture in that the largest
other tongue itself is the state language of the adjoining state, and
in the case of Punjab, Punjabi (which is the state language of the
present day Punjab and a major language) is not the other tongue
of even 10% of the bilinguals. The general trend is that the major
languages of the region in which the tribals live, which may be a
state or extend beyond a state, are the predominant other tongues.
The only exception is Tulu, which is the language of a sub-region
in Karnataka, but whose speakers are economically prosperous.
The other tongues acquired by the tribals may not be the standard
variety of the major language, but its regional variety. 3 This is
particularly important to note for Hindi, which has distinct
regional varieties. For example, in Himachel Pradesh the tribals
will have one of the Pahadi dialects as the other tongue, which is
reported as Hindi. In Bihar, however, Chattisgarhi is reported as a
separate other tongue besides Hindi.
The converse to the generalisation made above is that the link
languages at the national level are not the other tongues of the
tribals except in some union territories. This is to be expected:
they cannot be learnt through contact in the region, because they
are contact languages at a higher interregional level, and they are
not learnt in schools, because the educational achievement is low
among the tribals, as pointed out above. The predominant other
tongues in tribal bilingualism, then, are neither the local
 Page 32
tribal languages nor the national link languages, but the dominant
major languages of the region.
The generalisation is true also of the bilingualism of the non-
tribal linguistic minorities. Bilingualism in the regional language
of the state is much higher than in Hindi and English in the south
and in the east except in Kerala and West Bengal, where
bilingualism in English is higher. In the west, bilingualism in
Hindi is higher (Khubchandani, 1978). In the Hindi states, Hindi
being the state language, comparison between the state language
and Hindi does not arise. These regional differences are also
found in the tribal bilingualism. In the western states of Gujarat
and Maharashtra, Hindi is the second largest other tongue of the
tribals and in Kerala English is the second largest other tongue.
Hindi is the state language of the adjoining states also for Gujarat
and Maharashtra, and in addition to this, Hindi as a national link
language may also have contributed to the high percentage of
Hindi in these two western states.
The high percentage of English as the other tongue of tribals in
Kerala may be due to schooling, 4 as too may Urdu in Punjab.
Kerala has the highest literacy rate in the country (46.85% in 1961
and 70.42% in 1981). The tribal literacy is also about double the
national average (31.79% as against 16.35%) in Kerala. This
cannot be said of Punjab, whose literacy rate is only a little higher
than the national average (24.74% in 1961 and 40.86% in 1981).
The high percentage of Urdu in Punjab, therefore, cannot be
attributed to schooling alone; nor can the high percentage of
Hindi in Arunachal, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Nagaland and
Lakshadweep, nor the high percentage of English in Nagaland,
Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The second largest other tongue
percentage in Rajasthan, English, is unexplainable, though this
state has a high percentage (49%) of English as the other tongue
for all the bilinguals (tribal and non-tribal) also - the national
average of English as other tongue is only 26%(Khubchandani,
1978) and thus exhibits the same pattern as the general
bilingualism in the state. The large percentage of Arabic in
Lakshadweep, whose tribals follow Islam, is due to its religious
importance.
The parallelism described above in the preferred other tongue
between the non-tribal minorities5 and the tribals is very striking.
It is striking because their socio-cultural situations and contact
situations are different. The relationship of the non-tribal
minorities such as the Telugus in Tamil Nadu, Konkanis in
Karnataka, etc. to their respective majority communities are not
merely economic. They socialise themselves into the majority
community6 and culturally integrate themselves with the majority
language as their cultural language (Pattanayak, 1981). Their
cultural
 Page 33
convergence is indicated by the linguistic convergence of the
minority language with the majority language. As the linguistic
relation between the non-tribal minority language and the
majority language can be described with some exaggeration as
one grammar and two languages (Annamalai: to be published),
the cultural relation between the communities speaking these
languages may be described as one culture and two ethnicities.
The parallelism therefore suggests either that the relationship
between the tribal community and the majority community is
culturally the same as the relationship between the non-tribal
minority and majority communities (which is doubtful) 7 or that
the difference between the economic and structural relation on
the one hand and the social and organic relation on the other in a
contact situation is not crucial for different types of bilingualism
to emerge. The dominating position of the majority language in
the region overshadows or overpowers all relationships. If the
majority language is not the cultural language of the tribals as
suggested above, it is an instance of linguistic dominance without
cultural assimilation or dominance.
There are also some differences between the bilingualism of the
nontribal minorities and the tribals. The incidence of bilingualism
is higher in general in the urban areas than in the rural areas in
India (Weinreich, 1957). But the tribal bilingualism, which is
higher than the national average, is almost entirely rural.
The gender difference among the tribal bilinguals is only 12%.
Among the tribal bilinguals (4.7 million) 56% are males and 44%
are females. The difference is more for the non-tribals. The
gender difference comes out more clearly when the speakers of
tribal and non-tribal mother tongues are compared. Among the
male speakers of tribal mother tongues 39%o are bilinguals, and
among the female speakers 32% are bilinguals. Contrastively,
among the male speakers of non-tribal mother tongues 12% are
bilinguals, and among the female speakers 6% are bilinguals. It
may be seen that almost as many males are bilinguals as females
among the tribal language speakers, whereas among the non-
tribal language speakers, the female bilinguals are only half of the
male bilinguals.8 This suggests that women are equal participants
in the productive economic activities of the tribal community and
are equal members of the group in socialisation. This supports
the point made earlier that the status of women in the tribal
societies in general is not subordinate.
It was stated at the beginning of the paper that Indian
bilingualism is stable. But the tribal bilingualism is relatively
unstable. 43% of the tribals have reported a non-tribal language
as their mother tongue. (Itagi et al.,
 Page 34
1986.) While the tribes number 29.9 million people in 1961, there
are only 12.8 million tribal mother tongue speakers (51.6 million
and 19.3 million respectively in 1981, i.e. 37.1). This means that
nearly half of the tribals have shifted their mother tongue. 9 For
almost all the tribals for whom the bilingualism turned out to be
transient, the transferred mother tongue is the majority language
of the region. The bilingual tribals also have reported the
majority regional language as their mother tongue whose other
tongue may be a tribal language. The details of this shift
including the factors that contribute to the shift (Moag, 1987),
decennial variation in the population reporting a tribal mother
tongue, the correlation between literacy and language shift are the
subject matter for a separate study.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to N. H. Itagi for providing all the statistical data in
the paper based on the Census of India. His help provides
empirical base to this study. The interpretations in the paper are
valid to the extent of the validity of the census data. For a
detailed field study of tribal language use in some states, see M.
V. Sreedhar (1988). This chapter was presented as the
Presidential Address to the Eighteenth Conference of the
Dravidian Linguistics Association at Kanyakumari, Tamilnadu, in
April 1990.
Notes
1. Bilingualism is used in this paper in the broader sense of
ability to use more than one language, to include multilingualism.
2. The demographic figures given in this paper are from the 1961
census in which detailed information is available. Such details are
not available in either the 1971 or the 1981 census. The number
of states and union territories is less in 1961 than in 1981. This
makes the figures outdated. For example, the tribal literacy rate is
highest in Mizoram (59.63% in 1981), but it was part of Assam in
1961 and therefore its figures cannot be given in this paper.
Punjab has no tribal population in 1981, but has in 1961, because
at that time part of present day Himachal was in Punjab. This is a
limitation of this study.
3. The subsidiary language (i.e. the other tongue) given in the
census for the bilinguals is not the name of the mother tongue,
but the name of the language. It means that even if the subject
gives the name of a mother tongue (which may be the name for a
regional variety of the language) the census classifies it under a
language and gives the name of the language.
4. It may also be due to the fact that a large percentage of tribals
in Kerala have reported Malayalam as their tongue and therefore
it cannot be their other tongue. It will be interesting to see
whether there is a correlation between literacy and language shift.
 Page 35
5. The comparison of non-tribal minorities with the figures given
by Khubchandani (1978) is not strictly correct because his figures
are for the entire population covering the speakers of majority,
non-tribal minority and tribal languages. Nevertheless, since the
bilingualism of majority language speakers is very low (9.6%)
compared to the minority language speakers (60.9%) (Apte,
1970), the figures for the non-tribal minorities alone should not
be substantially different in percentage.
6. This assumes that the state must be taken as a domain for
socialisation. This suggests that the development of sub-national
or national identity is a case of socialisation.
7. A recent study of Periyalwar (1988) of the Nilgiri tribes brings
out the fact that the tribes prefer to have their tribal languages in
the cultural programmes in mass media like radio or television,
which is not the case with non-tribal minorities like the Telugus,
Kannadigas, Saurashtras, etc. of the plains in Tamil Nadu. This is
so in spite of the fact that bilingualism in Tamil in both groups is
equally high. This suggests that the cultural needs of the non-
tribal minorities are satisfied by Tamil, both of the tribes. There
are, however, tribes like Bodos in Assam and Kok Boroks in
Tripura for whom the cultural languages are Assamese and
Bengali respectively. This is particularly true in the area of literate
culture.
8. These percentages are computed from the bilinguals among the
114 mother tongue speakers of which 43 are tribal mother
tongues (Government of India, 1964). The table includes only
mother tongues whose population is more than 10,000 and whose
bilinguals are more than 5,000, which, however, covers 95.8% of
the total population. This computation, incidentally, shows that
the bilingualism of the tribal language speakers is much higher
(35.56%) than the bilingualism of the tribes (15.73%) and the
bilingualism of the non-tribal language speakers is slightly less
(9.2%) than the national average (9.7%). The figure for
bilingualism of the non-tribals alone is not readily available, and
it is also likely to be slightly less than the figure for non-tribal
language speakers, which includes tribals who have shifted their
mother tongue to a non-tribal language.
9. It is not, however, necessary that the mother tongue of the
tribals was always originally a tribal language different from the
majority regional language. The mother tongue may be a dialect
of the majority regional language.
References
ANNAMALAI, E. 1986, Bilingualism through schooling in India.
In A. ABBI (ed.) Studies in Bilingualism. New Delhi: Bahari
Publications.
To appear, Convergence: A Study of Indian Languages. Pune:
Linguistic Society of India.
APTE, M. L. 1970, Some sociolinguistic aspects of interlingual
communication in India. Anthropological Linguistics, 12-3.
GOVT. OF INDIA 1964, Census of India 1961. Vol. I India, Part
II-C(ii) Language Tables. New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs.
GOVT. OF INDIA 1966, Census of India 1961, Vol. I India Part
V A (ii) Special Tables for Scheduled Tribes. New Delhi:
Ministry of Home Affairs.
GOVT. OF INDIA 1978, Background papers on tribal
development, scheduled tribes and scheduled areas in India. New
Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs.
 Page 36
GREENBERG, J. H. 1956, The measurement of linguistic
diversity. Language, 32, 1.
GUMPERZ, J. and WILSON, R. 1971, Convergence and
creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan-Dravidian border. In D.
HYMES (ed.) Pidginization and Creolization of Languages.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HAMILTON, R. 1978, The Liberation of Women: A Study of
Patriarchy and Capitalism. London: George Allen and Unwin.
ITAGI, N. H., JAYARAM, B. D. and VANI, V. 1986,
Communication Potential in the Tribal Population of Assam and
Madhya Pradesh. Mysore: CIIL. KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1978,
Distribution of contact languages in India: A study of the 1961
bilingualism. In JOSHUA FISHMAN (ed.) Advances in the Study
of Societal Multilingualism. The Hague: Mouton.
MISRA, P. K. 1977, Patterns of inter-tribal relations. In S. C.
DUBE (ed.) Tribal Heritage of India Vol. 1. New Delhi: Vikas.
MOAG, R. F. 1987, Causal factors in the loss/maintenance of
minority language: The case of Tamil in Fiji. International
Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 15, 1.
PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1981, Multilingualism and Mother Tongue
Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
PERIYALWAR, R. 1988, A Sociolinguistic Study of Nilgiris.
Udhagamandalam: Tribal Research Centre. Unpublished.
SREEDHAR, M. V. (ed.) 1988, Pidgins and Creoles: Languages
of Wider Communication. Mysore: CIIL.
SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1984, Linguistic minorities and national
language. In F. COULMAS (ed.) Linguistic Minorities and
Literacy. The Hague: Mouton.
WEINREICH, U. 1957, Functional aspects of Indian bilingualism.
Word 13, 2.
 Page 37

4
Multilingualism and School Education in India:
Special Features, Problems and Prospects
A. K. Srivastava

Indian MultilingualismIn the Eyes of a Psychologist

The number of languages spoken in the world far exceed the
existing number of countries. There are from 3,000 to 4,000
languages with a little more than 150 countries to accommodate
them (Grosjean, 1982). Therefore, bilingualism/multilingualism is
expected to be a universal phenomenon. However, this is not so.
At one extreme there are countries which follow dominantly
monolingual policies, imposing a uniform language as their
national/official language. Demographically such countries may
be multilingual, but functionally they are always monolingual.
Western countries, on the whole, best illustrate this situation. At
the other extreme there are countries like India, which is
multilingual, multicultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic.
There are 1,652 mother tongues according to the 1961 census
(census of India, 1961). This number is reducible to 200, by
eliminating those dialects which are actually similar mother-
tongues but have different names, out of which 15 have been
included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as
major languages, 58 find a place in school curricula and 47 are
used as media of instruction in schools. There are 34 literary
languages, out of which 14 are neo-literary as they have been
cultivated only recently (Chaturvedi & Singh, 1981). The press
uses 87 languages for publication, and the radio 71 languages for
transmission. For administration in states, one of the 13
languages (Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada,
Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu)
 Page 38
has been selecteddepending upon the percentage of people
speaking that language in the state concernedand declared as its
official language. Still, Indian multilingualism is so well
distributed that even to the district level of this vast country
minority speech communities existand maintain their languages.
India has, therefore, been characterised by the scholars as a
sociolinguistic giant (Pandit, 1972) with multilingualism being the
soul of this giant. Maintenance of language is, therefore, a norm
and not a deviation (Pandit, 1977), and any deviation, either
perceived or real, is totally resisted.
Why, then, is the phenomenon of multilingualism, which should
have developed as a natural way of life throughout the world,
had a very imbalanced growth with some countries becoming
dominantly monolingual and some others typically multilingual?
This paper has two purposes:
(1) to make a comparative assessment of the two situations as
they reveal themselves in the eyes of a psychologist, in order to
find out the special features of Indian multilingualism.
(2) to critically examine the attempts made by a country like India
to introduce several languages at the level of school education
with a view to preserve and promote multilingualism even at the
level of formal education.
Purpose (2) supplements and supports purpose (1).
The answer to the imbalanced growth of languages in different
countries lies in the differences in perception of the people of the
multiplicity of languages in their environment. Perceptual
differences promote differential reactions towards the same
object or situation. Einstein introduced the role of the observer
and his frame of reference into the measurement of velocity in
the theory of relativity. Similarly, the directive state theory of
perception in psychology highlighted the role of the observer in
determining what is perceived. Even though this theory did not
deny the role of structural factors in perception, such as the
stimulus object and the perceiving mechanism, it was empirically
demonstrated that the perceiver's needs, values, attitudes, beliefs,
socio-economic and cultural backgrounds are important
determiners of the way objects or situations are perceived and
differential reactions are offered towards them.
The binary philosophy of the West took linguistic heterogeneity
as the curse of God pronounced as a means of punishing people
for attempting to build the Tower of Babel without His approval
(Wolff, 1971). The Western perception towards multilingualism is
best illustrated in the following words of Pool (1972):
 Page 39
but a country that is linguistically highly heterogenous is always
underdeveloped, and a country that is developed always has
considerable language uniformityif not uniformity of language origin,
then widespread knowledge of a common language. Language
uniformity is a necessary but not sufficient condition of economic
development and economic development is a sufficient but not
necessary condition of language uniformity. (Pool, 1972: 213)
It is, therefore, not surprising that except for the academic interest
shown by some linguists in the native languages of America,
Canada and Australia (which were there prior to the advent of
immigrants), attempts were made to dissolve all these languages
in the melting pot of uniformity to give way to the language of
the dominant groups. It is another matter that instead of
languages the pot itself melted.
The phenomenon of bilingualism attracted researchers' attention
in Europe as far back as in the ninth century A.D. (Wolff, 1971).
Until this period monolingualism was the way of life, represented
first by Hebrew and then Latin. It was considered to be a curious
phenomenon and its effect on the individual was harmful and for
society it was a handicap. A review of studies on the effect of
bilingualism on individuals showed that it was always negative
(Darcy, 1953; Dolson, 1985; Srivastava, 1983). It must, however,
be said that Peal & Lambert (1962) attempted to mend matters by
stating that the earlier studies suffered from methodological
deficiences and that the effect of bilingualism on different aspects
of an individual's life is always positive. Further, Lambert and his
group (Lambert & Tucker, 1972) not only gave a status to
bilingual education but also empirically demonstrated through
their immersion studies that children did not lose in any way if
the medium of instruction was the second language.
A spate of studies has followed since then on linguistics,
educational, psychological, theoretical, political and legal aspects
of bilingualism and varieties of concepts have been offered as
well as criticised indicating growth of research both in horizontal
and vertical directions (Devaki, Ramasamy & Srivastava, in
press).
The interest of the Western scholars on different aspects of
bilingualism is still alive today (Cummins, 1979, 1983; Cummins
& Swain, 1986; MartinJones & Romaine, 1986). But it cannot
also be denied that behind all these interests of the Western
countries in the phenomenon of bilingualism is the self-interest
of survival, which has been threatened by the changing
circumstances of the present shrinking world, emergence of the
pressure groups formed by the immigrants asserting their identity,
and above all the
 Page 40
needs for defence and diplomacy. Multiplicity of languages is still
not accepted as a natural part of life and an average Westerner
commands only one code. The basic attitude remains the same.
The path to unity is still through uniformity.
Multilingual countries like India present a picture in contrast.
Multilingualism in India has existed from the beginning of her
recorded history and has been perceived as neither good nor bad,
but as a normal and natural phenomenon of day to day life.
Existence and maintenance of diversity, whether cultural,
linguistic, religious or ethnic have always been a part of Indian
tradition and culture. The Indian philosophy of 'udar charitanam
tu vasudhaiva kutumbakam' (for those who are generous, the
whole world is like their family) preached universal brotherhood
and a spirit of tolerance and acceptance of difference. Thus, even
though India was not geographically united in the sense we mean
today, she has always remained culturally and linguistically
united while maintaining her linguistic diversity. This has been so
despite several invasions and long colonial rule of the British
Empire, when English was imposed through the formal
educational system to form a special group of Indian élites to rule
their own countrymen for the Britishers. Even migrations of the
linguistic groups from one part of the country to another did not
adversely influence the maintenance of their languages. On the
contrary, these languages spread by reciprocal interactions with
the local languages and gave birth to new languages, further
enriching the multilingual base of India. Thus, small group
loyalties and micro identities contributed rather than threatened
the formation of large group loyalties and macro identities.
Communication was never affected because of maintenance of
interlinkages with the several levels of communication, that is,
from local to regional to national.
To sum up, one generation has passed on to the other the
languages and cultures it inherited from the past and adding at the
same time its own innovations and developments born out of
contact between several languages within the country or with the
languages of the invaders and those who migrated. The
succeeding generations adapted and preserved them as their own
rich linguistic and cultural heritage. The Indian perception of
multilingualism is well characterised by Pattanayak (1984) in
these words:
The dominant monolingual orientation is cultivated in the developed
world and consequently two languages are considered a nuisance,
three languages uneconomic and many languages absurd. In
multilingual countries many languages are facts of life; any restriction
in the choice of language use is a nuisance, and one language is not
only uneconomic, it is absurd. (Pattanayak, 1984: 82)
 Page 41
It will appear from the above discussion that the ethos and the
psychology of people in a multilingual country like India differ
very much from the dominantly monolingual countries like the
USA and Canada. This difference at the level of people and the
environment in which they grow has to be properly understood
and appreciated, and any attempt 'to view multilingualism with a
monolingually conditioned perception would distort the
perspective and result in bias' (Srivastava, 1986: 45).
First and foremost the difference lies in the availability of
multiple codes to the speakers in a multilingual country with
different roles allotted to each code according to the need of the
situation, which prevents any conflict or interference between the
codes either at the behavioural or at the cognitive level.
Therefore, the question of any negative or positive effect of
availability of several codes on the cognition and personality of
the speakers has no relevance in India. People not only freely
switch over from one code to another but mix them as well for
better communication and establishment of rapport in discourse.
Dominantly monolingual countries, on the other hand, present a
picture in contrast where people generally have one or two codes
at their disposal. The impact of these two situations on the
cognition and personality of the two speakers is bound to be
different. Srivastava (1986) points out that,
this capacity of switching codes provides an individual with a
remarkable capacity and skill to adjust to different conditions she is
exposed to. It makes her attitudes flexible, which leads to an
awareness of the presence of diversity in and around her environment;
and not only that, she has skills to deal with such situations.
(Srivastava, 1986: 47).
Related to the first is the second difference in the process of
socialisation and child rearing practices between the 'we' oriented
multilingual culture like India and the 'I' oriented culture of the
dominantly monolingual countries. Children born in dominantly
monolingual countries are usually surrounded with the
overflowing uniformity in and around them in matters of speech,
dress, culture and other similarities. These children also slowly
get socialised to ignore diversity and look at it as something
peculiar. On the other hand, children in multilingual societies are
born to adjust in a heterogeneous environment with varying
dress, food habits, ways of living and religious practices, but all
forming the mosaic of one culture and one nation. Therefore,
Indian children are socialised from the very beginning to develop
tolerance and respect for differences.
Several other differences between the two situations which
clearly focus this special feature of Indian multilingualism have
been pointed out by
 Page 42
scholars (Annamalai, 1986; Khubchandani, 1983; Southworth,
1980; Srivastava, 1977). Some of these are as follows: (a)
multilingualism is sustained in India by social institutions, (b)
linguistic features transcend genetic boundaries, (c)
multilingualism is the result of nationism and nationalism, (d)
change in linguistic codes or their mixing in communication does
not create problems of identity, conflict and crisis, (e) it is
possible to become multilingual without being multicultural, (f)
language boundaries because of regular contact are fuzzy, (g)
Indian multilingualism is bifocal, existing both at mass and élite
levels, the former in the form of neighbourhood multilingualism
informally acquired, and in the latter it is formally acquired, and
(h) the functional relation between languages are not linear but
hierarchical.
The presence of diversity with tolerance as well as respect for the
same leads to two more qualitative differences between the
multilingual and dominantly monolingual ethos. First, the
presence of diversity in the environment leads to regular
interlinkages and intermixture at various levels between different
groups. Such interlinkages not only bring different languages in
contact but also produce a qualitative change in the style of
living, character and personality of the people and their pattern of
communication. Secondly, presence of several languages in the
immediate as well as remote environment not only aids the
informal learning of languages from the environment itself but
also provides opportunity to use the newly acquired language.
The presence of both these factors in the environment makes a
second language learning different from a foreign language
learning. Environment, therefore, has been the greatest language
teacher in India and has also helped in maintaining
multilingualism informally at the oral level through the ages and
through the periods of stresses and turmoils in the long history of
the country. However, with the development of science and
technology, writing and reading skills of language have become
more important vehicles of communication than the oral modes.
To survive in the changed circumstances of modern existence, the
question arises: can the Indian society preserve and develop
multilingualism through a formal system of education in schools
and colleges? Indian society has already made its choice and has
accepted the challenge of even symbolically promoting
multilingualism by introduing several languages in the school
curriculum. The next section will critically examine the steps
taken in this direction.

