The People's Linguistic Survey of India provides an overview of the extant and dying languages of India, as perceived by their speakers. It is the culmination of a nation- wide survey of languages, documented by linguists, writers, social activists and, most importantly, members of different speech communities The work chronicles the evolution of these languages until 2011, and incorporates their socio-political and cultural dimensions. Critically, it encapsulates the world view of the speakers of the languages.
The Survey comprises state and national volumes. The former document the languages prevalent in each of the different states of India. The national volumes bring together the languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and draw attention simultaneously to Indian languages in the diaspora, foreign languages in India, the Indian Sign Language, and language census, survey and policy.
The monumental People's Linguistic Survey of India focuses extensively on the languages of indigenous people, minority communities and the marginalised, and compels us to bring them to the centre of contemporary language debates in a globalised world.
The Languages of Puducherry (Volume twenty-three. Part two) of the People's Linguistic Survey of India presents to the reader the multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual nature of the Union Territory of Puducherry and the history and status of the languages in Puducherry. Under French rule from the seventeenth century till its merger with the Indian Union in 1962, Puducherry, formerly Pondicherry has been greatly influenced by French culture and language which can still be seen in the wide use of French in the region. The Union Territory comprises four small unconnected districts-Puducherry, Karaikal, Yanam and Mahe, cach with a dominant language as the local official language. Puducherry and Karaikal which are enclaves within Tamil Nadu have Tamil as their official language Yanam and Mahe enclaves of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have Telugu and Malayalam as their official languages respectively Apart from this unique linguistic composition of this small Union Territory, its spiritual identity is derived from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
G. N. Devy taught at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda till 1996, before leaving to set up the Bhasha Research Centre in Baroda and the Adivasi Akademi at Tejgadh where he has since worked towards conserving and promoting the languages and culture of indigenous and nomadic communities. He has been the recipient of many awards for his work in literature, tribal craft and language conservation, including the Padma Shri. He is the Chief Editor of the PLSI series.
L. Ramamoorthy heads the linguistic-data- consortium for Indian languages at the Central Institute of Indian languages. Mysore He was earlier associated with the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture as Director-in-charge. His academic interests are sociolinguistics, language planning and language technology.
G. Ravisankar is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. His areas of specialisation are phonetics, phonology intonation studies, translation and speech synthesis.
Gulammohammed Sheikh is an artist, writer and educationist who has contributed to a renewed understanding of cross-cultural themes in artistic pedagogy, in Indian and international contexts. He has received several awards for his works, including the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
While thinking about the People's Linguistic Survey of India, it suddenly struck me that the Indian Constitution opens with the words, 'We the people of India'. In the context of the debate about the supremacy of the Parliament and the Supreme Court, we have forgotten the people of India. Although people have the supremacy, they are not contestants of Parliament or the Supreme Court. Similarly, PLSI is neither a contestant of Grierson's survey or the survey conducted by the Registrar General of India. It is an independent, autonomous, people oriented and people motivated survey, trying to capture the perception of the people about the languages they speak. The PLSI aims at restoring the self confidence of the people that their languages are good for education, administration and mass communication. They are good for development and for intimate communication. Once their self confidence is restored, they will know that the mother tongue is the best foundation for learning more languages and subjects. Mother tongue helps in sharing as well as caring.
Indian intellectuals have contributed a word, 'mainstreaming', to the English dictionary. Mainstreaming is excluding, marginalising and demolishing smaller languages and cultures. It is another name for genocide. The tribals in particular, who are displaced from their habitat in the forests and mountains, are wrenched from their languages and cultures are forced to adopt the dominant regional language as their mother tongue. Hindi is considered the mainstream for many Indian languages and English is the mainstream for all Indian languages including Hindi. All binaries such as primitive-civilised, simple-advanced, low-high, concrete-abstract, pre-logical-analytical, utterance- text, are manipulated to defend dominance and subjugation. They are 'socialisation into mainstream ways of using language in speech and print, mainstream ways of making meaning, of making sense of experience. From the mainstream point of view morality is an evil which needs determined eradication. Indian society is a relation based society, clearly different from the binary and contract based society of the West. This is what explains the extended family, the extended society and the language and culture area.
The Puducherry volume of the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) is similar to other PLSI volumes in its representation as it is about the multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual nature of of Indian society. This is the characteristic feature of this small Union Territory of India. The four regions under this Union Territory have their own identity in terms of language, culture and even politics. Since the seventeenth century it was under French rule and has therefore deeply imbibed various elements of French culture and has adapted and localised the French language. It has experienced a continuous strife with the British, not to talk of the struggle for freedom by the people of Pondicherry. After its merger with the Indian Union in 1962, it has seen rapid development in all spheres. It stands out from the rest of the Indian states in education, industry, spirituality and politics. The language situation in Puducherry is unique as fifty-five languages were returned as the mother tongues of the population according to the 1961 Census. Nowhere in India did such a complexity of multilingualism exist. The four regions namely, Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam of this Union Territory which are geographically discontinuous have paved way for different policy decisions with regard to administration, education etc. Each region has its dominant language as the local official language. Tamil in Puducherry and Karaikal, Malayalam in Mahe and Telugu in Yanam. Still, English is used as the link language in all these regions of the Union Territory. The impact of French tradition can be seen in the life style of the people as well as in the landscape of Puducherry and in addition to the wider use of the French language among the inhabitants of these regions.
Another salient feature of the literary tradition of Puducherry is its contribution to the diary tradition. The history of Puducherry can be understood from the diaries written by Anandarangam Pillai and Thiruvenkatam Pillai who served as translators to French Governors. The spiritual identity of Puducherry has been well established by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the heart of Puducherry town. Since Puducherry was under French rule and as the population speaks different languages, the multilingual nature of Puducherry has raised, the awareness of linguistic purism among Tamils. Poets like Subramania Bharathi, Bharathidasan lived in Puducherry and contributed a lot to Tamil literature and poetics. This volume attempts to bring out the language situation of the Union Territory of Puducherry comprehensively and also its unique linguistic composition. It is the earnest hope of the editors of the volume the readers will get a glimpse of the sociolinguistic heritage of the Union Territory of Puducherry.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist