ഗോത്രവര്ഗ ഭാഷകളെ സംരക്ഷിക്കുന്നതിന് താന് നടത്തുന്ന അക്ഷീണ പരിശ്രമങ്ങളെക്കുറിച്ച് റാമോജി എക്സലന്സ് പുരസ്കാര ജേത്രിയായ പ്രൊഫ.സതുപതി പ്രസന്ന ശ്രീ ഇടിവി ഭാരതിനോട് വിശദീകരിച്ചു.
00:00The Ramoji Group proudly confers the Award of Excellence in Art and Culture upon Professor Satupati Prasanna Sri.
00:08Satupati Prasanna Sri has given voice and identity to long marginalized communities by creating alphabets from 19 Indian tribal languages.
00:18A distinguished scholar and tribal linguist, she has dedicated her life to safeguarding India's cultural essence.
00:24Now serving as the Vice-Chancellor of Adikavi Nannaya University, she is the first woman in the world to develop scripts for millions of tribal language speakers.
00:34A Nari Shakti Puraskar awardee, her work blends scholarship with empathy and tradition with modernity, ensuring languages endure and cultures thrive.
00:44A hearty congratulations to Professor Satupati Prasanna Sri Garo.
00:48Welcome to ETV Bharat. I am Siddharth and today we are joined by Dr. Satupati Prasanna Sri, a leading linguist and a Vice-Chancellor of Adikavi Nannaya University.
01:01She is renowned for her work in tribal languages and preserving tribal languages apart from creating scripts for indigenous languages.
01:08Namaste ma'am.
01:09Namaste.
01:09You are Andhra's first tribal women Vice-Chancellor. It's a groundbreaking achievement.
01:18What emotions or memories do you have that took your journey from Stuartpuram to being where you are right now?
01:26Most of the people, you know, they take it for granted that I am from Stuartpuram.
01:30In fact, I am not.
01:31My grandfather was a teacher and he was a principal, I mean headmaster to a school.
01:36My father started his journey at, I think at the age of 14, he came to Andhra Medical College, Vishakapatnam.
01:44And thenceforth, he has been traveling to Calcutta professionally because he is from Railway Department.
01:51So he had to move towards the various places.
01:54And that is how, of course, my parents, they don't belong to Stuartpuram, but his father and all, they belong to Stuartpuram right now.
02:02What was the initial journey like, as in what drew you towards languages or linguistics in the first place?
02:09Because we tend to see a unidirectional way of studying in our country.
02:14It's either engineers or doctors.
02:16What turned you towards this?
02:17It was not at all a planned journey.
02:20It's a journey that I was forced to take it for series of issues that harass you.
02:29They mar your internal spirit of peace and then they disturb you.
02:36The very emotional fabric of your mindset, when it distracts you, you are not recognized as a person, as a human being, by your fellow human being.
02:46Then it automatically, I think I started looking into this particular concept.
02:51Why am I not treated properly?
02:53Why?
02:54It's not that somebody, I'm inferior and somebody is superior.
02:57Chalo, humbi ek hai.
02:59Even they are there.
03:01Then this kind of disparities, you know, this kind of emotional harassment in the social engineering fabric.
03:10When I have all the qualities, why am I disturbed and distracted?
03:13That was my point.
03:14So, I thought, it is not me alone, but thousands and thousands of people who had their life in the last few years.
03:25All my ancestors have been harassed and they have been mistreated because their identity is they belong to that place, Srotpuram.
03:35Of all the fundamental facts, whether they belong to Srotpuram or to Bangalore, it doesn't make any difference.
03:42The idea is, these are tribal groups and they don't have education.
03:46They have emotional, psychological education, you know, brain both achai, they can, but the thing is, they don't have an identity of their own.
03:55When they don't have an identity of their own in terms of identifying scripted language, then people were, are making these people think that you are, your identity is not on par with us.
04:14Your identity is at our feet.
04:16You sit there.
04:17So, education makes a lot of difference.
04:20Script makes a lot of difference.
04:22When you are cultivating the harvest of academics, if you are not ahead in the race, automatically people, they put you down.
04:34And I don't want to be that.
04:37That's it.
04:37Languages as an identity and language as a way of, you know, treating somebody, how it changes.
04:44Is that what drew you towards these endangered languages and working on creating these scripts?
04:50When I initially wanted to do this, I was carrying myself into, without any destination I was traveling like.
04:56But I, when I started taking control of the situation, I understood the enormity of problems, situations around.
05:05And then I thought, it's not me alone.
05:08There are so many people who have not seen this light in their life.
05:14Like, you know, their parents were not educated and they were not educated.
05:17Education, academics was not in, that was not the word.
05:21That was not their cup of tea.
05:22When I thought like this, 7% of India's population are tribals.
05:28This is the plight of all tribals.
05:30So, more importantly, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Yarkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.
05:38All these are areas, you know, we have a lot of pocket for tribals.
05:42This is the story of almost all tribals whose languages are not known.
05:47Only they have a language that they can speak.
05:50That's called oral literature.
05:51Over a period of time, I also felt that if you are able to speak one language in a particular province, the language has life.
06:01But when state-dominant languages come in, or neighbor languages come in, your original format of language, the thither of it will lose its flavor.
06:11So, you have to have your identity, then you should have a language for yourself.
06:18You should have a script for your languages.
06:20You just said something very interesting.