Indian Multilingualism and School Education

The one and the only way to introduce multilingualism through a
formal system of education is to make provision for the study of
several languages in the school curriculum.
 Page 43
The following facts have to be considered in order to decide the
number of languages and also which of the languages a child
should study as a part of the school curriculum.
(a) Mother tongue (MT) is the first language, which children
must study from the very beginning in their school both as a
subject and as a medium in order to derive maximum advantage
from education. This is based not only on sound pedagogic
principles (Ausubel, 1968, 1980) but also supported on linguistic
grounds because MT is the expression of primary identity of man
(Pattanayak, 1981a, 1981b, 1986; Krishnamurti, 1986). Article
350A of the Indian Constitution has also stressed the need for
adequate facilities in every school for instruction in MT at the
primary stage of education.
(b) For several school children there may be differences between
their MT and the language of the region in which they are
staying, and which they ought to study to fulfil both integrative
and instrumental needs.
(c) Every school-going child ought to study Hindi since it is the
official language of the country.
(d) English also has to be studied since apart from being the
associate official language it is also an international language
through which several instrumental needs can be satisfied.
(e) An Indian language other than the MT or the language of the
region in which the child lives has also to be studied both for
national integration and for smooth mobility from one part of the
country to another for employment, trade and education.
(f) In order to ensure cultural rootedness children have to study
some classical languages like Sanskrit and Indian Persian.
(g) In order to have wider international communication school-
going children may also like to study at some stage of their
educational career an international language other than English.
Based on the above considerations and evolving through several
reports of the high-powered committees and conferences like
Secondary Education Commission (1953), Central Advisory
Board of Education (1956), Conference of the Chief Ministers
(1961), Education Commission (1964-66), the Three Language
Formula (TLF) gradually developed as a national consensus duly
approved by the Parliament in order to promote national
integration and provide wider language choice in the school
curriculum. It is an educational strategy for communication
between people at the national, regional and local levels. The
National Policy on Education (1968) laid down as follows the
principles of the TLF for the study of languages in the schools:
 Page 44
At the secondary stage, the State Governments should adopt, and
vigorously implement, the three language formula which includes the
study of a modern Indian language, preferably one of the southern
languages, apart from Hindi and English in the Hindi speaking states,
and of Hindi along with the regional language and English in the non-
Hindi speaking states. Suitable courses in Hindi and/or English should
also be available in universities and colleges with a view to improving
the proficiency of students in these languages up to the prescribed
university standards. (The National Policy on Education, 1968: XVII)
The National Policy on Education further recommended that
steps should be taken for the development of regional languages,
Hindi, Sanskrit and international languages including English in
the form of developing new methods of teaching and materials
and facilities for their teaching in the schools.
Seen in the context of the large number of languages in this
country, it is a fact that the study of only three languages cannot
preserve multilingualism at the formal level of schooling.
However, two facts may be clarified in the very beginning.
Firstly, the TLF provides only the minimum and not the
maximum and children are free and should be encouraged to
study more than three languages in the school system. Secondly,
what is important is not the number of languages but the spirit
and philosophy behind the formula which attempts to kindle
interest and motivation in children to know about different
languages, customs, dress, food habits and cultures.
The National Policy on Education (1986) fully approved and
reiterated its 1968 policy about the TLF. However, it was felt that
the implementation of the 1968 policy had been uneven and the
need for more energetic and purposeful implementation of the
policy was underlined. The reasons listed for its unsatisfactory
implementation by the Government document on Programme of
Action (1986) for implementation of New Education Policy are:
(a) The State Governments do not seem to be clear about the
stage at which all the three languages have to be introduced and
therefore all the languages are not taught compulsorily at the
secondary stage. Moreover, the duration for the compulsory
study of the three languages varies from state to state and a clear
decision has to be taken.
(b) The Hindi-speaking states do not teach a modern Indian
language preferably one of the South Indian languages, namely,
Kannada,
 Page 45
Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalamand substitute Sanskrit in its place.
(c) The absence of expected competency level to be achieved by
the study of each language introduces a state of tentativeness as
well as vagueness about the objectives of language teaching and
about the role of language in education.
The above deficiencies are the result of not only lack of proper
conviction about the role of study of several languages in
education and life of the pupil, but also due to lack of facilities to
teach these languages. The language planners and policy makers
are well aware of these short-comings and adequate steps have
been and are being taken to remove them. However, a closer and
critical analysis is needed of the problems faced and prospects
visualised in this stupendous task of maintaining multilingualism
at the level of formal education for the 700 million people of this
vast country with linguistic minorities far exceeding the
population of several European countries.

Problems and prospects

The load of learning several languages in schools
The impression that inclusion of several languages in the school
curriculum is a load on the learner has been held both by general
public and some educationists. However, learning in itself can
never be a load since it is a context-bound process influenced by
a network of forces. Environmental conditions like poor
teaching/learning facilities, and psychological factors of
motivation, attitude and incentive may all combine to reduce the
coping process of children to the learning situation and thus
make one view the entire learning process as a load or burden.
Srivastava (1986) has analysed the reasons for this type of
unfounded impression which may be
... an impression of ignorance of the ethos in which we live, and
sometimes a deliberate device to push some languages out of the
curriculum in order to impose the monolingual model on a multilingual
country. For some it is also a convenient cover to perpetuate the élitist
domination in order to safeguard the individual interest. It is also born
out of ignorance of the role that language plays in education and other
walks of life. (Srivastava, 1986)
Srivastava, Shekhar & Jayaram (1978) and later Borkar
(forthcoming) under the supervision of the author conducted an
empirical investigation to
 Page 46
examine the impression of load in its totality. The questions
asked from the sample of boys, girls, their parents, and their
language teachers selected from the urban, semi-urban and rural
secondary schools centred on: the number of languages preferred
to be learnt and advantages of learning several languages;
difficulties faced in the pedagogic, environmental and curricular
areas; difficulties in relation to the learning of four skills of
languages, and the comparative difficulties faced in learning the
first, second and third languages. The teachers were also asked
about the difficulties faced either by them in teaching the
languages or by their students in learning the languages. The
results conclusively indicate that not only is the learning of
languages not taken to be a load but there is an allround welcome
acceptance for this opportunity by the students, their parents and
the language teachers. Certain specific difficulties have been
indicated by them in all the three areas asked, but there is a very
high motivation for learning languages and that is what sustains
them in the face of difficulties which are certainly not beyond
solution.
TLF does not provide a place for MT teaching for the minorities
This criticism is very important for a multilingual country like
India where there are two types of linguistic minorities: (i)
speakers of minor languages like some of the tribal languages,
and (ii) speakers of modern Indian languages living in a state
where the official language is different from the native language.
It is very important that there are facilities for teaching in and
through the languages of the speakers of minor languages, as per
the provision made in the Constitution. It is a fact that some of
the minority languages are not fully developed to become the
language of education. It is, therefore, all the more essential that
these languages are properly developed to be used as a medium
and as a subject for introducing children to the school, with a
provision at the same time for gradually transforming such
children to the regional language of the state to which they
belong. This will not only ensure the development and
maintenance of such minor languages but will as well bring the
child to the mainstream of the state and the country and make the
schools more meaningful for them. For the second type of
linguistic minority it has already been clarified in the beginning
that the TLF does not lay down any ceiling on the number of
languages to be studied and, therefore, arrangements have to be
made even in the form of audio and video cassettes for language
learning, as per the needs and options of the learners.
 Page 47
Classical languages do not find a place in the TLF
As already stated above, the formula does not lay down any
ceiling on the number of languages to be studied and certainly the
schools have to provide proper facilities for the study of classical
languages. A link can be provided at successive stages between
MT, regional and classical languages by preparing a composite
course if it is not possible to provide for the study of additional
languages.
No use of the third language for the learners
It has been remarked that the way the third language is taught in
the schools makes its learning only a formality to be forgotten in
the absence of use. Therefore, there is neither motivation nor
need for its learningapart from the fact that this type of criticism
emanates from the pedagogic, curricular and environmental
difficulties faced by the learners and lack of technological aids to
develop communicative competence in the language studied. This
type of criticism is sometimes deliberately made by some élitist
groups or by misguided or ignorant persons due to the total lack
of appreciation of their multilingual ethos and their rich cultural
heritage. In our study (Srivastava, Shekhar & Jayaram, 1978;
Borkar, forthcoming), it was found that the students expected to
derive academic, instrumental and integrative advantages from
the study of the third language.
Designation of languages as first, second and third
About designating which language is to be given what number
there is no controversy about the MT/regional language of the
state being given the status of the first language. In the
controversy about the second and third languages, it is advisable
that a modern Indian language should be the second
languagetaught for a longer number of years than at present is the
case as the third language. This will enable the child to develop
higher proficiency in an Indian language other than his
MT/regional language and will make him use this language more
for the fulfilment of both his integrative and instrumental needs.
English ought to be the third language, introduced last in the
order and at a later stage in school education. This is because by
the completion of the middle education a good percentage of
students drop out. Such children do not need any knowledge of
English. But they do need knowledge of an
 Page 48
additional Indian language in order to ensure proficiency for both
local and national level communications. However, those
continuing the secondary stage of education are expected to get
better trained and qualified teachers in English at this stage. The
number of students will also be less than the middle stage and
they are also expected to be more motivated, as these students
will go for higher education and hence they will need a
knowledge of English.
Finally, it may be clarified that the designation of first, second
and third does not indicate the order of importance of languages,
which are equally important depending upon the use of the
language for the learners for their local, national and international
communications.
The problem of medium of instruction (MI)
As pointed out earlier, MT is the best medium of education on
psychological, sociological, educational and linguistic grounds.
The immersion studies of Lambert advocating beneficial effects
of education through second language has been criticised.
Attempts to replicate such studies for low socio-economic groups
and immigrants in the United States and Scandinavian countries
drew attention to the impairment of proficiency in both first and
second languages as a result of this type of bilingual education
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981, 1986; Cummins, 1979; Cummins &
Swain, 1986).
Even though mother tongue is the best medium of instruction, its
effect on the learner is dependent on several factors, such as
social status enjoyed by the mother tongue, the extent to which it
can serve the all-round interest of the learner, and the conditions
under which instructions through mother tongue is imparted. It
does not, therefore, provide a magic formula for all evils of
education, as Nadkarni (1986) comments:
our approach to mother tongue education is so befogged with
sentimentalism that it has become impossible for us to view language
planning in education in clear pragmatic terms. Mother tongue medium
education has become a magic formula instead of becoming the
foundation of a carefully planned educational edifice. (Nadkarni, 1986:
31)
An intensive study conducted by the author clearly showed that
even if instruction is imparted through mother tongue, the
language related skills may develop poorly leading to wastage of
talent, which should be a matter of concern for society
(Srivastava, 1966). So long as society has a choice for
 Page 49
an alternative system which promises better development of
language related skills, study habits and academic motivation and
thus higher achievement, pupils who can afford it will opt for
this system in order to survive in this highly competitive society.
This is the basic conflict between the two systems prevailing in
India. Firstly, education through mother tongue and secondly,
education through other tongue, which is mostly English and
which is better equipped to serve the economic, developmental,
scientific and social interest of the learner.
A series of studies have been conducted by Srivastava and his
colleagues to examine the effect of different media of instruction
on school achievement. In one study (Srivastava & Khatoon,
1980), two groups of Standard Eight students, one studying
through the MT and the other through English medium were
compared.
It was found that English medium students achieved significantly
higher than the MT medium students who also scored
significantly lower in nonverbal intelligence. However, when the
influence of intelligence was partialled out no difference was
found in the achievement of the two groups. Again when both
the groups were selected from the same school the significant
difference between them disappeared.
The results clearly show that the difference between the school
achievement of English and MT medium students is not due to
the difference in MI but due to school related variables like
difference in teaching methods, materials and teaching aids used,
the general school climate and the difference in selection and
admission criteria. In the English medium schools, bright
children coming from upper socioeconomic status (SES), who
could afford the reasonably costly education provided by such
schools, were selected.
The next study (Srivastava & Ramasamy, 1987; Srivastava,
Ramasamy & Devaki, forthcoming) investigated the effect of MI,
SES and Sex on school achievement of secondary school
students. Three groups, one studying through MT, the second
through an Indian language but cognately related to MT, and the
third through the medium of English were compared for their
achievement in the first language, i.e. mother tongue, second
language, i.e. English, mathematics, science and social studies.
The following conclusions can be drawn from the findings.
(a) The effect of MI is not the same for all curricular subjects.
The MT medium students scored significantly higher in science
than the English and cognate medium students, but the English
medium students scored significantly higher than the other two
groups in second language and mathematics. No significant
difference was
 Page 50
found between the three groups in the first language and social
studies.
(b) The difference between MT and MI has either no effect or
detrimental effect on the child if the MI is any other language
except English. Had it not been so, the cognate medium group
would also have scored at least on a par with the English medium
group. On the contrary, they have achieved the lowest in all the
subjects in comparison to the other two groups. This goes in
favour of the argument that MT medium is the best instructional
medium of education for the child.
What then, is so special about English medium education which
allows students to achieve not only on a par with the MT medium
group, but in some subjects even better than them? And this is
what the educationists and language planners have to analyse in
the context of the Indian situation, and it is the problem which
we want to highlight on the basis of our empirical studies. In
introducing multilingualism through formal schooling, English is
the ultimate gainer as it is the one language most likely to be
introduced in every school of India in the name of TLF, with no
clear-cut policy followed by the schools about the specific stage
to start its teaching (Chaturvedi & Singh, 1981). There is a
definite imbalance in favour of English, and the Indian languages
are the losers. Even though English is spoken and understood by
only 2% of the population, it occupies a dominant position in the
country as the prestigious language. Language serves several
interests of the peopleeconomic, developmental, scientific and
culturaland it appears that more than any other Indian language,
English better serves these interests. Therefore, English as
instructional medium which develops all-round higher
competence in the language than its study only as a subject in the
curriculum, is well reinforced by society. The study of English as
a MI has become a social value, which every school child, if he
can afford, aspires to inculcate. And only the children from
upper and middle socio-economic status can afford this
education, thus perpetuating the élitist tradition and rule in the
Indian educational system. What is required under the
circumstances is the balanced development of all the Indian
languages. It is suggested that MT should compulsorily be made
the MI, to begin with in the modern Indian languages for all
schoolgoing children in the country with a strong base for
teaching of English with improved methods for the last four
years of ten years of school-level education in this country.
An attempt has been made in this paper to highlight the special
features of multilingualism in India and the problems confronting
and prospects ahead in attempts made to preserve and promote
multilingualism even at the level of formal education. The task is
stupendous indeed but the
 Page 51
objective is also laudable. With confidence half the battle is won
and the nation is confident and committed. The victory is in
sight.
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 Page 54

