I'm going to speak about something which is of very essence of to human existence and that is language if one thinks of one major the most crucial difference between other animal species and human beings it is language it is true that bees have their languages these have a kind of language it is true that dogs do understand and remember about 100 words it is true that certain species of fish do have a communication system which is fairly world but the human communication system can take in such large and complex amount of significance that it is quite amazing we are capable of externalizing our thoughts like no other animal species can do that we speak is not just a matter of God's gift or an accident it was a necessity in the evolution for us to evolve this kind of communication system in through which we can talk not just about what is present but also about what is the past and what is yet to come we can talk about distant things any other animals can talk about only what is present and what is within a short span of memory but humans can invent situations through words they can actually create a new world through the language that they have so if we do not have language we are no human and I'm not talking of languages but the general language capability it is the word through which we invent the world the human consciousness works in a very peculiar way we have of course the experience of texture of the world of things we have some experiences and we do name them but there are things which we do not directly experience nor we can touch them nor we can see them one can talk about apples in Kashmir or snow in Switzerland without being in Kashmir or in Switzerland it is through the word that the consciousness tries to grapple with the external reality what one can what one calls the phenomenal world and it is through that that the consciousness forms an image a continuous image of our existence if we did not have the word we would not have the world therefore every language any language just any language it's not just a French Spanish Russian Italian and English any language is a complete worldview even if that language has only 300 words it can describe the entire world it can cover the entire world this is a scientific view because a language is a symbolic system and symbolism has the capability of enveloping a lot more than the mere quantitative measure of this symbol through very few words you can express everything but through very few words you can experience practically everything every language is a unique world view two languages do not have similar color terms in Marathi where were called camisa those who are Marathi speakers perhaps might our there's no word for that in English the English brought to us through the colonial experience an idea of how languages grow how they develop and at the basis of that at the back of that idea was that there is an original one language and out of that one language many languages come that there is the Tower of Babel through which man could you know speak with the divine and at one time the tower collapses and many languages languages through which man just cannot speak to the divine that comes up this is a peculiar historiography an idea of genesis of language which is not scientifically valid languages develop differently in different landscapes people in the desert people in these snowy areas people near the oceans they of different languages the climate's contribute to that and therefore not one original language similarly very often we think that languages are like human beings that they're born and therefore they will die that is a logical fallacy a language does not die a language does not die a language can only be killed languages die as we understand the word die because sometimes they are over over structured they die if the speakers of that language try to dominate other people if you remember the history of the Roman Empire that's precisely what happened the Empire collapse the Latin disappeared and what the Latin people used to call vernaculars they took over and that's the that's the seed of the of the modern European history when the Europeans came to us they contributed many good things in the field of knowledge but they tried to talk about our past and build a historiography for us they tried to draw maps for us in from their perspective of cartography they they put together many takes and scholars like Sir William Jones produced produce a wonderful community of scholars in said together a wonderful community of scholars in Calcutta the Asiatic Society it was initially the quest to understand initially when the British came to Bombay and in surah prior to that they used to hire Armenian interpreters they wanted to communicate with people here they wanted they wanted that some kind of dialogue be established but the quest to understand India the quest to understand the Orient in general the quest for establishing a dialogue slowly changed Nathaniel holla'd produced the first grammar of Bengali and that was out of genuine under interest to understand how the Bengali works but slowly the the command of language became the language of command slowly we here started believing that we have to know the English language if we have to have knowledge to some extent that was right but we push this demand a bit too far people like Raja Ram Raja Ram Andhra actually went to London and said they're asking for teaching through English Macaulay responded even if elphinston in Bombay was saying that there are schools in Marathi and Gujarati and good schools the language became the language of command it became a conquest and when a language achieves this kind of conquest then the mindset changes and one feels that what that language has alone is truth and therefore our oral traditions started undergoing many changes in the East India Company had set up the first printing office in st. fort Williams and they started printing languages like Hindi Marathi though accidentally a printing machine had landed in Goa but used only for a short time for printing kannada language and so we started accepting the idea that what is oral is a taboo and what is written has a Protima call you as a matter of fact many of our knowledge traditions where oral knowledge traditions we speak in the name of the Mahabharata and so on a karamaneh genius to say that everybody in India knows the Mahabharat because nobody reads it it is oral and we all know it so knowledge has no relationship with writing as a matter of fact very few languages in the world have their own scripts and yet they can be major languages English has no script of its own it is still using the Roman script but it is not way one cannot say it is an underdeveloped language as time pass and we came to the post-independence period we decided that only the languages that were printed should have a political authority and therefore we decided to set up linguistic states in this country this is a unique feature of Indian state that we have linguistic states because we had inherited the