Linguistic Diversity and Marginality inSouth Asia

Rama Kant Agnihotri

ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Instability in South Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Linguistic Diversity in South Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Fluidity in Linguistic Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10English in South Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Languages and People on the Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Marginalization of Tribal Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Peripatetic Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Linguistic Diversity and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Toward South Asia Rooted in Multilinguality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

AbstractIdeally, linguistic diversity should be a source of strength; unfortunately it mostlyends up being a source of discrimination and marginalization. In every SouthAsian country, English along with some national/official/regional languageconstitutes a dominating Multilinguality that becomes oppressive for the commonpeople using the dominated Multilinguality consisting of hundreds of differentspeech varieties of large sections of society. These marginalized groups includepoor people; farmers and factory workers; tribal communities; nomadic tribes andother peripatetic groups; people displaced because of increasing urbanization,globalization, and homogenization; and women and persons with disabilities.Education is the main instrument used for perpetuating this status quo wherelanguages and cultural practices of the dominating Multilinguality are celebrated

R. K. Agnihotri (*)Linguistics Department, University of Delhi, Delhi, Indiae-mail: agniirk@yahoo.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020P. M. Sarangapani, R. Pappu (eds.), Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia,Global Education Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3309-5_32-1

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and those of the dominated Multilinguality are increasingly pushed to the mar-gins. A disjunction between constitutional and legal proclamations and actualpractices further accentuates this marginalization. If Multilinguality is creativelyused as a classroom resource, it would create spaces for the subversion of thedominating Multilinguality. The practice of using Multilinguality as a resource isclosely associated with providing space for the voices of the underprivileged,subversion of different power structures, logical analysis, cognitive growth,language proficiency, and social tolerance. South Asia needs to listen to thevoices of Multilinguality that are often pushed under the rug with disdain.

KeywordsSouth Asia · Linguistic diversity · Marginality · Multilinguality · Triballanguages · Nomadic/peripatetic groups · Education

Introduction

Linguistic diversity in highly multilingual societies such as those of South Asiashould ideally become a national resource. Unfortunately, it is often used fordiscrimination and marginalization of powerless groups. Some languages in thesecountries are so empowered by the elite that the people who speak sociallydisempowered languages become increasingly marginalized. Scholars of languagehave used a variety of terms to capture the phenomenon of linguistic diversityincluding bilingualism, multilingualism, code-mixing, code-switching, trans-languaging, hyperlingualism, hybridity, pidginization and creolization, and linguis-tic continuum of language varieties and dialects among others. However,perspectives implicit in all these concepts have one thing in common: they look ateach language as a discrete entity. For example, multilingualism which now sub-sumes bilingualism looks at language as an addition of L 1, L 2, L 3, etc.; inMultilinguality there is no discrete concept of L 1, L 2, etc.; there is only a verbalrepertoire of Multilinguality with relative fluidity of what are construed as differentlanguages. As discussed below I use the term Multilinguality to suggest that, withinthe constraints imposed by the Universal Grammar, languages are essentially fluidin nature; sounds, words, and sentence patterns do not need passports to travelacross languages. Multilinguality is constitutive of being human and of functioningin human groups. It can be used as an educational and social resource and is closelyassociated with language proficiency, cognitive growth, scholastic achievement,and social tolerance. This paper is configured in terms of “dominating” and “dom-inated” Multilinguality. In each of the South Asian countries, we notice that thedominating Multilinguality consisting of English and some national/official/regionallanguage acquires so much power as to become the source of serious discourse inall domains of activity including education, mass media, judiciary, executive, army,administration, and corporate business. The education system is then so designedas to reproduce the status quo, denying the linguistically marginalized any accessto the echelons of power. Groups speaking tribal/ethnic languages, nomadic and

2 R. K. Agnihotri

peripatetic groups of various kinds, migrant labor, immigrants, people displacedbecause of urbanization and development, and women and persons with disabilitysuffer a great deal under the domination of languages of power. Each one of thesegroups has its own verbal repertoire; it is just that it belongs to the category ofthe dominated Multilinguality. One does notice occasional attempts at subversion ofthe elite domination and a movement for the empowerment of the dominatedMultilinguality of the marginalized, but the political instability in all the nations isso high and the manipulations by the national and international powers so frequentthat one rarely if ever witnesses any substantive results. It will also be seen that thestate budget allocation for education is generally so low as to render any attempt atrecovering the vitality of a disempowered language fruitless. The most effective wayof marginalizing a community is to ignore or silence its voice.

Instability in South Asia

The South Asian region consists of ten countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,India, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.None of them is internally stable; except for Bhutan, these countries share a historyof colonization and continue to suffer from internal sociopolitical instability andsustained interference from the major global powers. On October 30, 2018, TheIndian Express (p. 12) reported: “While the seeming political calm of the last threeyears in Sri Lanka was shattered last week, the turmoil in another Indian Oceancountry and key neighbour of India, Maldives, is yet to subside after PresidentAbdulla Yameen lost to joint opposition candidate Ibrahim Solih, who won over58% of the popular vote. But the pieces are beginning to fall into place.” In fact,pieces don’t seem to fall in place in any part of South Asia as big powers includingthe USA, the UK, Russia, and China try to assert and consolidate their political andeconomic supremacy in these countries. The USA and UK have additional stakesin the English language industry. The geographic location of Afghanistan hasturned it into a space for sustained battles among the Taliban, British, Russian, andAmerican military powers in addition to the interference by India and Pakistan;this unfortunate country has not witnessed peace for centuries now. Though theConstitution of Nepal promises to promote cultural diversity, the indigenous peoplewait to see whether these promises will ever get translated into reality. Bhutan facesserious internal conflicts between the original citizens and the Nepali migrantswho claim equal status and power now. In Myanmar (Burma), the celebrations ofthe Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracyand elected as the State Counselor (Prime Minister), were ruined by her being held asa prisoner for over 15 years by the dominant military junta and the current Rohingya

1The headlines of the November 3, 2018, The Indian Express screamed: “Godfather” of Talibankilled in Pak, “Rajapaksa poaches another MP” as the Sri Lankan President Sirisena prepares to callthe Parliament to see which way the wind would blow between Rajapaksa and Wickremasinghe;

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 3

crisis; this Muslim minority has always been seen as a threat by the local Buddhists.Myanmar has remained in a social and political turmoil for a long time. From 1947 to1961, local mujahideen fought against the Burmese government soldiers in anattempt to have the Mayu peninsula in northern Arakan; the Rakhine state secededfrom the country, so it could be annexed by the present-day Bangladesh (then EastPakistan). In the 1990s, there were major conflicts between the Rohingyas and theBurmese authorities on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Each component of SouthAsia is simmering with socioeconomic and political unrest and keeps bursting on theseams every now and then.1

It is not the case that there is peace in the rest of the world; the magnitudeof violence in the USA itself is a threat to the whole world. But the situation ofSouth Asia even in the global south is more precarious. Given this strife-ridden pastand present, it should not surprise anyone that linguistic diversity, education, andinterests of the marginalized groups have stayed on the fringes of policy formulationin all these countries. Way back in 1966, the landmark Education Commission(1964–1966) chaired by D S Kothari (known as the Kothari Commission Report,Ministry of Education 1966) suggested that the government should spend as biga part of the GDP on education as possible; it suggested a minimum of 6% ofthe GDP. India has rarely if ever crossed the 4% mark; more often than not, thefigure remains below 3%. This unfortunately is true of most of South Asia too.According to the 2016 figures provided by the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_e-ducation_(%25_of_GDP), the only countries which seem to spend substantial partof their GDP on education are Bhutan (7.4%) and Maldives (7.2%). Other SouthAsian countries in decreasing order are Mauritius (4.89%), India (3.8%), Nepal

and “Xi assures help as Imran laments Pak’s financial crisis in first official China visit” (p. 16). It isdifficult to think of peace and stability in Myanmar; it has already seen three Constitutions: one in1947, the second in 1974 after the Burmese coup, and the third in 2008. In spite of its declarations tobeing a democratic society, the military junta has never allowed its powers to diminish. About theinternal, mutual, and external battles and problems of India and Pakistan, the less said the better(think of the wars of 1965, 1971, and 1999, not to mention the day today strikes on the borders). OnFebruary 14, 2019, a car-borne suicide bomber killed 40 members of the Central Reserve PoliceForce of India in Pulwama in Kashmir. The subsequent air strikes and the arrest of wing commanderAbhinandan by Pakistan and his release made the Kashmir issue, so far restricted to India andPakistan, an international issue for political mileage for the world as both countries are now nuclearpowers. Just a few days before I finalized this paper, Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote an article in theIndian Express (August 6, 2019) with the title “The story of Indian democracy written in blood andbetrayal” as the Indian Government revoked Article 370 giving a special constitutional status to thetroubled state of Jammu and Kashmir with a Presidential decree; the state was divided into twounion territories of Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature and of Ladakh without a legislature. Thebetrayal was comprehensive and complete; it is still unknown as to how much bloodshed willfollow. Before Article 370 was scrapped unceremoniously on August 5, 2019, thousands ofparamilitary men were deployed into the valley, both the former chief ministers and most of theelected legislators were arrested, and a curfew was imposed along with Section 144. An advisorywas issued by the government to all pilgrims, and tourists to return home. All hotels and guesthouses were closed down. A senior member of the Indian parliament called it “a procedural hara-kiri.” This was indeed a black day in Indian history.

4 R. K. Agnihotri

(3.7%), Sri Lanka (3.5%), Afghanistan (3.1%), Pakistan (2.8%), Myanmar (2.2%),and Bangladesh (2.2%).

All these countries suffer from inhuman discrimination by the dominant groupsbased on caste, color, and creed or because of being a part of nomadic and wanderingcommunities and the associated verbal repertoire of the dominated Multilinguality.It is not surprising therefore that one would find only a small number of people inwell-paid jobs and the rates of unemployment would be high. According tothe recent Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), there are 31 millionIndians looking for jobs, i.e., about 6.1% of the employable people haveno jobs (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/unemployment-rate-in-india).

Except for Myanmar where the rate of unemployment is less than 1%, theunemployment is really high in all the other South Asian countries: Afghanistan(8.80%), India (6%), Pakistan (5.90%), Maldives (5%), Bangladesh (4.20%), SriLanka (4.10%), Malaysia (3.30%), and Bhutan (2.50%). The elite job market in theorganized sector is appropriated by the dominating Multilinguality.

