The debates and arguments about language as a unifying factor in the development of India as a union state resulted in adopting the three-language formula prescribed by the first Education Commission (1964-66). Till date, the stress on the three-language formula can be seen more with the advent of the New Education Policy 2020. Under this three-language formula, it states that greater flexibility in the implementation; no language will be imposed on any state; the three languages learned by the children will be the choices of the state, region, and of course, the students themselves so long as at least the three languages are native to India (NEP, 2020). Consequently, the three-language formula leaves little space for the smaller linguistic communities in school education. Minority speakers usually shift to dominant languages of the state in almost all functional domains and these languages are restricted to the home or intra-group communication.
According to the 2011 Census, 121 languages with 270 mother tongues, and 22 are classified as Scheduled languages[1]. Those with a speaker’s strength of over 10,000 above are classified as mother tongues. Out of the 270 mother tongues, 123 mother tongues are grouped under the scheduled languages, and 147 mother tongues are grouped under Non-scheduled languages” (Mishra, 2020). This is comparatively low to the census 1971 mentioned above, despite the protection and preservations of languages and minority languages are well-defined within constitutional safeguards and provisions. For instance, Article 347 allows the use of minority languages for an official purpose; Article 350 (A) provides the provision to provide adequate facilities for instructions in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups and Article 350 (B) gives power to the President to appoint appropriate officers and use proper methods to investigate and safeguard the rights of linguistic minorities. Under the Ek Bharat-Shrestha- Bharat scheme more opportunities are allowed to develop in both print and digital materials on minority languages that should be utilized in fun projects/activities on the languages of India in Grade 6-8. Further, under this scheme, there are opportunities to develop short films/ documentaries on the cultures and societies of the indigenous and lesser-known communities.
In the context of the NER, which is home to around 125 languages, many belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family with one distinctive language (Khasi spoken in Meghalaya) that belongs to the Austro-Asiatic family.
All the Northeast states are multilingual; all eight states have many small tribal languages. The question of such smaller minor-tribal languages is one of the most critical issues in the current scenario with the advent of the NEP in 2020. For years, the National Curriculum Framework, 2005 has been talking about mother tongue-based multilingual education and the need for children’s mother tongues to be the medium of instruction in the early classes. Despite all these many small tribal/minority languages are yet to feature in the educational system. For example, Arunachal Pradesh has around 20 languages/mother tongues but none are featured in school education according to the 50th Report of the Commissioner of Linguistic Minorities. The three-language formula followed in the state is English (L1), Hindi (L2), and Assamese/Sanskrit/Bhoti (L3). Many reasons can be attributed to this; one can be the community members are not aware of the need for mother tongues in education and their negative attitude towards their language. The second factor is that such communities are helpless and remain susceptible to the system. Such a system rarely showed any concerns for preserving and sustaining the languages of these communities and sees them as uneconomically viable to do so. Further, the helplessness comes with factors such as the lack of linguistic documentation and a writing system; another factor is the dearth of literary materials that could support the inclusion of such languages in the school education. Both factors could be the lack of space for such languages to function in societal domains, as discussed in other research (Pattanayak & Illich, 1981; Pandharipande, 2001, and several others). Therefore, building a digital database of such minor-tribal languages can be a resourceful platform in supporting the development of teaching-learning materials to be integrated with teacher education programmes.
Recognizing the urgent need to document and preserve these invaluable linguistic resources, the NERIE-NCERT is organizing a five-day workshop. The primary focus of this workshop is to compile data for Non-Scheduled languages of the region, with the ultimate goal of creating a comprehensive database. This database will be a valuable resource for developing accessible educational materials aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This initiative is crucial for ensuring that every child, irrespective of their linguistic background, has equal opportunities to learn and thrive.