5
Psychological Consequences of Mother Tongue
Maintenance and Multilingualism in India
Ajit K. Mohanty
When education goes under the banner of human resource
development but at the same time ignores the most complete and
complex form of resource with which a child joins school human
language the inherent contradiction is too compelling to pass off
because, for millions of children who are forced to seek formal
education in schools where curriculum and language of
instruction has no relationship with their home language, this
neglect of mother tongue spells their destiny. In the name of
unity, standardisation, integration, modernisation and
homogenisation, so many people are stripped of their cultural
rootedness and their primordial pride through loss of one of their
most primary identity tagsmother tongueand, in the process, kept
out of the privileges of a majority dominated élitist society, that
equality of opportunity remains a vague slogan.
For many ethnolinguistic minority groups in contact with other
majority and/or dominant linguistic groups, promises of
incentives such as economic and social mobility are doled out as
poor compensation for cultural subordination and language shift.
In the process, paradoxically, the linguistic minority groups are
driven to further povertyculturally and economically because
their languages, as resource for educational achievement and,
through it, for equal access to economic and other benefits in a
competitive society, are rendered powerless. At the individual
level, despite the transition from minority mother tongue to the
majority or dominant contact language, the former remains a part
of the group and individual identity because of its salience in a
person's subjective reality. In the case of multilingual and
multicultural societies, as in the Third World,
 Page 55
the role of regional and national level language(s) to serve as
language(s) of wider communication or as 'lingua franca' is
undeniable; but disappearance of alternative modes of self-
expression for the linguistic minorities is not only a loss of
diversity but also a deplorable wastage of human resources. In an
analysis of the national language policy in the Philippines and the
educational status of indigenous and minority languages vis-a-vis
the 'colonial' language, Smolicz (1986) sounds the warning:
... attempts to artificially suppress minority languages through policies
of assimilation, devaluation, reduction to a state of illiteracy, expulsion
or genocide are not only degrading of human dignity and morally
unacceptable, but they are also an invitation to separatism and an
incitement to fragmentation into ministates. The danger is that if this is
not realised in time, needless suffering, discrimination, tension and
strife may be inflicted upon the whole population. (Smolicz, 1986: 96)
In pluralistic countries, widespread societal bilingualism has
ensured mutually intelligible and continuous zones of
communication so that languages have never been a barrier to
communication. In a multilingual socieity, where languages of
intimate communication, neighbourhood communication, and
wider communication play a mutually complementary role,
language problem is only an outcome of failure to develop a
single policy framework for these layers of language use. The
contrast, in this respect, between dominant monolingual and
grassroot multilingual societies is quite obvious.
The dominant monolingual orientation is cultivated in the developed
world and consequently two languages are considered a nuisance,
three languages uneconomic and many languages absurd. In
multilingual countries many languages are facts of life; any restriction
 in the choice of language use is a nuisance; and one language is not
only uneconomic, it is absurd. (Pattanayak, 1984a: 82)
Thus, the problems of language planning in multilingual
countries cannot be viewed from the monolingual perspective
which is available from the developed countries. Every
multicultural, multilingual country must find its own unique
solution keeping in view the sociolinguistic and psychological
contexts of its language use. But there is at least one common
lesson available from analyses of language problems and their
possible solutions throughout the pluralistic societies of the Third
World: true language integration cannot be accomplished by
denying the minority language users a sense of pride and dignity
in their own language and by treating the
 Page 56
minority and/or indigenous mother tongues with neglect and lack
of respect. Multiculturalism cannot be sustained without an active
policy of multilingualism and, at least for some, multilingual
policy is ineffective unless it is built into the educational system
as well.
... Multicultural and monolingual curriculum is a useless palliative in a
society that claims to promote pluralism. Historical evidence and
research show that multicultural interaction cannot survive without the
media that embodies different cultures, and that multiculturalism cannot
be genuinely achieved without an adequate policy of multilingualism.
(Tosi, 1984: 175)
Pattanayak (1986a), pleading for educational use of the mother
tongue, suggests that use of mother tongue as the medium of
instruction has several advantages since it offers to a large
majority of people: (i) equal opportunity to participate in national
reconstruction; (ii) greater access to education; (iii) easier access
to scientific knowledge and technology; (iv) decentralised
information and free media, and (v) opportunity for greater
political involvement towards defence of democracy. These
arguments are particularly valid for a multilingual country like
India, where a vast majority of speakers of over 1,600 mother
tongues are dominated by only 15 scheduled languages and
English all of which, recognised as official languages of
administration and education, enjoy a position of privilege denied
to the minority languages. Unfortunately, the social policy
planners have failed to take adequate notice of the fact that the
social and psychological consequences of neglect of its
multicultural and multilingual reality are quite different from
those to be predicted on the basis of dominant monolingual
models. The present illustrative analysis of the cognitive cost of
the loss and neglect of mother tongue and the social
psychological consequences of imposed monolingualism in the
context of Indian multilingualism seeks to show that the language
problems in India must be viewed within its unique framework
and that, apart from the emotional and intuitive arguments often
advanced in favour of mother tongue maintenance, there is some
sound empirical basis in pleading for promotion of mother
tongues through their educational use and through other means.

Multilingualism in India
Characterised as a sociolinguistic giant (Pandit, 1972) whose
nerve system is multilingualism (Annamalai, 1986), with its 1,652
mother tongues
 Page 57
of which only 47 are used as media of instruction, 87 for the
press and 71 for radio broadcasting, India has been a challenging
linguistic area for the language planners. With prevalence of
linguistically pluralistic communities throughout the country and
with nearly half of the districts having minority speech groups
exceeding 20% of the district population, the Indian
sociolinguistic scene is characterised by extreme heterogeneity
(Khubchandani, 1986) and stratified hierarchical patterns of
language use associated with caste, religion, family hierarchy, sex
etc.
In spite of the linguistic reorganisation of Indian states in 1956 based
on the language identity of the dominant pressure groups, language
identity regions are not necessarily homogeneous communication
regions .... Every state, apart from the dominant state language, has
from one to six outside, or minority languages which are spoken by
more than 20 persons per 1,000 population. (Khubchandani, 1986: 20)
Khubchandani (1983, 1986) also points to the fluidity of language
identity both in terms of declaration of mother tongue and even
in terms of switching from a mother tongue (such as Bhojpuri,
Braj, Maithili, etc.) to a major regional language (such as Hindi,
Urdu, etc.). Unlike the dominant monolingual societies where an
individual's speech behaviour is limited in its range by
standardisation pressure and lack of stratification, in India
individuals as well as communities are often required to adapt to
linguistic diversity by developing multiple speech identities
which play complementary, but not conflicting, roles in groups'
or individual's selfcharacterisation. As Dua (1982) points out,
capacity and necessity to use multiple languages require
individuals and communities in India to have multiple identities
which they sometimes exhibit by selective code switching. Code-
mixing is also used as a strategy to express multiple identities
(Southworth, 1980). It should be pointed out here that such
patterns of language use in a multilingual and multicultural set up
gives rise to a functionally meaningful pluralism in which many
languages can neither be a load (Srivastava, 1980) nor
inconveniences either for the learner or for the planner
(Pattanayak, 1984a), nor must they necessarily detract from
national unity and identity (Ward & Hewstone, 1985).
These and many other diverse characteristics make the Indian
sociolinguistic scene far too complex for any model drawn from
the dominant monolingual societies to deal with. It is, therefore,
not very surprising that several generalisations, based on
sociolinguistic studies in Western societies regarding a variety of
linguistic processes, such as language shift and maintenance,
code-switching, code-mixing and specific
 Page 58
outcome of intergroup contact situations etc. have been found to
be grossly unfounded (Fishman, 1971). The theoretical accounts
drawn from dominant monolingual societies have provided a
biased and limited framework to account for several features of
Indian multilingualism. In a review of the differences between
India multilingualism and bi/multilingual situations in the West,
Dua (1986: 17) suggests that the former raises the possibility of a
'distinctive and relevant theoretical framework'. For example, the
models of the Western societies, generally characterised by rapid
and somewhat forced assimilation of minority languages, are
clearly inadequate to account for persistence of several isolated
minority languages among the tiny migrant communities
throughout India, such as Bengali in Benaras, Urdu in Mysore,
etc. In respect of the outcome of language contact situations, the
Western studies (e.g. Gal, 1979; Labov, 1963, 1965) have
repeatedly shown that contact between a majority (often the high
prestige) and a minority language leads to a process of language
shift initiated by synchronic variations in language use. However,
similar findings are not always obtained in Indian studies.
Bhuvaneshwari's (1986) study on Naikans, a Telugu-Malayalam
bilingual community which migrated to Palghat in Kerala several
generations back, shows that, in spite of internal variation in
language use pattern at synchronic level, this community retains a
stable bilingualism by maintenance of Telugu over the years.
Thus, depending upon the specific context of language contact,
synchronic variation in language use need not necessarily lead to
language shift. It may be noted that similar observations led
Pandit (1977) to an earlier conclusion that, in India, language
maintenance is the norm and language shift, a deviation. In
mutual contact situations in the West, languages often compete to
override each other, whereas, languages playing complementary
functions has been a predominant characteristic of Indian
multilingualism (Dua, 1986).
According to Southworth (1980: 79), 'multilingualism is an
integral part of social segment of life which many Indians adjust
at a very early age. Different languages, dialects or sharply
distinct styles of speech are complementarily distributed in the
speech of individuals and groups in a way which minimizes their
competition with each other.' Such complementary role
relationship between the languages used by the individuals and
speech communities is indicated by assignment of different
languages, codes, and varieties to different domains of speech
use (e.g. home, market place, intimate ingroup situations, etc.).
Switching from one language to another, or mixing languages
within a discourse unit, under such conditions, reflect selective
strategies to fulfil specific communicative functions (Dua, 1984;
Gupta, 1978; Kachru, 1978; Sridhar, 1978; Verma,
 Page 59
1976). Such features of Indian multilingualism have created an
atmosphere in which mass bilingualism has never presented any
problem for communication (Pandit, 1979). Thus, it is quite
evident that issues relating to language policy and planning such
as maintenance of minority mother tongues and their educational
use have to be examined from a multilingual pluralistic point of
view; monolingual models would have to be rejected as
inefficacious. In several of his recent writings, Pattanayak (1981,
1984a, 1984b, 1985, 1986a, 1986b) has exposed the limitations of
'monomodels' in dealing with the predicament of the multilingual,
multicultural and multiethnic developing world including India.
According to him (Pattanayak, 1984a) the problems of devloped
countries are quite different from those of the multilingual
developing countries where
cultural reductionism resulting from language loss, anomie resulting
from language imperialism, lack of creativity and innovativeness in
education due to misuse and disuse of language, and blockage of
communication because of wrong policies, are issues which need to be
studied more seriously. Attrition of linguistic and cultural repertoires
of societies, conflict generated by grassroots multilingualism and
schoolimposed dominant monolingual orientation, have fundamental
implications of policy and planning and yet these are seldom taken into
account. (Pattanayak, 1984a: 76-7)
The investigations briefly reported in the following sections share
these concerns and illustrate social, psychological and
psycholinguistic analyses of the problems arising out of loss of
indigenous mother tongue for an ethnic minority group under the
pressure of a dominant regional language in the multilingual
societal context of India.
Psychological Consequences of Mother Tongue Maintenance
In the face of domination by a language of the majority, the
indigenous minorities are left with two choices: either (i) to
succumb to the domination by allowing the majority language to
completely override the minority mother tongue, or (ii) to cope
with the pressure by adopting two mother tongues, one of which
is the indigenous minority language, the other being the majority
culture language. Process (i) is one of language shift and process
(ii) of maintenance of the minority mother tongue. The
significant question in the context of the issues raised by Indian
multilingualism is: Is mother tongue maintenance by the
indigenous minorities a barrier to their social educational and
economic mobility and to their integration with the
 Page 60
larger social system, or is it a key to their equal opportunities in a
multinlingual social mosaic? The studies on bilingualism among
the Kond tribals in Orissa, India are discussed here in an attempt
to seek an illustrative answer to this question.
The Konds constitute the majority as a tribal group (more than
40% of district population) in the Phulbani district of Orissa, one
of the eastern provinces of India. Kui is their indigenous
language belonging to the IndoDravidian language family. A
population of around 511,000 speakers (Census of India, 1961)
use Kui as a mother tongue. The Konds are in close contact with
the non-tribal (mostly Hindus of lower caste, e.g. Sundhi)
speakers of the dominant Oriya language (Indo-European
language family) which is the regional lingua franca and the
official language of Orissa. The process of language shift, the
implications and possible causes of which are discussed
elsewhere (Mohanty, in press, a), has resulted in a clearcut
geographical split with the areas between Khajuripada and
Phulbani, i.e. north-east regions of the district showing complete
shift of Kui in favour of Oriya monolingualism among the tribals
(Konds) and the remaining parts, i.e. areas south-west of
Phulbani town toward G. Udayagiri showing a relatively stable
form of Kui-Oriya bilingualism by the Kond tribals who have
maintained Kui language for home and ingroup communication,
and Oriya for intergroup communication. The children of Kond
families in the bilingual areas grow up learning Kui in their
homes and Oriya in the neighbourhood mostly through play and
peer group interactions. As has been observed (Mohanty, 1982 a,
b), the Konds, despite differences in their language use patterns
in the monolingual and bilingual zones, perceive each other as a
close ingroup displaying little socio-cultural and economic
differences. The Konds are settled cultivators and also engage in
a lot of seasonal gathering from the surrounding forests.
Schooling for the Konds is available in Oriya medium only and
Kui, which has no script of its own and is sometimes written in
Oriya script, has no educational use in the schools.
Considering the extremely low literacy rate (12%) among the
Konds, low rate of school enrolment and a high percentage of
school drop out (more than 80% by grade V), a series of studies
has been conducted (Mohanty, 1982a, b; in press a, b, c; Mohanty
& Babu, 1983; Patnaik & Mohanty, 1984; Mohanty & Das, 1987)
to examine the psychological consequences of bilingualism
through mother tongue maintenance compared to
monolingualism as a result of loss of the indigenous mother
tongue. These studies, conducted with schooled and unschooled
Kond children belonging to different age groups, from 6 to 16
years, show that the Kui-Oriya bilingual groups outperformed the
Oriya-only monolinguals on a number
 Page 61
of cognitive, linguistic and metalinguistic ability measures and (in
the case of schooled children) academic achievement. In one of
the early studies in this area (Mohanty, 1982a), 180 monolingual
and bilingual 1 Kond children in the age groups of 10-12 years
(grade VI), 12- 14 years (grade VIII) and 14- 16 years (grade X)
were administered tests of simultaneous processing (Raven's
Progressive Matrices, figure copying, and clustering), successive
processing (free recall, digit span, paired associate learning),
reading and language skills (classroom language achievement,
semantic class association, paradigmatic association, oral reading
time and error) and metalinguistic awareness tests of ability to
detect syntactic amibiguity, to evaluate contradictory and
tautological propositions, to substitute linguistic symbols, to
understand the arbitrariness of language, meaning-referent
relations, and non-physical nature of words. The Kui-Oriya
bilinguals significantly outperformed the monolinguals on all the
measures of simultaneous and successive processing except digit
span, and also on all the measures of metalinguistic awareness. In
terms of the total classroom achievement (percentage of marks in
the last examination) the bilinguals were better than the
monolinguals. On other measures of Oriya language and reading
skills the two language groups did not differ significantly except
in the case of reading error in favour of the monolinguals. Even
when the difference in non-verbal intelligence was statistically
controlled, using Raven's Progressive Matrices score as a
covariate in analyses of covariance, the findings remained
unaffected. The results were interpreted as showing that, 'Kui
Oriya bilinguals seem to be benefiting from retaining their own
culturally intrinsic language besides learning Oriya' (Mohanty,
1982b: 39).
In another study (Mohanty & Babu, 1983) it was shown that on a
modified version of the metalinguistic ability test of Osherson
and Markman (1975), the bilingual Kond children performed
significantly better than the monolinguals with the Raven's
Progressive Matrices score used as covariate in analysis of
covariance. With younger children (6-, 8-, 10-year olds from
grades I, III, and V, respectively; N = 120) in a study by Patnaik
& Mohanty (1984), the bilingual Konds did not differ from their
monolingual counterparts in Piagetian conservation tasks and
nonverbal intelligence. But the metalinguistic measures showed
significant superiority of the bilinguals.
The hypothesised metalinguistic basis of bilinguals' superior
intellectual and educational performance was further confirmed
in a factor analytic study (Mohanty, in press, c) with 174
monolingual and bilingual Kond high school students in the age
range of 11-15 years. In other studies (see Mohanty, in press, b)
the bilingual Kond children demonstrated more
 Page 62
effective application of their metalinguistic skill by showing
cognitive flexibility in better detection of syntactic ambiguity and
by effectively using intonational cues for appropriate perception
of surface structurally ambiguous sentences. In a recent study
with 80 unschooled 7- and 9-year-old children (Mohanty & Das,
1987), the bilinguals were significantly better in the noverbal
intelligence measure (Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices) in
both the age levels, but in the metalinguistic tasks the difference
between the bilingual and monolingual groups was not
significant. A comprehensive theoretical analysis of the findings
in terms of metalinguistic hypothesis of bilinguals' superior
intellectual performance has been attempted elsewhere (Mohanty,
in press, b) but, for the purpose of the present discussion, it
should suffice to point out that the Kond children growing up as
bilinguals in their indigenous mother tongue and culture language
had a clear advantage over their monolingual majority-language-
only counterparts in terms of intellectual and classroom
performance, cognitive flexibility and skills in use, manipulation
and awareness of language even if their indigenous language
does not find a place in their school curriculum. Considering the
tremendous psychoeducational significance of these skills for
scholastic success, the possible advantage of mother tongue
maintenance for the children of the indigenous minorities can
hardly be overemphasised.
In another study of attitude towards maintenance of ingroup and
outgroup linguistic and cultural identities among the Kond tribal
and nontribal adults of Phulbani (Mohanty, 1987), the tribals
displayed an integrative orientation by a positive evaluation of
the maintenance of their own language (Kui) and culture and by a
favourable view of the language (Oriya) and culture of the
nontribals. Within the tribal group, the Kui-Oriya bilingual Konds
showed a greater integrative tendency compared to the
monolingual Oriya-speaking Konds. Although the nontribals
were somewhat segregation oriented, this was much less the case
with the bilingual nontribals who also used Kui besides their
language (Oriya). The findings have been analysed (Mohanty, in
press, a) in terms of Berry's (1974, 1980, 1984) and
Schermerhorn's (1970) model of cultural relationship in plural
societies to show that the minority group which could maintain
its indigenous mother tongue besides adopting the culture
language was much better integrated in the society compared to
the group which has become monolingual following a loss of
indigenous language. Integration was defined in terms of a sense
of positive self-identity along with positive other-identification.
The Kui-Oriya bilingual tribals who maintained their indigenous
mother tongue are characterised by a positive attitude towards
their own language and culture and their maintenance and
 Page 63
a positive attitude towards the language and culture of Oriya
speaking nontribals and a value for maintenance of positive
relations with them. These findings show that, from a broader
social psychological perspective, mother tongue maintenance by
the indigenous minority groups is a desirable goal for a positive
integration in a multicultural and multilingual pluralistic society.
Thus, both from the psychological and social points of view, the
question regarding whether mother tongue maintenance for the
minority groups, such as the Kond tribals of Phulbani, is a barrier
to their social, educational and economic mobility and to their
integration in the wider social context has to be answered in the
negative. Denial of the rights of the minority groups to maintain
their indigenous mother tongue, to develop a sense of pride in
the linguistic identity and to maximally utilise their cultural
resources by educational use of their mother tongue is clearly a
denial of equality of opportunities to these minorities in a
multilingual multicultural society like that of India because, as
Pattanayak (1986a: 7-8) succinctly points out, 'the mother tongue
is that language, the loss of which results in the loss of
rootedness in tradition and mythology of the speech community
and leads to intellectual impoverishment and emotional sterility'.
The studies on the Kond tribals vindicate this position. The
process of mother tongue maintenance in India through its
educational use and other methods of language planning have
been severally discussed by Pattanayak in his writings (some of
which has been cited here) and by others (e.g. Dua, 1985) as
means towards minimising sociolinguistic inequality in India.
While the specific operational aspects of mother tongue
maintenance through language and educational planning have to
be evolved and to be continuously debated, its social,
psychological and economic significance must never be lost sight
of because 'the destiny of countries is interwoven with the
destiny of mother tongue speakers' (Pattanayak, 1984b: 1,841).
Notes
1. In all our studies reported here only balanced bilinguals were
taken, selected on the basis of one or both of a translation test
and a word-association test.