The issues of linguistic diversity and marginalized communities should not beseen outside this framing. In spite of such a threatening environment, linguisticdiversity and marginalized groups remain a reality in all these countries, and in theirown ways, they try to come to terms with it though rarely if ever becoming a part ofthe power structures in their society. In the language ecology of the South Asianregion, the elite using languages of greater power (dominating Multilinguality) ruleover and constantly marginalize masses speaking hundreds of languages of lesserpower (Volker and Anderson 2015). The languages of lesser power and lesser knownlanguages (Saxena and Borin 2006), constituting the dominated Multilinguality, arestigmatized as “dialects, vernaculars, rural, broken, mixed, uncouth, pidgins, orcreoles”; even in the most favorable and enlightened of situations, they maybe used for basic literacy (actually eliminating the “literate” from the worldof education) or used in the early primary classes as bridges to “mainstreaming”in the bridge-models or the trivialized bilingual methods of education. It is notappreciated that linguistically speaking there is no difference between “a language”and “a dialect”; the saying “language is a dialect with an army and a navy” is creditedto the Yiddish scholar MaxWeinreich (1894–1969). There is generally no awarenessin any country that “Multilinguality” is a default feature of all societies and class-rooms and that it can be used as a resource for both linguistic and cognitivegrowth; it can also significantly raise levels of metalinguistic awareness and socialtolerance. It is possible to engage with the languages of the underprivileged usingMultilinguality as a resource and make an attempt for a redistribution ofpower structures, to make groups on the margins feel that their languages canalso be privileged in the social spaces and languages of lesser power can alsoshare platforms with languages of greater power.

One should not think that Multilinguality is unique to South Asia and therefore an“object of wonder.” The opposition framed ever so often for contrasting the languageprofile of the monolingual west and multilingual east is not really true. Notice thatGermany speaks in 25 languages, France in 24, Spain in 16, and the UK in 13 with

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 5

hundreds of immigrant languages factored into their fabric of multilingualism. Whatif anything is then different? Both in the west and the east, the elite minority usingthe dominating Multilinguality uses it to exploit people using the dominatedMultilinguality. There are, however, some fundamental differences. For centuries,the east has been colonized by the west, not just in terms of economics, trade, andpolitics but in terms of languages and cultures as well. Secondly, the sheer numberof languages and language families ensures that individual- and societal-levelmultilingualism is far more widespread in the east than it could ever be inthe west. It is this phenomenon that produces the counterfactual images ofthe monolingual west and multilingual east. Thirdly, in spite of gaining politicalfreedom, the colonized countries find it difficult to free themselves fromthe shackles of linguistic imperialism (Ram 1983; Suleri 1992; Phillipson 1992,2009). Multilinguality which can be used as a resource for linguistic and cognitivegrowth (Cummins 1984, 1989; Cummins and Swain 1986) is often seen as aproblem or minimized in such a way that those speaking minor languages orlanguages used by minorities get marginalized. Their languages are not used ineducation or mass media, and they are discriminated against in the job marketbecause of their languages or perceived disabilities. A hearing-impaired personmay suffer all his life because the country he lives in does not even recognize signlanguage as a proper language. Persons displaced for a variety of reasons may neverfind any use for their languages in the new country of domicile and may in fact bediscriminated against because of their linguistic assets. Nomadic tribes may neverreceive the benefits of education and development because their lifestyles do noteven form a part of the imagination of the policy makers. It is indeed rare for a triballanguage of a country to become one of its mainstream languages even if as in thecase of Santali and Bodo, they manage to find a place in the Constitution of thecountry (in this case India).

Linguistic Diversity in South Asia

If for nothing else, the contemporary South Asian region may be seen as a unit since,in addition to each of its countries being multilingual, there are linguistic, cultural,religious, and social practices that cut across national boundaries. English cuts acrossall the countries as a language of power; Tamil cuts across Sri Lanka, India, andMyanmar; people speak Hindi/ Urdu and Panjabi not just in India and Pakistanbut also in Maldives and Myanmar; Nepali is spoken not just in Nepal but also inIndia and Bhutan; Bengali is spoken not only in India and Bangladesh but also inMyanmar and borders of Bhutan. On the shared geographical borders of thesecountries, as also on the boundaries of different states in India, languages flow intoeach other effortlessly. You find Sikkimese and Groma languages spoken on theSikkim-Bhutan border and Toto on the West Bengal and Totopara border. In thecase of religion and its languages, Islam and Arabic dominate Pakistan, Afghanistan,Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Maldives; Buddhism and Pali largely dominate Sri

6 R. K. Agnihotri

Lanka and Bhutan, and Hinduism and Sanskrit are the dominant voices of India andNepal. Consider the following table:

It is clear from Table 1 that each country in South Asia has a dominatingMultilinguality of one or two languages, some immigrant languages, and severallanguages that are in trouble or dying; a large number of languages in each countryremain on the margins. India counted 1652 languages in the 1961 census; eventoday, in spite of all the mergers, where, for example, “Hindi” subsumes over 51important languages including Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, and various languages ofRajasthan and the hills, People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) came upwith a number of 780 languages; of these 480 are spoken by tribals and nomadictribes, while about 80 are coastal languages (50 Vol. Peoples Linguistic Surveyof India, Orient BlackSwan, Delhi) (https://www.orientblackswan.com/downloads/PLSI_Volumes_List.pdf); according to Ethnologue, India has 460 languages; bothAfghanistan and Bangladesh have 41 each; Nepal has 122; Myanmar 119; Pakistan74; Bhutan 23; and Sri Lanka 7 (Ethnologue 2019). The Constitution of Indiarecognizes Hindi (in the Devanagari script) and English as its official languages(Art 343); it lists 22 languages in its 8th Schedule (Art 344) called “Languages” (forthe debates leading to these decisions, see Agnihotri 2015). India does not have anational language. The dominating Multilinguality in India consists of English,Hindi, a regional language like Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi, Bangla, or Khasi amongothers, depending on the region one is talking about. Hindi is the official language ofthe states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajas-than, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and the National Capital Territoryof Delhi. Tamil is an official language of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and AndamanNicobar Islands. English is the co-official language of the Indian Union, and each ofthe several states mentioned above may also have another co-official language.

Article 16 of the Constitution of Afghanistan recognizes Pashto and Dari asthe official languages of the state; it also provides for the official recognition ofUzbeki, Turkmani, Pachaie, Nuristani, Baluchi, or Pamiri as the third official

Table 1 South Asian countries: language profile. (Source: https://www.ethnologue.com/.Accessed last on Mar 20, 2019)

CountryNumber oflanguages

Principallanguages

Immigrantlanguages

Languages introuble

Dyinglanguages

Afghanistan 41 2 1 6 7

Bangladesh 41 1 3 9 –

Bhutan 23 2 8 6 –

India 780 (1652) 2 (22) 12 56 13

Maldives 2 2 1 – –

Mauritius 7 2 7 – –

Myanmar 119 1 1 17 3

Nepal 122 1 3 56 3

Pakistan 74 2 8 9 2

Sri Lanka 7 3 5 1 1

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 7

language in the areas where they are used. Yet, English is increasingly makinginroads into Afghanistan; the English teaching shops are mushrooming, andknowledge of English is becoming increasingly necessary for important jobs in thepublic and private sectors (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7493285.stm).Pashto and English then constitute the dominating Multilinguality.

Myanmar with 119 languages is certainly one of the most linguistically diversenations. Of the living 118 languages, 112 are indigenous and 6 are nonindigenous.The languages of Myanmar belong to seven different language families. Over 78%people speak languages belonging to the Tibeto-Burman languages, 10% to the Tai-Kadai family, and 7% to Mon-Khmer family. The official language for all adminis-trative, educational, and mass media purposes is Burmese though English as in therest of South Asia is increasingly gaining importance. There have been ratherunsuccessful movements to use the ethnic languages in education; they have failedlargely because of lack of social support and motivation but also because of lack ofteachers and textbooks and negative stereotypes of parents and educators.

Like several other countries of South Asia, Sri Lanka is home to a large number oflanguage families including Indo-European, Dravidian, and Austronesian. Sinhala,spoken by about 75% of the population, and Tamil, spoken by about 11% ofthe population, are the official languages of Sri Lanka. As in the case of the rest ofSouth Asia, English is the language of power and prestige, holding access tothe high-profile offices in judiciary, administration, education, mass media, andarmy; it is spoken fluently by about 24% of the population.

The verbal repertoire of Sri Lanka is a part of the linguistic continuum that cutsacross South Asia. It is not just that English connects it to South Asia but Tamilconnects it so closely to India and the migrants from Tamil Nadu and languagesspoken in the neighboring Maldives and Malaysia also show significant influences.The British, Dutch, and Portuguese colonization has left its own impact. Thereare more than 50,000 speakers of Malay Creole, and some people still use thePortuguese Creole; the Muslims often resort to Arabic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Sri_Lanka).

Maldives does appear to be the least multilingual as compared to the othercountries of South Asia. However, given that such minority populations as that ofthe Hindus and the Buddhists are not given any recognition and the fact thatdemocratic institutions have no place in the governance, it would not be wrong tospeculate that a considerable amount of language diversity is pushed under thecarpet. The data about Maldives and even about Mauritius and Sri Lanka maybe slightly misleading as it may hide several varieties that are not officiallyrecognized. In the case of Maldives, in addition to the different varieties of Frenchand English, we have the unofficial lingua franca in Creole. As Sonck (2005) pointsout, Mauritius is a multilingual country with English, French, and Creole as the mainlanguages and several ancestral languages which are mainly used for religiousceremonies. Most children speak Creole at home and learn English, French, andone ancestral language in the first year of primary school.

The 2011 National Census of Nepal lists 123 languages spoken as mother tonguesin Nepal; they belong to the Indo-Aryan and Sino-Tibetan language families.

