Multilingualism In India

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

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon Philadelphia title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject:

Multilingualism in India Multilingual Matters (Series) ; 61 Pattanayak, Debi Prasanna Multilingual Matters 1853590738 9781853590733 9780585126128 English Multilingualism--India, Sociolinguistics--India. 1990 P115.5.I4M85 1990eb 306.4/46/0954 Multilingualism--India, Sociolinguistics--India.

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personality developments of the school-going students. Scholar Critic Vol. 5(9), July 75-90. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., RAMASAMY, K. and DEVAKI, L. (in press) Effects of Medium of Instruction: An Indian Experience in Bilingual Education. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., SHEKHAR, RAJ and JAYARAM, B. D. 1978, The Language Load. Mysore: CIIL Occasional Monograph Series No. 13. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and S. KUMAR (eds) Indian Bilingualism. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan 51- 87. WOLFF, P. 1971, Western Languages. A.D. 100-1500. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Disclaimer: This book contains characters with diacritics. When the characters can be represented using the ISO 8859-1 character set (http://www.w3.org/TR/images/latin1.gif), netLibrary will represent them as they appear in the original text, and most computers will be able to show the full characters correctly. In order to keep the text searchable and readable on most computers, characters with diacritics that are not part of the ISO 8859-1 list will be represented without their diacritical marks. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-073-8 ISBN 1-85359-072-X (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd Bank House, 8a Hill Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7HH, England

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Copyright © 1990 D.P. Pattanayak and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Index compiled by Meg Davies Typeset by Action Typesetting, Gloucester. Printed and bound in Great Britain by WBC Print Ltd.

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Page iii Contents Introduction D. P. Pattanayak

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1 A Demographic Appraisal of Mutilingualism in India B. P. Mahapatra

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

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3 Linguistic Dominance and Cultural Dominance: A Study of Tribal Bilingualism in India E. Annamalai

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

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5 Psychological Consequences of Mother Tongue Maintenance and Multilingualism in India A. K. Mohanty

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6 Literacy in a Multilingual Context R. N. Srivastava And R. S. Gupta

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7 Multilingualism from a Language Planning Perspective: Issues and Prospects 79 H . R. Dua 8 Language and Social Identity Jennifer Bayer

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Index

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personality developments of the school-going students. Scholar Critic Vol. 5(9), July 75-90. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., RAMASAMY, K. and DEVAKI, L. (in press) Effects of Medium of Instruction: An Indian Experience in Bilingual Education. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., SHEKHAR, RAJ and JAYARAM, B. D. 1978, The Language Load. Mysore: CIIL Occasional Monograph Series No. 13. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and S. KUMAR (eds) Indian Bilingualism. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan 51- 87. WOLFF, P. 1971, Western Languages. A.D. 100-1500. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 nationmaking 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

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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) 264,188,858 39.94 1. Hindi 54,226,227 8.20 2. Telugu 51,503,085 7.79 3. Bengali 49,624,847 7.50 4. Marathi 44,730,389 6.76 5. Tamil 35,323,481 5.34 6. Urdu 33,189,039 5.02 7. Gujarati 26,887,837 4.06 8. Kannada 25,952,966 3.92 9. Malayalam 22,881,053 3.46 10. Oriya 18,588,400 2.81 11. Punjabi 3,174,684 0.48 12. Kashmiri 1,946,278 0.29 13. Sindhi 70,525 0.01 14. Assamese 2,946 15. Sanskrit 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.

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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 632,290,615 29,206,534 661,497,149 (95.58) (4.42) India States 52,754,352 420,925 53,175,277 (99.21) (0.79) Andhra Pradesh 65,440,524 4,198,201 69,638,725 (93.97) (6.03) Assam (No census was taken) Bihar 33,361,388 558,494 33,919,882 (98.35) (1.65) Gujarat 12,861,460 11,97 12,873,434 (99.91) (0.09) Haryana 4,084,570 173,005 4,257,299 (95.94) (4.06) Himachal Pradesh 4,325,961 1,621,338 5,947,575 (72.74) (27.26) Jammu & Kashmir 34,801,429 2,037,793 36,839,222 (94.47) (5.53) Karnataka 25,024,913 219,456 25,244,369 (99.13) (0.87) Kerala 47,884,931 4,115,138 52,000,069 (92.09) (7.91) Madhya Pradesh 59,153,116 3,077,166 62,230,282 (95.06) (4.94) Maharashtra 32,570 1,376,669 1,409,239 (2.31) (97.69) Manipur 181,113 1,145,635 1,326,748 (13.65) (86.35) Meghalaya 69,726 677,345 747,071 (9.33) (90.67) Nagaland (table continued on next page)