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 Page 67

6
Literacy in a Multilingual Context
R. N. Srivastava and R. S. Gupta
The last two decades have witnessed a growing scholarly interest
in literacy. Research in the area of literacy has involved three
primary parameters: language, society, and cognition. Focussing
on one or the other of these parameters, scholars have studied
different dimensions of literacy. Srivastava & Gupta (1983) have
identified these dimensions as: (a) literacy as a skill involving the
ability to control the visual (graphic) medium of language, and to
use it for involving written language to achieve certain socio-
cultural ends, (b) literacy as an instance of mass-upsurge and a
call for the participation of the socially deprived and the
economically disadvantaged illiterate masses in the heritage of
written culture, and (c) literacy as an enabling factor which,
through syllogistic reasoning, linear codification of reality and the
critical accumulation of knowledge, creates conditions conducive
to linguistic innovation and imaginative creativity.
As evident from the above, the research that has gone on in the
area of literacy has been truly multi-faceted, and different foci
have been established for the study of literacy. An important fact
that has emerged from these researches is that literacy is by no
means a unified or monolithic concept, and that different people
perceive and experience its nature, value and relevance
differently (cf. Heath, 1980; Graff, 1982; Pattison, 1982;
Raymond, 1982). Literacy studies also reveal that the perception
of literacy and its attendant benefits across societies is
conditioned, to a large extent, by their socio-economic reality (cf.
Cressy, 1980; Slaughter, 1982; Neustupny, 1984).
While a great deal of attention has been focussed on the study of
literacy in close nexus with the socio-economic ecology of
various societies at different points of time, the close relationship
that exists between language ecology and literacy has received
little or no attention. For instance, a
 Page 68
recent study on education and development conducted by the
National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration,
has discussed the problem of illiteracy within the scenario of
educational development. The study shows a close relationship
between literacy and deprivation and socioeconomic
underdevelopment in different states of India, and says:
State of Kerala has the highest literacy, as well as female literacy. It
also has the distinction of having the lowest infant mortality rate, the
lowest proportion of married females in the age-group 15-19, very low
death rate and the highest agricultural productivity (in Rs/Hectare). As
against this, Uttar Pradesh with literacy rate of only 27.16 per cent and
female literacy of 14.0 per cent, is characterised by the highest infant
mortality rate, high death and birth rate, high proportion of married
females in the age-group 15-19, and low couple protection rate.
(Bhushan, 1987: 2). 1

This admirably compiled work completely neglects the

relationship between literacy and the configuration of languages
in a multilingual society. We believe that literacy cannot be
studied meaningfully in isolation from the language ecology that
obtains in a given society.
Haugen (1979) has discussed the concept of language ecology,
albeit in the context of language planning. Ecology, in biology,
refers to the study of natural environments as a branch of science
that is concerned primarily with the interrelationship of the
organisms and their environments 'especially as manifested by
natural cycles and rhythms, community development and
structure, interaction between different kinds of organisms,
geographic distribution and population alterations' (Haugen,
1979: 243). The same kind of definition applies to language
ecology which provides us with the conditions that emerge out of
the totality or pattern of relationships between languages and
their environments. It is this view of language ecology that makes
it imperative to study the differences between monolingual and
multilingual societies, as well as between individual and societal
bilingualism while discussing issues related to literacy.
A lack of proper understanding of the nature of multilingualism
(as distinct from monolingualism), and of the relationship
between multilingualism and literacy has led scholars to advance
very generalised claims that are open to serious question. A
classic example of such generalised claims is provided by
Gudschinsky (1982) who asserts that the phenomenon of
monolingualism has a feeding relationship with literacy, whereas
multilingualism induces a bleeding relationship. Such claims stem
 Page 69
from the fact that there has been a lack of understanding of
multilingualism, as well as of the interrelationship between
different languages in a multilingual society. This lack of proper
understanding has generated several myths about bi- and
multilingualism. Srivastava (1977) attributes these myths to the
scholars' disagreeably predominant preoccupation with
multilingualism with a negative interpretation, and enumerates
them as follows:
1. Linguistic homogeneity is currently related to many more
desirable characteristics of polities than linguistic heterogeneity.
2. Bilingualism is a source of educational disadvantage and
intellectual impoverishment.
3. Bilingualism cripples the creative abilities of the human mind.
4. Bilingualism is a rather anomalous state of language behaviour
involved in social group communication.
5. Bilingualism is an obstacle per se in the linguistic
communication within a speech community.
(Srivastava, 1977: 59-67).
Scholars like Pandit (1972), Pattanayak (1981), Khubchandani
(1983), Srivastava & Gupta (1983) and Srivastava (1984a) have
convincingly shown that these are mere myths, and have
described how, despite mass illiteracy, a societal type of
bilingualism was able to cut deep into the soil of India and
provided life and vitality to its verbal behaviour.
As a matter of fact, sociolinguists now believe that it is
monolingualism that is a myth, in the sense that no society is truly
homogeneous and free of variation. Multilingualism has now
become a norm even for those societies that had hitherto been
labelled as monolingual. According to Fishman (1978) 'societal
multilingualism will not only ''linger on" in "backward" corners
of the globe but it will defend itself by modern methods (rather
than merely give in to such methods) and will do so within the
very heartland of modernity per se'. Multilingualism, thus, is not
only a characteristic feature of South Asian, African and Latin
American societies but a global phenomenon. It is practically
impossible to locate a truly monolingual country in which there
are no minority groups using both the majority and the minority
languages (Grosjean, 1982). While discussing literacy in
monolingual countries, Bhatia (1984) has used the term
monolingual in two restricted contexts: (a) the dominant
relationship of one language over another in a speech
community, i.e. predominantly monolingual speech communities,
and (b) attitudinally considered monolingualismdespite dialectal,
stylistic and 'high-low' type of intralanguage variation. Under the
first condition he has characterised the USA, Great Britain, China,
Japan and Iceland as monolingual societies,
 Page 70
whereas Arabic-speaking countries have been labelled as
monolingual under the second condition. He has gone on to
characterise countries such as India 'as a set of ML (monolingual)
societies where various societies may be classified in relation to
one or the other of the two types' (Bhatia, 1984: 24). This is a
patently erroneous view and does not take into account either the
multilingual ethos of countries like India or the language ecology
that obtains in such countries.
Srivastava & Gupta (1983), Pattanayak (1980) and Srivastava
(1984b) have discussed the problems of literacy within the
framework of the plural character of India, as well as in the
context of the functional configuration of languages in its
multilingual setting. The language ecology of multilingual
societies clearly exhibits intralanguage functional variation, as
well as functional allocation of codes in the verbal repertoire. It
also exhibits functional allocation of different languages in the
total network of communication system in a polity. In this sense,
then, language ecology may be classified as internal and external.
As pointed out by Srivastava (1987), in the case of internal
ecology the environments are internal to language itself, such as
regional and sociolectal varieties. A language, in this sense, may
be viewed as a polylectal system which operates partly in
harmony and partly in conflict. Most of the scholars working in
the field of South Asian linguistics have accepted this polylectal
view of language (Ferguson, 1959; Gumperz, 1961; Ferguson &
Gumperz, 1960; Gumperz & Naim, 1961). Scholars have also
shown that in the case of a language like Hindi microlects such as
High Hindi, High Urdu and Hindustani are there as coexistent
systems in the verbal repertoire of Hindi speakers (Kelkar, 1968;
Srivastava, 1969). The recognition of the existence of microlects
raises an interesting question in relation to literacy: Which
microlect is to be used for initiating literacy?
While the polylectal view of language, based on the internal
ecology of language, raises one set of questions related to
literacy, another set of questions is raised by the external ecology
of languages in a multilingual setting. External ecology refers to
environments external to language and shapes the attitudes that
the speakers of a language have towards other languages used
within and across speech communities in a given polity. The
institutional view of language has extended the meaning of the
term language to cover even those codes of the verbal repertoire
that have distinct grammatical structures. For instance, Hindi as a
language extends its coverage to include regionally circumscribed
dialects such as Braj, Avadhi, Maithili, etc. Linguistically these
three are different from one another, as well as from standard
Hindi which functions as a superposed norm for the different
members of the Hindi speech community. However, an average
 Page 71
dialect speaker is attitudinally disposed to identify himself as a
Hindispeaker and declares Hindi as his mother tongue at the time
of the census. This raises a very interesting question as to
whether literacy should be initiated in the dialect (mother tongue)
and then extended to the superposed variety, or should it be
initiated in standard Hindi and then extended to the dialects, some
of which happen to possess a great literary tradition of their own?
External ecology, considered in terms of attitudes and
relationships, becomes all the more pertinent when seen with
regard to minor languages which have yet to evolve a writing
system of their own. This aspect of language ecology, in the
Indian context, gives rise to several questions as regards literacy
initiation. Some of these questions are: Do we initiate literacy in
the mother tongue (minority language) or in the dominant major
language of the region in which the mother tongue speakers are
located, or do we initiate literacy in pan-Indian Hindi, or in pan-
Indian English? Even if it is decided to initiate literacy through
the mother tongue, the question of script-choice for non-literate
languages becomes problematic - should one choose Devanagari
(the script used for Hindi), or Roman (the script used for
English)?
It is worth mentioning here that language ecology is not a static
concept, nor are the elements that enter into relationship with one
another, at a standstill. Changing social conditions and
perceptions bring about a corresponding change in language
ecology. The educational perspective in pre-independence India
was centred round elitism that promoted élite bilingualism on the
one hand, and standard language literacy, on the other. Literacy
was imparted not merely by accepting the standard written norm
of a language institutionally recognised to sustain and promote
elements of written culture, but is also forced the initiators of
literacy to opt for a language other than the learner's mother
tongue. Thus we find at least three different situations in India in
which literacy programmes promoted a second language in the
field of formal literacy education. Most of the people living in
tribal zones accepted either English or a regional standard
language for literacy education. In the Hindi region, despite the
fact that the average speaker employed one or the other dialect in
day-to-day communication, literacy was initiated through primers
written in standard Hindi of which the speakers had only a
passive command. In urban settings all over India, English-
medium schools promoted literacy in English which had a limited
functionality for the learner as compared with his native
language. In all such cases initiating standard language literacy
through a second language created a gulf between two sections of
the society - the status-oriented literates and the stigmatised
illiterates. It also gave rise to
 Page 72
a dichotomy between a 'high variety' based on the stylistic
accretions of literary achievement, and a 'low variety' based on
vernaculars grounded in oral communication. In turn it promoted
a value judgement that asserted that while literates live in a
written culture with several intellectual resources, the illiterates
live basically within the matrix of oral culture which does not
concern itself with abstract categorisation, syllogistic reasoning
and formal logical thinking. Without going further into these
issues it should suffice at this point to state briefly some of the
negative consequences of initiating literacy through a second
language:
it leaves many learners at the level of semi-literacy,
creates intellectual imbalance between standard language literacy
and mass illiteracy,
downgrades the learner's mother tongue,
interferes with the channel for cross-cultural communication that
would
it generates disharmonious relationship between functions of
literacy (i.e. what literacy does for learners) and uses of literacy
(i.e. what learners do with literacy skills)
(Srivastava, 1984a: 35)
With the rediscovery of the importance of indigenous languages,
and a shift of policy away from élitism in education, in post-
independence India the movement for mass literacy was given a
new theoretical and operational basis. At a meeting of Language
Education Experts (UNESCO 1978) serious concern was
expressed for the promotion of the cause of mass literacy which,
according to these experts, could not be achieved without making
the learner's mother tongue central to all literacy programmes. It
was agreed that there are several positive gains that accrue from
the promotion of mass literacy through the mother tongue, at
least during the initial stages of literacy education.
The reasons given for favouring mother tongue were:
1. This is the language in which a child first of all finds
expression of his self and that of his immediate environment.
2. Mother tongue allows for every one an equal access to
educational opportunities and makes education broad based.
3. It enables the educational facilities to be made available in the
largest possible manner.
4. It meets the psychological needs of the people.
5. It provides means of identifying oneself with the culture.
6. It helps in bridging the gap between the home language and the
school language. This gap is always the source of educational
disadvantage to
 Page 73
the children of the minority communities. It also saves the
young learner from the cultural shock that he undergoes in the
process of entering the school system of education.
7. The educational value inherent in learning through the mother
tongue is well-known because the learner learns through the
language already known with more ease and facility than through
an unfamiliar linguistic medium.
(Srivastava, 1978: 41 -2).
It needs to be noted at this point that in multilingual countries
languages configurate their functional roles in relationship with
each other, and that language used in literacy as means and as an
end are not necessarily one and the same. It is because of this
reason that we find in the literature on literacy two conflicting
claims:
(a) Literacy as a skill is most effectively achieved in the mother
tongue because of our assumption that literacy presupposes
control of oral skills, i.e. literacy is nothing but an extension of
language skills in the domain of reading and writing for the code
in which one has already acquired the skills of listening and
speaking.
(b) Literacy as a function is most effectively achieved in the
language which is most appropriate for written communication,
and which has a rich literary heritage.
It should be mentioned here that in India there are several
indigenous languages which have extremely limited functional
load, and there are several mother tongues which have never
entered the arena of written literary tradition. There are still other
mother tongues which are yet to evolve a script of their own. The
functionality criterion of literacy demands that in such
circumstances mother tongue literacy, after the initial phase,
should give way to standard language literacy through the
transfer model of literacy education. This model proposes that
while initial literacy may be imparted through the mother tongue,
at some stage or other subsequently, the learner must be made
literate in the language in which writing is contextually
appropriate (Pattanayak, 1980). However, care has to be taken to
see that standard language literacy (i) does not create a
discontinuity between oral culture and written culture, and (ii)
does not lead to the creation of 'high' and 'low' codes. According
to Srivastava (1978) the lowest literacy rates in India are found
precisely in those areas where there is a wide gap between
standard language and the local vernacular. In order to bridge
such a gap it is desirable to 'tone down' the high-flown literary
variety in order to bring it closer to the colloquial norm. Literary
languages in India tend to show a wide cleavage between the
high literary variety and
 Page 74
TABLE 6.1 Literary languages
Language High variety Colloquial variety
Hindi Sanskritised Hindi Hindustani
Bengali Sadhu bhasha Chalit
Telugu Granthika Vyavaharika

