Nepal plunges into politics of languages By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - The issue of official language(s) has never been as sensitive in
Nepal as it is now. While the interim statute maintains the continuity of
Nepali, in Devnagari script, as the language of official communication, some
members of the 601-strong Constituent Assembly want to add 11 more languages to
the list, giving them the same status, while others are advocating for the
addition of Hindi.
Otherwise, the members will resort to writing "notes of dissent", unwittingly
using an English expression to press their point. One contention is that since
Nepal is now a republic, it should adopt a language policy to de-link the
country's monarchical past.
If all 11 languages gain equal status with Nepali as demanded, that will still
leave Nepal's 60 other languages and dialects, which
are spoken by just 1% of the population in a country of over 25 million people,
off the list.
But does Nepal have the required resource-base to have a dozen official
languages? Yes, it is possible, said commentator Shyam Shrestha. Since
democracy requires equality, the state should be prepared to pay a concomitant
price for it, he said in a recent newspaper article.
Countries often cited for their liberal language policies are Switzerland,
Canada, India and South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa, for example, has
accepted 11 languages to address some ethnic communities. But with the passage
of time, English, although fifth on the list, has emerged as the most preferred
language there. Efforts to promote Afrikaans as the first language have not
produced encouraging results.
Nepali, an offspring of Sanskrit, is the mother tongue of 49% of the population
and has been in use for official communication for centuries. In Nepal's
neighborhood and beyond it is also called Gorkhali, a name derived to identify
it with the world famous Gurkha soldiers. It is a language with an enriched
vocabulary, grammar and literature. Besides being the official language, Nepali
has provided a link between and among communities speaking local languages and
dialects.
It is understood and spoken, with local accents and variations, in all
4,000-plus villages and towns that make up the present-day Nepal. No other
language has this level of outreach.
Credit - or discredit - for having agitated the public to protest the perceived
domination of the Nepali language goes to the Maoists. The Communist Party of
Nepal (Maoist), led by Prachanda, whose nine-month premiership ended in May,
has found it expedient to extend support to those who insist that the new
constitution must recognize all 12 languages as official ones.
Assembly member Barshaman Pun, affiliated to the Maoists, told the panel that
all remaining languages should be included in the annex of the statute. He also
wanted the words "people's war" to be included in the preamble of the new
statute so that the armed Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) will be remembered by
future generations. Members belonging to other parties insisted that the period
be described only as an "armed conflict".
In their initial effort to mobilize masses in favor of the "people's war", as
they chose to call it, Maoist leaders issued slogans and promises that they
would provide autonomous states "with the right to self-determination" on the
basis of ethnicity, language or religion. Scholars and analysts see this as the
main contradiction in the Maoist scheme.
If they were true communists they would have made it a class war - a battle to
seek justice for poor and downtrodden people, irrespective of ethnicity or
caste. They found it useful to go after catchy slogans without anticipating
that their moves would eventually create divisions in society and threaten the
integrity of Nepal as a nation state.
The persistent demand to turn Nepal's entire flatland, called Terai, in the
south bordering India into one state is being backed by over two-dozen armed
groups. There is a credible threat of separation should the current demand for
statehood not be met.
Some of the Maoist leaders do accept, in private conversation, that they made
some serious mistakes along the way but now find no agreeable way to rectify
them. In the absence of a face-saving device, they don't want to backtrack from
their declared objectives in public. On the day Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed in Sri Lanka this year, Prachanda
himself publicly alluded to the case of Sri Lanka, where the Tamil-speaking
community fought a protracted civil war that ended in tragedy.
At the start, Maoists did not realize that they were opening a Pandora's box.
And they also did not learn lessons from events in the former Yugoslavia and
elsewhere. Now they are in the midst of a host of issues for which there is no
durable or sustainable solution. The language issue is one such example. Of the
72 languages that are spoken in the country, some have numerous sub-groups.
