'Political dispensation forcing India to close its mind'

Why would a renowned literary critic, tribal activist and writer leave behind his home and life's work in Vadodara and move to quiet Dharwad? It could be about letting go and be an 'aparigrah' as GN Devy likes to call it. Aparigrah is Sanskrit for somebody who practises non-attachment. The 67-yearold founder of the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), moved to Dharwad a year ago because he believes “organisations grow when their founders depart“. Devy, a former English professor at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, set up

Bhasha

Research and Publication Centre in 1996. The trust undertook the PLSI in 2010 and runs an

Adivasi Academy

for tribal students.Last year, he stepped down as part of a planned withdrawal. “I am not a neta. All that I have been is being a thinker, a meditative and quiet person,“ he says.

Devy has always let his actions do the talking. The scale of PLSI is the perfect example -the two-year initiative involved 3,500 volunteers and found that the country's linguistic heritage had shrunk from 1,100 languages in 1961 to 880 in 2013 (PLSI couldn't document 100 languages). The academy and its activities touched more than 15 lakh tribals in the last 15 years all initiatives Devy undertook without much government support, at least initially. Devy is now working on a Global Language Status Report, and has just published 'On The Crisis Within: On Knowledge and Education in India', a book on the loss of language and cultural memory leading to denial of access to higher education. Devy, who moved to Dharwad due to his close association with the late rationalist writer MM Kalaburagi who was shot dead by unknown miscreants, believes that language, which exists for connecting different people, is being used for control in India.Excerpts from an interview.

It's been more than a year since you moved to Dharwad. Why did you move and what has your experience been?

Dharwad is a place of many legendary singers and writers. It is a quiet and somewhat solitary town with a great cultural heritage. My arrival in Dharwad was hugely wel comed. Surekha (his wife) and I keep our house open for all to come and dis cuss, plan literary and cultural activities, to exchange human joys and sorrows.Life continues as if there has been no break caused by the relocation.I have been able to write more since I came to Dharwad, and I find myself giving more public lectures than before.

How did PLSI come about?

In 2006, I realised that the official plan for a linguistic survey wasn't going forward. So I met representatives of nearly 300 languages in 2010 and we decided to take up a People's Linguistic Survey of India without waiting for government help. A few weeks later, I started going from state to state creating teams of volunteers. In September 2013, the national exercise was completed. Something considered nearly impossible was accomplished through collective efforts of several thousands.

Do you think the anxiety expressed by some south Indians about the central government and BJP imposing and pushing 'north Indian' culture and values is justified?

The anxiety in the south about the cultural invasion by the values promoted by the BJP government at the centre is entirely justified. The values promoted are of intolerance towards diversity, contempt for criticism and an arrogance of power. What are being promoted as 'Hindu' values are not at all consistent with the values embedded in the Upanishads or in the thought of Chaitanya or Abhinavagupta.What is at stake is not the limited question of the north versus the south. These two have lived in harmony for the last 3,000 years. Spiritually great fountains of thought within the dy namic Hindu practices originated in the south. I h ave n o doubt that whether it was

Ramana Maharishi

or Aurobindo, Madhavacharya or Vallabhacharya, they all would have found the brand of non-compassionate Hindutva quite repulsive. What the present political dispensation doing is to spread fear through intimidation, forcing India to close its mind. How can the south accept that? After a while, the north too will start rejecting such versions of the Hindu way of life.

What is the impact of languages like Hindi and English on India's memory traditions?

The memory traditions of India were adversely affected by printing technology. When some Indian languages started getting printed in the 19th century, they came to be seen as the languages fit for literary activities. New educational institutions --created for promoting English education -added to this false distinction. The written became the solemn foundation of knowledge and the oral became a sign of intellectual backwardness.When India became free and the states were organised along linguistic lines, only languages that had printed literature got their own states. All other languages -even when the population speaking them was sufficiently large -did not get states. Bhili is divided among four states, so is Gondi. Such languages became minority languages in these newly created states. Education through those lan guages came to be seen -quite un scientifically and with dis astrous re sults -as impossibility. The effects of that turn of events in India's modern history have been far reaching on the economy, sociology and politics of our country. Neither Hindi nor English are any threat to anyone. They become threats when they are combined with sociological or political visions founded in exclusionary tendencies. A bhasha exists for connecting, and not disconnecting, different people. It is when the difference comes to be seen as undesirable that the desire to control bhasha, expression, becomes paramount. That is precisely what is happening in India today.

What were the difficulties in setting up Bhasha 20 years ago?

The Bhasha Centre had to be created from scratch. It was not set up because of any project or grant. Given my university background, I had to learn new skills and tasks. I was never alone. Former students from the

Baroda University

came as unpaid volunteers. Others brought in monetary contributions.

Why did you start working for denotified and nomadic tribals along authors Mahasweta Devi and

Laxman Gaikwad

?

There are about 191 communities that were once wrongly notified as `criminal tribes' by the colonial government and stigmatized. After their 'denotification', these communities continued to suffer. Moved by a lecture delivered by Mahasweta Devi at Bhasha, we decided to establish the DNTRights Action Group, the first-ever national campaign and worked to abolish the Habitual Offenders Act.Bhasha's energetic campaign received an overwhelming response from the communities. We had opened up a long festering wound. As a leader of that campaign I had to give serious thought about how to turn the anger into constructive energy. I decided to use the ancient method of getting people angry without making them destructive, which is `theatre'.

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