the relatively low colloquial code. At extreme points these two

are in complementary distribution, with a limited zone of overlap.
Thus we have Table 6.1.
However, with the emergence of prose as a powerful medium of
written culture, and the rise of prose fiction (as opposed to
poetry) as a literary genre, and with mass education, the language
ecology has further changed, bringing about a shift favouring the
variety that was hitherto labelled as 'low'. This has tended to
neutralise the 'high-low' dichotomy to some extent. This
attitudinal change, coupled with the motivation for mass literacy
programmes, could lead to a resolution of the conflicting claims
of languages for literacy in the multilingual setting of India.
The proposed transfer model, when seen in the context of Indian
multilingual reality, raises several issues about the very nature of
literacy, as well as about its operational aspects. Literacy, once it
has been acquired as a functional skill, can be extended
indefinitely. The script-system being only a device for the
representation of the functional units of language and not being
constrained by any intrinsic properties of a given language, one
can peel off, in a manner of speaking, the script from its
institutionalised usage as a medium to represent a given language,
and extend its use to visually represent another language. For
instance, though the Roman script, in the Indian context, is
conventionally used to represent the English language, it has also
been used to represent Sanskrit, and has even been promoted as a
potential vehicle for the representation of several hitherto
unwritten tribal languages. Keeping this in mind, and also not
forgetting that literacy is a continuous process, one can identify
three types of literacy in a multilingual setting, viz. monoliteracy,
biliteracy and bisystemacy. In cases where the use of the writing
system (script) of the mother tongue is extended so as to provide
a medium of visual representation for another language, we have
instances of monoliteracy. For example, Devanagari which is
used as a script for Hindi, may also be used to represent spoken
English. Contrary to this, when one employs the writing system
(script) insitutionally employed for the second language, we have
biliteracy,
 Page 75
because such a user starts controlling two writing systems for two
distinct languages. For example, a learner may use Devanagari
for Hindi and Roman for English. Bisystemacy is found in
situations where two styles of one and the same language call for
the use of two different writing systems. For instance, the
Sanskritised variant of Hindi requires the use of Devanagari,
while the Perso-Arabic script is required by Urdu (the Perso-
Arabic variant).
We would like to suggest that despite these distinctions literacy, in
a deeper sense, is acquired only once. We must remember that
language in its oral form is acquired in response to a language
faculty which is intrinsically given to all humans as a biologically
endowed property. The same, however, is not true of the visual
(written) form of language. Culturally it is a learned activity.
Literacy, in this sense, is related to all those manual and visual
modalities which are involved in reading and writing skills. Once
literacy as a skill has been achieved, it can be extended across
writing systems, with the need for some extra knowledge of new
writing systems, as in the case of biliteracy.
Another issue that the proposed transfer model raises is related to
the categorisation of literacy on the basis of its functionality in
terms of the range of application. Scholars agree that literacy is a
progressively continuous process and that it can range from
'sounding out' of words and sentences to the skill of reading
difficult texts with total understanding and comprehension.
Generally, in a multilingual setting, two languages are not learnt
with the same degree of competence, and there always exists
different degrees of control in their usage. So is the case with
literacy. Thus, one can make a distinction between initial literacy
which is concerned with control in the written language for
ordinary day-to-day activities such as writing letters, filling
forms, etc., and progressive literacy which is concerned with the
aesthetic and intellectual dimensions of written language (De
Silva, 1976), with the two forming a sort of continuum. It is
possible, however, that literacy in the mother tongue is restricted
to intitial literacy, while literacy in the other languages, especially
those languages which are employed in higher education, is
extended to progressive literacy. As a matter of fact, the transfer
model presupposes such a functional movement from one
language to another, as well as from one degree of literacy
competence to another degree.
The functionality of literacy in a multilingual setting also makes
one recognise a tripartite distinction between pre-literacy, non-
literacy and illiteracy. Pre-literacy refers to a stage where a child,
living in a literate society, has already acquired the oracy skills
but has not yet reached the
 Page 76
take-off point, in terms of age, for learning literacy skills. It
should be noted that in the life cycle of an individual literacy
skills always come as a later development than oracy skills. Pre-
literacy refers to the gap or interregnum betwen two take-off
points for oracy and literacy within the overall context of
linguacy. Non-literacy is a condition of a society in which the
skill of literacy is of no consequence at all, because it neither
marginalises those who live exclusively in oral culture, nor does
it treat non-acquisition of literacy skills as a hindrance to the
achievement of social status and prestige. Illiteracy, as a
condition, pertains to an individual or a groups 'that has failed to
master the generally accepted skills of the culture and is thus cut
off from the cultural heritage of contemporaries' (Finnegan,
1972). It is obvious from the foregoing that while pre-literacy and
non-literacy are value-neutral terms, illiteracy is a value-sensitive
term and the condition known as illiteracy is generally viewed as
a social malaise or as a serious individual handicap.
We would like to suggest that in the multilingual and pluricultural
context of India non-literacy and illiteracy form a cline i a special
way. Studies have shown that literacy enters the life of a given
society at a particular stage of its development, and that too after
it has gone through certain socio-economic transformations. The
uneven development of the Indian society has given rise to
uneven attitudes towards the social functionality of literacy. This,
in turn, has promoted the concept of functional literacy, which is
the major thrust of the literacy movement in India.
Notes
1. For a detailed table of figures see Appendix 1 of NUNA, S. C.
(ed.) 1987, Education and Development.

References
BHATIA, TEJ K. 1984, Literacy in monolingual societies. In
KAPLAN R. B. (ed.) Annual Review of Applied Linguistics Vol.
IV. (pp. 23-38) Rowley: Newbury House Publishers.
BHUSHAN, S. 1987, Education and development. In NUNA S. C.
(ed.) Education and Development (pp. 2-5). New Delhi: National
Institute of Educational Planning and Adminstration.
CRESSY, D. 1980, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and
Writing in Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
DE SILVA, M. W. S. 1976, Diglossia and Literacy. Mysore:
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FERGUSON, C. A. 1959, Diglossia. Word 15, 325-40.
FERGUSON, C. A. and GUMPERZ, J. J. (eds) 1960, Linguistic
Diversity in South Asia Introduction (1-18). Bloomington:
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FINNEGAN, R. 1972, Literacy versus non-literacy: The great
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Thought. London: Faber and Faber.
FISHMAN, J. A. (ed.) 1978. Advances in the Study of Societal
Multilingualism Preface. The Hague: Mouton.
GRAFF, H. J. (ed.) 1982, Literacy and Social Development in the
West: A Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press.
GROSJEAN, F. 1982, Life with Two Languages: An Introduction
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GUDSCHINSKY, S. C. 1982, Literacy: The Growing Influence of
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GUMPERZ, J. J. 1961, Speech variation and the study of Indian
civilization. American Anthropologist 63, 1,976-88.
GUMPERZ, J. J. and NAIM, C. M. 1960, Formal and informal
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FERGUSON and J. J. GUMPERZ (eds.) Linguistic Diversity in
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HAUGEN, E. 1979, Language ecology and the case of Faroesa. In
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HEATH, S. B. 1980, The functions and uses of literacy. Journal
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KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1983, Plural Languages, Plural
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University of Poona.
PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1980, Literacy Education. Mysore:
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 Page 78
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 Page 79

7
Multilingualism from a Language Planning
Perspective:
Issues and Prospects
Hans R. Dua

Introduction
The identification, characterisation and description of language
problems is fundamental to the formulation of coherent and
comprehensive language policies and the development of
adequate and explanatory theory of language planning. The
solutions of language problems have wide-ranging implications
not only for development and cultivation of language resources
but also for socio-economic, scientific, cultural and
communication planning. Language planning as an
interdisciplinary subject has therefore rapidly developed during
the last two decades. With the growth of the discipline the nature
and scope of language problems has widened tremendously. The
range of language problems and socioeconomic, political and
educational issues brought into the paradigm of language
planning theory reflect the salience and significance of language
as a societal resource.
From a larger perspective of language problems the language-
status planning raises fundamental issues about the nature and
extent of multilingualism that can be maintained and nourished in
the linguistically complex societies. The significant research that
has been conducted on multilingualism from several
perspectives, such as socio-psychological and educational, has
made it a crucial issue for language planning as well as for
educational, communication and national identity planning. The
consideration of the issues related to multilingualism from a
language planning perspective would, therefore, be useful and
relevant not only for
 Page 80
understanding the nature and scope of these issues but also for
the development of language planning theory as well as national
planning in general. The present paper is a modest attempt in the
achievement of such a goal.
The paper is divided into five sections. The first section deals
with the philosophical grounding of language planning theory. It
argues that the ways in which goals, values, ideologies and
criteria are defined and characterised in seeking solutions to
language problems will determine the nature, form and extent of
multilingualism in linguistically heterogeneous societies. The
second section critically examines the studies on the question of
language diversity which has a significant bearing on
multilingualism from the point of view of language planning. It
shows that there is no conclusive evidence to prove that language
diversity is either good or bad in itself and that the existence and
survival of multilingualism depends on the recognition of the
function of language diversity in multilingual society. The next
section deals with one of the most crucial arenas of the
management of language diversity which concerns the use of
language in the domain of education. It argues that a theoretically
sound basis of mother tongue education forms the solid
foundation of multilingual education and that the nature and
form of multilingual education will determine the scope and
extent of multilingualism that can be sustained through the
process of change. The fourth section is complementary to the
previous section in that it deals with another crucial arena of
language use concerned with mass communication. It argues that
a multilingual communication policy is essential not only for a
social communication system but also for language develoment
and maintenance of multilingualism. The final section may be
considered to sum up the thrust of the arguments in the preceding
sections. It concludes that languages have a fundamental right to
development and that the maintenance of minor/minority
languages is essential for the development of minority cultures
and growth of majority languages as well as cultures. Thus, the
systematic concerted efforts in the maintenance and sustenance of
multilingualism from the perspective of language planning seems
to be the only solution for the development of the immense
potential of language diversity which mankind has fortunately at
its disposal.

Ethics of Language Planning

Language planning is future-oriented. It involves the
consideration of the structure and function of the verbal
repertoire of a speech community or a nation and its socio-
cultural and political setting, and envisages
 Page 81
systematic deliberate changes in the verbal repertoire, keeping in
view the future image of the society at large. The characterisation
of the present sociolinguistic situation, projection of the future
image of society and the scope of change will determine the
nature, structure and function of the verbal repertoire in future. It
is crucial in this process who defines language problems; what
language problems of the verbal repertoire are perceived and
projected; why certain language problems are defined; how
certain language problems are characterised; what strategies and
solutions are suggested to solve the problems, and so on. Several
such questions need to be properly understood within a
systematic framework of a sound theory of language planning.
The consideration of goals, values, ideologies and criteria
provides such a framework which reveals the philosophical
grounding of language planning theory and form the
foundational basis for the existence and growth of
multilingualism.
The setting of goals, their precise formulation and the degree of
consistency among them with regard to resources, social
objectives, evaluation of alternatives and instruments and
modalities for achieving the goals constitute perhaps the most
crucial and complex component in language planning. Nahir
(1984) claims that 'with few partial exceptions language planning
goals have to date been neither established nor delineated'.
Though most of the goals established by him have been
discussed in the language planning literature in relation to
language planning processes or their outcomes, the discussion of
these goals by him highlights the significance of achieving
consistency between the goals, resources, strategies and
outcomes. However, Nahir mainly focuses on language-related
goals, though he points out that they may be viewed as related to
communicative, political, social, economic, religious and other
needs and aspirations, existing or perceived to date. The
characterisation of societal goals is as essential as language
planning goals. Dua (1985) considers societal goals as one of the
components in the social system within the system model of
language planning. He points out that a sufficient and necessary
degree of precision, specificity, consistency and clarity among
various goals is a prerequisite for the success of language
planning.
The setting of goals and establishing a hierarchy or an order of
priority among them depends on value-judgements. Neustupny
(1983) points out that 'it would be unrealistic to maintain that
language planning theory could or should be a value-free
politically neutral discipline', and that it 'must provide a full
account of all political values involved in language planning
processes'. Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson (1986a) make a three-
way distinction between value-judgements, beliefs and
knowledge which constitute the language planner's consciousness
and which lead to action
 Page 82
and ultimately achievement of goals. According to them, the
value-judgements are a manifestation of reality, can be studied
objectively, and significantly influence both beliefs and
knowledge. They show how the characterisation of value-
judgements have implications in the empirical analysis of
language planning in Namibia as far as the use of various criteria
for the choice of official language is concerned. The issues
related to the number of criteria will be discussed in detail later.
For the present it would suffice to point out that the nature of
value-judgement, explicitly or implicitly held by the speech
community about the use, status or function of a language
significantly influences the processes of language selection and
allocation and consequently have serious implications for
maintenance and growth of multilingualism.
The formulation of goals and elaboration of values are intimately
related to the issue of ideology. Recently there has been some
discussion on the need and relevance of ideology in language
planning theory and practice. Cobarrubias (1983) points out that
language-status planning is ultimately contingent upon ideology.
Weinstein (1986) considers ideological interests as one of the
general categories of interests which emphasise and underscore
that all planning is value-encumbered and which determine the
course of language policies and their implementation. An
ideological interest, according to Weinstein, is an absolute
principle which is pursued for its own sake, but it may also
provide justification or an explanation for tangible political,
economic and social interests. For instance, he remarks that 'the
pursuit of ideology for its own sake seems to be one important
motivation of language planning with respect to the issue of
medium of education, mother tongue, national tongue, or
language of wider communication' (Weinstein, 1986: 39). He also
refers to language ideology and ideologies of unity, authenticity
and pluralism. However, Dua (1986), commenting on Weinstein's
paper, brings out that the notion of ideology has not been
properly defined and characterised. It is necessary to distinguish
ideology from such other related concepts as outlooks, creed,
systems and movements of thoughts and programmes. It is also
necessary to distinguish between different kinds of ideologies,
linguistic, political, social or economic, and how they interact
with and influence each other. Furthermore, the role of ideology
in language planning depends upon how it is formulated,
transmitted, perceived and interpreted to serve different interests
at different periods of time. Thus, the notion of ideology is
complex and needs to be properly characterised before it can be
used as a construct in the language planning paradigm.
Cobarrubias (1983) remarks about the problems involved in
using ideology as a construct:
But, although the relation of status policy decisions to ideological
matters is so pervasive, it seems difficult to offer a
 Page 83
satisfactory model or taxonomy of language policy ideologies that will
explain and/or predict how a particular type of ideology affects
language change. (Cobarrubias, 1983)
He himself offers a taxonomy typical of language ideologies,
which is by no means an exhaustive taxonomy, in terms of
linguistic assimilation, linguistic pluralism, vernacularisation and
internationalisation. Each of these ideologies has different
implications for the choice, use and development of various
languages in the multilingual situation. It is evident from a brief
discussion of the implications of these ideologies by Cobarrubias
that the endorsement of different ideologies and the degree of
emphasis accorded to them will definitely determine the form and
extent of multilingualism in linguistically heterogeneous societies.
The discussion of goals, values and ideologies is incomplete
without the consideration of various criteria which have been
suggested or proposed in decision-making about issues related to
language-status planning. This is not only because these criteria
support different conflicting goals, values or ideologies but also
because they may be employed without any proper weighting to
achieve certain ends. For instance, Neustupny (1968) mentions
four criteria of: development, democratisation, unity, and foreign
relations. Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson (1986a) offer a list of
criteria consisting of: unity, accessibility, familiarity, feasibility,
science and technology, pan Africanism, wider communication,
and United Nations, which have been suggested in the context of
choice of official language for independent Namibia. They show
how these criteria focus more on the international functions of
the official language and less on the socio-cultural and
educational factors as part of an overall multilingual policy. They
point out that some criteria which would have been extremely
relevant have been excluded from the list. These include: ease of
learning, Namibian cultural authenticity, empowering the under-
privileged, and self-reliance. They claim that the selective
checklist of criteria is skewed in favour of English.
The identification, selection and evaluation of various criteria is a
complex process and involves both theoretical and
methodological considerations since they imply different and
often conflicting outcomes and support different values or goals.
Dua (1985) discusses the ramification of six criteria, viz. unity,
national development, language development status, equality,
cost and mental growth, and educational achievement, in the
context of educational planning. He points out several
definitional and methodological problems and contradictory
solutions and dilemmas that make language choice extremely
difficult, if not impossible. He remarks that no definite
conclusions can be drawn on the basis of these criteria in
 Page 84
favour of vernaculars, national languages or world languages as
media of instruction. He concludes that each country must decide
the extent to which each of these criteria should be emphasised,
keeping in view the short and long term educational and language
planning goals and the multilingual realities of the situation.
In short, the discussion of goals, values, ideologies and criteria
highlights the following facts. First, these notions have neither
been sufficiently characterised nor adequately distinguished from
each other. Second, they raise definitional, conceptual and
methodological problems in process of decision-making. Third,
though the significance of these notions in the theory of language
planning is recognised, they do not as yet provide a coherent and
comprehensive framework for explaining or predicting how they
affect particular language policy or planning decisions in
different sociolinguistic contexts. Finally, the characterisation and
acceptance of these notions as constituting the philosophical
groundings of language planning has definite implications for the
form and extent of multilingualism that can exist, survive or
flourish in the linguistically heterogeneous and complex
modernised/modernising societies. The development of a
comprehensive system of the philosophical groundings on the
basis of these and other notions is therefore indispensable for the
growth of both the language planning theory as well as
multinlingualism.
Challenge of Language Diversity
The issue of language diversity has not been properly understood
by most scholars. The perspective of the predominantly
monolingual ethos from which this issue has been approached
seems to have served as a blinker in the perception of the
functional role of diversity. This perspective has been
perpetuated by the myth of monolingualism. Fishman (1986)
remarks about the pervasiveness of this myth, 'Three socio-
philosophical myths or Weltanschauungen have fostered
monolingualism for as many millenia of Euro-Mediterranian
experience: the myth that monolingualism = universalism; the
myth that monolingualism = freedom; and the myth that
monolingualism = rationalism.' It is perhaps because of the
monolingual perspective that several scholars have negatively
evaluated language diversity when they have tried to relate it with
socio-cultural, economic or political development. Pool (1972)
sums up the findings of these scholars:
Language diversity, it is claimed, aggravates political sectionalism;
hinders inter-group co-operation, national unity, and regional
multinational co-operation; impedes political
 Page 85
enculturation, political support for the authorities and the regime, and
political participation; and holds down governmental effectiveness and
political stability. Similarly it is said that language diversity slows
economic development, by, for example, breaking occupational
mobility, reducing the number of people available for mobilisation into
the modern sector of the economy decreasing efficiency, and preventing
the diffusion of innovative techniques. (Pool, 1972)
There is no doubt that some scholars have questioned the validity
of correlation between language diversity and development.
Lieberson et al. (1974, 1975a, 1975b) have examined the notion
of mother tongue diversity in a comparative analysis of nations
and have shown that the cross-sectional correlations are either
'spurious' or based on untested assumptions. Lieberson & Hansen
(1974: 37-8) remark: 'The correlations between diversity and
development are created because these two separate clusters exist,
but it is only a slight overstatement to say that within each cluster
there is essentially no association between the developmental
characteristics and mother tongue diversity' Lieberson &
O'Connor (1975) also point out that many nations may show
radically different patterns of diversity at the sub-regional level
and that the decisions about language at the national level may
not be relevant at the regional level. They remark that 'policy
decisions over such matters as the medium of school instruction,
mass communications, offical languages recognised in courts and
other government agencies and the like must consider more than
the level of language diversity in the entire nation' (1975: 106).
It might be considered that various language-nation typologies
attempt to come to grips with the notion of language diversity,
though they have not succeeded in grasping the characteristic
function of diversity. For instance, Apter (1982) points out that
Rustow's (1968) typology considers 'multinlingualism (linguistic
heterogeneity) in a social vacuum, disregards structural and
cultural boundaries other than territory', that in Kloss's (1968)
typology 'variables themselves are poorly defined', and that
Fishman's (1968) cross-polity analysis provides a 'parody of
value-laden social science' (see also Srivastava, 1977). He
concludes that it is incorrect to treat linguistic heterogeneity per
se as an independent variable.
Pool (1972) presents an elaborate analysis of the issues involved
in the question of correlation between language diversity and
national development. He acknowledges that planned language
unification is subject to numerous doubts from the point of view
of empirical practicability and to morality from the point of view
of language planning. He makes a
 Page 86
distinction between the genuine relation in which development is
linked with language unification through intervening variables of
communication, education and cleavage, etc., and the spurious
relation in which language uniformity is directly linked with
nationalism, democratisation, revolution, independence,
education, social mobilisation, etc. He extends the correlational
analysis by retrieving more information from the Handbook and
A Cross-Polity Survey and rejects the causal relation between
language uniformity and development. The generalisations which
are arrived at after this exercise are considered to be descriptive
and static: 'they describe what is, rather than predicting what
would be under other conditions, and they deal with states rather
than rates' (Pool, 1972: 224). Notwithstanding this, Pool seems to
accept what he denounces when he remarks that 'a planner who
insists on preserving cultural-linguistic pluralism had better be
ready to sacrifice economic progress', that there is no single
country which can serve as a contemporary model of
development with diversity and that this will 'discourage planners
and politicians from attempting to bring about the combination in
question and thus perpetuate its absence' (Pool, 1972: 226).
The denunciation of language diversity can also be seen in the
discussion of the territoriality and personality principles of
language planning. McRae (1975: 52) accepts that a language
policy adviser 'will be unable to generalise very far or confidently
about the relative merits of territoriality or personality per se as
alternative principles of language planning'. But in the last section
of his paper he seems to support unilingual territoriality as it is
'clean economical and elegant in the economist's sense', as it
advances 'personal security', 'linguistic stability', and helps in
'conflict regulation', and so on. This would seem to suggest that
the challenge of language diversity can best be handled by
accepting the territoriality principle of language planning.
The discussion of the issue of language diversity highlights the
following facts which are relevant for considering
multilingualism from the language planning perspective. First, it
needs to be recognised that language diversity is not only not bad
in itself, but also it is a characteristic indispensable feature of
plural societies. It needs to be positively evaluated and
systematically nourished. Pattanayak (1984) remarks about this:
In plural societies, efficient management of plurality must be the
yardstick to measure efficiency of economic and political systems.
Looked at from this perspective, in plural societies many languages
ensuring access to information, knowledge and political participation
with a view to providing economic
 Page 87
advantage to the greatest number of people are the best defence of
democracy. (Pattanayak, 1984)
Second, language diversity interacts with several factors, socio-
cultural, economic, political, communicational and
developmental. The understanding of language diversity as a
variable, independent, intervening or dependent would be
essential not only for the development of social science in general
but also for an explanatory theory of language planning in
particular.
Finally, the cost of the elimination of language diversity would
not only be stupendous but also result in irreparable loss for
mankind as a whole. This point will be elaborated in detail in the
last section of the paper.
In short, to the extent language diversity is understood, valued
and nourished, it would contribute to the growth and
maintenance of multilingualism. Language planning can play a
constructive role in proper evaluation and management of
language diversity and provide a sound basis for the cultivation
and sustenance of multilingualism.