Some scholars of the Rai community in the eastern hills, for instance, have
discovered 28 variations of the Rai language, with speakers of each group
wanting their dialect to receive identical treatment from the state. The Sherpa
community, which provides high-altitude guides to mountaineers attempting to
scale Everest and other Himalayan peaks, is uncomfortable over purported moves
to marginalize their language to bestow a higher status to a language used by
recent immigrants from Tibet. But people living in the foothills of snow-capped
mountains in the northern belt have not lost their cool, and are not making
much noise.
The situation is quite different in the southern belt, which shares porous
borders with India's Bihar state - known for lawlessness - and Uttar Pradesh
state, with a large population, among others. Small political parties, with
loaded regional overtones, suddenly felt strong enough to demand that Hindi,
spoken mainly in northern India and popularized by India's Mumbai-based film
industry, be given the status enjoyed by Nepali. This happened on the eve of
the national polls of April 2008 that were held to elect the constituent
assembly.
Existing regional parties were emboldened with the sudden emergence of new
parties, mainly consisting of disgruntled leaders from the mainstream national
parties such as Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), which
is considered a moderate communist group when compared with the Maoists.
Media reports claimed the new political parties were floated - ahead of the
crucial election - with moral and material support from the south; but official
India promptly denied such reports and allegations.
Those who have appeared vocal in the constituent assembly debate belong to
these newly formed parties, and have inserted the dissenting opinion with the
demand that Hindi too be made an official language like Nepali. Their main
argument is that since most Nepalis watch Hindi films and enjoy listening to
Hindi music there should not be any hesitation to accept it as an official
Nepal language.
Upendra Yadav, head of the Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum, a Terai-based party, said
that given neighboring India already included Nepali in its list of recognized
languages, Nepal needs to reciprocate the gesture by accepting Hindi on this
side of the border. But he denied charges that he was speaking as a spokesman
for India.
"English is the language of science and development," said Birendra Yadav, a
lawyer based in the border town of Birgunj. In a written comment published
recently he argued that should the government decide to make additional
investments in language it must do so to enhance younger people's accessibility
to English, not Hindi. India itself has flourished because of the use of
English.
Ram Chandra Jha, a former minister representing the moderate Unified Marxist
Leninist party, suspects that the idea to make Hindi a link language in Nepal
could be a ploy to weaken the roots of the Maithili language on the Indian
side. Maithili's status in Nepal is higher than in India. In other words,
promoters of Hindi in India might have a hand in Nepal's campaign in order to
preempt any identical demands on the Indian side of the border.
With this compelling argument, Jha and his fellow UML leaders have convinced
the party's central leadership that Nepali alone should be given official
language status in Nepal. Nepali Congress, the other party among the three big
parties, also holds the position that it is only Nepali that deserves to be the
lingua franca of Nepal.
Language experts do not consider Hindi's case as a tenable proposition as the
percentage of the population using Hindi as its mother tongue is 0.47%. To
enjoy Hindi movies and music, which is done even in America and Europe, cannot
be a basis to accept it as a serious language of mass communication. Hindi,
although given national language status in India, is not widely used.
Television viewers have seen Indian Interior Minister P Chidambaram handling
Hindi questions in English. English continues to be the language of Indian law
courts.
If Hindi is accepted as an official language this would pose a direct threat to
Terai's existing regional languages such as Maithili, Bhojpuri, Avadhi and
Thaaru, they contend. In the view of Professor Madhav Prasad Pokharel of
Tribhuwan University, to entertain the current advocacy being made for Hindi
would spark the highly sensitive issue of nationalism. Languages, he said, need
to be placed in four categories: mother tongues of all communities; the link
language, which is Nepali; cultural languages such as Sanskrit, used by Hindus
and Buddhists alike for religious rites and Arabic/Urdu which are essential for
Muslims; and English.
All mother tongues deserve preservation, Nepali should be allowed to function
as the official and link language, cultural languages must be inserted on the
list of recognized languages and English be formally accepted as the language
of international communication. There is no role or room for Hindi as it stands
now.
Meanwhile, leaders of various ethnic communities appear to have realized that
the Nepali language is one vital foundation to establish the collective
identity of the diverse ethnic groups that make up Nepal.
Dhruba Adhikary is a Kathmandu-based journalist.
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