In Bengal, there are many other languages besides Bengali. While advising to bring all these languages to the forefront, Education Minister Bratya Basu suggested becoming more 'regional' from the stage of the government language fair.
On Monday, he said, "The way the central government and the ruling party (BJP) are trying to impose linguistic hegemony, every time this oppression comes down upon us, we will have to find our more regional existence to resist it." Bratya's conviction is that "to resist linguistic hegemony, we must move towards regionalism."
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The language fair began on Monday. The fair is organised by the Institute of Language Studies and Research, or ILSR, under the Higher Education Department. This time, the fair is being held at the World Bengali Convention Centre in New Town, featuring a total of 46 languages of West Bengal. Along with Bengali, there will be many languages used in this Bengal, such as Kora, Garo, Bhumij, Kurmali, Birhor, Kurukh, Santhali, Rajbanshi, and Nepali, whose usage is extremely regional and in some cases marginal. The minister informed that ILSR has already identified 68 such languages, which are languages of this state.
Writers, litterateurs, and artists of all these languages will be brought together and connected at the fair, alongside publishing books in all 68 languages. So that people can learn about and use these languages. For this reason, Bratya also mentioned uploading these books for free of cost on the internet.
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In his words, "The colonial Bengali that once marginalised all these languages. We want them to come to this city and fly the flag of their own language and identity. I am proud of that."
Bratya informed that the work of writing Bengali-Urdu and Bengali-Santhali dictionaries has already been completed by ILSR. They will be published very soon. The purpose of this language fair is to showcase the multilayered nature of many languages not only in the country but also within this state, before everyone.