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Page 4 TABLE 1.2 (continued) India/State/Union Territory

Total household population (excluding Institutional household population)

Speakers of Schedule VIII languages and the percentage to the total household population 23,535,237 26,171,262 (89.93)

Speakers of other languages and the percentage to the total household population

16,723,153

16,689,494 (99.80)

33,659 (0.20)

34,130,701

32,518,743 (95.26)

1,611,958 (4.74)

308,262

19,570 (6.35)

288,692 (93.65)

48,089,281

48,041,159 (99.90)

48,122 (0.10)

2,034,242

1,459,299 (71.74)

574,943 (28.26)

110,549,826

110,506,761 (99.96)

43,065 (0.04)

54,207,652

51,570,921 (95.14)

2,636,731 (4.86)

178,885

143,748 (80.36)

35,137 (19.64)

597,862

103,037 (17.23)

494,825 (82.77)

440,837

437,301 (99.20)

3,536 (0.80)

101,818

31,213 (30.66)

70,605 (69.34)

6,174,632

6,136,683 (99.39)

37,949 (0.61)

1,059,012

446,406 (42.15)

612,606 (57.85)

39,709

33,687 (84.83)

6,022 (15.17)

2,636,025 (10.07)

Orissa Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Tripura Uttar Pradesh West Bengal Union territories Andaman & Nicobar Islands Arunachal Pradesh Chandigarh Dadra & Nagar Haveli Delhi Goa, Daman & Diu Lakshadweep (table continued on next page)

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Page 5 Table 1.2 (continued) India/State/Union Territory

Total household population (excluding Institutional household population)

Mizoram

476,439

Pondicherry

599,384

Speakers of Schedule VIII languages and the percentage to the total household population 43,523 (9.14) 597,780 (99.73)

Speakers of other languages and the percentage to the total household population

432,916 (90.86) 1,604 (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,

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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

Punjab

99.80

Rajasthan

95.26

Sikkim Tamil Nadu

below 25% 99.90

Tripura

71.74

Uttar Pradesh

99.96

West Bengal

95.14

Union territories Andaman & Nicobar Islands Arunachal Pradesh

80.36

99.20

Dadra & Nagar Haveli

30.66

Delhi

99.39

Goa, Daman & Diu

42.15

Lakshadweep

84.83

Pondicherry

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Punjabi (84.88) Hindi (89.89) Tamil (85.35) Bengali (69.59) Hindi (89.68) Bengali (86.34) Bengali (24.68)

below 25%

Chandigarh

Mizoram

Oriya (82.83)

Hindi (55.11) Gujarati (23.84) Hindi (76.29) Marathi (25.18) Malayalam (84.51)

below 25% 99.73

Tamil (89.18)

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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

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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

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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 halftruths. Only a complete picture of the existing multilingualism can give the planners a chance towards developing a national goal.

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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 himLinguistic 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

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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)

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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 nervecentres of the country that they hardly contribute

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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.

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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. 4882). 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.

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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.

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(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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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TABLE 2.1 Medium of instruction at universities/institutes Institutions No Medium of instruction 8 English1 1) Central Universities 2) Indian Institutes of 5 English Technology 3) Professional 25 Not stated for most2 Universities/Institutions: 22 Agriculture Universities 1 Gujarat Ayurved Univ. 1 J. N. Technological Univ. 1 Indira Kala Sangit Univ. 20 English (not Professional 4) Deemed to be universities Institutions), Sanskrit, Hindi, English (for language institutions)3 96 English at postgraduate level 5) Multi-faculty universities 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

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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 antiHindi 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

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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

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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. 693702). The Hague: Mouton. KANUNGO, GOSTHA BEHARI. 1962, The Language Controversy in Indian Education:

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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.

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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

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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 nontribal 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

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(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

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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).

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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)

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TABLE 3.1 (continued) Sl. State/Union No. territory 17. Laccadive Islands (Lakshadweep) 18. Tripura 19. Dadra & Nagar Haveli 20. NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) 21. Nagaland

Tribal Other bilinguals tongues (%) (%) 3.54 Arabic 51.21 English 20.41 Malayalam 14.01 32.70 Bengali 98.79 7.27 Gujarati 92.60 40.10 Assamese 72.59 Hindi 19.44 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.

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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

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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

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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.,

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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.

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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 subnational 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.

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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.

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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)

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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):

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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

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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)

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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

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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.