Multilingualism in Educational Planning

From the point of view of educational planning the language-
status decisions about language allocation and use in the domain
of education have far-reaching consequences for the developing
multilingual countries. They determine not only the function,
status and development of indigenous languages but also the
pattern of communication and socioeconomic and political
processes of change and modernisation since patterns of
language choice and use are related to distribution of knowledge,
resources and power in the society. It is partly because of the
serious implications of these decisions that there is a great deal of
debate, controversy and even confusion in the domain of
educational planning. This state of affairs is also partly due to the
lack of adequate knowledge of the sociolinguistic situation, the
complexity of educational and language planning goals, the
different perception of future needs and images of society and
the conflicting interests and ideologies that influence the process
of decision making. If language-education policy and planning
are not based on sound decisions and if suitable implementation
strategies are not evolved to implement them, the structure of
multilingualism will crumble to pieces and smaller indigenous
languages will survive marginally or disappear altogether.
The characterisation and description of patterns of language use
in a multilingual society is necessary to put the language
allocation decisions on
 Page 88
the firm ground. It is a complex task as it involves the
identification of types of uses of different languages, the relative
potency and salience of particular use, the development of
suitable criteria for measuring the nature and extent of use and
the description of the position, relationship and functional
distribution of the varieties of verbal repertoire of speech
community. It also needs to be characterised in what ways the use
of different languages is complementary, supplementary, equative
or randomly overlapping and what changes are visualised in the
different patterns of use. The patterns of language use and the
likely changes need to be related to educational facilities and
planning on the one hand and language planning goals and
national policy on the other. Furthermore, the decisions need to
be linked to the right pace of implementation keeping in view the
time limit, the implementation strategies, the likely constraints
and consequences that may accompany with or flow from them
and the target population that are covered and influenced by the
implementation of language allocation decisions. Both the
language allocation decisions and the implementation are
necessary not only for the development of language planning
theory in general and educational planning in particular, but also
for the growth and maintenance of multilingualism (Dua, 1987).
In situations of language-status planning the allocative decisions
to use and develop certain languages have failed or have been
trimmed and cut down, either because they were not realistically
formulated in the first place, or because adequate consensus
could not be sustained in the process of their elaboration and
implementation, or because the hidden constraints and socio-
political consequences flowing from them were not fully grasped
at the time of taking the decisions. Thus there is the possibility of
a gap between the ideal and reality or between the policy and the
current practice. This gap is not properly perceived because the
relationship between the policy and the practice is characterised,
as pointed out by Afolayan (1984: 16), by the three-headed evil
of under-rating, overrating and self-deception. Thus he finds a
transparent skewness between the ideological position of
indigenous languages of Nigeria and the status of the English
language, and therefore requires 'a very clear, well-balanced
policy on the English language as the nation's second language
such that the indigenous Nigerian languages would also play their
most meaningful roles side by side'.
The evaluation of the comparative status and roles of various
languages, particularly the mother tongue and second language,
as the medium of instruction suffers a great deal of confusion,
misunderstanding and obfuscation because of two main reasons.
The first reason may broadly be considered in relation to the
evaluative criteria which are suggested to prove or disprove the
advantages or disadvantages of mother tongue and second
 Page 89
language as media of instruction. It is possible to prepare a long
list of various criteria and of comparative advantages and
disadvantages. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to
discuss all the criteria and the related advantages and
disadvantages. Some discussion of the issues related to this
question has been presented in Dua (1985) as mentioned earlier.
Here it would suffice to point out that no definite conclusions can
be drawn in favour of vernaculars, national languages or world
languages as media of instruction on the basis of any single or a
set of criteria. Each criteria is not only complex and involved but
also offers conflicting and often contradictory standpoints posing
dilemma in decision-making. For instance, while Daken, Tiffen
& Widdowson (1968) point out that the use of minority
languages in education offend the four criteria of economy,
utility, ease of communication, and cohesion, Pattanayak (1981)
claims that monolingual policy in dominantly multilingual
countries would not only be uneconomical but also absurd. The
criterion of cost is also complicated because it is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to identify and calculate both the
tangible and intangible factors in the cost-benefit analysis in
relation to both short- and long-term planning. Not only are the
criteria not fully characterised, but also there are no rational
grounds to decide about their relative salience and weightings
and to determine the ways in which they influence each other.
Due to lack of explicitness, specificity and adequacy of various
critieria the question of educational planning becomes a casualty
and suffers at the hands of both the politicians and the language
planners.
The second reason concerns the nature and amount of research
evidence that is considered to have the last word in settling the
controversial issue of the comparative advantages of mother
tongue and second language as media of instruction. It is not the
purpose of this paper to present an overview of the research on
this issue, as an elaborate discussion of this has been presented
by Skutnabb-Kangas (1986). However, a few observations will
be made to point out the limitations of research evidence. First,
as a wide range of variables pertaining to students, teachers,
community, schools, languages, material and goals and objectives
are involved in the experimental programmes, it is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to control and monitor all the relevant
variables in the comparative studies. It is particularly so in the
case of long-term longitudinal multivariable studies which can
defy any objective and precise evaluation. Second, as
sociolinguistic settings differ in several aspects the models of
language use applicable in one setting may not be viable and
relevant in other settings. Finally, the methodological problems
involved in controlling the variables and evaluating and
interpreting the results are so complex that the findings
 Page 90
of experimental programmes seem to be of doubtful value.
Furthermore, methods may be influenced not only by the
theoretical assumptions but also the philosophical basis in
conducting research and evaluating its results. Skutnabb-Kangas
(1986) remarks about this:
Methods are not a separate collection of neutral recipes which you can
learn in your training, out of context and then apply to any problem. All
methods are integral part of or at least related to specific paradigms
and specific philosophical and political ideologies and controversies
about methods have to be seen in this context. (Skutnabb-Kangas,
1986: 1,974)
The research evidence may fail because of the above reasons and
may not provide any definite conclusions. For instance, Fasold
(1984) refers to the studies by MacNamara (1966), Dakin, Tiffen
& Widdowson (1968), Engle (1975) and Tucker (1977) who
review several studies and conclude that the linguistic effects of
teaching in mother tongue or second language are either not
known or inconclusive.
The state of affairs about the status and validity of research
evidence presented above has serious implications. It not only
leads to indecisiveness but it can also be manipulated to support
the majority view or the current practices. It evades the basic
issue by creating an opposition between mother tongue and
second language but not resolving it. The basic issue in a
multilingual situation is to find out, forge or cement the
interlinkages between the languages. It is to explore the different
ways in which different languages can be combined to generate
different models of bilingual education and to maximise the
cognitive, academic, linguistic, cultural and socio-political
benefits associated with different models. If such a perspective is
brought to bear upon language and educational planning, it will
enrich both the theory and practice of multilingualism and
develop the culture of mutual understanding, tolerance and
coexistence.
In short, the quality of educational planning and consequently the
future of multilingualism depend upon the nature and scope of
decisions about the status and function of various languages in
the domain of education. The complexity involved in the
decision-making process and the conflicting or contradictory
alternatives available in a given situation cannot be simply
resolved on the basis of any set of criteria or research evidence.
Acceptance of multilingual reality and the formulation of
language allocation decisions on the basis of this implies a
perspective which seeks interlinkages between various languages
rather than oppositions between them. This perspective can be
realised on the basis of enrichment-oriented models of
multilingual education which are essential for the development of
both linguistic resources and cultural understanding.
 Page 91

Breaking the Barriers of Communication

The second domain with wide scope for language planning and
far-reaching implications for multilingualism is the domain of
mass communication. The significance of mass media for
language planning has been recognised, though the discussion on
media and communication planning is not as detailed as on
language education planning. Noss (1967) points out that radio,
newspapers and television exert a decisive influence on the
spread and acceptance of national language, and concludes that
'the radio undoubtedly ranks near the Government primary
schools among the most persistent and efficient disseminators of
knowledge of the national language'. In spite of the significance
of mass media for language spread, standardisation and
development there is a lack of basic data on language use in
broadcasting in different countries from the point of view of
language planning. Only recently some issues of language use
and development have been raised in some countries, notably,
Britain, Australia, and Singapore in the context of planning of
television for the use of minority languages or spread of the
national or other languages (Smolicz & Secombe, 1984; Kuo,
1984; Dodson & Jones, 1984). It is expected that there would be
more interaction between language planning and communication
planning for the development of both linguistic resources and
communication systems. In this process if some issues about
language use and technology development are not properly
understood, this will have serious consequences for maintenance
of multlingualism and multiculturalism.
As in the field of education, the issue of language use in mass
media has been framed more in oppositional terms rather than in
terms of the complementary roles of different languages. It has
been recognised that the use of a larger number of languages is
essential in broadcasting to achieve maximum degree of political
penetration and control over different language groups.
Plurilingualism is considered viable and realistic to meet the
diverse linguistic demands and aspirations of people for cultural
development. However, the multiplicity of language is considered
to hamper scientific and technical development and the use of a
single national language, or language of wider communication is
considered imperative to strengthen national cohesion and to
overcome the barriers of communication. The dilemma of choice
between one or many languages as faced by many African
countries has been aptly discussed by Head (1974):
Either way Government leaders face a dilemma: whether to allow
broadcast languages to proliferate for the sake of preserving traditional
cultures, winning the loyalty of minority
 Page 92
groups and reaching a maximum audience at the risk of encouraging
tribalism and separatism; or whether to standardize on a single
broadcast language for the sake of emphasizing nationhood at the risk
of hastening the disappearance of local cultures, alienating minority
groups and failing to communicate with the very people in whom the
central government most needs to inculcate an understanding of its
intentions. (Head, 1974)
This apparent dilemma between one versus many languages can
threaten the existence of minor and minority languages if proper
attention is not given to the development and mastery of new
technology growing at a rapid rate. It is felt that new
technologies, advancing by their own momentum or due to
political pressures and economic requirements, are running ahead
of man's capacity to interpret its implications and direct it into the
most desirable channels (UNESCO, 1982). They have a strong
and pervasive impact on the organisation of communication
system, drastically alter or destroy the stable institutions and well-
established relations and introduce new relationships and
institutions which threaten the values of pluralism and
decentralisation. If the developing multilingual countries do not
pay attention to the development of appropriate alternative
technologies to solve their communication problems, it is likely
that the transfer of sophisticated advanced technologies may
create forces of centralisation and language uniformality which
may be difficult to check and control in order to preserve the
edifice of multilingualism and multiculturalism.
One of the issues in the development of new technologies can be
considered in terms of the transmission capacity of the
broadcasting media. Generally the transmission capacity is
calculated in terms of technical specifications related to the
number and strength of transmitters, the number of frequencies
and channels or number of stations etc. The adequacy of
transmission capacity is judged in terms of the coverage of
population and region. However, the notion of coverage can be
very deceptive and unrealistic if the linguistic background of the
population in a multilingual situation is not taken into account for
ascertaining the adequacy of the communication system. For
instance, in India there were only 23 television transmitters till
1982. In the next three years there was a remarkable growth in
TV expansion as the number of transmitters went up to 180
covering about 70% of population in the country. However, the
access to television broadcasting will be found to be very low if it
is considered in terms of the ability of the people to buy
television sets or see the programmes on the one hand and the
understanding and intelligibility of programmes in English or
other dominant language on the other. Thus the centralisation of
broadcasting network in terms of both organisation
 Page 93
and language use can create a deceptive and misleading picture of
the coverage and utilisation of a communication system for
national development purposes.
It is generally assumed that the innovations in information
technology and the development of satellite communication
support centralised systems of communication in the name of
economy and efficiency. However, it is not realised that this may
be achieved at the cost of inequalitities and imbalance which may
be strengthened by the centralised homogeneous networks of
communication. Furthermore, centralisation of communication
networks has serious consequences for both the language and
cultural development as it encourages the use of dominant
languages on the one hand, and standardisation and
commercialisation of culture on the other. However, as Banerjee
(1985) points out, centralisation is not a necessary condition of
the new technology. On the contrary, new technologies provide a
tremendous opportunity for the decentralisation of information
and communication. The potential of new technologies for
diversity and pluralism has been summed up by Joshi (1985: 24)
who remarks that the present electronic mode of communication
'can be a promoter of diversity rather than homogeneity,
diffusion rather than concentration, particpation rather than
exclusion, integration rather than polarisation'. The harnessing of
this potential of new technologies in proper directions is one of
the most challenging tasks in evolving a viable communication
system in the modern linguistically complex societies. To achieve
this, bold decisions and options will have to be made on the basis
of sound economic, political and technological considerations. It
will have to be realised that the decentralised institutional
structures, media networks and technological infrastructures can
fulfil the communicative needs of linguistically heterogenous
society more realistically and protect the fabric of multilingualism
and plurality of cultures from the onslaught of homogeneity,
standardisation, commercialisation or imposition of dominant
ideologies.
While the satellite communication has immense potential, it raises
issues of international co-operation and understanding. It favours
the expansion of majority languages or languages of wider
communication and may adversely affect the language situation
across the national borders. For instance, Beardsmore & van
Beeck (1984) point out the implications of the potential impact of
satallite technology and the majority language French for the
assimilation of the Dutch speakers to the French language
community. The opening of national borders to communication
from other countries in different languages has become a
plausibility with the growth of satellite technology. This has
serious implications for language
 Page 94
maintenance and cultural growth and raises wider issues of
political ideology and international understanding. Thus while the
satellite technology needs to be harnessed for diversified
communication within the country, it requires co-operation and
understanding across national borders.
In short, a viable, socially realistic communication system in a
linguistically complex and plural society can be firmly established
only on a multilingual foundation. The multiplicity of languages
in broadcasting media requires not only the augmentation of
transmission capacity but also its decentralisation through the
development of appropriate technologies. New technologies
cannot be adequately controlled and properly harnessed for the
sake of diversity and pluralism if interlinkages and
interdependence between languages are not cultivated and
nourished from the point of view of communication and cultural
growth. Language planning can play a constructive role in the
development of minor and minority languages and in establishing
meaningful interdependence between them as well as with major
languages in terms of their communicative roles. The integration
of communication and language planning is as essential as
language education policy and planning for the growth and
sustenance of multilingualism.
Right of Existence and Survival
While the use of several languages can be justified on the basis of
their role in education, communication and other domains in a
multilingual situation, it is the recognition of the inherent value of
language on philosophical and moral grounds that ultimately will
ensure the growth and development of multilingualism. In
language planning theory these grounds are beginning to be
recognised as significant for both cultural and language
development. A discussion of some issues related to the
philosophical and moral principles will be useful in
characterising the language planning perspective suitable for
planning in multilingual situations.
One of the basic principles is the recognition of language as a
societal resource. However, the implication of this principle has
not been fully understood for the purpose of language planning.
Whatever attempts have been made in this direction (Jernudd &
Jo, n.d.; Thomson, 1978), they indicate that all the linguistic
resources available at the disposal of a speech community should
be properly developed and utilised. The loss of any language
system, however minor, is not only the loss of a conventionalised
system for making sense of the world, but the loss is irreparable.
Once the
 Page 95
linguistic resources are destroyed and dissipated unscrupulously,
they can never be restored or recreated (Fishman, 1980;
Miihlhäusler, 1987).
Another principle which has come into focus recently in the
context of language planning concerns the issue of language
rights. Language resources cannot be adequately and equitably
developed if it is not recognised that all language groups have a
right to use, develop and maintain their language. The
development and maintenance of language as a matter of right is
not only essential for the transmission of cultural knowledge,
heritage and world view of the language group in question, but it
also ensures participation of all the groups in the social processes
of communication and modernisation. Pattanayak (1987) points
out that 'both in education and in communication capturing the
local and the international through intermediate linkages of the
regional and the national is an essential precondition of
participatory democracy'.
The mere recognition of language rights is not enough. As the
present state of affairs about language rights in the world shows,
the countries can be differentiated in terms of whether language
rights are explicitly or implicitly recognised, and whether they are
prohibition or promotion oriented (Skutnabb-Kangas &
Phillipson, 1986b). In view of the indeterminacy and vagueness
in the characterisation of language rights it is not enough to
accord a formal status of equality to all the minor and major
languages. In the case of minor and minority languages the
formal status of equality would be meaningless if they do not
have the facility and possibility of satisfying their own interests,
and spiritual, cultural, economic, administrative and political
needs with means as effective as those used by the majority. It is
necessary for this purpose to create equality not only in law but
also in fact which 'may involve the necessity of different
treatment in order to attain a result which establishes an
equilibrium between situations' (Alcock, 1979). Thus the
principles of language rights needs to be supplemented by the
principles of equality as well as differential treatment which
provide a sound ground for the maintenance of minor/minority
languages as well as enrichment of multilingualism.
Finally, it is essential to recognise that language diversity is not
only inherently valuable but it is also functionally or
instrumentally an important asset (Fishman, 1982). The inherent
value of diversity derives from the fact, as Lewis (1981: 240)
points out, 'that there is no single overarching standard of value
in terms of which all behaviours, attributes of individuals and
groups, beliefs and acts can be evaluated'. It also derives from the
fact that different languages following an independent course of
evolution have arrived at 'different but equally logical provisional
analyses' (Whorf, 1956).
 Page 96
The functional or instrumental value of diversity has been
characterised in detail by Mühlhäusler (1987: 19) who compares
linguistic diversity to a genepool. He remarks: 'Just as the
diversity of plants in a tropical rain forest may contain the
solutions for future medical and genetic problems, the diversity
of languages may contain a source of alternative philosophies,
scientific metaphors and ways of living in harmony with one's
natural and cultural environment'. He points out that the smaller
languages of Australia and the Pacific are facing the danger of
extinction partly because of the colonial policies and partly
because of the post independent policies. However, they can
provide a rich pool of knowledge which can prove significant to
Western technology, society and philosophy. The potential gains
could be made in four areas that include new perspectives on the
boundary between nature and nurture, between the literal and
metaphorical and the different ways of splitting up and grouping
together aspects of the reality and the different modes of
language use. As different languages provide different
perspectives and orientations on these four issues, they can make
a fundamental contribution to enrichment of culture and
knowledge.
In short, a new perspective of language planning seems to be
emerging. This perspective is based on the recognition of
language as a societal resource and its proper development and
utilisation, the principles of language rights, equality and
differential treatment, and the inherent as well as functional value
of linguistic diversity. With a fuller characterisation and
development of this perspective not only the language planning
theory will gain in depth and systematicity, but it will also make a
more positive contribution to the growth and sustenance of
multilingualism and multiculturalism.
Conclusion
The language problems of linguistic diversity and multilingualism
in linguistically heterogeneous complex modernising societies
require a richer and new language planning paradigm which
recognises the value of diversity and cultivates the immense
potential of multilingualisms. The issues raised in the context of
educational and communication planning show that neither any
amount of research nor any number of evaluative criteria can
resolve the controversial or conflicting decisions which are often
based on the notion of comparative advantages and
disadvantages of mother tongue, vernaculars, regional, national
or international languages. They show that it is essential to forge,
cement and nourish interlinkages and
 Page 97
interdependencies between several languages in the multilingual
situations on the basis of their educational, cultural, socio-
political and communication roles rather than consider their
functions in oppositional terms.
The scope for the fulfilment of the complementary roles of
various languages depends on the philosophical groundings of
the theory of language planning. A comprehensive system of the
philosophical groundings can be characterised in terms of goals,
values, ideologies, and criteria. Those notions raise fundamental
definitional, conceptual and methodological problems in the
process of decision-making about selection, use and development
of various languages in different domains. The understanding
and characterisation of these notions is necessary for the growth
of both the language planning theory and multilingualism.
The framework of the philosophical groundings needs to be
integrated with the newer perspective on language which seems
to be emerging in the context of minor/minority language
planning. This perspective is based on the recognition of
language as a societal resource and its proper development and
utilisation, the principles of language rights, equality as well as
differential treatment, and both the inherent and functional value
of linguistic diversity. It is expected that a fuller characterisation
and development of this perspective and its integration with a
comprehensive system of philosophical groundings will lead to
the emergence of a richer and more powerful language planning
paradigm. The future of language diversity and multilingualism
as well as the prospects of solution of the issues raised by them
depend upon the nature and scope of such a language planning
paradigm.
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 Page 101

