India’s history should be be written from people’s perspective: Ganesh Devy

Stating that the people of India are multilingual by nature, Devy said the Vadodara-based Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, founded by him before moving to Dharwad in Karnataka in 2016, was working on establishing the “evident connections of language pan-Asia”.

“A small idea that we have (through linguistic research) is that right from the regions of Syria and Turkey to Japan, we are one people… The Armenian language is known to be connected to Indian languages… So, right from Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries, we have linguistic inter-relations. Our next ambitious project will research on how this human civilisation moved to diversity,” Devy said.

He also highlighted the contribution of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III in “promoting diversity”. “Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III encouraged many languages and promoted diversity… His Ministers were Bengali, Tamilians and also Maharashtrians… In fact, it is true that in every household in India, mothers are multi-lingual and do not speak only in their native tongue, which is also called the mother tongue. Every language that a mother speaks to a child in a house should be called the mother tongue. Therefore, Bhasha considers it a duty to focus on pan Asian diversity. We are trying to complete this research in the next five years.”

Talking about the “revisions” being made to historical texts that have been part of the education system so far in the country, Devy said, “History has to go through a lot of trials before it comes to be accepted as history… The council, which has been appointed (by the government) to revise history, has put its project on hold because academic researchers and writers are working hard to raise questions… Science is an open theory that can be challenged, religion is not. Once created, it is an absolute. History also needs experts from different domains to come together with authentic accounts…”

At the event, Kannada writer and critic Rahmat Tarikere said that the erstwhile royal states of Kolhapur, Mysore and Baroda were contemporaries with a common teacher, Sir AH Elliot, as their guru. Tarikere added that Devy had shifted from Vadodara to Karnataka in 2016 with a ‘shroud’ on his head. “While working on the research with Professor Devy, I have seen the pluralism of India in languages, religions, regions and people… He is a weaver, who moved to Karnataka and turned the literary threads into a fabric… But when he came to Karnataka, there was so much threat (following the murders of literary writers and social activists) that the situation was not good… He came with a kaffan (shroud) on his head and it would be right to say that he overcame the kaal (death).”

Devy’s book is co-edited by Tony Joseph and Ravi Korisettar. It will soon appear in translation in Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Bangla, Hindi, Gujarati and Odia.