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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:

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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,

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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objective is also laudable. With confidence half the battle is won and the nation is confident and committed. The victory is in sight. References ANNAMALAI, E. 1986, The sociolinguistic scene in India. Sociolinguistics Vol. XVI(I), (June), 2-8. AUSUBEL, DAVID P. 1968, Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1980, The facilitation of meaningful verbal learning in the classroom. In J. HARTLEY (ed.) The Psychology of Written Communication. New York: Nichols Publishing Company. BORKAR, I. S. (forthcoming) Language in School Curriculum. A Comparison of the Options of the Scheduled Caste and Non Scheduled Caste Students, their Parents and Teachers. CABE 1956 and CM's 1961, 1967, In Report of the Commission for Linguistic Minorities. India: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. CENSUS OF INDIA 1961, Vol.I, Part II-C. Delhi: Government of India Press. CHATURVEDI, M. G. and SINGH, S. 1981, Third all India Educational Survey. New Delhi: NCERT. CUMMINS, J. 1979, Cognitive academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism 19, 197-205. 1983 Heritage Language Education: A Literature Review. Ontario: Ministry of Education. CUMMINS, J. and SWAIN, M. 1986, Bilingualism in Education: Aspects of Theory. Research and Practice. London: Longman. DARCY, N. 1953, Review of the literature on the effects of bilingualism upon the measurement of intelligence. Journal of Genetic Psychology 82, 21-57. DEVAKI, L, RAMASAMY, K. and SRIVASTAVA, A. K. (forthcoming) Bilingualism Bilingual Education and Medium of Instruction An Annotated Bibliography. DOLSON, DAVID P. 1985, Bilingualism and scholastic performance: The literature revisted. NABE Vol. 10(1) (Fall), 1-35. Education Commission Report,1964-66, New Delhi: NCERT. GROSJEAN, F. 1982, Life with Two Languages. An Introduction to Bilingualism. Cambridge: Harward University Press. KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1983, Plural Languages. Plural Cultures: Communication, Identity, Socio-political Change in Contemporary India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. KRISHNAMURTI, BH. 1986, A fresh look at language in school education in India. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 62. 105 - 18. LAMBERT, W. E. and TUCKER, G. R. 1972, Bilingual Education of Children: The St. Lambert Experiment. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House. MARTIN-JONES, M. and ROMAINE, S. 1986, Semilingualism: A half-baked theory of communicative competence. Applied Linguistics, Vol. 7(1), 26-38. NADKARNI, M. V. 1986, The English and the medium of education. The Heritage Vol. 2(3), 29-38. NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION 1968, 1970. In Education and National

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Development. Report of the Education Commission 1964-66. New Delhi: NCERT. NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION 1986, Minstry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India (Dept. of Education). New Delhi. PANDIT, P. B. 1972, India as a Sociolinguistic Area. Poona: University of Poona. 1977, Language in a Plural Society: The Case of India. New Delhi: Dev Rajchanna Memorial Committee. PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1981a, Multilingualism and Mother Tongue Education. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1981b, Mother tongue as Medium of Instruction. Paper presented in the UNESCO Expert Meeting Relating to the Use of the Mother Tongue as Medium of Instruction. 30th November to 4th December (Mimeo). 1984, Language policies in multilingual states. In A. GONZALEZ (ed.) Pangani (Language Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. Manilla: Linguistic Society of the Phillipines. 1986, Working Group on the Study of Languages A Report. New Delhi: NCERT. PEAL, E. and LAMBERT, W. E. 1962, The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs Vol. 76(27). POOL, J. 1972, National development and language diversity. In J. A. FISHMAN (ed.) Advances in the Sociology of Language: Vol. 2. The Hague: Mouton. Programme of Action, 1986, New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Secondary Education Commission Report, 1953, New Delhi: Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, Government of India. SKUTNABB-KANGAS, T. 1981, Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 1986, Who wants to change what and whyConflicting paradigms in minority education research. In B. SPOLSKY (ed.) Language and Education in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 153-181. SOUTHWORTH, F. C. 1980, Functional aspects of bilingualism. IJDL Vol. 9(1) 74-108. SRIVASTAVA, A. K. 1966, An investigation into the factors related to educational underachievement. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Patna: Patna University. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and S. KUMAR (eds), Indian Bilingualism. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan. 57-87. 1983, An examination of the psychological view points on the effects upon the learner of learning more than one language. In D. P. PATTANAYAK and E. ANNAMALAI (eds) To Greater Heights-Faculty Research of CIIL 1969/1979. (Part I). Mysore: CIIL Occasional Monograph Series 29. 1986, Language planning in multilingual context: Educational and psychological implications. In E. ANNAMALAI, B. H. JERNUDD & J. RUBIN (eds) Language Planning - Proceedings of an Institute. Mysore: CIIL, Conferences and Seminar Series No. 8. SRIVASTAVA, A. K. & KHATOON, R. 1980, Effect of difference between mother tongue and another language used as medium of instruction on achievement, mental ability and creativity of the VIII Standard children. In E. ANNAMALAI (ed.) Bilingualism and Achievement in School. Mysore: CIIL. SRIVASTAVA, A. K. & RAMASAMY, K. 1987, Bilingualism, SES and sex and

