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VOL. 03, NO. 01, June 01, 2009 (Jestha 18 2066)
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Linguistic Diversity in Nepal:
Situation and Policy
1. Background
Nepal is rich in its cultural and linguistic diversity. Nepalese belong to 103 caste and ethnic groups (CBS 2001) who are largely Hindus, Buddhists, Kiratis, Animists, and Muslims and speak around 92 languages officially-recognised by the state (CBS 2001; Yadava and Turin 2007). As a result, Nepal has evolved as a unique cultural space with numerous religious and philosophical values, customs and practices (Pradhan and Shrestha 2006).
Despite being a multilingual nation, a single language, viz. Nepali, has been given power, recognition and prestige while, as a corollary, the remaining minority languages and their communities are impoverished and marginalized. As a result, linguistic minorities have remained socially excluded from harnessing national benefits in fields such as politics, economy, education, employment and so on. It is, therefore, necessary to address these issues of linguistic minorities in the context of inclusive democracy in Nepal. It is from this perspective that the present study has been undertaken.
2. Objectives of the study
The goal of this study is to present the current situation of the existing linguistic diversity in Nepal, with a focus on the linguistic minorities such as Janajati and Madhesi and to propose an inclusive language policy and planning with a view to enabling these socially excluded groups to access the benefits of the national system and accommodate themselves into it. More specifically, this study addresses the following objectives:
i. To present an approximation of Nepal’s languages on the basis of existing studies including various census reports.
ii. To provide their details such as genetic affiliation, demography, literate traditions, ethnicity, bi/multilingualism, domains of language use including education, language shift and vitality, language endangerment and the like.
iii. To see how social exclusion of diverse forms is related to their linguistic issues; and finally,
iv. To propose a viable language policy and plan of action for Nepalese languages which can induce the social inclusion of deprived language communities into the national system.
3. Methodology
To achieve the goals of this study, the following research devices and tools have been devised and used:
i. Review of existing literature
ii. Preparation of an inventory of stakeholders for eliciting relevant information
iii. Development of a questionnaire to understand language situation and assess the stakeholders’ needs and perceptions
iv. Collection of relevant information on marginalization of linguistic minorities in social, economic and political fields;
v. Other relevant methods required.
4. Major findings
1. There exist variations in the various estimates about the identification of languages spoken in Nepal. Hence, there is a need for their precise identification through an objective linguistic survey.
2. Due to the lack of adequate studies about several languages it is difficult to understand the precise genetic relationships among languages.
3. With respect to heteroglotonyms, some language communities have negative attitudes towards these tendencies; a few are neutral and most are positive towards heteroglotonyms.
4. There exists no satisfactory account of information about regional, social and stylistic varieties of languages in Nepal.
5. Most languages have been confined to just their oral traditions and have not been introduced to any writing systems.
6. There is no standardization of languages including Nepali.
7. Most of the language communities are dissatisfied with the language census figures.
8. Linguistic diversity is a fact to be reckoned with in Nepal.
9. Multilingualism or bilingualism is widely prevalent resulting in language convergence and language loss owing to language shift.
10. As for the domains of language use, the following observations have been made in this study:
• Nepali alone has been used in administration.
• There are 15 mother tongues used in primary education as a subject, medium or both.
• There has been recent thrust to introduce quite a few languages in media.
• Nepali has been mostly used a second language in the hills and the mountains and Hindi in the Terai.
11. Most language communities have expressed interest in preserving and promoting their mother tongues.
12. Very few languages have availed language resources in print and mass media.
13. Most speakers have positive attitude towards their mother tongues.
14. Most languages are more or less threatened with extinction and need to be revitalized and promoted.
5. Recommendations
In order to resolve the linguistic issues and challenges, there is a need to envisage the following two types of language planning:
i. corpus planning (i.e. intervention in the forms of a language) and
ii. status planning (deliberate efforts to allocate the functions of languages and literacies within a speech community).
