Radio artiste Manoj Chaudhari sang and danced under a Mahuda tree,narrating a traditional exchange between a woman and her brother-in-law. Linguists from Nigeria,Kenya,Papua New Guinea,UK and continental Europe,USA and other parts of India joined him in the chorus,not understanding a single word. Chaudhari was singing in a tongue called Chaudhari,spoken by some 8 lakh people in south Gujarat,which hardly anyone else in the state speaks or understands. Yet,every person in Chaudharis audience connected with him in a common idea to preserve and protect every dialect spoken in the world from the choking onslaught of hegemons like English. On Sunday,at the end of the two-day Bhasha Vasudha global languages meet,some 600 delegates from across the world converged at the tribal academy founded by Dr Ganesh Devy in this hilly village 100 km from Vadodara. A day earlier,12 volumes of the first Peoples Linguistic Survey of India believed to be the first nationwide linguistic survey since George Griersons work in the beginning of 20th century were released. Devy chaired the Survey and,after giving up a career in teaching English at MS University,Baroda,founded the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre. He is now keen on a more ambitious project a global language survey covering 900 languages. So,at Bhasha Vasudha over the weekend,you could hear This is a meeting of languages,being spoken in 900 different tongues all at once Hayaan reya dunubh hoba tana in Ho,Ugbanjo ni own Itsekiri in Itsekiri,Keyigk gi zhelzom shalzom in Dzongkha,and Aaj parsi ka koomuti in Gondi. Ho is spoken by over 3 million people in Jharkhand and Orissa,Itsekiri belongs to Nigeria,Dzongkha to Bhutan,and Gondi is a tribal dialect spoken in Madhya Pradesh. All are struggling to survive. At one of the lunch breaks,Tony Afejuku,professor of English at the University of Benin in Nigeria,sat with fellow Nigerian Chinenye Nwabueze,professor of mass communications at the Anambra State University. Afejuku is from the Itsekiri tribe; Nwabueze is an Igbo. Both speak languages named after their tribes,and dont understand what the other man speaks. Afejuku is proud that his country has 450 tribes and as many languages,but is upset that he has to make a living teaching English. I am in exile in my own country. English is my exile, he said. Berrnard Giraud,who works to preserve ecodiversity,came from Paris with wife Nicole. We live in Paris but most of our neighbours speak Chinese or Arabic, Berrnard said. Nicole and he said languages like Britanny,of Celtic origin,and Corse,from Corsica,are all but dead in France. Quietly listening to Devy was Lung Taen Gyatso,a lama who teaches philosophy at the Royal University of Bhutan. His country has 20 languages. But children study in English,with only one course in Dzongkha. Gyatso has read Kalidasa in Sanskrit and speaks fluent Hindi. Like the biblical Tower of Babel,Bhasha Vasudha broke language barriers. Visitors would have come away with the knowledge that Maggi (or Muggi) is not instant noodles but a language and Maria is not merely a popular name for girls,but a dialect of Madhya Pradesh.