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personality developments of the school-going students. Scholar Critic Vol. 5(9), July 75-90. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., RAMASAMY, K. and DEVAKI, L. (in press) Effects of Medium of Instruction: An Indian Experience in Bilingual Education. SRIVASTAVA, A. K., SHEKHAR, RAJ and JAYARAM, B. D. 1978, The Language Load. Mysore: CIIL Occasional Monograph Series No. 13. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and S. KUMAR (eds) Indian Bilingualism. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan 51- 87. WOLFF, P. 1971, Western Languages. A.D. 100-1500. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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-, 10year 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

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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

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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. References ANNAMALAI, E. 1986, The sociolinguistic scene in India. Sociolinguistics XVI(1), 2-8. BERRY, J. W. 1974, Psychological aspects of cultural pluralism: Unity and identity considered. Topics in Culture Learning 2, 17-22.

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1980, Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In A. PADILLA (ed.) Acculturation: Theory, Models and Some New Findings. Washington: AAAS. 1984, Cultural relations in plural societies: Alternatives to segregation and their sociopsychological implication. In N. MILLER and M. BREWER (eds) Groups in Contact (pp. 11-28). New York: Academic Press. BHUVANESHWARI, C. V. 1986, Synchronic variation in language use and bilingual mechanism: Study of a bilingual situation in Kerala. In A. ABBI (ed.) Studies in Bilingualism (pp. 35-46). New Delhi: Bahri Publications. CENSUS OF INDIA 1961, Language Tables Vol. I, Part II.C. Delhi: Government of India. DUA, H. R. 1982, Dimensions of language identity: Dynamics of language symbols and functions. Indian Journal of Linguistics 9(2), 8-25. 1984, Perspectives on code-switching research. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics XIII(l), 136-55. 1985, Sociolinguistic inequality and language problems of linguistic minorities in India. In N. WOLFSON and J. MANES (eds) Language of Inequality. Berlin: Mouton. 1986, Directions of research on multilingualism in India. Sociolinguistics XVI(1), 9-19. FISHMAN, J. 1971, The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. In J. FISHMAN (ed.) Advances in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Mouton. GAL, S. 1979, Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria. New York: Academic Press. GUPTA, R. S. 1978, A sociolinguistic study of the use of mixed Hindi-English in metropolitan Delhi. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, York University, Toronto. KACHRU, B. B. 1978, Toward structuring code-mixing: An Indian perspective. International Journal of Sociology of Language 16, 27-46. KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1983, Plural Languages, Plural Cultures. Hawaii: EastWest Centre. 1986, Multilingual societies: Issues of identity and communication. Sociolinguistics XVI(1), 20-34. LABOV, W. 1963, Social motivation of a second change. Word 19, 273-309. 1965, On the mechanism of linguistic change. Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics. 18, 91-114. MOHANTY, A. K. 1982a, Cognitive and linguistic development of tribal children from unilingual and bilingual environments. In R. RATH, H. S. ASTHANA, D. SINHA and J. B. P. SINHA (eds) Diversity and Unity in CrossCultural Psychology (pp. 78-86). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swet & Zeitlinger. 1982b, Bilingualism among Kond tribals in Orissa: Consequences, issues and implications. Indian Psychologist 2(1), 34-44. 1987, Social psychological aspects of assimilation/integration in a language contact situation. Paper presented in the Thematic Panel on Language and National Integration in the XII Indian Social Science Congress, Mysore, July 14-17. In press a, Social psychological aspects of languages in contact in multilingual societies. In G. MISRA (ed.) Applied Social Psychology in India. Delhi: Sage. In press b, Bilingualism and cognitive development of Kond tribal children: Studies on metalinguistic hypothesis. In G. C. GUPTA (ed.) Proceedings of the National Seminar on Cultural and Ecological Variables in Psychological Research. Delhi: Delhi University.