8
Language and Social Identity
Jennifer Bayer
Any research into the nature of language in its social context is an
exploration of man in constant interaction with the other. The
norm and form of social behaviour is of encounters being
negotiated or encounters constantly renegotiated. Language in its
social context is thus an interdependent phenomenon. Ecological
factors contribute to the existence of social markers and variation
in speech styles, resulting in regional dialects, class dialects and
caste dialects. Ethnicity also contributes to variation in speech
styles. The use of language entails not only knowing the language
but also knowing how to use language in situations and contexts.
Linguistic minorities are generally bi-/multilingual. The
functional use of their mother tongue is generally restricted to the
home and in-group interaction while the dominant language(s) of
the environment perform the role of other functions, such as in
education, administration and mass communication. Thus
language, singly or in clusters, acts as a token of cultural identity
of individuals and groups. This paper investigates language as a
significant token of identity among the linguistic minorities.
In multilingual societies there is a hierarchy of identities. Each
group stresses primary attachment to one identity and at the same
time stresses differing degrees of attachment for other identities,
each in symbiosis with the whole network of identity of the
individual and of the group. For example, if one splits the Tamil
language and culture into its innumerable variants of language
and cultural features based on social categories such as caste,
religion, and region, what emerges is that the single entity of
Tamil language and culture is hierarchically structured. This
hierarchy is broken into networks of social groups. The complex
inter-mixture of physical, material and cultural entities has made
isolation of traits, complexes and features almost impossible to
establish regions and groups entirely on this basis. However,
while creating a general framework for treating India as a
 Page 102
linguistic area this process of miscegenation has left thousands of
groups with distinct identities and personalities, thus making
India a culture polychrome. Due to economic factors impinging
on such a complex social situation, one finds the existence of
'majority groups' with superior rights and advantages over
'minority groups', who live under differential and unequal
treatment. The corollary to this is that under conditions of
linguistic diversity major language groups and minor language
groups are defined on the basis of language providing unequal
access to rank, status and privileges at different levels.
The concept of ethnicity subsumes contrasting, conflicting, and
contradictory definitional factors. The nature of ethnic groups
has been termed differently by scholars as 'natural', 'primordial',
'given' communities or 'creations of interested leaders, of élite
groups, or of the political system' (Brass, 1978). The view of the
primordialist is that 'every person carries with him through life
''attachments" derived from place of birth, kinship relationships,
religion, language and social practices that are "natural" for him,
"spiritual" in character, and that provide a basis for an easy
"affinity" with other peoples from the same background' (ibid).
There are others whose arguments are 'that such attachments that
form the core of ethnicity are biological and genetic in nature'
(ibid). What is important in this context is that ethnicity is defined
in terms of descent. The Anglo-Indians in India are defined
constitutionally in terms of common descent. They represent a
cultural consensus of the British, the European and the Indian of
historical, linguistic and religious experience. Fishman's (1977b)
observation that ethnicity is 'understood as an aspect of a
collectivity's self-recognition as well as an aspect of its
recognition in the eyes of outsiders' is valid in such examples. It
is a phenomenon that connects the individual to the social norms
and social values.
Giles et al. (1977), discussing social identity, say 'a person's
social identity involves self-evaluation which derives from being
a member of a specific group. It is often the case that a group's
evaluative attachment to its membership is reflected in its feelings
about its speech styles.' For instance, the Quebecois, Mexican
Americans and American Blacks until quite recently had a
relatively negative social identity which was reflected in the
evaluations they made of their own distinctive speech styles. In
India, the scheduled castes invariably speak non-standard
varieties of languages. This is a factor in their negative social
identity. Y. B. Damle, in his study of 'College youth in Poona, a
study of élite in the making', speaks of Ram Bhosle, the
scheduled caste boy who studied to become an engineer,
constantly emphasising that 'talk in the family should be cultured
and all members be educated'. His acute consciousness of the
lack of culture in his father's
 Page 103
family reflects to a large extent the distance between the language
use in two generations. This evaluation of one's own speech is
especially important for language spoken as it is often among the
most salient dimensions of ethnic identity (Taylor et al., 1973).
Fishman (in Giles et al., 1977) comments on why language is
such a salient dimension of a group's identity:
it becomes clearer why language is more likely than most symbols of
ethnicity to become a symbol of ethnicity. Language is the recorder of
paternity, the expressor of patrimony and the carrier of phenomenology.
Any vehicle carrying such precious freight must come to be viewed as
equally precious, as part of the freight, indeed, as precious in and of
itself.
Mahapatra (1981) discussing ethnicity, identity and language
shows that in most cases ethnicity is the primary focus of group
identity and that language and ethnicity are co-extensive, or one
is a derivative of the other. There are groups in India like the
Malto speaking Paharia of the Santal Parganas who are not
specifically defined as belonging to a particular ethnic group.
'The Paharia identifies himself as en malen, "I am the language
speaking man", and rejects others as ah gohel "he is a different
language speaking ousider"' (ibid). The Indian census gives
'Pardesi' and 'Bahargaon' as mother tongue labels. When a person
declares one such label as mother tongue, what he implies is that
he does not form part of the local speech community. It is
apparent from this that language is the most important identity
marker.
Referring back to the Tamil speech community it will be seen that
their mother tongue is Tamil, which is perceived as the overall
signifier of identity. Looked at in terms of either caste, region or
religion, exclusively or conclusively, each group is perceived as a
dimension of the central Tamil entity. Instrumental, interpretative
and expressive of every single social group, the identities form
the overall network of social groups within the Tamil language
and culture.
TABLE 8.1 Tamil
Caste Region Religion
Brahmin Madras Hindu
Mudaliar Arcot Muslim
Padayacci Tirinivelli Christian
 Page 104
A Tamil social group is perceived as Tamil when put in contrast
or in comparison with another major language category. Within
this broad frame, a Tamil is perceived of in terms of caste, region
and religion.
Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, or Telugu speakers in
Karnataka, who are major language speakers elsewhere in India,
have been reduced to minority language speakers in the dominant
Kannada speaking state. Their identities assume different
dimensions without reducing the core value of their languages
and cultures. They evolve into sub cultures creating distinctive
identities marked by distinctive accents or distinctive speech
styles. They operate in a system somewhat different from their
home environment. The social system, the political environment
and the educational system in the host setting force them to
change.
The study of the Tamils in Bangalore yields interesting insights
into language and social identity. Hierarchy of groups can be
established in terms of caste groups as well as in terms of control
of language. For example, speech characteristics of the Iyengars
in Bangalore mark them out as a group whose Tamil is not
considered pure or acceptable by native Tamil speakers as
standard. This group does not use Tamil in work situations,
whether it is in the factory, office, or research institutes. They
avoid using Tamil with people from Tamil Nadu. They generally
use Kannada, the state dominant language or English with
extensive code mixing of Tamil, Kannada and English. In short
this group is perceived as lower in the Tamil speaking hierarchy,
and perceiving themselves as such they suffer from an inferiority
complex. The degree of control of language also marks a person
in the hierarchy of Tamilians. The distinction between Karnataka
Tamil and Tamil Nadu Tamil, or different varieties of Tamil
within Tamil Nadu provide good examples of this situation.
In many traditions of the world, language is treated as a 'house';
Steiner (1971) used the term 'unhousedness'. When a person uses
his own language for expressing himself he is 'housed' in that
language. When for political or cultural reasons he is forced to
choose another language for expressing himself, then he may be
said to be 'unhoused'. Pattanayak (1978a) has extended the
meaning of the term by pointing out its different implications.
Since rootedness in a language is an important identity marker
either opting out or being forced out may create a sense of
alienation.
During the British period in India, India contained British
provinces and Indian states. In stages, due to the conveniences of
the moment, beginning from the nineteenth century through the
twentieth century, reorganisation of homogeneous linguistic areas
had taken place in India under the British rule. Bihar was formed
as a separate province to allow the Hindi speaking
 Page 105
TABLE 8.2 Tamil language distinctions
Kannada Karnataka Tamil Nadu English
Tamil Tamil gloss
bande vandhe vare 'coming'
This is used in the context when a visitor taps on the front door of a home and the hosts
answer 'vandhe'.
houdha aamava apadiya 'is that so'
In any given speech event there is the use of lexical items which are considered as
feedback signals. This is one usage.
aagala avardille mudiyad 'not possible'

