நீங்கள் உங்கள் அடையாளத்தை பாதுகாக்க வேண்டும் என்றால் உங்கள் மொழியை உயிருடன் வைத்திருக்க வேண்டும். அதுவும் எழுத்து வடிவில் இருக்க வேண்டும் என்று பேராசிரியை சதுபதி பிரசன்னாஸ்ரீ தெரிவித்தார்.
00:00Welcome to ETV Bharat. I'm Siddharth and today we're joined by Dr. Satupati Prasanna Sri, a leading linguist and a vice chancellor of Adhikavi Nannaya University.
00:11She is renowned for her work in tribal languages and preserving tribal languages apart from creating scripts for indigenous languages.
00:18Namaste ma'am.
00:19Namaste.
00:20You're Andhra's first tribal women vice chancellor. It's a groundbreaking achievement.
00:27What emotions or memories do you have that took your journey from Stuartpuram to being where you are right now?
00:36Most of the people, you know, they take it for granted that I am from Stuartpuram. In fact, I am not.
00:41My grandfather was a teacher and he was a principal, I mean, headmaster to a school.
00:47My father started his journey at, I think at the age of 14, he came to Andhra Medical College, Vishakapatnam.
00:54And thenceforth, he has been traveling to Calcutta professionally because he is from Railway Department.
01:01So he had to move towards the various places.
01:04And that is how, of course, my parents, they don't belong to Stuartpuram, but his father and all, they belong to Stuartpuram right now.
01:12What was the initial journey like? As in, what drew you towards languages or linguistics in the first place?
01:19Because we tend to see a unidirectional way of studying in our country. It's either engineers or doctors.
01:26What turned you towards this?
01:28It was not at all a planned journey. It's a journey that I was forced to take it for series of issues that harass you.
01:40They mar your internal spirit of peace and then they disturb you.
01:46The 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.
01:56Then it automatically, I think I started looking into this particular concept.
02:02Why am I not treated properly? Why?
02:04It's not that somebody, I'm inferior and somebody is superior.
02:07Chalo, humbi ek hai. Even they are there.
02:11Then this kind of disparities, you know, this kind of emotional harassment in the social engineering fabric.
02:19When I have all the qualities, why am I disturbed and distracted? That was my point.
02:24So, I thought, it is not me alone, but thousands and thousands of people who had their life in the last few years.
02:35All my ancestors have been harassed and they have been mistreated because their identity is, they belong to that place, Svodhpuram.
02:45Of all the fundamental facts, whether they belong to Svodhpuram or to Bangalore, it doesn't make any difference.
02:51The idea is, these are tribal groups and they don't have education.
02:57They have emotional, psychological education, you know, brain both achai.
03:01They can, but the thing is, they don't have an identity of their own.
03:05When they don't have an identity of them, of their own, in terms of identifying a scripted language, then people were, are making these people think that you are, your identity is not on par with us.
03:25Your identity is at our feet, you sit there.
03:27So, education makes a lot of difference.
03:30Script makes a lot of difference.
03:32When you are cultivating the harvest of academics, if you are not ahead in the race, automatically people, they put you down.
03:44And I don't want to be that.
03:47That's it.
03:48Language is as an identity and language as a way of, you know, treating somebody, how it changes.
03:54Is that what drew you towards these endangered languages and working on creating these scripts?
03:59When I initially wanted to do this, I was carrying myself into, without any destination, I was travelling like.
04:07But I, when I started taking control of the situation, I understood the enormity of problems, situations around.
04:15And then I thought, it's not me alone.
04:18There are so many people who have not seen this light in their life.
04:23Like, you know, their parents were not educated and they were not educated.
04:28Education, academics was not an, that was not the word.
04:31That was not their cup of tea.
04:33When I thought like this, 7% of India's population are tribals.
04:38This is the plight of all tribals.
04:40So, more importantly, Andhra Pradesh, Chathisgarh, Jarkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.
04:48All these are areas, you know, we have a lot of pocket for tribals.
04:53This is the story of almost all tribals whose languages are not known.
04:57Only they have a language that they can speak.
05:00That's called oral literature.
05:01Over a period of time, I also felt that if you are able to speak one language in a particular province, the language has life.