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In press c, Bilingualism and metalinguistic ability among Kond tribals: Further evidence for metalinguistic hypothesis. In A. K. SRIVASTAVA and P. N. DUTTA-BARUA (eds) Perspectives in Language Learning. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. MOHANTY, A. K. and BABU, N. 1983, Bilingualism and metalinguistic ability among Kond tribals in Orissa (India). The Journal of Social Psychology 121, 15-22. MOHANTY, A. K. and DAS, S. P. 1987, Cognitive and metalinguistic ability of unschooled bilingual and unilingual tribal children. Psychological Studies 32(1), 5-8. OSHERSON, D. E. and MARKMAN, E. 1975, Language and the ability to evaluate contradictions and tautologies. Cognition, 3, 213-26. PANDIT, P. S. 1972, India as a Sociolinguistic Area. Pune: University of Pune. 1977, Language in a Plural Society: The case of India. Delhi: Dev Raj Channa Memorial Committee. 1979, Perspectives on sociolinguistics in India. In W. C. MCCORMICK and S. A. WURM (eds) Language and Society: Anthropological Issues. The Hague: Mouton. PATNAIK, K. and MOHANTY, A. K. 1984, Relationship between metalinguistic and cognitive development of bilingual and unilingual tribal children. Psycholingua XIV(1), 63-70. PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1981. Multilingualism and Mother Tongue Education. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1984a, Language policies in multilingual states. In A. GONZALEZ (ed.) Panagani (Language Planning, Implementation and Evaluation). Manilla: Linguistic Society of the Philippines. 1984b, Mother tongue education and destiny. In J. NIVETT, D. GOYVAERTS and P. VAN DE CRAEN (eds) AILA Brussels '84. Proceedings. Vol. 5: Plenary papers. Brussels: AILA Brussels '84. 1985, Diversity in communication and languages: Predicament of a multilingual nation state: India. A case study. In N. WOLFSON and J. MANES (eds) Language of Inequality. Berlin: Mouton. 1986a, Educational use of the mother tongue. In B. SPOLSKY (ed.) Language and Education in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd. 1986b, Communication: Perspectives from the Developing World. In N. SCHWEDA-NICHOLSON (ed.) Languages in the International Perspective. Norwood. N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation. SCHERMERHORN, R. A. 1970, Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research. New York: Random House. SMOLICZ, J. J. 1986, National language policy in the Philippines. In B. SPOLSKY (ed.) Language and Education in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd. SOUTHWORTH, F. 1980, Functional aspects of bilingualism. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 9(1), 74108. SRIDHAR, S. N. 1978, On the function of code-mixing in Kannada. International Journal of Sociology of Language 16, 109-17. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1980, Societal bilingualism and language teaching in India. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 6(2). TOSI A. 1984, Immigration and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

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VERMA, S. K. 1976, Code-switching: Hindi-English. Lingua 38(2), 153-65. WARD, C. and HEWSTONE, M. 1985. Ethnicity, language and intergroup relations in Malaysia and Singapore: A social psychological analysis. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6, 271-96.

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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

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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

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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 biand 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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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TABLE 6.1 Literary languages Language High variety Hindi Sanskritised Hindi Bengali Sadhu bhasha Telugu Granthika

Colloquial variety Hindustani Chalit 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,

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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 preliteracy, 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

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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 valuesensitive 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: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

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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: Indiana University. FINNEGAN, R. 1972, Literacy versus non-literacy: The great divide. In R. HORTEN and R. FINNEGAN (eds.) Modes of 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 to Bilingualism. Cambridge: Harvard. GUDSCHINSKY, S. C. 1982, Literacy: The Growing Influence of Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton. 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 standards in the Hindi regional language area. In C. A. FERGUSON and J. J. GUMPERZ (eds.) Linguistic Diversity in South Asia (pp. 92-118). Bloomington: Indiana University. HAUGEN, E. 1979, Language ecology and the case of Faroesa. In M. A. JAZAYERY et al. (eds.) Language and Literary Studies in Honour of A. A. Hill Vol IV. The Hague: Mouton. HEATH, S. B. 1980, The functions and uses of literacy. Journal of Communication 30, 123-33. KELKAR, A. R. 1968, Studies in Hindi-Urdu I. Poona: Deccan College. KHUBCHANDANI, L. M. 1983, Plural Languages, Plural Cultures. East-West Center: University of Hawaii Press. NEUSTUPNY, J. V. 1984, Literacy and minorities: Divergent perceptions. In F. COULMAS (ed.) Linguistic Minorities and Literacy (pp. 115-28). Berlin: Mouton. NUNA, S. C. (ed.) 1987, Education and Development. New Delhi: National Institute of Educational Planning and Adminstration. PANDIT, P. B. 1972, India as a Sociolinguistic Area. Poona: University of Poona. PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1980, Literacy Education. Mysore: Saraswatipuram. 1981, Multilingualism and Mother-tongue Education. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. PATTISON, R. 1982, On Literacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. RAYMOND, J. C. (ed.) 1982, Literacy as a Human Problem. University-AL: University of Alabama Press. SLAUGHTER, M. M. 1982, Literacy and development. University of Hawaii (mimeo.) SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1969, Review of KELKAR A. R. Studies in Hindi-Urdu (1968). Language. 45, 913-27. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and S. KUMAR (eds.) Indian Bilingualism (pp. 5788). Agra: Central Insitute of Hindi. 1978, Language teaching in a bi- or plurilingual and multicultural environment. Academic report. Paris: UNESCO. 1984a, Consequences of initiating literacy in the second language. In F. COULMAS (ed.) Linguistic Minorities and Literacy. Berlin: Mouton. 1984b, Literacy in South Asia. In R. B. KAPLAN (ed.) Annual Review of Applied Linguistics Vol. IV (pp. 93-110). Rowley: Newbury House Publishers.