5.1 Corpus planning
o To carry out linguistic survey for precise identification of Nepalese languages and their dialects and their genetic relationships through a definitive standard;
o To provide their details such as genetic affiliation, demography, literate traditions, ethnicity, bi/multilingualism, domains of language use including education, language shift and vitality, and language endangerment;
o To develop practical orthographies for preliterate languages, including choice of script;
o To carry out linguistic documentation and descriptive studies in the languages identified;
o To develop multi-lingual dictionaries;
o To prepare grammars – descriptive grammars, reference grammars, and pedagogical grammars; and
o To preserve and promote endangered languages through their immediate documentation and revitalization programmes.
5.2 Status planning
In the context of the envisaged federal structure of the country there is a need for designing Nepal’s language policy to preserve and/or promote all local, regional, and national languages. Roughly speaking, this inclusive policy may be categorized as follows:
5.2.1 Official language policy
Keeping in view the restructuring of Nepal into various linguistic states, it would be legitimate to suggest a bilingual policy for each state, a policy favoring the two official languages: a lingua franca (federal language) and a regional language.
A lingua franca is used to communicate across linguistic barriers. Nepali, a lingua franca used mostly in the hills and mountains and Hindi used mostly in the Terai can be legitimate choices for official language. If states are created on linguistic basis, each will have its regional language which can be used as another official language apart from Nepali or Hindi. Some of the possible options from among regional languages include Maithili, Bhojpuri, Tharu, Tamang, Newar, Magar, Avadhi, Bantawa, Gurung, and Limbu. However, some minor languages (such as several Rai languages, Dhangar, Santhali, Urdu, Bhujel, etc.) are confined to just one or more specific VDCs. In such a case they can be used as medium of local administration provided that these languages are translated into the two official languages. This provision will ensure equal linguist right to every language community. Based on ‘territorized’ individual rights, such an inclusive language policy recognizes the same rights to all members of a community within a specific region.
5.2.2 Policy for use of language in education and media
The following three types of recommendations for use of language in education need to be incorporated in the envisaged language policy for Nepal:
o To determine the minority languages for which mother-tongue literacy programs are most urgent and most viable;
o To develop model primers should for these languages employing content that is sensitive to the local language, local teaching style, local art, and local culture;
o To conduct the training of competent and fully qualified mother tongue teachers;
o To develop adequate “bridge materials,” designed to take the minority-language student from basic competence in his or her mother tongue to competence and ability in Nepali or other languages of wider communication (LWC);
o To postpone the introduction of international languages like English to a later phase, after skills in the mother-tongue and the LWC have been adequately addressed;
o To continue ongoing production and distribution of primers, readers, and manuals for mother tongue education;
o To do school mapping for existing and future students to co-relate with access to schools;
o To propogate radio announcements and bulletins pertaining to health, environment and other social issues; and
o To operate regional broadcast service in regional languages by Radio Nepal and FM programmes owned and operated by local communities.
5.3 The founding of National Language Academy
To regulate and monitor the strategies and activities enshrined in the language policy it is imperative, as in India, China and elsewhere, to establish a “National Language Academy”, having autonomous status, and having the responsibility of understanding and articulating “best practice” policies with respect to mother-tongue and multilingual education.
Social Inclusion Research Fund (SIRF): An Introduction
As a follow-up to an assessment of Norwegian support to NGOs in Nepal (2001), the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Kathmandu, envisaged a need to stimulate further research on processes of national building, social exclusion and poverty, and the role of the civil society in Nepal. As per the report titled “Social Exclusion and Nation building – Assessment of prospects for enhancing the role of research and research institutions in Nepal” (June 2003), the Government of Nepal and Royal Norwegian Embassy at Kathmandu, agreed in 2005, to establish a Research Fund and support research cooperation between a Norwegian and a Nepali research institution to carry out research on issues of social exclusion. SNV Nepal was invited to manage the research fund.