06:21You said these are oral traditions, oral literature, rather, without a script.
06:28So, when you take a language with oral literature that has evolved and has been passed on by word of mouth through the generations,
06:36and then you decide to make a script for it, anybody who is doing the study, what is the process like?
06:43As in, because it is something that you have to start from scratch.
06:46Yes, you have to start from scratch, Maneh.
06:50That's what I was trying to tell you, Siddharth.
06:52There were the days, you know, where tribals lived in a particular province.
06:56And their forefathers and forefathers, oral, see, through oral literature, there was some kind of literature that has been passing down as, what you call, as a family system.
07:06But over a period of time, you know, these days, we have the pressure of other languages also on our identity, of tribal languages.
07:15Then what happens is, these are the days where people are not able to identify themselves as tribes.
07:23Because once my identity is revealed to the world that I am a tribe, everybody starts looking down upon me.
07:30They say, because, you know, their mindsets are so dominated by the fact that they don't look at me as an educated tribe.
07:39They only look at me as a tribe who used to stay in those jungles, you know, with all the traditional system like that.
07:47They only look at me like that.
07:49But I say, even those people were more intelligent and more grasping towards,
07:54they had a special power to attract the language of the universe.
08:00They were able to transform this to their generations after generations.
08:04But these days, today what happened, what you ate, you don't remember tomorrow.
08:09So, we are more and more dominated by different kinds of influences.
08:14Under the shade of too many influences on our mind and our lifestyle,
08:18I thought that we need to have identity that gives you a peculiar feel that you are, you belong to this particular clan.
08:28You belong to this kind of tribe.
08:31This is your culture and this is your identity.
08:34Each one of us have to have our own identities in terms of our culture.
08:39Retention of our culture because India is a secular state.
08:44And why do Americans and why do all Western society, they look at us?
08:49Because we are more and more identified by our cultural identity is more important than whether you are a Malayali or a Camillean or something else.
08:57Whenever you go there, they don't ask me whether you are a tribe or a Hindu or a Brahmin.
09:01They only look at me, they say, you are from India.
09:04That's it.
09:05So, I want that identity.
09:07But here, when it comes, your identity is your unique force.
09:10You have to have your identity and your identity is represented by your language.
09:14Your way of assimilating the culture that has been given to you by forefathers.
09:20You said a very powerful thing, your identity, about how language is an identity.
09:24And it really is true because language is a bigger identifying factor and a bigger sense of belongingness factor than religion or race or any of those.
09:34It's language ties you because that's what connects you, right?
09:36Yes, yes.
09:38And having worked on the endangered languages and then tribal languages where speakers of those languages or members of those community continue to face discrimination in many different ways.
09:50And your work, sort of, can it be looked at as an attempt to restore the pride in one's language and culture, especially in these communities and languages?
10:01Yes.
10:01What are your thoughts on it?
10:02Yes, yes, very much.
10:03When these are the days where, you know, people are more and more attracted towards the language English, which is not our own.
10:11But yet we speak English.
10:13We think in English.
10:14But our native feel is in our native language.
10:18We translate our emotions.
10:20into a language that is more suitable for everybody to listen.
10:25So, do you think your language restores your own pride?
10:30Yes.
10:31You as an individual who's from certain communities.
10:35Having worked on so many languages, you speak 22 languages.
10:38Which one was the hardest for you to learn and why was it?
10:42Because South Indian language, there's a question word start with A sound.
10:45In North Indian, it's with Ka sound.
10:47So, there are elements like this.
10:50So, what did you find fascinating and what did you find the hardest?
10:54Bengali was very hard for me to understand.
10:56Why?
10:57I went into schooling in Bengal, Eden Garden, Calcutta.
11:05Then, you know, those were the days.
11:07I used to speak Telugu English, Hindi somewhere else.
11:10When I went into this language, I was not able to understand between the shh sound, the consonants and vowels and all sort of things.
11:18You know, there were lots of variables in the thither that I could speak up.
11:23So, Bengali was a little difficult.
11:26At the same time, Tamil was also difficult.
11:30And when I come to tribal languages, Gond was very difficult for me to understand.
11:34The frequency of sound was so different.
11:37And it took me many years to understand, many months to understand the basics of Gond language.
11:43How has your personal identity coming from a tribal background and as a woman from a tribal background helped shape your journey?
11:50Apart from that, you've won many awards including the Nari Puraskar Award and now the Ramoji Excellence Award.
11:58How does this all tie up for you?
12:00My father, my forefathers, they were all very conservative people.
12:05But my father was very liberal, you know.
12:08Academic girls should be educated.
12:10That was his idea.
12:11A woman venturing to tribal areas, looking in quest of her own roots and then trying to assimilate a concept that is very new to her.
12:22And then a woman venturing into a concept like this, where it was not accepted by the men, patriarchy, was always.
12:30And they used to see this phenomena as a taboo.
12:33Socially, there were so many people who have ostracized me and my identity.
12:38But I never bothered about all that.
12:40Whatever I want to do it, I did it.
12:43And again, I tell you, when I did it, Mane, I think Cosmos wanted me to do it.
12:51God in Heavens wanted me to do it and I did it.
12:53That's it.
12:53I am only a catalyst.
12:55So that was Professor Sathurwati Prasanna Sri on her journey, on her research in languages and on language as an identity.
13:03This is Siddharth signing off for ETV Bharat.
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