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1987, Theory of planning and language planning. In U. N. SINGH and R. N. SRIVASTAVA (eds.) Perspectives in Language Planning (pp. 137 - 52). Calcutta: Mithila Darshan. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. and GUPTA, R. S. 1983, A linguistic view of literacy. Journal of Pragmatics 7, 533-49.

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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

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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

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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 valuejudgements, beliefs and knowledge which constitute the language planner's consciousness and which lead to action

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 selfdeception. 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

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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

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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. SkutnabbKangas (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. (SkutnabbKangas, 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.

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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

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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

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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

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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 cooperation 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

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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).

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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

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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. References AFOLAYAN, ADEBISI, 1984, The English language in Nigerian education as an agent of proper multilingual and multicultural development. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development Vol 5(1), 1-22. ALCOCK, A. E. 1979, The development of government attitudes to cultural minorities in Western industrial states. In ANTONY E. ALCOCK, BRIAN K. TAYLOR and JOHN M. WELTON (eds) The Future of Cultural Minorities. London: The MacMillan Press Ltd. APTER, ANDREW H. 1982, National language planning in plural societies: The search for a framework. Language Problems and Language Planning 6(3), 219-40. BANERJEE, SUBRATA (ed.) 1985, Culture and Communication. New Delhi: Patriot Publishers. BANKS, ARTHUR S. and TEXTOR, ROBERT B. 1963, A Cross-Polity Survey, Cambridge: MIT.

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BEARDSMORE, HUGO B. & VAN BEECK, HERMAN, 1984, Multilingual television supply and language shift in Brussels. International Journal of Sociology of Language 48, 65-79. COBARRUBIAS, JUAN, 1983, Ethical issues in status planning. In JUAN COBARRUBIAS and JOSHUA A. FISHMAN (eds) Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton Publishers. DAKIN, JULIAN, TIFFEN, BRIAN and WIDDOWSON, H. G. 1968, Language in Education: London: Oxford University Press. DODSON, C. J. and JONES R. GERALLT, 1984, A Welsh-medium TV channel for Wales: Development, controversies, problems, implications. International Journal of Sociology of Language 48, 11 - 32. DUA, HANS R. 1985, Language Planning in India. New Delhi: Harnam Publications. 1986, Comments on Brian Weinstein's paper on language planning and interests. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Language Planning. Les Presses De L'Universite Laval 1987. 1987, Language allocation: Some theoretical and methodological issues in language planning. In U. N. SINGH and R.N. SRIVASTAVA (eds) Perspectives in Language Planning. Calcutta: Mithila Darshan. ENGLE, PATRICIA, 1975, The Use of Vernacular Language in Education: Language Medium in Early School Years for Minority Group Children. Arlington, Va: Centre for Applied Linguistics. FASOLD, RALPH, 1984, The Sociologistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell. FISHMAN, JOSHUA A. 1968, Some contrasts between linguistically homogeneous and linguistically heterogeneous polities. In JOSHUA A. FISHMAN, CHARLES A. FERGUSON, and JYOTINDRA DAS GUPTA (eds) Language Problems of Developing Nations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1980, Minority language maintenance and the ethnic mother tongue schools. The Modern Language Journal 64(2), 167-72. 1982, Whorfianism of the third kind: Ethonolinguistic diversity as a world-wide societal asset. Language in Society 11(1), 1- 14. 1986, Positive bilingualism: Some overlooked rationales and forefathers. In JOSHUA A. FISHMAN et al. (eds). The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival. Berlin: Mouton Publishers. HEAD, SYDNEY W. (ed.) 1974, Broadcasting in Africa: A Continental Survey of Radio & Television. Philadelphia, Pa: Temple University Press. JURNUDD, BJORN H. and SUNG HWAN, J. n. d., Bilingualism as a resource in the United States (mimeo). JOSHI, P. C. 1985, Problems of cultural planning and policy in India. In SUBRATA BANERJEE (ed.) Culture and Communication. New Delhi: Patriot Publishers. KLOSS, HEINZ, 1968, Notes concerning a language nation typology. In JOSHUA A. FISHMAN, CHARLES A. FERGUSON and JYOTINDRA DAS GUPTA (eds) Language Problems of Developing Nations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. KUO, EDDIE C. Y. 1984, Television and language planning in Singapore. International Journal of Sociology of Language 48, 33-48. LEWIS, E. GLYN, 1981, Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press. LIEBERSON, STANLEY, DALTON, GUY and MARSDEN, MARY ELLEN, 1975a, The course of mothertongue diversity in nations. In ANWAR S. DIL (ed.) Language