8 R. K. Agnihotri

Formerly called Gorkhali, the official language of Nepal is Nepali. Maithili is spokenby about 12% of the population. Most of the languages of Nepal are written inDevanagari. As Bhatt and Ahmar (2008) point out, as compared to India andPakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal have one major dominant language. In Bangladesh,over 98% people speak Bengali; thus the number of people speaking the other 37languages is really small. Nepal has 121 languages belonging to four languagefamilies; yet Nepali and English dominate the scene. Bangladesh is often seen as amonolingual country with Bangla being the national and official language. In thereligious setting, people use Arabic, Sanskrit, or Pali. Since the people of Bangla-desh are mostly Muslim, Arabic is widely used as the language of rites and rituals inthe religious settings. Christians may use English, and tribal groups may use theirindigenous languages for religious activities.

As Faquire (2010) points out, apart from the Bangla-speaking main speechcommunities in Bangladesh, there are, however, more than 30 speech communitieswhich comprise more than 1% of the total population (approximately 150 million)with the speakers from 4 different language families: the Austroasiatic includingSantal and Khasi; the Sino-Tibetan including Garo, Kokborok, and Marma; theDravidian including Kurux and Sauria Paharia; and the Indo-Aryan includingChakma, Hajong, Tanchangya, and Urdu. As in the case of the rest of South Asia,in Bangladesh also English along with Bangla constitutes the dominatingMultilinguality.

Bhutan, a landlocked country is bordered by Tibet (China) and Sikkim, Assam,and West Bengal (India). Except Nepali (an Indo-Aryan language), all the 24 oddlanguages spoken in Bhutan belong to the Tibeto-Burman family. As van Driem(1994, p. 87) says, “The government’s language policy is a balanced approachcharacterised by two complementary policy lines. The first line of policy isthe promotion of Dzongkha as the national language. The second line of policyis the preservation and, indeed, study of the country’s rich linguistic andcultural heritage” (https://www.academia.edu/10165069/Language_policy_in_Bhutan?auto=download). The Constitution of Bhutan assures free school education toits citizens. However, unless you are a citizen by birth born to Bhutanese parents,you should, in addition to fulfilling other conditions, e.g., residence in Bhutan for15 years, be able to speak and write Dzongkha. In spite of the policies of thegovernment, languages that dominate Bhutan are Dzongkha and English.

What is common to all these countries is the multiplicity of languages, declarationof democratic linguistic rights in the Constitution, and formulation of holy policiesfor the welfare of masses; but all this in practice is accompanied by near ruthlesscelebration of the dominating Multilinguality of one or two languages in places ofpower and the pervasive neglect of several languages of lesser power.

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 9

Fluidity in Linguistic Behavior

The dominated Multilinguality in South Asia keeps itself vibrant through aremarkable fluidity in linguistic behavior; languages, in spite of warnings tothe contrary, do not suddenly disappear. In the Indian subcontinent, variationin linguistic behavior facilitates rather than breaks communication across majorgeographical regions (Pandit 1969; 1972). Srivastava (1992) adds that “the conceptof co-existent subsystems which operate partly in harmony and partly in conflict isnot merely a hypothetical linguistic construct, but in fact exists in the verbalbehaviour of Indian speech communities” (p. 330). The “convergence, creativityand hybridity” (Braj 2005, p. xvi) of languages in most regions of South Asia allowlanguages to cross their boundaries. As shown so effectively in the case of India(Emeneau 1956; Pandit 1972; Mukherjee 1981; Subbarao 2008), it constitutes alinguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural area, in spite of its diversity.

The linguistic and religious pluralism is constitutive of the South Asian region.Language families like Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Munda cutacross South Asia; similarly religions like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism,Christianity, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism are found in different countries of SouthAsia. “The earlier, and ongoing, linguistic convergence (Sprachbund) betweenand among typologically distinct languages is also evident in their literatures,folk traditions, and three major linguistic impacts, those of Sanskritization,Persianization, and Englishization” (Braj 2008, pp. 1–2). The case of dying andendangered languages is indeed worrying as a whole system of cultural, and nativeknowledge is likely to die with it. Krauss (1992) thinks that if we don’t make anyspecial efforts, half the languages of the world may disappear during the twenty-firstcentury (See Van Driem 2007 also) . There are legitimate anxieties about vanishingvoices/endangered languages (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000; Crystal 2000; Nettle andRomaine 2000; Dorian 1989); it has been argued that language diversity isdisappearing at a rate faster than biodiversity and that language diversity is funda-mental to biodiversity in addition to a community’s knowledge systems and culturalpractices. However, there is a fundamental difference. Biodiversity is subject tothreatening environmental pressures; people carry their languages in their heads anduse in their social groups. Their verbal repertoire often transcends environmentalpressures. As Saxena (2006, p. 4) notes “Language death is not a new phenomenon.Languages have disappeared all through recorded history.” Those who becomeanxious about endangered languages often forget that this is not a new phenomenon;even though languages have disappeared ever so often in history, people haveevolved new languages and in many cases maintained the patterns of their socialand cultural behavior. Languages in fluid contexts don’t remain discrete entities;secondly, though there will be few languages of power at the top, those at the bottomof the scale don’t just disappear. As Labov (1971) points out, the concept of“system” is central to linguistic theory, but in the same paper, he acknowledgesthe fact that people in fluid situations can mix their verbal repertoire in ways that arecompletely unpredictable. Examining the data from a Puerto Rican speaker, he says:

10 R. K. Agnihotri

So far, however, no one has been able to show that such rapid alternation is governed by anysystematic rules or constraints, and we therefore must describe it as the irregular mixture oftwo distinct systems. (Labov 1971, p. 457)

What we suggest here is that there are no “distinct systems”; all “languages” arethemselves irregular mixtures except for the highly abstract laws of UniversalGrammar. It is just that in highly fluid and heterogeneous societies of South Asia,such irregular mixture is seen far more frequently and in sharp relief thanelsewhere. Languages perceived as distinct can converge dramatically. Gumperzand Wilson’s (1971) famous study of Kupwar shows how Dravidian Kannada andIndo-Aryan Marathi converge phonetically, syntactically, and semantically leavingspaces for the insertion of multiple lexical items of one or more languages open.

The languages of dominated Multilinguality may be mixed to different degreesdepending on the domain of use. As Annamalai (2008, p. 231) says, “This showsthat the functionally distributed multilingualism is not static but is stable in the sensethat the principle of functional distribution is constant when the languages in thedistribution change.” Recent years have witnessed some welcome voices in favor oflanguage mixing which can be used as a resource. It has been suggested thatbilingualism may be misunderstood as parallel monolingualism (Heller 1999) orthat multilingualism may be misunderstood as limited to plural monolingualism(Makoni 2003) or multiple monolingualism (Heugh 2003). According to Stroud(2001), we need new concepts of language policy and linguistic citizenship, inwhich marginal languages play an important role; this would redefine the roleof minor languages for democracy and equity and ultimately contribute to theredistribution of power in society (also see Stroud and Heugh 2004). This fluidityhas acquired several new names including hyperglossia, translanguaging, hyper-lingualism, code-mixing, and Multilinguality. Sometimes, these constitute importantinterfaces between the dominating and dominated Multilinguality. Several studies(see below) show how components of the dominating and dominated Multilingualityjoin hands here to create spaces of subversion as it were.

English in South Asia

The picture generally projected in the case of English in the South Asian countriessuggests that there is no salvation without English. It is proposed that it is the key toemployment, higher education, knowledge, and social mobility. In South Asia, oneis made to feel that there were no great languages in the past and that there are almostnone in the present or will be in the future. That languages like Sanskrit, Greek,Latin, and Persian once dominated the world is forgotten just as the fact that intoday’s world they have if at all a marginal existence. That English could meet asimilar fate is not even contemplated by those charmed by the power and aura ofEnglish. It is also ignored that there are large parts of the world, both prosperous andunderdeveloped, where English has no space including Europe, China, Japan,Russia, and several highly populated parts of Asia and Africa. Even within the

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 11

urban South Asian world where English is increasingly consolidating its position,many things are happening to people in the context of “English” which are notalways obvious. First of all, millions of people living in slums and dilapidated areasof metros receive no substantive access to English and hardly if ever gain anyproficiency levels in it. Then, each region in South Asia develops its own varietyof English. In the case of India, in addition to a fluid pan-Indian norm of English,each state develops its own variety, certainly at the levels of phonology and lexicon.This is true of every part of South Asia; they may claim they regard the BritishReceived Pronunciation (RP) and the British lexicon and structures as a norm, thefact is that each region develops a variety according to its own needs and languageecology; in particular, the phonology varies even as the syntax remains largelyinvariant (Agnihotri and Singh 2012). Agnihotri (2001) examines the role of Englishin the context of India; that it has a comparable destructive role in other South Asiancountries would become clear below. English has indeed become an importantcomponent of the verbal repertoire of South Asia, but it should not be allowed tothrive at the cost of other languages and people.

Since each South Asian country is highly multilingual, code-mixing and code-switching involving English is very high, particularly in language use in the materialworld (Agnihotri 1998; Agnihotri and McCormick 2010; Agnihotri and Vashishth2015). Mixing codes is indeed a way for the dominated Multilinguality to assert itsunique identity making at the same time a dent into the dominating Multilinguality;chunks of the mixed code are often appropriated from the exclusive constituents ofthe dominating Multilinguality. Finally, many South Asian countries still havethriving local languages with a rich literary heritage that compares favorably withEnglish. These among others include Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, Malayalam, Marathi,Sinhala, Hindi/Urdu, Nepali, and Pushto. Kachru Braj (2005, p. 14 and earlier)makes a distinction between the Inner, Outer and Expanding circles of English inAsia; countries like Australia and New Zealand belong to the Inner circle whereEnglish has become the first language of most people and is certainly the dominantlanguage of the country. However, even in these countries, there are very powerfulmovements to revitalize the indigenous languages. A major part of South Asiaincluding India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Mauritius, and also Singaporeand the Philippines would fall in the Outer circle where English has been assignedimportant additional roles, often in significant domains such as those of education,judiciary, mass media, and the executive; in the Expanding circle, we have countrieslike China, Thailand, Taiwan, and Korea, where English is still only a foreignlanguage.

