[India Report] An appeal to save a tribal language

Sukurthang Saimar, the oldest of the Saimar-speaking four, being felicitated at the 44th Foundation Day of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (Photo: The Hindu)

Only four people are trying to save a severely endangered language in India. ‘Saimar’ is the language spoken by only four people who lives in a tiny village of Tripura. The Hindu Times reported that the language is in the brink of extinction.

India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries. As many as 850 to 900 languages are spoken in India, though only 122 are recognized in the census and just 22 are recognized as official languages in the constitution.

On the 44th Foundation Day of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, in Mysore, Mr. Sukurthang Saimar, a 70 year old man and the oldest of the four persons who speaks the language was the guest of honour. He was overjoyed when he was honoured by eminent linguists on Tuesday (July 17).

various indian scripts. (Photo: inventindia.in)

Welcoming Mr. Saimar, CIIL Deputy Director, R. Subbukrishna, said: “This small group of Saimar-speaking people has sent Sukurthang to Mysore, as CIIL wanted to collect data from him [through a translator] on the language for its archive,” The Hindu Timesd quoted his as saying. According to CIIL, the four Saimar-speaking persons were learned to belong to an isolated tribe.

Saimar is spoken only at Gantachera village. The people speaking this language are agricultural labourers and farmers.  Tripura is house of over three dozen languages and there are some 18 sub-clans of Halam, an ethnic group of tribal communities including Saimar and Molsom in Tripura. Each community speaks different languages and there is only slight dialectical difference between each other.

In 2009, there were approximately 25 Saimar-speaking tribal, and today only four are remaining — Mr. Sukurthang Saimar, his wife, grandson and a senior lady. According to CIIL, the language has dwindled to just four due to influence of other tribal languages. Mr. Nandakumar attributed the decrease in number of Saimar speakers due to lack of male population in the community speaking the language. Sukurthang’s family had only single male child in each generation and over the years the numbers of speakers have come down, The Times Of India reported.

map of Tripura. (Photo: GOOGLE)

On Monday (Jult 16) when Mr. Sukurthang Saimar was asked to address to the people presented in the gathering in his own language, he could not control his emotion.

He came to the podium and spoke in a loud voice. Through a very few words, he conveyed a very strong message to the present gathering along with the people of India.

He said “My language and community are in danger. I appeal to the people of this country to help protect and preserve my language,” which was translated into English by Mr. Burman. 

Sudhanya Ghosh Intern Reporter news@theasian.asia