Nothing can be more sublime than one’s attachment to the mother tongue

The number of things people belonging to different religions, cultures, creeds, and speak different languages, and practice different rituals, have in common, is truly amazing.

Fossil and DNA evidence indicate that having evolved in Africa approximately two to three lakh years ago, Homo sapiens migrated to the rest of the world.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam, classified as Abrahamic religions, trace their spiritual and genealogical origins to the patriarch Abraham.

Irrespective of the language a composition is made, its structure is based on ‘raga’, or different combinations of the same seven notes of music.

Then why do we have barriers across caste, creed, religion, language and culture? They are, after all, only artificial divisions, largely created by politicians and religious leaders, for serving their own vested interests.

Patronage by rulers in olden days was the primary catalyst for languages to flourish, acting as a crucial bridge between scholarly expression and widespread cultural acceptance. Rulers fostered linguistic development through financial support, official recognition, and personal engagement in literary pursuits.

Throughout history, several monarchs and rulers were not only known for their military or administrative prowess, but also for being accomplished poets, writers, and patrons of literature. They used literature and poetry as a form of self-expression, political propaganda and intellectual pursuit.

There are many such examples in Indian history. For instance, King Harsha, a prominent emperor in north India in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, is credited with having authored three Sanskrit plays, including ‘Priyadarsika’.

Also in this category is Malwa region’s King Bhoja, whose books covered a range of subjects, from poetry to architecture. King Vikramaditya was known for his generous patronage of poetry. His Court was adorned by great poets such as Bihana and Shantinatha.

Vijayanagara Empire’s Queen Ganga Devi authored the historical poem ‘Madhura Vijayam’, chronicling the Vijayanagara conquest of Madurai. Sri Krishna Devaraya wrote the classic ‘Amuktamalyada’, in the introduction of which he famously quoted Lord Vishnu of Srikakulam, as having appeared to him in a dream and telling him to write the book in Telugu, the ‘sweetest’ of Indian languages.

Such patronage, extended by benign and enlightened rulers, was also common elsewhere in the world.

Henry VIII, James I, Queen Victoria, Guillaume (William) IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and Gascony in France have carved a niche for themselves for their exceptional scholarly and creative pursuits.

Meanwhile, the advent of the digital era has caused a massive die-off of languages of the world, which are going extinct at an alarming rate, almost at the rate of one every fortnight.

Apparently, due to the harsh environment, minority languages are unable to survive and enter the digital space unless supported. A study has it that less than five per cent of languages currently in use are expected to qualify for digitisation. Consequently, technologies have emerged. Projects like ‘Lingua Libre’, archive and document endangered languages before they vanish completely.

Moreover, new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have become available, which help preserve such languages. While technology, undoubtedly, is a powerful tool for preservation, it also serves as a catalyst for bringing into being a more homogeneous, English-dominated digital landscape. Thus, there is in place, today, a situation which has created a complex and dualistic reality for languages. Technology is both accelerating the decline of many while providing tools for the survival and revitalisation of some others. It is akin to Darwinian manifestation, figuratively speaking, of ‘survival of the fittest’, in the community of languages. It is not that languages are losing their relevance. Only, a rapid shift is taking place on account of the emphasis on online communications, with a small number of dominant languages thriving, while a vast majority are ending up ‘digitally dead’.

The internet is heavily dominated by a handful of languages, such as English, Chinese and French. Also, digital communication sets heavy store on brevity, with acronyms such as Laugh Out Loud (LOL), Away From Keyboard (AFK) and Ask Me Anything (AMA) and expressions such as trending, viral, emojis and shortened slang dominating the environment and traditional vocabulary finding sparing use. A process of linguistic erosion and compression!

Latin, ancient Greek and Sanskrit are generally considered ‘dead’’ languages, as they nearly lack a community of native speakers, who use them for daily communication. Sanskrit, while not in use anymore as a spoken tongue, continues to be used widely in Hindu rituals, yoga and academic studies. While these languages may lack natural and day-to-day use, none of them is in immediate danger of disappearing altogether.

Irrespective of whatever is happening in the realm of communication through languages, against the background of the increasing domination of digital technology, the primacy of an individual’s mother tongue, as a conduit for the appreciation of fine arts, like literature, music, and poetry, and as an authentic vehicle for artistic expression and understanding, remains unchallenged. This is largely on account of the emotional resonance which one experiences while using the mother tongue. The first Indian Nobel Laureate, philosopher, social reformer and composer, Rabindranath Tagore, equated the mother tongue to mother’s milk and as the natural medium for expressing innocent feelings and inner truths; a language in which one‘s inner sentiments are formulated. Even the British implemented the system of regional languages as media of instruction up to the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC). The mother tongue is also deeply entertained with cultural identity, inherited traditions, stories, and social values, without which one is in danger of missing the subtle nuances and cultural metaphors, and historical context, that give literature and poetry their richness, the reason why artists believe that genuine poetry can only be created in the mother tongue, the language of one’s dreams and earliest emotions.

The areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) use the lexicon of an emerging digital genre known as techno – scientific public discourse, a highly precise technical terminology with informal, multimodal and interactive social jargon. In such communications, abbreviations, hashtags and visual aids, such as info graphics and graphs, are used to convey complex data rapidly. For digital platforms like Weibo, X and LinkedIn, such specialised vocabulary is crucial.

No matter how hard languages try to preserve their individuality and uniqueness, the rapidity of present day communication, and the need for increasing the size of vocabulary common to most languages, is making some words acquire practically universal comprehension. Some examples are mama, papa, coffee, khaki, tea or chai, banana, taxi, telephone, ok, metro, airport, TV, computer, football, sugar, yoga and Nirvana.

The attachment one feels towards the mother tongue was best demonstrated by the story (probably apocryphal), that is attributed to the legendary maverick poet-Tenali Ramalingaiah. When a versatile poet from a distant land visited the Emperor’s court and challenged the erudite people present on the occasion to defeat him in any language of the country, Ramalingaiah volunteered to take up the gauntlet. Instead of engaging in a direct tête-à-tête with the visitor, he devised a cunning method to achieve the objective. When the visiting poet was asleep, that night Ramalingaiah hired a couple of hoodlums to attack the sleeping scholar. Alarmed and in pain, the visitor woke up, cursing the assailants, quite expectedly, in his mother tongue!

(The writer was formerly Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)