philosophy of nationalism here from the European countries and once we set up the linguistic States we had a big gap law to how to count our languages in the 1961 census as I had asked that question does anybody know how many languages in 1961 census the Census soared 1652 mother tongues 1652 mother tongues claimed by the people in this country in 71 as the census was getting ready in the next door there was a war on the language issue Bangladesh became as in a separate country and after 71 these the figures of census we're not revealed it was decided that only those languages which are spoken by more than 10,000 alone will be listed and the list of 1971 census was 108 languages and the hundred and 9th was all other languages so from 1650 two languages we had reduced the official number of languages in this country 208 that's roughly killing at least making honour officially making them languages without any citizenship almost 1400 of those and speakers of those languages are made invisible generations in this country because if the language is not included in the age schedule if it is not listed in the census then no state machinery can support education in that language primary schools colleges universities are just not possible no funding is available for that just day before a study the Prime Minister has said there is right to education for everybody but mind you it is not right to education through the mother tongue and when you do not teach a child the language that the child learns at home then what you impose on that child is called in the Greek language aphasia that's almost if I were Anupam Kher I would put my tongue out and show it clipped you cutting the tongue of the child is the mother tongue and aphasia of course is when the when the communication between you know between the brain and the speech organ fails when the either there is something wrong in the motor system or with the speech organs you're not able to speak but it is not aphasia of this kind we are imposing as a nation aphasia on speakers of almost 1400 languages that's the sentence it's a I mean it's ironic that I'm using that word sentence we are taking away the sentence and that's a punishment and what we are encouraging is a kind of monolingual cacophony you will be shocked to know that today 96% of Indian speak 4% of languages and 4% of Indian speak 96% of languages this was not the situation 50 years back the number has has gone down at the 1961 census we have 46% Indians speaking those languages so we have reduced 42% of Indian population from linguistic citizens in this country to no citizenship pattern and we are encouraging the rule of only a few languages I am NOT against those languages I respect all languages alike but there is a great social injustice involved in it and there is a great rape of knowledge involved in it a linguist a linguist a friend of mine said to me that one day she saw a woman and the old woman was talking to a sparrow so in the under man's so this silicon watabe the linguist asked her why why are you talking to sparrow the old woman said I am the only speaker alive of my lang and if I do not speak - nobody else understands if I do not speak to this Sparrow what will happen to my language this bow the woman from bow tribe both the senior she died on the 26th January on the Republic Day this year and with her death in history of 65 thousand years of that language has gone and gone with that is the knowledge and the memory historical memory that language held and this is the fate of so many other languages in the country we are pushing those languages to that fate democracies all over the world are becoming dictatorial we don't have to I do not have to state it I come from Gujarat many of you visited the United States everywhere democracies are becoming the tutorial through democratic apparatus and in a country like India if we have people who rule us who speak only one or two languages will they be able to reflect the aspirations of the people truly will they be able to reflect the world views of the people truly if a democracy means respect for diversity then how can democracy exist by killing diversity therefore we have to learn to listen to silence I am rather sad in saying this our century 21st century action of voices all over the world so while we think that we are getting connected we are actually ready gating this was we have to listen to this I'll the Bombay party this a little story I want to tell I will go back to the tiger presentation it was from the core Co area this story is written by mahadeva the bangla writer you know perhaps that the bomb that the surah thrower aligned was led by the british by taking away the core KU forest when the forest was taken away very bad poor quality of land was given to the tribals they could not cultivate it and therefore they therefore the yield say he started no coming down generation after generation they became victims of hunger starvation by starvation death the government of mirage appointed a committee and said what can we do it is a genetic disease called sickle-cell here that is the real situation the story begins here and that is the the maja Davis story the stories like this when the cork ooze knew that they are going to die they decided to die a death of dignity and therefore they made a special heart and when a person was to die the person was to go there and wait for death somebody had Jennifer had heard that cuckoos are dying the Geneva scientists had heard that there is a liquid which can be injected in the body and somehow these people can be saved and so on so the fellow came he injected this liquid in the body of the last survivor whose name was Maha do this Madhu Boyd was injected that the scientists went away to his conference in Geneva to report on you know water findings Madhu is waiting in the heart waiting for his death and he he hears at a distance the whistle of a train is the Calcutta is the horas or train and suddenly his historical memory stirred he feels the fragrance of the the timber that the British had chopped from the area so he decides to jump jump onto the train and the Train brings somehow to Bombay in Bombay hadoo sees a very strange sight a strange thing which she had not seen for a long time he sees food in Bombay and he starts eating and he eats everything he eats in the food available in Bombay he eats the boot building he eats the Raja by a tower he eats the new building being built by somebody called Mukesh Ambani and because of that that fluid injected in his body Madhu grows tall in stature and his head touches almost this almost touches the sky then Madhu's thirsty so he bends down and he drinks the arabian sea and then rises again lifts his arms and plucks the stars in the sky and starts writing in the sky the history of mankind again and the first sentence in that histories every language is a unique world view do not kill it how tolerance let diversity live then alone democracies can be democracies particularly in a country like India thank you ladies and gentlemen