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Diversity and Language Contact. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. LIEBERSON, STANLEY and HANSEN, LYNN K. 1974, National development, mothertongue diversity and the comparative study of nations. In ANWAR S. DIL (ed.) Language Diversity and Language Contact. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. LIEBERSON, STANLEY and O'CONNER JAMES F. 1975b, Language diversity in a nation and its regions. In ANWAR S. DIL (ed.) Language Diversity and Language Contact. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. MACNAMARA, JOHN, 1966, The effects of instruction in a weaker language. Journal of Social Issues 23(2), 121(35). MCRAE, KENNETH D. 1975, The principle of territoriality and the principle of personality in multilingual states. Linguistics, 158, 33-54. MUHLHAUSLER, PETER, 1987, The politics of small languages in Australia and the Pacific. Language and Communication 7(1), 1-24. NAHIR, MOSHE, 1984, Language planning goals: A classification. Language Problems and Language Planning 8(3), 294-327. NEUSTUPNY, J. V. 1968, Some general aspects of language problems and language policy in developing societies. In JOSHUA A. FISHMAN, CHARLES A. FERGUSON and JYOTINDRA DAS GUPTA (eds) Language Problems of Developing Nations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1983, Towards a paradigm of language planning. Language Planning Newsletter 9(4), 1-4. NOSS RICHARD, B. 1967, Language policy and higher education. In Higher Education and Development in South East Asia 3:2, Paris: UNESCO & the International Association of Universities. PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1981, Multilingualism and Mother Education. Delhi: Oxford University. 1984, Mothertongue education and destiny. In Proceedings AILA. Brussels 84: 1,831-44. 1987, Multilingualism and Multicularation: Britain and India. London: University of London, Institute of Education. POOL, JONATHAN, 1972, National development and language diversity. In JOSHUA A. FISHMAN. (ed.) Advances in the Sociology of Language Vol. II. The Hague: Mouton. RUSSETT, BRUCE, M., ALKER, HAYWARD R. Jr, DEUTSCH, KARL W. and LASSWELL, HAROLD D. 1964, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators. New Haven: Yale. RUSTOW, D. 1968, Language modernisation and nationhood - An attempt at typology. In JOSHUA, A. FISHMAN, CHARLES, A. FERGUSON, and JYOTINDRA DAS GUPTA (eds) Language Problems of Developing Nation. New York: John Wiley & Sons. SKUTNABB-KANGAS, TOVE, 1986, Who wants to change what and why Conflicting paradigms in minority education research. In BERNARD SPOLSKY (ed.) Language and Education in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. SKUTNABB-KANGAS, TOVE and PHILLIPSON, ROBERT, 1986a, The legitimacy of the arguments for the spread of English. Paper presented at Post Congress on Ethnocentricism in Sociolinguistics. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