English in South Asia has indeed been made a part of national language planningand plays important roles in such areas as education, social mobility, modernity,and knowledge creation. However, many scholars including Kachru (2005) suggestthat it can be regarded as an “ethnically neutral” language as it is not associated withany specific ethnicity. This is to forget that it is closely associated with the domi-nating Multilinguality and its prized crown. It is claimed that the regional profiles ofAsia have become richer because of English and regional languages have beenenriched by their Englishization. Though true to an extent, there is no way one can

12 R. K. Agnihotri

deny the negative social role English has played in South Asia in disempoweringlanguages and people. Millions of people in India who have no access to English orhave only a limited control on it are denied any opportunities to places of power inthe executive, corporate jobs, judiciary, or army; a small number may make a dent inthe political domain through dominated Multilinguality (Agnihotri and Khanna1997). English in South Asia is learnt in utterly impoverished environment by themasses going to the government school system; only a small fraction of the richstudies in the private (called public) or convent schools. In the case of Bangladesh,Hamid et al. (2013) explore the disastrous consequences of using English as amedium of instruction throughout the school education; it leads to a complete lackof reading comprehension and learner’s academic growth. They suggest that withoutneglecting the importance of English, the nation should move away from a mono-lingual and monocultural situation and use languages of learners as media ofinstruction to enhance linguistic diversity and academic achievement. In the caseof India, Agnihotri and Khanna (1997) quote several studies that demonstrate thedamage English has done to the education system of the country. Very few peoplespeak/use English as a first language in the South Asian countries; in fact it isdoubtful whether except for a small number of speakers who use it as a nativelanguage or the university elite, English media, and writers, anybody else usesEnglish fluently in any significant way. Several of our studies in India (Agnihotri1991; Agnihotri, Khanna and Mukherjee 1984, 1988; Agnihotri and Khanna 1995)showed that the fluency levels of Indian graduate students were far belowthan expected. It is rarely if ever the language of home, market place, religion,neighborhood, social functions like weddings, etc.; its domain is restrictedto higher education, high-profile jobs, and English mass media. In Bhutan andMaldives, very few use English; Maldives in fact has recently shifted from Dhivehito English in school education, and English is increasingly becoming its nationalworking language, at a great cost to the learners. In Sri Lanka, close to 47% peopleuse it as a first or additional language, in Nepal 36%, in Bangladesh 18%, in Indiaand Pakistan about 13%, and in Myanmar 4% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population).

Along with English, came the colonial education system marked by lack oftransparency, fear of examination system, and uniformity of assessing students(Nawani 2018). The rates of unemployment and underemployment in most ofSouth Asia are very high. There has been a marked disjunction between educationand employment, both in theory and practice. In the case of India, for example,Padmini Swaminathan (2007, p. 325) says “This disengagement at all levels (policy,research, practice) has led to a heavy toll, in that, through all these years afterindependence, we are still left with large numbers of formally illiterate persons,large numbers of non-employable but literate persons, large number of semi-literatebut professionally untrained persons, an economy that has experienced prematuretertiarisation, where industrial expansion is limited, employment generation is low,and where hardly any substantive R & D takes place.” The idea is not to rejectEnglish but to make it a creative part of the verbal repertoire of South Asia. “In aback-to-the-future scenario, English has been advocated both as a unifying and a

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 13

modernizing force and a marker of internationalism and class privilege. Realistically,however, the most viable way ahead for a multilingual society is also the mostobvious, to promote different languages for different purposes” (Vaughier-Chatterjee2007, p. 382). It is worth our while to listen to Ngugiwa Thiong’o (1993, p. 39):

We must avoid the destruction that English has wrought on other languages and cultures. . ..The death of many languages should never be the condition for the life of a few. . ..We, thepresent generation, must distance ourselves from the false and bloody logic of developmenttheory handed to us by imperialism; the claim that the cleanliness of one person must dependon pouring dirt onto others; that the health of a few must depend on their passing theirleprosy onto others; that the wealth of a few nations must be rooted in the poverty of themasses of people and nations.

Languages and People on the Margins

The structure of the dominating Multilinguality has indeed pushed several languagesand people to the margins, even when they may show insignificant presence inlanguage mixing. Languages such as Paraci, Ormuri, Tiro, Uigur, and Mogoli arealready extinct or on the verge of extinction in Afghanistan. According toUNESCO’s classification of languages in danger (vulnerable, definitely endangered,severely endangered, and critically endangered), 191 languages in India that arein trouble include not just Koraga, Bori, Handuri, Purum, and Nihali amongothers but also those which are vulnerable like Adi, Ao, Angami, Meitei, Mizo,and Sora among others which can still be saved if the Multilinguality paradigmis invoked. The website (http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/) for endangeredlanguages lists the number of languages in trouble in these countries from 10 inBangladesh to over 200 in India; in Nepal 56 are in trouble, in Myanmar 17, inPakistan 9, and in Bhutan 6. This data alone should be enough to indicate how theunderprivileged social groups are further pushed to the margins. These languagesform a part of the dominated Multilinguality of different regions. People speakingthese languages are constantly marginalized as the processes of urbanization andhomogenization reign supreme. Perera (2018) examines the issue of space as apolitical text in the context of beautification of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.He estimates that about five lakh people may be displaced as a result of this to createexclusive places of leisure for the elite; the “collateral damages” to the displacedwould include a corresponding damage to the dominated Multilinguality consistingof varieties of Sinhala, Tamil, and various Creoles.(https://minorityrights.org/country/sri-lanka/). Sri Lanka has a plural society. The majority group, the Sinhalese,speak a distinctive language (Sinhala) related to the Indo-Aryan tongues of NorthIndia and are mainly Buddhist. Minority groups in Sri Lanka include Moors (9.3%)and a small number of Malays Burgher and Sri Lankan Chetty, Bharatha, andVeddhas. The Sri Lankan civil war left a huge minority of women without anysupport systems. It lasted for over 25 years during 1983–2009; this was a war ofTamil Tigers of the north and east of Sri Lanka for a separate Tamil State. Over

14 R. K. Agnihotri

100,000 people were killed leaving thousands of women and children homeless andwithout any means of survival.

In the case of India, over 200,000 people have been displaced because of thevarious dams including the Omkareshwar, Maheshwar, Indira Sagar, and SardarSarovar being built over the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh. The NarmadaBachao Andolan (NBA) has been fighting on their behalf. Their protests, fasts,and non-violent actions are suppressed by repeated arrests, jails, and utter indiffer-ence by the state. Roy (1999) quotes Ram Bai (now living in Jabalpur) when shewatched her village being submerged by the Bargi Dam: “Why didn’t they justpoison us? Then we wouldn’t have to live in this shit-hole and the Government couldhave survived alone with its precious dam all to itself” (see Roy 1999). There is thecollateral damage of the loss of a way of life, culture, and language. Suddenly, thesepeople often speaking such tribal languages as Gondi, Baiga, or Bhili are relocated inan alien environment where only Hindi, Gujarati, and English are understood. Thenumber of such “developmental” activities across South Asia is huge, and each timeit results in the displacement and segregation of millions of people delinking themfrom the environment in which they have been living for centuries. It also then leadsto urban ghettos where these groups suffer persistent struggle and humiliation tosurvive. As Ganguly (2018) says, contrary to the imagination of Ambedkar, theBhangis, Sweepers, and Balmikis of Delhi live in ghettos far away from the “secularand cosmopolitan values where people speak the language of rationality andmeritocracy” (p. 50).

Bhutan was a nation-state much before the modern European concept of thenation-state was born, and it has never been colonized (van Dreim 2015). In 2006, itwas called the happiest country in Asia, and the sixth happiest in the world in asurvey based on the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. Since then Bhutanhas become a popular tourist destination across the world. However, there aremarginalized groups whose languages may never find a voice in the processes ofmodernization and globalization. Dzongkha is the national language and has a richliterary tradition. No single group constitutes a majority in Bhutan; the dominantgroup is Ngalop in the western and northern Bhutan, Sharchop in eastern Bhutan,and Lhotshampa in southern Bhutan. The tribal groups and migrants, about 15% ofthe population, from Tibet, India, and various other parts of the world are scatteredall over the villages of Bhutan. Choke is the dominant liturgical language and deeplyinfluences the national language Dzongkha. Yet Sikkimese and Groma languages onthe Sikkim-Bhutan border and Toto on the West Bengal and Totopara border mayremain isolated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Bhutan).

For the Nepali population of Bhutan, the kingdom is nowhere close to heaven onearth. Since the 1990s, they’ve been persecuted, and their plight is barely known.In 1991 and 1992, over 80,000 Nepalis – part of the Lhotshampa ethnic group thathas lived in Bhutan since the 1800s – were dispossessed and moved into refugeecamps in Nepal. They have not been allowed entry into Bhutan ever since. Bhutanrefuses any responsibility, instead choosing to focus on promoting the country on itsGNH index.

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 15

The Bhutanese Constitution and laws have rendered over 106,000 ethnicNepalese refugees; they have been stateless since the 1990s. They have no accessto Bhutanese system of education, health, or property. There have also been cases ofsexual violence and abuses against girls and women (https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/10/03/discrimination-against-ethnic-nepali-children). As Banki (2014) says,GNH is a unique index developed by Bhutan; it consists of a set of criteria thatconsiders sustainable development, support of cultural values, environmental con-servation, and good governance as a nuanced index to judge a country’s success.GNH captured the imagination of people as a holistic approach to developmentand was recently endorsed by 68 countries in the UN General Assembly. The GNHunfortunately does not include, as Banki points out, an equal treatment of minoritiesand groups such as the Nepali Bhutanese or Lhotshampa, and the Sharchops all ofwhom have been ill-treated.

Coming to Nepal itself, the 2007 Interim Constitution of Nepal promotes culturaldiversity and talks about enhancing skills, knowledge, and rights of indigenouspeoples. But the indigenous peoples in Nepal are waiting to see how these visionswill be realized by the new constitution, which is still in the process of beingpromulgated through the second constituent assembly. Nepal also has a lawrelated to indigenous nationalities since 2002. And, in recent years, there hasbeen an increased recognition of the multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual, andmulticultural character of Nepali society and the need for respecting this diversityfor political stability and social progress.