population 'a fair opportunity for development' (Report of the States

Reorganisation Commission, 1955). In 1936, the province of Orissa was
created by bringing together the Oriya speaking areas of the provinces of
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the Central Province and Madras. In 1953, a
statement was made in the Indian Parliament by the Prime Minister that in
order 'that the welfare of the people of each constituent unit as well as the
nation as a whole is promoted, the question of reorganization would be
examined' (Report of the States Reorganisation Commission, 1955). The
Government of India indicated some broad principles for reorganisation.
From the statement 'The language and culture of an area have an
undoubted importance as they represent a pattern of living which is
common in that area' (ibid.), it would be evident that one of the
principles of reorganisation was linguistic and cultural homogeneity. As a
result of the above guideline, what emerged is individual states
demarcated on the basis of dominant languages. In spite of this, each
state continues to be a multilingual unit. The reorganisation not only
sought to impose a relationship of dominance and subordination at the
state level, but also extend it to the level of central planning, thus building
into it contradictions alien to the Indian ethos. One of the factors in the
Indian context that contributes to the integration of the Indian people has
been the great degree of tolerance of linguistic, cultural, and socio-
political diversity that is inherent in Indian history. Even after over fifteen
centuries of migration, Saurastri is still the language of the immigrant silk
weavers in Madurai. Srivastava (1977) discussing the Indian situation
points out that:
 Page 106
Pan Indian national cultures act as superordinate language while
regionalised cultures behave like localised distinct dialects.
Regionalised cultures like dialects usually do not detract from the
wider loyalties to a nation; rather it provides the people with a sense
of belonging instead of inbreeding feeling of hypernated rootless life. It
is the cultural pluralism within a multilingual framework with a sense
of superordinate feeling of being one nation which is the Indian
identity. (Srivastava, 1977)
Taylor and his associates have examined the salience of language
as a dimension of ethnic identity in comparison with cultural
background and geographic residence. It has been found in
Quebec among the Franco-Americans in Maine, and in Wales
(Taylor et al., 1973; Giles et al., 1977) that ethnic group members
identify more closely with someone who shares their cultural
background. For instance, Welsh bilinguals would consider
themselves more similar to an Englishman who spoke Welsh than
to a Welshman who spoke English. It seems that one's behaviour,
and in particular one's verbal behaviour, is a truer reflection of
one's ethnic allegiance (at least in the eyes and ears of others)
than one's cultural heritage as determined by the fortunes of
birthright. Indeed, one has no choice over one's ethnicity in terms
of heritage, but one can exert more control over which language
variety one can learn or use in addition to one's mother tongue
(Giles, 1977: 326). Gaining more control over a language other
than one's mother tongue leading to extreme situations of attrition
of mother tongue results in great emotional strain on the part of
the individual communities.
In societies where other cultural factors which act as binding
forces loosen, language tends to become the dominant trait of
identity. Pattanayak (1978b), discussing the Indian context points
out the conditions under which language becomes a cultural
token for the minorities. He says that
the minority is constantly under the threat of assimilation. When under
the compulsions of economy, the family structure is loosened, the
social organisation faces disintegration, the handicrafts and other finer
cultural traits of distinctness face extinction language remains a major
identity marker if not the only one and acts as the only window to the
cultural past of a people. (Pattanayak, 1978b)
The Anglo-Indians in India are a minority, faced with a crisis of
identity. The community is of multi-ethnic ancestry. Their
adoption of English as their mother tongue has resulted in the
'stamping out' of their respective
 Page 107
ancestral European languages. In Kerala, the assimilation of a
group of Anglo-Indians with the local language speakers led to
their loss of Anglo-Indian identity. The Urdu speakers in the
South, once they were isolated from the mainstream, developed
local identities, and they had to seek larger identity through the
standard. Dua (1981) discussing the speakers of Dakkhini Urdu
regards standard Urdu as a symbol of larger identity for speakers
of non-standard Urdu in other parts of the country.
Language as a symbol of social identity is also influenced by
political manoeuvrings. As Pattanayak (1981) put it:
Whether it is in economics, defence, or diplomacy, language plays a
significant role. Language is the most important tool in understanding
one's collaborators, competitors and adversaries and in developing
coping abilities to meet the challenges of a world in flux. During the
world wars all warring powers in general and Germany in particular
used linguistic evidence for the detection of spies. Mispronunciation of
place names, and names of people gave away the spies, therefore, spy
training schools all over the world put great emphasis on language
training. There is nothing novel in this phenomenon. The Old Testament
story narrates how people were beheaded for mispronouncing the
word 'shibboleth'. In ancient India, it is reported, mispronunciation of
mantrams not only brought ruination on oneself, but often misdirected
good results. In other words, whether it is developing internal
competences to meet the rising expectations of small groups speaking
diverse languages and dialects at home or developing external
competences to cope with a complex world, where societies
increasingly confront one another because of the invasion of their
privacy by the electronic media, language needs priority.
There are cases where nation states have enforced a single
language, thus expecting the minorities to give up their loyalty to
their own language.
The creation of English as a separate identity marker in England after
the loss of Normandy, the development of Castilian to form standard
Spanish, the acceptance of Khadiboli as standard Hindi are examples
when the surface tranquility was disturbed to create these new symbols
of group identity. (ibid)
The conflict of ethnic and regional identity with national identity
have led to situations as in the USA which followed the melting
pot policy and took both legal and economic steps which resulted
in the virtual elimination of
 Page 108
German, Greek, Yiddish, Dutch, Japanese and many other
tongues including American Indian languages. Laws were passed
banning teaching of German in Nebraska, making teaching of
Japanese difficult if not impossible in Hawaii (ibid). Pattanayak
further points out that
Both the creation of a language and the destruction of a language are
fraught with serious political consequences. Urdu was born in India
during the last 200 years. Since its birth it has affected Indian politics
in vital ways. At one time it was cultivated by Hindus and Muslims
alike. With the passing of time it became a symbol of Muslim identity
and now it is a reason for political and social tensions. Another
example of creation of new identities by atomizing the existing
language identity is the christening of Angika and Bajjhika as separate
languages. These two seek to break the existing Maithili identity. Yet a
third kind of situation is represented by the acceptance of Castilian as
the basis of Spanish or Khadiboli as the basis of Hindi. This has
consequences for the dialects of a language and language
standardisation. A fourth kind of example of creation of new identities
is the Serbs and Croates agreeing to merge their identities to create a
single language. A fifth example is the creation of the new state of
Kazhakstan in the USSR. The Soviet Government merged various tribal
identities by resettling them in one place and giving them a larger
identity. Politically this situation is more interesting as there may be a
possible conflict between the people themselves defining their identity
and the state defining their identity. (ibid)
The Indian census provides the example of enforced loss of
identity, when it was decided that languages spoken by less than
10,000 people should not be listed, and mother tongue should be
merged under major languages.
After Bangladesh became a sovereign state, the Punjabi speaking
muslims in Pakistan, who at the time of partition shifted to Urdu,
have begun to revive the use of Punjabi. The distinction being
made is between the Punjabi speaking Muslims and the Pashto-
speaking or Sindhi speaking Muslims. Language is being used as
an expression of identity. On the other hand, the Punjabi Hindu
of Delhi is prepared to give up Punjabi in order not to be
identified with the Punjabi Sikh (Pandit, 1978).
The case of the German Americans show how language due to
political factors is not lost as a vehicle of daily communication.
German has been associated with the Nazi movement during the
Second World War. There
 Page 109
is nothing surprising in the fact that the anti-Nazi sentiment in the
US and the German American eagerness to dissociate themselves
from the Nazi association by not insisting on their language
identity would lead to attrition of the German language in the
USA. Heinz Kloss (1966) says in his conclusion,
Among the descendants of the nine million or so German-speakers who
lived on American soil in 1910, at most 50,000 of those under eighteen
years of age still speak German natively. Thus the German language
seems doomed to extinction, apart from (1) its lingering existence in a
few 19th century language islands; (2) its continuation among some
self-segregated sectarian splinter groups; (3) its constant but ephemeral
reinforcement by new waves of immigrants who, unlike their
forerunners, do little or nothing to transmit the language to their
children. This is a development whose epic proportions should not be
underestimated. The linguistic assimilation of nine million German
Americansa group, be it remembered, which in 1916 was sufficiently
influential to prevent Theodore Roosevelt's renominationis the most
striking event of its kind in the annals of modern history. No other
nationality group of equal numerical strength and living in one country
has ever been so wellnigh completely assimilated.
The opinion that is being voiced is that while German language
as a spoken language is doomed to die in the United States there
is the possibility of it remaining a second language for the
Americans with German descent and a cultural link with the
German speaking parts of Europe. Even though Fishman (1977)
considers language as 'biological inheritance' of group identity,
the manoeuvrings of political ideologies leads to systematic
processes of groups considering language as social disgrace and
decide not to identify themselves with language as in the case of
the German Americans.
That language is a salient dimension in a group's ethnic identity
cannot hold true for all groups. It has been found that the
Franco-Americans in Northern Maine could speak only English
and that cultural background was the defining dimension of their
ethnic identity. Studies on ethnic groups such as the Irish, the
Jews and the Scots are 'examples of collectivities for whom the
specific language spoken is not important' (Giles, 1977: 327).
Another dimension of language as a significant token of social
identity is that even though language is an important symbol of
ethnicity, distinctive
 Page 110
accents or distinctive speech styles also contribute to the
conceptualisation of social identity.
India has been referred to as a society hierarchically structured in
terms of caste. On the basis of caste, groups are identified as
speaking dialects. Until recently most scholars divided them into
the Brahmin dialect, the non-Brahmin dialect, and Harijan dialect.
Bean (1974) in her survey of 'Linguistic variation and the caste
system in India' concludes that 'caste status is the dominant
variable'. Pattanayak (1976) suggested that the notion of 'caste
dialect is unscientific, and unnecesssary', 'caste difference in
dialects may be a marginally determinant variable only at the
rural subcaste level' and that 'scholars who have investigated
language variation in India have taken caste dialect for granted as
an a priori assumption'. Several scholars, national and
international, took issues with this line of argument and their
comments are published in the IJDL (vol. IV, No. 2 and vol. V
No. 1). Pattanayak's contention is that there is a distinction
between the structure and function of caste on the one hand and
that of language on the other. Therefore, caste and language
cannot be treated as coterminous. In his reply to all the comments
(IJDL vol. V No. 1) he says
In the process of modernization of the traditional society of India, caste
is also in the process of transforming its structure into a corporate
group while fulfilling its social function. Caste as a social group even
if it continues to provide an important alternative to one's life chances
and act as an identity marker in the process of change, such identity
carries over to other sets of social categories.
From the above discussion, it is quite evident that the notion of
language identity is not a compartmentalised entity but overlaps
with the individual, group, regional and national identity. One
has to delve deep into various social science discliplines such as
sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, politics, and
even theology in order to properly handle the issue of language
identity. In the process of modernisation its dynamic
characterisation embodies complex manifestations. As Pandit
(1977) points out
Identities are revealed in many ways, one's social class is indicated by
the dress and demeanour, one's religious identity is revealed by one's
home and the sacred marks on one's persons and by many other visual
clues. Speech does not merely replicate this information, it serves the
function of bringing speakers together despite these differences, by
allowing adjustments in the social space; it creates opporutnities for
negotiating
 Page 111
identities; the malleability and flexibility of speech makes it an ideal
instrument for the performance of this communicative task.
Language and social identity are very much linked with ethnic
identity which is a multi-dimensional concept. But what is
apparent, is that, even though questions may be asked as to when
and in what context language assumes greater importance, in
actual fact, language is the most important symbol of identity.

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South Asia. Indian Linguistics 35, 4.
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DAMLE, Y. B. 1966, College youth in Poona. A study of élite in
the making. Deccan College: Poona.
DUA, H. R. 1981, A Study of the Dakkhini Urdu Speakers in
Mysore City. Central Institue of Indian Languages, Mysore.
FISHMAN, J. A. 1977a, Language Loyalty in the United States.
The Hague: Mouton & Co.
1977b, Language and ethnicity. In H. GILES (ed.) Language
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KLOSS, H. 1966, German American language maintenance
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 Page 112

Index
Note: Page references in italics indicate tables.

A
Adi, extent 13
Afolayan, Adebisi 88
Alcock, A.E. 95
Allocation, language 88
Anglo-Indians 102, 106-7
Annamalai, E. 25-35
Ao, extent 13
Apter, Andrew H. 85
Arabic, and tribal bilingualism 32
Assam, tribal bilingualism 27
Assamese, L2 speakers 7
Assimilation xiii, 33, 58, 93, 106-7, 109
Attrition, language 59, 106
Austric languages 2, 26
Avadhi dialect 70
B
Banerjee, Subrata 93
Bayer, Jennifer 101-11
Bean, Susan 110
Beardsmore, Hugo B. & Van Beeck, Herman 93
Bengali, as minority language 27, 58
Bentinck, Lord William 17
Berry, J.W. 62
Bhatia, Tej K. 69-70
Bhili/Bhilodi, extent 13
Bhojpuri, as L1 vi
Bhubaneshwari, C.V. 58
Bhushan, S. 68
Biculturalism xi
Bilingualism,
attitudes to 39, 69
extent 5-9, 8, 10-13, 25
full vii, 58
functional 28
and linguistic apartheid vii
and modification vi-vii
monoliterate vii
 partial vii
and positive discrimination vii
reciprocal vi, 28
segmented education vii
societal viii, 28, 55, 69
transitional vii, 25
tribal 25-35, 29-30, 60-3
see also education
Biliteracy 74-5
Bisytematicity 75
Borkar, I.S. 45-6
Braj dialect 70
Brass, Paul R. 102
C
Caste, and dialect 110
Census 1951 1
Census 1961 1-2, 5-7, 10, 26, 28, 37
Census 1971 9
Census 1981 2, 9
Child language v, vi
Choice, language 18, 43, 82, 83-4, 87, 91
Cobarrubias, Juan 82-3
Code mixing 41, 57, 104
Code switching 22, 41, 57
Cognition,
languages of vi, 41
and mother tongue 19, 56, 61-2
Commonwealth Universities Yearbook 19-21
Communication,
centralisation 93
and language planning 91-4
and multilingualism vi, 5-13, 15, 40, 55, 59
 Page 113
policy 80
Concept, and language x
Contact, linguistic 25, 27, 32-3, 40, 42, 58
Contact languages 9, 27, 54
Context, social 101
Convergence, linguistic 32-3
Cues,
multimodel oral/written vi
prosodic intonational/lexical syntactic viii, 62
Culture, and language v, ix, xi, 15, 33, 54, 105-6
Curzon, Lord George Nathaniel 17

D
Dakin, Julian, Tiffen, Brian & Widdowson, H.G. 89, 90
Damle, Y.B. 102-3
Devanagari script 71, 74-5
Development, language 15-16, 22
Development, national, and language
diversity 16, 38-9, 84-6
Dialects,
and caste 110
 English ix, x
and literacy 70-1
Discourse style v, vi
Distance, language v
Diversity, language viii-ix, 57, 80
attitudes to xii, 38-9, 40-2, 84-6, 95-6, 97, 105
elimination 87
extent 1-10, 11-12
and language planning 84-7
and tribals 31
Dogri, extent 13
Domains, new 15-16
Dominance, language 33, 59, 105
Dravidian languages 2, 26, 60
Dua, H.R. 57-8, 79-97, 107
E
Ecology, language 67-74, 101
Education,
access to 72, 87
and bilingualism vi-viii, xi, 25-6, 27-8, 32, 39, 60, 90
colonial language medium 16-18
 higher 16, 18-19, 20-2, 20, 44, 75
minority vii
modern language medium 18-23, 37, 42-5, 48-50, 54, 84, 88-90
and multilingualism xii, 16, 37-8, 42-51, 56, 80
primary 17-18, 19, 43
secondary 18, 44, 47-8, 49 see also mother tongue; planning,
educational
Education Commission 1964-66 19, 43
Education Dispatch 1854 17
Elites, language v, 22, 40, 45, 50, 54, 71-2
Engle, Patricia 90
English,
in education 16, 17-22, 43-4, 47-50
as lingua franca xi, 7
and literacy 71
as official language 19, 21, 43, 56
status ix-x
and tribal bilingualism 32
Ethnicity 33, 101-3, 106, 109, 111, see also identity, language
F
Fasold, Ralph 90
Finnegan, R. 76
Fishman, J.A. vii, viii-ix, 69, 84, 85, 102-3, 109
Function,
nominal ix
socialisation ix
Functionality vi, 70-1, 73, 75-6
G
Garo, extent 13
Gender, and tribal bilingualism 28, 33
Giles, H. 109
Giles, H. et al. 102
Gondi, and tribal bilingualism 26, 31
Greenberg, J.H. 27
Grierson, G.A. 1
Gudschinsky, S.C. 68
Gujarat, tribal languages 31, 32

H
Haugen, E. 68
Head, Sydney W. 91-2
 Page 114
Heteroglossia viii
Hindi,
dialects 70-1
as link language 7, 13, 32
microlects 70
as official language 19, 21, 43-4
and tribal bilingualism 27, 32
Hodgson, Brian Houghton 17

I
Identity, language vi, ix, xi, 40, 54, 57, 62-3, 93, 101-11
Ideology, in language planning 82-3, 87, 109
Illiteracy 9, 76
Immersion 39, 48
Imperialism, linguistic xi, 59
India, demography and language 1-13
Indo European languages 2, 26
Integration,
language 55, 59-60
national 43
social 62-3
Interpretation, oral/literate styles vi
Ishwaran, K. 2
Iengars 104
J
Joshi, P.C. 93
K
Kannada, L2 speakers 7, 104
Kerala, and tribal bilingualism 32
Khaboli vi
Khasi, extent 13
Khubchandani, L.M. 5-7, 9, 10, 34, 57, 69
Kingman, Sir John x
Kinnauri, extent 13
Kloss, Heinz 85, 109
Kond tribals 60-3
Konkani speakers 32
Konyak, extent 13
Krishnamurti, B.H. 15-23
Kui language 60-2
Kurukh speakers 27
L
Ladakhi, extent 13
Lambert, W.E. & Tucker, G.R. 39
Language,
classical, see Persian; Sanskrit
context-free/context-sensitive viii
international 43-4
literary 37, 73-4, 74
official 10-12, 19, 21, 37, 56, 60, 83, see also English; Hindi
polylectal view 70
standard v, ix, 71, 73
tribal 28-31, 34, 35, 46, 74
see also child language; minority languages; regional language;
scheduled languages
Language learning,
load 45-6
second 42
Lewis, E. Glyn viii, 95
Lieberson, S. 1, 13
Lieberson, S. et al. 85
Lingua franca 18, 55, 60, see also English
Literacy,
functional 9, 76
 initial/progressive 75
in mother tongue 70-1, 723
and multilingualism v-vi, 67-76
second language 71-2, 73-4
and socio-economic status v, 67-8
transfer model 73-5
tribal 26-7, 32, 34, 60, 71
Lotha, extent 13
Loyalty, language xi
Lushai/Mizo, extent 13
M
Macaulay, Thomas Babington 17
MacNamara, John 90
McRae, Kenneth D. 86
Madhya Pradesh, tribal bilingualism 27, 31
Mahapatra, B.P. 1-13, 103
Maharashtra, tribal languages 31, 32
Maintenance, language vii, x-xi, 38, 40, 58-9, 80
and new technology 93-4
psychological consequences 59-63
 Page 115
Maithili dialect 70
Malayalam, as tribal language 34n.4
Malto speakers 103
Manipur, tribal bilingualism 26, 30
Manipuri/Meithei, extent 13
Materials, language learning 46
Media,
role 37, 91-4
transmission capacity 92, 94
Mewati, as L1 vi
Microlects 70
Minority languages ix-xi, 26, 32-3, 38
disappearance 54-6
extent 10-12
and identity 101-11
maintenance vii, 58-63, 80, 95
and media 91-2, 94
and Three Languages Formula 46
Mobility, social xi, 54, 59, 63
Mohanty, Ajit K. 54-63
Monolingualism 7, 12-13, 37-8, 59, 60-2, 69-70, 84
Monoliteracy 74
Mother tongue,
in education vii, x, 16-19, 22-3, 43, 48-50, 54, 56, 63, 80, 88-90
functions vi, 101
and group identity vii, xi
and literacy 71, 72-3, 75
loss 59, 106
maintenance x-xi, 59-63
numbers 6, 8, 9, 37, 56-7
status vii-x, 48
tribal 26-7, 33-4
Mühlhäuser, Peter 96
Multilingualism,
attitudes to xi-xii, 38-41, 69
in educational planning 87-90
extent 9-10, 11-12, 13, 37-8
maintenance 45, 82, 87-8
societal ix, xii
and standard language v
N
Nadkarni, M.V. 48
Nahir, Moshe 81
Naikans 58
Nation-state, and multilingualism 1, 13, 107
National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration 68
National Literacy Mission 9
National Policy on Education 43-4
Neustupny, J.V. 81, 83
Nilgiri tribes 35n.7
Nissa/Dafla, extent 13
Non-literacy 76
Noss, Richard B. 91
O
Orissa, tribal bilingualism 60
Oriya language 27, 60-3, 105
Osherson, D.E. & Markman, E. 61
P
Paharia 103
Paite, and tribal bilingualism 31
Pandit, P.B. 69, 110-11
Pandit, P.S. 58
Patnaik, K. & Mohanty, A.K. 61
Pattanayak, D.P. v-xii, 5, 40, 55-6, 59, 63, 69-70, 86-7, 89, 95,
105, 107-8, 110
Peal, E. & Lambert, W.E. 39
Periyalwar, R. 35n.7
Persian 16, 43, 47
Personality, in language planning 86
Planning, educational 45, 87-90, 96
Planning, language 56-7, 59, 63, 79-97
and communication 91-4, 96
ethics 80-4
goals 81-2, 87, 88
and language survival 94-6
status 79, 82-3, 87-8, 105
Policy, language viii, 55-6, 58, 72
Pool, J. 38-9, 84-6
Power,
and standard language v
and unequal bilingualism 25, 102

P
Pre-literacy 75-6
Punjab, and tribal bilingualism 32
Punjabi, and identity 108

R
Rajasthan, tribal bilingualism 26-7, 32
Raven's Progressive Matrices 61