Dr Tarseem Kumar
According to a United Nations report, 97 percent of the world’s population speaks 4 percent of the languages and the remaining 3 percent speaks 96 percent. Most of these 96 percent of the languages belong to the tribe communities or the Marginalized Sections of Society.
UNESCO also said in a report that half of the nearly 6,000 languages currently spoken in the world are in danger of extinction.
The disappearance of language should be a matter of concern for human society, because each language has a different way of looking at the world. The disappearance of language is directly related to the disappearance of perspectives that may be important for human life.
Research conducted at various times and places around the world has recognized that the education in mother tongue is essential for the physical and mental development of children.
According to an article published on UNICEF India website “The parents and teachers together help to build the foundation for the child as they start their journey in this world. Evidence suggests teaching and learning in the mother tongue builds strong foundations for a child’s cognitive development, improves communication skills, and helps a child to create an emotional connection between the child and their learning environment”.
Point 22 of the National Education Policy 2020 talks about promoting mother tongues, arts and cultures. Point 22.10 states that “More HEIs, and more programmes in higher education, will use the mother tongue/local language as a medium of instruction, and/or offer programmes bilingually, in order to increase access andGER (Gross Enrolment Ratio) and also to promote the strength, usage, and vibrancy of all Indian languages. Private HEIs too will be encouraged and incentivized to use Indian languages as medium of instruction and/or offer bilingual programmes. Four-year B.Ed. dual degree programmes offered bilingually will also Help, e.g. in training cadres of science and mathematics teachers to teach science bilingually at Schools across the country”.
UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring report 2007 highlights mother tongue education in many places.
The National Curriculum Framework Foundational Stage 2022 and the National Curriculum Framework School Education 2023, which followed on from the National Education Policy 2020, also reinforce the need for children to be educated in their mother tongue at the foundation stage and beyond.Considering the importance of mother tongue, it is important to keep an eye on the formal number of people speaking the mother tongue. In this context, let us assess the status of Dogri language speakers. Census is the only means of knowing the formal number of speakers of Dogri language. The first census was conducted in 1951 by the Registrar General and Census Commission under the Home Ministry of the Government of India, but due to political circumstances, the census could not be conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.The first formal data related to the languages of Jammu and Kashmir came from the 1961 census, which revealed the number of Dogri speaking people in Jammu and Kashmir. According to the 1961 census, the number of people speaking Dogri as their mother tongue was only 8 lakh 69 thousand 199, which was only 23 percent of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the population of 1971, the number of people speaking Dogri as their mother tongue in Jammu and Kashmir was only 11, 39,259, which was only 24 percent of the total population.
According to the 1981 census, the number of people speaking Dogri as their mother tongue in Jammu and Kashmir was only 14, 60,279, which is only about 24 percent of the total population.The 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir. According to the 2001 census, the number of native speakers of Dogri in Jammu and Kashmir was 22lakh 05560 hundred which was about 22 per cent of the total population.
According to the 2011 census, the number of mother tongue speakers was 2.513 million, which was 20 percent of the total population of the state.
If we look at the censuses conducted at different times, it is seen that there is a negative growth in the number of Dogri speakers. The trend of negative growth in the census is a matter of concern, but at the same time, there is also a need to pay attention to the factors that are causing this negative growth.
One more thing that is worth noting is that there is no significant difference in the percentage of Kashmiri, the most widely spoken language in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1961, 53 per cent of the total population in Jammu and Kashmir spoke Kashmiri, which increases slightly to 54 per cent in 2011 Census. In the era of globalization and technology, if a regional language maintains the percentage of its speakers, then it should be a matter of pride for the region
Another figures from the census conducted at various times that draws particular attention is that of the number of people who accept Hindi as their mother tongue in Jammu and Kashmir. In the 1961 census, the number of Hindi speakers was 22, 32, which was less than one percent of the total Population. But according to the 2011 census, the number of Hindi speakers was 26, 12,631, which was 21 percent of the total population of the state and was 1 percent more than those who accepted Dogri as their mother tongue. In fact, the 1961 census revealed a total of 1652 mother tongues and dialects in India. This census also included those mother tongues whose speakers were very few in number. But later the Government of India decided to include the data of only those mother tongues in the census with more than 10,000 speakers. However, it was also true that just two people are enough for the existence of a language. But due to this decision many languages were left out of the official numbers. The Hindi statistics discussed above show that even in the 1971 census data, there is no significant change in the number of Hindi speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, which was less than one percent. But the astonishing figures were from the 1981 census in which the number of people who accepted Hindi as their mother tongue was 10, 37,166 which was 17 percent of the total population of the state. Actually this change was not due to people’s inclination towards Hindi, the reason for the change was the technical changes made in the 1981 census. In the 1981 census, languages were divided into two parts, Part-A and Part-B. Part A comprised of languages that were included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Part-B included non-scheduled languages. But one of the most important things was that groups were also formed under the languages included in Part-A and Part-B. The groups formed under Part A to Part B included those mother tongues which were not part of any mentioned group but were widely spoken. According to the 1981 census ‘In both Parts A and B, mother-tongues have been grouped in some cases under the relevant languages. This has been done on the basis of linguistic information readily available or in the light of studies already made’.Under this grouping process, many mother tongues of Jammu and Kashmir were placed in the Hindi group, which also included Gojri and Pahari languages, whose speakers were in millions. This was the reason why the 1981 census shows a large increase in the number of Hindi speakers in Jammu and Kashmir. In the 2011 census, the number of Hindi speakers being slightly higher than that of Dogri speakers simply meant that there has been an increase in the number of speakers of languages falling under the Hindi group in Jammu & Kashmir. There is a possibility that in the 2011 census, people may have chosen some other mother tongue as an option other than Dogri language. To understand this, the 2011 census data of Rajouri district is being analyzed. In Rajouri district, according to the 2011 census, out of the district’s population of 6 lakh 42 thousand, 10 thousand 875 people accepted Dogri as their mother tongue, which was just over one percent of the total population of the district. Conversations with local Dogri speaking people reveal that the Pahari community awareness movement started by some intellectuals in Poonch and Rajouri districts after 1970 gained momentum after the Gujjar community was granted ST reservation in 1991. The movement later demanded Pahari speaking reservation certificate and ST reservation which may be the reason for the change in the number of Dogri speaking people in the census. However, more research is needed on this topic. In the 2001 census, seven percent of the people in Rajouri district had accepted their language as Dogri. Its reduction to one percent in 2011 was quite telling. In 2003, Dogri was included in the eighth schedule. In the 2011 census, Dogri was included in the list of scheduled languages. However, no group was created under Dogri and no mother tongue was included, which would increase the number of speakers of these scheduled languages. There are about sixty mother tongues under the Hindi group. Some of them are from Jammu and Kashmir. After Dogri is made a scheduled language, languages close to Dogri from the linguistic point of view may be part of the Dogri group. The grouping process in the census needs to be revised again in consultation with the linguists.
(The author is Assistant Professor PSPS Government College for Women Gandhinagar, Jammu)
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