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1986b, Denial of linguistic rights: The new mental slavery. Paper presented at 11th World Congress of Sociology. New Delhi. SMOLICIZ J. J. and SECOMBE M. J. 1984, Multicultural television for all Australians. International Journal of Sociology of Language 48, 33-48. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In GOPAL P. SHARMA and SURESH KUMAR (eds) Indian Bilingualism, Agra: Central Institute of Hindi. THOMSON, R. T. 1978, Long-range planning and the future of language study in the United States. In E. M. GERLI, J. E. ALATIS and R. I. BROD (eds) Language in American Life. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. TUCKER, G. RICHARD, 1977, Bilingual Education: Current Perspectives Vol. 2 Linguistics. Arlington, Va: Centre for Applied Linguistics. UNESCO, 1982, Many Voices, One World. UNESCO: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. WEINSTEIN, B. 1986, Language planning and interests. In Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Language Planning. Les Presses De L'Universite Laval 1987. WHORF, B. L. 1956, Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. J. B. CARROLL (ed.). New York: Wiley.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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. References BEAN, SUSAN. 1974, Linguistic variation and the caste system in South Asia. Indian Linguistics 35, 4. BRASS, PAUL, R. 1978, Elite groups, symbol manipulation and ethnic identity among the Muslims of South Asia (mimeo). 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 Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press. GILES, et al. 1977, Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations. In H. GILES (ed.) Language Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. Academic Press. KLOSS, H. 1966, German American language maintenance efforts. In J. A. Fishman, Language Loyalty in the United States. The Hague: Mouton & Co. MAHAPATRA, B. P. 1980, Ethnicity, identity and language. Indian Linguistics 4(2), June 1980. PANDIT, P. B. 1977, Language in a Plural Society: The Case of India. Deo Raj Chanana Memorial Committee. Delhi: Delhi University Press. 1978, Language and identity: The Punjabi language in Delhi. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 16. PATTANAYAK, D. P. 1976. Caste and language. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics IV(2), V(l). 1978a, Unhousedness in Indian Literature. Vagartha No. 21, April. 1978b, Education for the minority children. Indian Linguistics 39. Poona. 1981. Language and Politics. In Language and Social Issues. Princess Leelavathi Memorial Lectures. University of Mysore: Mysore. REPORT OF THE STATES REORGANISATION COMMISSION, 1955, New Delhi: Government of India. SRIVASTAVA, R. N. 1977, Indian bilingualism: Myth and reality. In P. G. SHARMA and SURESH KUMAR (eds) Indian Bilingualism. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan. STEINER, GEORGE, 1971, Extraterritorial. New Zealand: Penguin Books. STEPHENS, MEIC, 1976. Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe. Klatles Gomer Press. TAYLOR, et al. 1973, quoted in H. GILES (ed.) Language Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. New York: Academic Press.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Regional language 16, 19, 21, 22-3, 32, 34, 43-4, 46, 55 Repertoire, linguistic x, 70, 88 changes in 80-1 Resource, language as v, 54, 79, 94-6 Rights, language 95, 96-7 Roman script 71, 74 Roy, Raja Ram Mohan 16 Rustow, D. 85 S Sadler Commission 18 Sanskrit 16, 17, 43-4, 45, 47, 74 Santals 27 Saurastri speakers 105 Scheduled languages 2, 3-5, 6, 9, 13, 19, 37, 56 Schermerhorn, R.A. 62 Scripts 60, 71, 73, 74-5 Sema, extent 13 Shift, language vii, 26, 34, 54, 58, 59, 60 Skill, metalinguistic 61-2, 73 Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 89-90 Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove & Phillipson, Robert 81-3 Smolicz, J.J. 55 Socialisation, and bilingualism 25, 27-8, 32-3 and multilingualism 41 Srivastava, A.K. & Khatoon, R. 49 Solidarity, group ix, xi Southworth, F. 58 Speech style, and identity 102-3, 104, 110-11 Spread, language 91 Srivastava, A.K. 37-51 Srivastava, A.K., Shekhar, Raj & Jayaram, B.D. 45-6 Srivastava, R.N. 69, 70, 72-3, 105-6 Srivastava, R.N. & Gupta, R.S. 67-76 Standardisation 16, 22-3, 54, 57, 108 State Reorganisation Commission 10 Steiner, George 105 Strategy, cognitive v, vi Swann, Lord xi Tamil, and identity 101, 103-5 L2 speakers 7 as link language 13

and tribal bilingualism 35n.7 Tangkhul, extent 13 Telegu, as official language 12 speakers 32, 58 Terminology, standardisation 16, 22-3 Territoriality, in language planning 86 Textbooks 21, 22-3 Three Language Formula 43-7, 50 Tibeto-Chinese languages 2, 26 Tolerance, and multilingualism 40, 41-2, 105 Tosi, A. 56 Tribes, bilingualism 25-35, 60-3, 71 Tripura, tribal bilingualism 27 Tucker, G. Richard 90 Tulu, L2 speakers 7 U Uniformity, language 37, 38-9, 40, 85-6, 92 Unilingualism, see monolingualism University Education Commission Report 1949 19 Urdu, as minority language 58 and tribal bilingualism 32 use 12, 107-8 USA, German speakers 108-9 Spanish in vii Use, language 15-16, 47, 88, 101 V Value-judgements, in language planning 72, 81-2 Variation ix, xii, 70 Varli, and tribal bilingualism 31 Vernacular, in education 16, 17-18, 84, 89 W Weinstein, B. 82 Whorf, B.L. x, 95 Wilson, John 17

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