The main objectives of the Social Inclusion Research Fund (SIRF) are as follows:
Produce high quality and critical research on causes of social exclusion in Nepal and ways to accommodate and manage diversity.
Make social science research more relevant to excluded and disadvantaged groups and their agendas.
Ensure that research more effectively contributes to policy and public debate and a deliberative democratic process
A total of 25 Research Fellowships were awarded in 2006 and 2007. A total of 150 Apprenticeship Grants have been awarded in 2006 and 2007. Two Norwegian research institutions and five Nepali research institutions are cooperating in carrying out research and have published eight research papers.
SIRF is in the process of carrying out policy dialogue with the political party leaders, government agencies and civil society organisation through dissemination of critical discourse related to the outcome of the research programme, as well as allowing for advocacy groups to “take back” and use the research results for their own purpose. SIRF is also working with political party leaders and Constituent Assembly (CA) members to make the Constitution more inclusive.
The Government of Nepal is initiating the process of making the Fund an independent autonomous body under the new law to be enacted by parliament.
Indigenous Knowledge- An Identity of Tharu
By: Mohan Das Manandhar
Rojan Bajracharya*
The current political transformation in Nepal – to which contemporary political parties directly or indirectly trace their lineage – has been substantially supported by the rising voices of the suppressed indigenous. So, the common consent has been slowly built between the concern stakeholders to debate on the social inclusion issues for the Nation Building which has been the main theme of policy dialogue forums like Social Inclusion Research Fund (SIRF).
It is important to recognize that Nepal is cultural and ethnic mosaic so the country can capitalize the benefit of these complexities if the country is cognizance with the essence of all ethnic and cultural groups. In consistence to such spirit, the recent ethnic movements aware the government on the ethnic right and the latest one is the Tharu movement. Nevertheless, the problem associate with the Tharu movement is that it focuses on the political and civic right against government’s enlisting them in Madeshi but the defining socio cultural identity of Tharu community still remains. Professor Yogendra Yadav, research fellow of the SIRF, opine on the commonality of language in Terai, the major residential area of Tharu. So, we deduce that the language, the most referred cultural identify by the some Terai based activists, won’t identify all ethnic communities of Terai including Tharu. Hence, the question arise on how can Tharu be identified from the other inhabitants of Terai?
Whatever the answer to that question, nearly every individual Tharu agrees that Tharus are enriched with Indigenous Knowledge which distinct them from any ethnic communities of Terai. In this regard, we would like to highlight the findings of a SIRF funded research conducted by Gopal Dahit which focuses on the Indigenous Knowledge of Tharu.
The study has listed 19 areas of Tharu Indigenous Knowledge which are unique by nature and practices. Primarily, the study focuses on three types of Indigenous Knowledge namely, medical system, food and drinks and organizational system.
In terms of medical system, Tharus have three basic practices and practitioners. These are: Tharu Mantars practiced by Guruwas (spiritual/shaman), Massage by Sohrinya (birth attendants) and other practice-men/women, and Medicinal plants by Baidawas (herbalists).
In terms of Food and Drinks, Tharu prepares the distinct food items - Dhikri, Khariya, Kapwa, Kanjwa, Mar and Jhajhara - which do not match with other communities.
In term of organizational structure, Tharus have an old and genuine organizational system that has evolved to regulate their main profession, agriculture. The organizational system is divided into four levels namely, village lead by Barghariya, irrigation by Kulapani Chaudhary, Family/ household led by Gardhuriya and Agro-farming led by Kisanwa.
Dahit claims that the Indigenous Knowledge of Tharu is in the verge of extinct due to the social exclusion practices of the country.
As per the essence of the study, we conclude that Tharus are enriched with their indigenous knowledge and the government should acknowledge it which will traditionalize such knowledge in the society and consequently concretize the identity of Tharu.
(* Both authors are associated with Social Inclusion Research Fund. The views expressed are those of the authors' alone and do not represent the author’s affiliated institutions)