The 2002 Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) act was basedon the consultation with indigenous scholars and leaders of Nepal and abroad; itconcluded that though “indigenous peoples” and nationalities are not synonymouswith each other, all the “nationalities” seem to be the “indigenous peoples” inthe context of Nepal. The consultative meeting defined “indigenous peoples” or“indigenous nationalities” to refer to those communities “which possess their owndistinct tradition and original lingual and cultural traditions and whose religiousfaith is based on ancient animism (worshiper of ancestors, land, season, nature), orwho do not claim “The Hinduism“ enforced by the state, as their traditional andoriginal religion.” The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights andfundamental freedom of Indigenous Peoples (IPs), Prof. James Anaya, visited Nepalfrom November 24 to December 2, 2008, and noted that although the governmentof Nepal planned a number of positive measures for the socioeconomic benefitsof indigenous communities, IPs have been forcibly displaced from their ancestrallands, denied access to justice, and excluded from political representation anddecision-making; their economic and educational opportunities and their distinctcultures and languages have been continuously threatened. Prof Anayarecommended that the government should focus its actions on securing their survivalwithin a genuine multicultural political and social order.

In the case of Pakistan, as Rahman (2006) points out, it is indeed ironical that in acountry where about 45% people speak Punjabi, Urdu should be the nationallanguage and medium of education. Urdu and English are the languages of theurban elite, agents of dominating Multilinguality. To quote Rahman (2006), “We

16 R. K. Agnihotri

have seen that the language policies of Pakistan, both declared and undeclared, haveincreased both ethnic and class conflict in the country. Moreover, our Westernizedelites, in their own interests, are threatening cultural and linguistic diversity. As aresult they are impoverishing the already poor and creating much resentment againstthe oppression and injustice of the system” (p. 84).

In Maldives, there is no freedom to have independent places of worship (whichcertainly involves suppression of languages not even listed and recognized), and thecountry allows only the majority Sunni Islam as the national religion, andthe Sharia law is strictly followed. According to the Minority Rights GroupInternational, “The Maldives Government cannot claim to be proud of its humanrights record. In 1994 Amnesty International reported that at least fifteen possibleprisoners of conscience were arrested because of their political views or religiouspractices. In July 1994, the Majlis passed legislation which carries a punishment ofup to five years’ imprisonment for anyone found guilty of involvement in ‘givingreligious advice that contravenes independence and government policy and thepolicy stated by the president” (http://www.refworld.org/docid/4954ce3923.html).

However, what worries people, in particular the modern linguists interested inthe possible extinction of languages, is the changed structure of global economy andthe nature of technology that empowers a few nations to dominate the rest of theworld, threatening the existence of local languages and cultures, just as increasingurbanization and industrialization are destroying biodiversity. However, one doesneed to ask the ways in which, say, the Roman, Aryan, Mughal, or British empiresdiffered qualitatively, from the modern American, Russian, French, or Chinesedomination. It is true that technology has the speed and power of destruction inways unparalleled before, but that’s precisely what one would say about the powersthat were. In that context their technology and power were unparalleled. Powerfullanguages today such as English, French, or Chinese dominate and charm the worldexactly as Roman, Sanskrit, Persian, or English did in the past. A language likeSanskrit has not completely disappeared; it lives though passively in the Indianreligions; it also lives actively in a small way being spoken in some small villagesand homes and in the Sanskrit journals. However, what is more important, it leftbehind a trail of hundreds of Indo-Aryan languages flourishing today across SouthAsia; lexicon of structurally very different Dravidian languages is also enriched bySanskrit. How is then Sanskrit a dead language? Nor are the then stigmatizedPrakrits that were Sanskrit’s contemporary dead. They survive in the modern Indianlanguages in their own ways. Languages don’t really die; no not even in naturaldisasters or wholesale decimations of populations by a Nero, Genghis Khan, orTimur or even the attempts at the elimination of the linguistic and cultural roots ofthe native populations by the Europeans or Americans. They are mixed with theirneighboring languages, they change, they multiply, and they always survive beyondtheir time and space, in different forms. It is important not to make the fundamentalmistake of giving a kind of life to languages of their own; that metaphor makes usthink of birth, a life span, and death. It is important to always think in terms ofpeople; human beings use languages, they take them with them where they go, andthey maintain and change them; they also leave traces of their languages in the

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 17

languages of people they come in contact with. It is equally important to realize thatthe technology that threatens languages of lesser power is also the technologythat empowers them; we hear on the one hand of the domination of English andHindi through mass media and computers, but the same resources empower locallanguages for maintaining, asserting, and enriching their status. You have moreaccess to say the Indian Bhojpuri, Gondi, Bodo, or Meitei today than you had everbefore. There is no way that one could imagine the contemporary discourse or thedocumentation of so-called endangered languages without modern technology.A funding project like the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP)at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), London, a series of conferencesheld on endangered languages in recent years, or publications like Cantoni (1998),Dorian (1989), Crystal (2000), Skutnabb-Kangas (2000), and Nettle and Romaine(2000) among others bear witness to the fact that traces of threatened languagessurvive. Revitalization efforts may also be seen in the implementation ofthe American Indian Languages Development Institute and the Native AmericanLanguages Act. There may only be 36 speakers of Great Andamanese left (Abbi2006, p. 121), and their way of life may indeed be in a state of flux, yet how can onesay with any certitude that their languages have no traces of other languages and theyhave not left any traces in the languages that surrounded them when they were fargreater than just 36. In any case, their language does survive in archives now. A moreimportant question was raised by Illich (1981) when he argued that we first neglectour tribal languages and then spend millions of dollars to turn them into object ofwonder in a museum. What we need to do is to make them an integral part of policiesand pedagogies rooted in Multilinguality.

Marginalization of Tribal Languages

When we talk of “tribal languages,” we perhaps have to think of India alone; in othercountries of South Asia, the corresponding term may be ethnic languages. It was in1871 that the British identified some indigenous social groups in India as “criminaltribes”; the “tribal” status was further confirmed by Article 342 of the IndianConstitution. However, in 1952, the Government of India repealed the act“denotifying” such tribes. This unfortunately added insult to injury intensifyingthe stigma of being both “primitive” and “criminal.” Linguistically, there is nothingspecial about tribal languages; nor do they constitute a homogeneous group. Theygenerally belong to either the Tibeto-Burman or Munda families of Indian lan-guages, less often to Dravidian and Indo-Aryan. It is just that these social groupshave remained politically, socially, and economically isolated from the mainstream,except in situations as indicated above when they have become victims of develop-ment and modernization. According to the 2011 Census of India, about 9% of India’spopulation (i.e., over 104 million people) consists of tribal people.

The 2011 Census of India provides a classic example of how languages of lesserpower are further marginalized. The Census tried to do an honest to god “mothertongue” count and expectedly got a “raw” count of 19,569 mother tongues spoken in

18 R. K. Agnihotri

India. Through a thorough process of “linguistic scrutiny, edit, and rationalization,”this number was reduced to 1369 mother tongues; they were further rationalizedbased on available linguistic information. Finally, only those were considered whichhad more than 10,000 speakers bringing the number of languages to 121. As Abbi(2008) argues, there is a multilayered hierarchy of languages with 22 scheduledlanguages in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution; that leaves 99 languagesout of the aura of constitutional privilege. Of these, 90 are tribal languages.Some of these like Santali and Bhili are spoken by over five million people, manylike Gondi, Kurukh, Mundari, and Bodo by over a million (see Abbi 2008, p. 155).Thanks to major political struggles, three of these languages now appear inthe 8th Schedule: Meitei (1992), Bodo and Santali (2003) (http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/C-16_25062018_NEW.pdf). Of all the 780 languages documentedby the PLSI, 480 are languages spoken by tribal and nomadic communities, whileabout 80 are coastal languages.

Radhakrishnan (2016) suggests that we should use the term “first citizen” forpeople identified as tribals, adivasis, or indigenous because all these words havegenealogies rooted in historical context where these groups were looked down upon,often as criminals; they are really the original inhabitants of the earth. The processesof development and globalization have brought about a growing invasion of theirlives, rights, dignity, languages, and sources of livelihood. There have been protestsagainst the state and corporate repression in recent years as in the case of Vedantaand POSCO; the state has also taken some affirmative action as in the case of IndianForest Rights Act (FRA). Acts like the FRA do provide spaces for individuallegal battles (difficult to fight anyway for the people on margins) and haverecalibrated the relations between the tribal groups and the forest bureaucracy; itdoes not contain any mechanism and processes for the community as a whole toensure independent spaces for themselves and their way of life. This has seriousconsequences for language maintenance.

It is true that tribal groups find their own ways for inter-tribal communicationso long their habitat is not disturbed by attempts at development for others.As Annamalai (2008) points out, depending on its communicative, functional,political, and cultural context, new languages will emerge in fluid multilingualcontexts such as “Sadari in Bihar, Halbi in Madhya Pradesh, Desia in Orissa, andNagamese in Nagaland.” Abbi (2008, p. 164) makes similar observations: “Severaldifferent tribal groups have evolved one common lingua franca or contact languagefor intertribal communication and are not concerned when this common language isnamed differently in different regions. For instance, the Mundas of Chotanagpurarea (Santali, Mundari, Ho, Kharia speakers) communicate with Dravidian tribals(Kurux, Kui, Kisan) in Sadari/Sadani (an Indo-Aryan language) which is identifiedby different labels such as Nagpuria, Khortha, and Kurmali.” Once again we witnessthe potentials of dominated Multilinguality.

The ethno-religious differences across South Asia also lead to linguistic andsocial marginalization. Differences in religion, language, and ethnicity are oneaspect of the Nepali-Bhutanese issue. The Ngalong, the minority ruling class inBhutan, are Buddhist and speak Dzongkha, while the Nepali-Bhutanese, who have

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 19

traditionally resided in the lowlands of southern Bhutan, are primarily Hindu andspeak Nepali. These ethno-religious differences, extant for decades, werehighlighted by the Bhutanese government’s growing fears in the 1970s and 1980sthat the separatist movements in nearby regions (such as calls for an independentGhorkaland in an area that included Sikkim, parts of Bhutan, West Bengal, andeastern Nepal) would manifest in Bhutan. As a consequence, policies singling out“the other” within Bhutan became oppressive. For example, a centuries-old code ofconduct called Driglam Namzha, originally meant to offer guidance on dressand manners, was reinterpreted in ways that put constraints on the language andcustoms of Nepali-Bhutanese.

