The circular has not only left various ethnic communities speaking Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi and Tharu languages worried about the survival of their mother tongues but also prompted leaders of these communities to take initiatives for safeguarding their mother tongues. [break]
Shyam Sundar Yadav, secretary of Maithili Sahitya Parishad, Siraha, said it is inappropriate to impose Hindi as mother tongue as Maithili is the mother tongue of people living in Siraha and Saptari districts. “We will now start a campaign to safeguard our mother tongues,” he said. “We won´t let them replace our mother tongue that is being spoken for centuries.”
Yadav said that they have started “save mother tongue campaign” from Saptari starting Saturday.
According to the 2001 census report, only 3,200 of the total 1.36 million people living in Siraha and Saptari districts speak Hindi as their mother tongue. “It is not acceptable to impose Hindi that is spoken by only 3,000 people as mother tongue against 1.3 million people living in these districts,” said Jibachha Udasi of Maithili Sahitya Parishad.
Professor of Maithili language Laxman Jha said the campaign to impose imported language as the mother tongue of people living in the Tarai is likely to put local language such as Maithili on the verge of extinction. He said Maithili language has its own well-developed grammar and alphabets.
Among various Madhes-based political parties, Rajendra Mahato-led Sadbhawana Party has spearheaded the aggressive campaign to make people in the districts to register Hindi as their mother tongues during the census. “Our central level circular is to establish Hindi as mother tongue in Madhes. This does not mean that we are trying to displace Maithili and other languages spoken in the region,” said the party´s Deputy General Secretary Raju Gupta.
The manifestos of Madhesi People´s Rights Forum, Nepal, Tarai Madhes Democratic Party and Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (Democratic) also mention Hindi as mother tongue of people living in the Tarai. “We have come aggressively to establish Hindi as the mother tongue in Madhes. Though other parties have not spoken explicitly about this they are also in favor of our campaign,” Gupta claimed.
Professor Mahesh Chaudhari, who is conducting doctoral studies on Tharu language, said the campaign of Madhes-based parties to establish Hindi as the mother tongue of the region has worried them. He argued that the identity of the other lingual communities in the region would be in jeopardy if Hindi is made the contact language in Madhes.
According to national census conducted in 2001, only 0.47 percent people in the country speak Hindi language. However, people speaking Maithili, Bhojpuri, Tharu and Awadhi stand at 12.3 percent, 7.53 percent, 5.86 percent and 2.47 percent, respectively.
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