05:11But when state-dominant languages come in, or neighbor languages come in, your original format of language, the thither of it will lose its flavor.
05:22So, you have to have your identity, then you should have a language for yourself.
05:28You should have a script for your languages.
05:30You just said something very interesting.
05:33You said these are oral traditions, oral literature, rather, without a script.
05:38So, when you take a language with oral literature that has evolved and has been passed on by word of mouth through the generations,
05:47and then you decide to make a script for it, anybody who is doing the study,
05:51what is the process like?
05:53Because it is something that you have to start from scratch.
05:56Yes.
05:58You have to start from scratch, Mane.
06:00That's what I was trying to tell you, Siddhar.
06:02Those were the days, you know, where tribals lived in a particular province.
06:05And their forefathers and forefathers, oral, see, through oral literature, there was some kind of literature that has been passing down as,
06:14what you call, as a family system.
06:17But over a period of time, you know, these days, we have the pressure of other languages also on our identity, of tribal languages.
06:25Then what happens is, these are the days where people are not able to identify themselves as tribes.
06:33Because once my identity is revealed to the world that I am a tribe, everybody starts looking down upon me.
06:41They say, because they know their mindsets are so dominated by the fact that they don't look at me as an educated tribe.
06:49They only look at me as a tribe who used to stay in those jungles, you know, with all the traditional system like that.
06:57They only look at me like that.
06:59But I say, even those people were more intelligent and more grasping towards, they had a special power to attract the language of the universe.
07:09They were able to transform this to their generations after generations.
07:15But these days, today what happened, what you ate, you don't remember tomorrow.
07:19So, we are more and more dominated by different kinds of influences.
07:24Under the shade of too many influences on our mind and our lifestyle,
07:29I thought that we need to have an identity that gives you a peculiar feel that you belong to this particular clan.
07:38You belong to this kind of tribe.
07:41This is your culture and this is your identity.
07:44Each one of us have to have our own identities in terms of our culture,
07:50retention of our culture because India is a secular state.
07:54And why do Americans and why do all Western society, they look at us?
07:59Because we are more and more identified by our cultural identity is more important than whether you are a Malayali or a Tamilian or something else.
08:07Whenever you go there, they don't ask me whether you are a tribe or a Hindu or a Brahmin.
08:12They only look at me, they say, you are from India.
08:14That's it.
08:15So, I want that identity.
08:17But here, when it comes, your identity is your unique force.
08:20You have to have your identity and your identity is represented by your language,
08:25your way of assimilating the culture that has been given to you by forefathers.
08:30You said a very powerful thing, your identity, about how language is an identity.
08:34And 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.
08:44It's language ties you because that's what connects you.
08:46And having worked on the endangered languages and then tribal languages where speakers of those languages or members of those communities continue to face discrimination in many different ways.
09:01And 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?
09:11What are your thoughts on it?
09:12Yes, yes, very much.
09:14When, these are the days where, you know, people are more and more attractive towards the language English, which is not our own.
09:21But yet, we speak English.
09:23We think in English.
09:25But our native feel is in our native language.
09:28We translate our emotions into a language that is more suitable for everybody to listen.
09:35How has your personal identity coming from a tribal background and as a woman from a tribal background helped shape your journey?
09:42Apart from that, you've won many awards, including the Nari Puraskar Award and now the Ramoji Excellence Award.
09:50How does this all tie up for you?
09:52My forefathers, my forefathers, they're all very conservative people, but my father was very liberal, you know, academics, girls should be educated.
10:02That was his idea.
10:03A 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.
10:14And then a woman venturing into a concept like this, where it was not accepted by the men, patriarchy, was always, and they used to see this phenomena as a taboo.
10:25Socially, there were so many people who have ostracized me and my identity.
10:29But I never bothered about all that.
10:32Whatever I want to do it, I did it.
10:36And again, I tell you, when I did it, Mane, I think Cosmos wanted me to do it.
10:43God in Heavens wanted me to do it and I did it.
10:45That's it.
10:45I am only a catalyst.
10:47So that was Professor Sathurwati Prasanna Sri on her journey, on her research in languages and on language as an identity.
10:56This is Siddharth signing off for ETV Bharat.
Be the first to comment