By the late 1980s, discrimination against the Nepali-Bhutanese took severalforms. First, in addition to continuing cultural and linguistic discrimination, thejobs and landholdings of many Nepali-Bhutanese were taken away. Second, in 1988,a first-of-its-kind census, applied strictly only in the south where Nepali-Bhutaneseprimarily lived, divided the population, including units of individual families, intodifferent categories of genuine citizens and noncitizens. Finally, beginning in 1989and continuing through the early 1990s, tens of thousands of Nepali-Bhutanese hadtheir documentation (land certificates, voting records, and the like) taken away andleft the country. They crossed through India and into Nepal, where between 80,000and 100,000 lived for more than two decades in refugee camps.

In Nepal itself, over 35% Nepalese speak indigenous tribal languages; they haveremained marginalized in terms of language, culture, and political as well economicopportunities throughout the history. Some of Nepal’s indigenous peoples likeRautes are nomads, while some are forest dwellers like Chepang and Bankariya.Most of them rely on agriculture. However, in terms of ethnic identity, language,religion, and culture, all advanced, not-so-advanced, and backward indigenouspeoples have fallen victims to discrimination at the hands of the dominant groups.Many languages connect Nepal to India including Bajjika, Urdu, Awadhi, Rajbanshi,Bengali, and Santali. According to Article 6 of the Constitution, “All nativelanguages spoken in Nepal are National languages of Nepal.” Nepali in Devanagariscript is to be used for government work (Article 7a), and the Nepali provinces canchoose one or more other languages spoken by majority population of that provincefor government work (Article 7b). This in practice is far from the truth. Othercountries are not immune to ethno-religious linguistic discrimination. In the Stateof Jammu and Kashmir in India, the official language is Urdu, but people in Jammuspeak Dogri; in Kashmir, Kashmiri; and in the Buddhist groups living in Ladakh,Ladakhi; however, English is the medium of instruction from Class 1. Rao andCasimir (2007, p. 129) describe the current situation of a range of communitiesinhabiting Kashmir illustrating “how political violence not only endangershumanlives but also tears apart the socio-cultural fabric and ecological integrityof an entire region” (also see footnote 1). In the Northeast of India, groupsspeaking Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages and groups of people ofChittagong hills in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan all feel discriminated against.Then there are groups of people speaking language isolates such as the Hunza of

20 R. K. Agnihotri

Pakistan speaking Burushaski or the Nepalis speaking Kusunda and Sri Lankansspeaking Vedda who feel increasingly isolated.

Pakistan has various religious minorities. According to the 1941 Census of India,there were 5.9 million non-Muslims in the provinces that today form Pakistan.During and after Pakistan’s independence in 1947, about five million Hindusand Sikhs emigrated, with Punjab alone accounting for migration of 3.9 million.The arrival of such a large number of Punjabis increased the pressures onthe agricultural economy and set into motion a wave of migration to the UK.It is nearly impossible to imagine the linguistic and cultural shocks these highlyunderprivileged people went through as they got relocated multiple times (Agnihotri1980, 1987). According to the Pakistan 1998 Census, it still has a substantialnumber of Hindus (1,414,527, about 1.2%) and Christians (1,270,051); it also hassmall numbers of Ahmadis, Baha’is, Sikhs, Parsis, and Buddhists. However, thenational level of planning in Pakistan does not even take any cognizance of theseminority groups. In the 1951 Census, East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh) had22.05% Hindus. It has witnessed a decline with Hindus migrating from it becauseof insecurity due to fear of persecution, conflict, communal violence, and poverty.The percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh dropped to 9.7% by 2011.

As Fr. R. W. Timm points out, “even before Bangladesh was established duringthe War of Liberation in 1971, there were signs of the future treatment of minorities.The ethnic minorities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts did not join the rebellionagainst Pakistan because they anticipated a worse treatment under the Bengalis.”The original constitution of 1972 was committed to secularism, but in 1977 it wasreplaced by “absolute faith and trust in Almighty Allah” (Bismillar RahmanirRahim) under President Ziaur Rahman. Two recent cases show us how the religiousminorities with their associated languages are abused by the unjust application of itsstrict Islamic laws. There have been reports of Christian individuals being persecutedfor refusing to convert to Islam. The implementation of the Vested Property Acthas resulted in many Hindus losing their lands. They have been told to go toIndia or Pakistan. There have also been bans of TV channels and freedomof speech (https://sites.google.com/site/bdguiber/home/6-english/bangladesh/emerging-bangladesh/-minorities-in-bangladesh). The issue of Islamic domination isfundamental to Pakistan, Malaysia, Maldives, and Bangladesh in South Asia.Religious fundamentalism is closely tied to linguistic diversity as different religionsuse different languages for their religious rites.

Peripatetic Communities

According to Rao (2007, pp. 53–72), the fuzziness of nomadic categories is mirroredin ethnic labels such as Baluch, Banjara, Bhil, Charan, Gujar, Jat, and Nandiwallawho are often combined with other terms. Jat, for example, may designate severalgroups dispersed across South and Southwest Asia; they are often camel andbuffalo breeders, guides, spies, “Gypsies,” and sedentary farmers. Similarly, theterm Charan denotes a cluster of nomadic pastoralists, bards, merchants, farmers,

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 21

transporters, and even priests in Western India and Sindh. What is common to these“disappearing people” is that they are constantly on the move and with themmove their languages and cultural practices. As they come into contact with theforces of urbanization and homogenization, they have to constantly reinventthemselves not just in terms of the patterns of their livelihoods and sociopoliticaland economic structures but also in terms of their languages and cultures. A largenumber of these groups consist of peripatetic peoples of South Asia whose livesbecome increasingly miserable as the state control over pastureland and forestsincreases, agriculture gets modernized, and the market economy becomes moreglobalized. Robbins (2007) wonders whether the identity and culture of the pastoralcamel herding Raikas of Rajasthan can be sustained in the context of increasingsocietal and environmental changes. As Singh (2015) points out in The Pioneer,the communication systems evolved by the Raikas are of fundamental importancefor them “as one herder manages 50 camels and they control the herd based onthe voice. Interestingly, a lot of musical instruments were invented out of thepastoral setting as people needed to communicate to the animals over a longdistance. ‘Akal-dhakal’ is the art of communication between the camelsand the breeders” (https://www.dailypioneer.com/2015/vivacity/from-the-land-of-raikas.html).

Raikas have different languages and sounds to assist the camels, fromshowing the camel the way to water body for drinking or beckoning to them froma distance. The Doms of Hunza in Pakistan who are traditionally musiciansand blacksmith and remain at the lowest and much despised ladder of socialhierarchy need to rethink their survival strategies (Schmid 2007).

The papers in Brower and Johnston (2007) are framed in the “trope of irreversiblechange” (Remtilla 2011, p. 157) among the disappearing nomadic and peripateticpeoples of South and Central Asia under the sweeping forces of globalizationand homogenization. Remtilla’s review of the book is indeed nuanced; for thehistorically persecuted Hazaras of Afghanistan, changes to their traditional way oflife may be the only way out just as for the nomads of South Asia, education mayshow the way to sustain their lifestyle and future. Historically, the resistance to andoverthrow of colonialism were partly rooted in acquiring the best colonial educationhad to offer. As Brower and Johnston (2007, p. 9) point out, South Asia has “a long,rich, complicated history whose current inhabitants—farmers, poets, heroes, herders,mothers, merchants, teachers, students—are far more likely to be peaceful thanferocious. And the lives of these people, many belonging to small groups withunique identities developed over generations in unique encounters with the world,are radically changing. Once a part of the Earth that harboured extraordinary humandiversity, South and Central Asia is now the setting for aggressive forces ofhomogenization.”

The Hazaras of Afghanistan have been constantly persecuted; they are isolatedbecause of their origins, racial features, religion, and language. As opposed to theSunni Muslims of Afghanistan, Hazaras are Shi’ahs and speak a Persian-basedlanguage Hazaragi. Irrespective of who was in power, the Russians, Taliban, or theAfghans, they have suffered.

22 R. K. Agnihotri

However, the major threat to the survival of the Hazara is their long andcontinuing treatment in Afghanistan as a pariah group, for they have been despised,persecuted, murdered, and displaced. The Hazaras have been the victims ofmass killings by various Afghan governments, of encroachments of their territoryby other groups, and of the deliberate undercounting of their populations innational censuses and the drawing of provincial borders so as to split the Hazarapopulation. As a result of such treatment, thousands of Hazaras have left theHazarajat to become workers in the major cities or refugees in neighboring countries.When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, and the final Soviet-backedregime collapsed in 1992, some of the refugees began to return to the Hazarajat.Soon, however, a new conflict broke out, this time against the Taliban movementthat began to assert its control over Afghanistan in the middle 1990s. Althoughostensibly an Islamic movement, the Taliban were mostly Pashtuns, whose goal wasnot only to create a strict Islamic theocracy but also to return Afghanistan to itsPashtun roots. As the Taliban began to gain control in large areas of Afghanistan, theHazaras put up stiff resistance, and a number of battles between Hazara fighters andthe Taliban army occurred.

In the case of the Bhils, Tadvis, and Vassawas of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat,each having its unique verbal repertoire, Whitehead (2007) shows how they increas-ingly lost their control on the forest and grazing land first under the Rajput rulersand later under the Indian Forest Act of 1878 of the British Empire. The ForestDepartment became a major landowner in South Asia eliminating the customaryrights to use and trade forest produce. “In a Reserved Forest, no habitation orcultivation was allowed, and traditional hill practices such as burning plots of forestto clear vegetation, lopping of trees, fishing, and using minor forest products wereprohibited” (Whitehead 2007, p. 75).

So far as the transhumant pastoral populations are concerned, the Right toEducation Act 2009 in India has proved to be a regressive step. As Dyer (2017)argues, this act has homogenized the concept of “a neighborhood” and promises toprovide elementary education to the community within the neighborhood of akilometer. But the pastoral populations are mobile for over 9 months in a year; weneed to reach out to them. Dyer (2017, p. 156) quotes UNESCO reports of 2010and 2015 to say that “India has yet to catch up with other countries that haveto develop a strategic response to mobile pastoralists’ education deprivation in theEFA era.”

Linguistic Diversity and Education

Since literacy campaigns and educational policy are not conceptualized in tandem,those who have finished their literacy courses rarely if ever gain access to educa-tional institutions. Even when they manage to get to primary schools, they rarelyfinish the secondary school. Education is beyond doubt the most potent instrument tointroduce processes of social change, to provide spaces for the articulation of thevoices of the marginalized, and to some extent to subvert the agenda of the

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 23

dominated Multilinguality. As Spolsky (2009) pointed out, language policy adoptedby the governments is certainly the most important intervention made into educa-tional management. It is largely through education that the underprivileged maybe able to fight for their rights and become substantive agents in participatorydemocracy or other forms of government. On the other hand, if the educationsystem persistently ignores the languages of marginalized people, it would simplyadd to higher levels of silence in classrooms and a higher pushout rate in the earlystages of schooling. Tilak (1987) provides strong evidence in favor of investment inthe education of the weaker sections, viz., backward castes and women strictly oneconomic efficiency grounds, even when they are subject to discrimination in thelabor market. It is, therefore, imperative that governments treat the expenditure oneducation of the weaker sections not as welfare expenditure or burden but as aninvestment that pays, thus warranting larger public investment in the education of theweaker sections. That such an approach would eventually lead to rational thinkingand responsible citizenship goes without saying.

Unfortunately in South Asia, the schools systems are so designed as to reproducesocial inequalities in the educational domain. It is not just that there is a “private”system for the elite and the government system for the poor. Within that spectrumthere is a whole range of schools that reproduce social hierarchies. The public-private dichotomy may in fact hide how the school socially and linguisticallyreproduces the status quo ensuring that marginalized groups never crosstheir boundaries. Sarangapani (2018) suggests that this naive dichotomy produces“segmented and partial pictures that do not tessellate to cover the entire landscape-we are not able to understand the school as a part of a societal ecosystem” (p. 43).As she argues, we realize that students identified as “competent” go to high-pressureschools with a strict regimentation to “make it good” in life, while the poor (oftendubbed as “dullers”) go to state schools that hardly have any facilities. In this“invisible segregation,” the poorest of the poor and persons with disability may beserved by charitable institutions to sustain their status quo in society. Thus thesocietal ecosystem is reproduced in the school. Linguistically, there is a cry forEnglish across the board, and as Sarangapani says, education in the mother tongue isreserved for the poor.

It is true that the concerned governments sometimes do try to make efforts toprovide spaces for the marginalized where their languages and cultures may beprivileged and which still prepare people to participate proactively in society. TheNavodaya School experiment in India was one such effort and did show signs ofsome success before it fell prey to the mainstream English-dominated culture of thelower middle class. As Krishna Kumar (The Indian Express, Jan 25, 2019, p. 7)points out schools in the schemes like Navodaya Vidyalayas (NVs) in India whichwere initially designed to provide alternative schooling to the underprivileged and tothe moribund and bureaucratized culture of common government schools soon gavein to the pressures of the mainstream competitive urban schools. Nepal has alwaysfollowed India in its education policy and has therefore fallen into the same colonialtrap. The quality of public education system is low, and there is rampant discrimi-nation based on caste and ethnicity.

24 R. K. Agnihotri

The educational dropout rate is 40–50% after primary school. It is argued thatthe use of three languages in primary schooling places too great a cognitive burdenon children. Language policy in education needs to be revised on pedagogicaland scientific rather than political grounds. It is recommended that language beintroduced into the curriculum at different points in time.

Both Bhutan and Maldives spend over 7% of their budget on education; this ismuch more than any other country in South Asia. The literacy rate in Bhutan is stilllow. In fact, secular education in Bhutan started rather recently in 1950s or so; mostof earlier education was in the religious lamanaries. There was no colonialintervention in Bhutan. Maldives started school education in 1920s and has achieveda literacy rate close to 100%.

Deeply compromised by wars and conflict that have lasted for more than 30 years,Afghanistan’s education system remains fragile. Since the 2001 fall of the Taliban,however, there has been some progress. For example, prior to 2002, one million orfewer students, almost all of them boys, were believed to attend general schools.Today, an estimated 39 percent of students at general schools are female. Reform andreconstruction have occurred at the other levels as well. In 2015, Afghanistan’sMinistry of Education reported that “the annual number of secondary graduates[had] risen from about 10,000 in 2001 to more than 266,000 in 2013 and [was]estimated to reach 320,000 in 2015” (https://wenr.wes.org/2016/09/education-afghanistan).

Provisions are made to ensure free education and healthcare for all citizens.According to Article 43 of Afghanistan, “education is the right of all citizens andwill be provided free up to the B.A. level”; it also provides for the teaching ofmother tongues in areas where they are spoken. Article 44 ensures that the state shalldevise and implement effective programs to create and foster balanced education forwomen and improve education of nomads as well as eliminate illiteracy in thecountry. In spite of these promises, over the past three decades, schools, students,and the entire education sector have been widely and systematically abused by theruling regimes for their own political and strategic ends. Several non-governmentalorganizations, including the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), have warned theIndependent Election Commission (IEC) and the Education Ministry about the risksof involving schools in the election process.

In Bhutan, Dzongkha is the only national and official language of Bhutan; it isalso the compulsory medium of education. As elsewhere in South Asia, English hasbecome the default associate official language of administration and social mobilityand aspirations. Other than the traditional lamanaries, the growth of modern seculareducation in Bhutan is a recent phenomenon. It was only during the reign of KingJimi Doji Wangchu (1952–1972) that 61 schools were opened across Bhutan; inthe 1960s, Hindi was tried as a medium of instruction; in the Southern Nepali area, itwas Nepali; other languages like Lepcha, Bumthang, and Tshangle were also usedfor local communication. But Bhutan was quick to undermine its grassroots-levelMultilinguality. Although as a matter of policy declarations, lip service is paid to thepreservation of ethnic languages and cultures, what is happening in actual practice isthe domination of Dzongkha and English.

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 25

The largely monolingual policy followed in Sri Lankan schools since the colonialtimes, with English taught as a second/third language or meant for elite schools, hasfurther strengthened the ethnolinguistic segregation in the country. There was noeffective program to make pupils bi- or trilinguals. “This was fertile ground for thedevelopment and perpetuation of ethnocentric ideas, prejudices, and stereotypesabout the other. But, at the end of the day, they all had to compete for the samenational resources. In an ethnolinguistically differentiated society, competition isincreasingly perceived as among ethnic groups rather than among equal individuals”(Hettige 2007, p. 407).

According to Liu (2013), Mauritius uses English as its official mediumof instruction in all public schools. However, due to the large population ofFranco-Mauritians, French is also included in the education system as a languagesubject, and the use of standard French is promoted over the use of Mauritian Creole,or Kreol Morisyen (Kreol), a French-based creole, and the lingua franca of thecountry. Consequently, Mauritians view Kreol as a language of low prestige, andthey do not use it in formal domains, restricting its use to informal domains and tosignal national solidarity.

The Burmese languages, customs, and culture and the Theravada Buddhismhave close connections with India. In fact the early nineteenth-century BurmeseKonbaung dynasty ruled over an area that in addition to Myanmar controlled partsof Manipur and Assam as well. Burma gained independence from the BritishEmpire in 1948 following the independence of India; it has been a member of theAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since 1997. There are over 135ethnic groups in Myanmar grouped into 8 major ethnic races including Bamar (themost populous), Chin, Kachin, Kayin, Mon, Kayah, Rakhine, and Shan. There aremany immigrant ethnic groups speaking such languages as Chinese, Malay, Bangla,Sylheti, Hindi/Urdu, and Tamil. In spite of this enormous diversity, Burmese remainsthe national and official language and the medium of education in schools therebydenying all rights to education in their own languages or making any attempt at usingmultilingualism as a resource. There are some schools in the urban areas that provideeducation in English. Modern Myanmar has been involved in persistent ethnicconflicts and human rights violations, and it was only in 2011 that the militaryjunta was dissolved and general elections held and release of Aung San Suu Kyi thatone has witnessed relative peace. On the Human Development Index, Myanmarranks 145 in a list of 188 countries; in spite of its rich natural resources in gems, oil,and natural gas, the disparity in incomes is huge, a major portion of the economybeing controlled by former army chiefs.

Myanmar is now trying to formulate a national language policy under theleadership of Prof Lo Bianco (2016). It treats language as important as a naturalresource as water, air, land, and mineral wealth. It also argues that peopleshould be allowed to have education in their own languages and also acquirehigh levels of proficiency of Myanmar and English. It recommends strongsupport for high levels of literacy, mother tongue education, and linguistic and

26 R. K. Agnihotri

cultural diversity (http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs22/MIMU-Report_Brief_Progress_Report_-_Building_a_National_Language_Policy_for).

Heugh (2013) refers to a large number of studies (e.g., Makoni 2003; Makoni andPennycook 2012; Stroud and Heugh 2011) that clearly show a major disjunctionbetween the government multilingual policies and the multilingualism amongchildren as it actually occurs in their lives. These studies also show that these policiesonly make a token gesture to multilingualism and instead push assimilatory forcesthat force children to learn English, French, Hindi, Urdu, Sinhalese, Dzongkha, orDhivehi under very adverse circumstances. For example, in India, irrespectiveof whether teachers and materials are available, whether parents or students aremotivated or not, English is introduced as a subject from Class 1; in the cursedstate of Jammu and Kashmir, it has been the medium of instruction for a longtime from Class 1.

What has consistently been ignored is that any society and therefore anyclassroom is characterized by a multiplicity of linguistic and cultural practices andthat any educational enterprise that ignores this resource is violating basic principlesof justice and equality. One therefore should not be surprised that governmentpolicies and school practices almost across the world militate against the naturalgrain of human language. At home and in the street and playground, childrenconstantly borrow, mix, and experiment with language forms and meanings, exactlythe things that are forbidden in education in general and the language educationclassroom in particular. The rules of the game, be they language, religion, or culture,are largely defined by the majority community, which only tolerates the “deviations”of the minorities. Fortunately, in recent years the search for alternative linguisticdispensations has intensified. Increasingly, researchers insist that there is an urgentneed to conceptualize language differently to address the needs of classroom, whichare characterized by a diversity of cultural and linguistic practices, and to ensurejustice and equity to marginalized groups. As mentioned earlier, several authorshave suggested that bilingualism may be misunderstood as parallel monolingualism(Heller 1999) or that multilingualism may be misunderstood as limited to pluralmonolingualism (Makoni 2003) or multiple monolingualism (Heugh 2003).According to Stroud (2001), we need new concepts of language policy and linguisticcitizenship, in which marginal languages play an important role; this wouldredefine the role of minor languages for democracy and equity and ultimatelycontribute to the redistribution of power in society (also see Stroud and Heugh2004). Once access, retention, and infrastructure are assured, perhaps the mostcritical factor would be teacher education. This is currently the most ignored aspectof education; our teacher education programs lack both sociopolitical perspectiveand theoretical depth.

In the case of Mauritius, Tirvassen and Ramasawmy (2017) say “For multilin-guals, languages are part of a repertoire that is accessed for their communicativepurposes; languages are not discrete and separated, but form an integrated systemfor them; multilingual competence emerges out of local practices where multiplelanguages are negotiated for communication; competence doesn’t consist of separatecompetencies for each language, but a multicompetence that functions symbiotically

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 27

for the different languages in one’s repertoire; and, for these reasons, proficiencyfor multilinguals is focused on repertoire building”. This “deployment of a speaker’sfull linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially andpolitically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages”(ibid. emphasis in the original), in a fluid, flexible, dynamic, and creative manner,has been referred to by a plethora of terms such as polylingualism (Jorgensen 2008),metrolingualism (Otsuji and Pennycook 2009), and translanguaging (e.g., Williams1996, 2002; Garcia 2009; Garcia and Wei 2015), among others, although thereare some differences between them. Based on this new conceptualization ofthe phenomenon, multilingualism is not viewed as the subsequent acquisition oflanguages as separate entities. The multilingual speaker is no more perceivedas a deficient monolingual, and the criterion for his/her linguistic abilities is notnative-like competence anymore. As Kemp (2009, p. 19) says, “each language in themultilingual integrated system is a part of the complete system and not equivalent inrepresentation or processing to the language of a monolingual speaker. As a result, amultilingual speaker’s languages function as a holistic and integrated system orlinguistic repertoire, which is similar to a set of skills that the latter has at his/herdisposal, and from which s/he draws depending on the communicative function andcontext.” We need to think in terms of an education system that is rooted inMultilinguality if we wish to ensure a level playing field for all languages and thecognitive growth of our learners irrespective of the background they come from.

Toward South Asia Rooted in Multilinguality

Singh (2006) shows how different governments in South Asia are trying to createspaces for minor and minority languages through constitutional and legal means.He also argues that the participation of regional and minor languages has increasedin nation building. Yet there remains a disjunction between theory and practice.In the case of Nepal, Turin (2006) examines the disjuncture between linguisticrights and realities which “has only served to further politicize, and radicalize,the already embittered linguistic minorities, many of whom no longer believegovernment pledges on mother tongue education and bilingual classrooms” (p. 69).

South Asian countries should listen to the neglected voices of their people.Scholars have become increasingly dissatisfied with the concept of “a language”suggesting alternative perspectives like “super diversity” (Blommaert and Rampton2011; Vertovec 2007), “translanguaging” (e.g., Canagarajah 2011; García 2009), and“hyperlingualism” (Pauwels 2014), which occurs within contemporary cities. García(2009) uses both “hybridity” and “translanguaging.” Whichever of these terms isused, there appears to be the implicit existence of “a code/a language/a bilingual withdifferent codes.” García (2009, p. 128) says:

Translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic featuresor various modes of what are described as autonomous languages in order to maximizecommunicative potential.

28 R. K. Agnihotri

I think we don’t need to think in terms of languages and their mixing; we assumethat whatever is construed as “a language” is Multilinguality and hence allpatterns of verbal performance are equal linguistically. It is not that there is an “X”and there is a “Y” and we mix the two to get XY with some constraints; it is thatthere is only Multilinguality (Agnihotri 1992, 1995, 1997, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010,2011 among others). Tollefson (1991, p. 12) points out countries like the USAand Britain are classic cases of linguistic hegemony “where linguistic minoritiesare denied political rights and where multilingualism is widespread butofficially invisible in the major mass media, government, and most publicdiscourses (e.g., radio talk shows and newspapers).” Multilinguality implies thatthe boundaries we construct between different languages are artificial andoften sociopolitically motivated, but in practice, language boundaries are porous,and languages flow effortlessly into each other.

Language policies and pedagogies persistently talk in terms of “a language,”privileging languages of dominating Multilinguality as media of education and assubjects to be learnt at the cost of ignoring the linguistic and cultural practicesof students marked as coming from the marginalized minority backgrounds. SouthAsia is following the tradition of various language academies: The French Academyof 1634 followed by the Spanish Academy (1713) and a series of Latin AmericanAcademies in the nineteenth century and postcolonial academies in Africa and Asiain the twentieth century (see Ferguson 2006, p. 27). The Nagari Pracharini Sabhawas established at the Queen’s College, Varanasi, in India in 1893 to ensure thatDevanagari script prevails over the Kaithi script; Malaysia established the DewanBahasadan Pustaka in 1956; Hindi enthusiasts established the Hindi PrachariniSabha in Mauritius in 1926; in India, Article 351 of the Indian Constitution saysthat it would be the duty of the Indian State to promote the spread of the Hindilanguage, borrowing primarily from the Sanskrit language, thus laying a majorhurdle in modern Hindi becoming a language of serious discourse for commonpeople. The National Language Promotion Department (National LanguageAuthority) of Pakistan was established in 1979 under Article 251 of the Constitutionto remove difficulties and pave the way for the “adoption of Urdu, the nationallanguage, as the official language of the country.” In Mauritius, we witness ambiv-alence across colonial languages of power and the local Kreol. As English andFrench continue to dominate the seats of power and education, Kreol increasinglybecomes the unofficial lingua franca of the country (Sambajee 2016). The DhivehiLanguage Academy of Maldives (2011) was primarily created to promote the useof Dhivehi even though it claims to promote multilingualism. The academiabecomes an active participant in these activities as their efforts are always dulyrewarded by the State. We thus have an unstated complicity among the politicians,policy makers, and academics to create a “pure standard”; “this protracted pursuitof an elite by an envious mass and consequent” flight “of the elite” (Fisher 1958, p.486).

In the future pedagogy rooted in Multilinguality, South Asia could privilege thelanguages of the marginalized assuming that all learners have an innate faculty toacquire and accommodate a large spectrum of verbal repertoire and classroom can

Linguistic Diversity and Marginality in South Asia 29

effortlessly explore the domains of linguistic analysis in the classroom using datafrom different learner repertoire and using such methods as translation, préciswriting, paraphrasing, converting texts from one genre to another, etc. Learnersand teachers will collectively bring texts to the classroom, and these would becomesites for discussing social issues in the classrooms, spaces where the underprivilegedwould find causes for their neglect and domination and explore paths of liberation.

Agnihotri (1987, 1990) constitute a study in trying to understand how immigrantchildren negotiate identities in multilingual contexts. Achmat (1992) is a shortvideo showing the multiplicity of language varieties available in a classroomwhich can be used as a resource for scientific enquiry involving data elicitation,classification and categorization, rule formation, and hypothesis testing; allvoices find a place in this exercise. Agnihotri (2007) examines the theoreticalunderpinnings and possible pedagogical practices that can be undertaken in aparadigm rooted in Multilinguality; Agnihotri (2010) is a demonstration ofhow Multilinguality can be fruitfully used for the teaching of English. Agnihotri(2009) and Agnihotri (2012) try to show how Multilinguality can contribute towarda better society and global harmony.

As Rampal (2000, p. 2629) argues, all countries of South Asia make holycommitments toward decentralization and participation, “but practice has not alwayskept pace with national proclamations.” The school curriculum can no longer remaina sanitized narrative of a singular objective reality. The multiple realities of thesuffering majority must find a place in education. Classrooms across South Asiahave to create spaces for the voices of people, learn to use Multilinguality as aresource, and bring social issues into the day-to-day transactions of the schoolcurricula.

Anyon (2011) goes a step further. She suggests that working for criticalpedagogy should travel beyond the classroom and actually enter the politicalarena. “Critical educators today have an important role to play in helping studentsapprehend possibility in what, at first glance, might appear over determined orunchangeable racial, class, or gender subordination (Anyon 2011, p. 98).” It is notthat you become political and participate in social action; you participate in socialaction and evolve politicized identity. “Working for progressive change nowalso involves all of us against the few political and economic elites who removefrom our domain what has been rightfully ours: our jobs, income, homes, schools,water, pension funds, transportation systems etc. (Anyon 2011, p. 96).” Anyon’sagenda would remain incomplete without including language.

Conclusion

This chapter shows that South Asian countries are torn between a handful of elitedominating languages often featuring English and hundreds of languages of theoppressed constituting the dominated multilinguality. Sustaining the concept of “alanguage” in theory and practice suits the interests of the elite and helps to maintainthe status quo as the linguistic and cultural practices of the poor, tribal, and nomadic

30 R. K. Agnihotri

people are pushed under the rug and their modes of articulation stigmatized as“dialect/boli/backward/non-literary/unscientific,” etc. Linguistically, all human lan-guages possess the same potential to fulfill any social function or cognitive demand.The dominated multilinguality should be seen as a strength that children bring toschool and given its due place in the education system. Today, we have enoughevidence available for the successful implementation of pedagogical practices thatare rooted in multilinguality. As the voice of each child finds space in the classroominteraction, the level of silence decreases and students begin to respect their ownlinguistic practices as well as of others. The linguistic analysis made possiblethrough the use of multilinguality by trained teachers serves as a basis for firstintroduction to scientific enquiry and leads to cognitive growth and enhancement inlogical analysis. In small but sure ways, these processes in the classrooms may alsoeventually constitute spaces for societal subversion.

Cross-References

▶Afghanistan▶Bangladesh▶Bhutan▶Colonial Education and the Modern Subject▶Education of Myanmar▶ Indigenous Education Traditions▶Maldives▶Minority Lessons▶Nepal▶ Pakistan▶ Poverty and Education▶ School System and Education Policy in India▶ Schooling Education in Mauritius▶Tribal and Ethic Identities▶Tribal Education

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