ಭಾಷಾಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಜ್ಞೆ, ಆಂಧ್ರಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಮೊದಲ ಬುಡಕಟ್ಟು ಮಹಿಳಾ ಉಪಕುಲಪತಿ ಎಂಬ ಶ್ರೇಯಕ್ಕೆ ಪಾತ್ರರಾದವರು ಪ್ರೊ.ಸತುಪತಿ ಪ್ರಸನ್ನ ಶ್ರೀ. 19 ಬುಡಕಟ್ಟು ಭಾಷೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಲಿಪಿಗಳನ್ನು ರಚಿಸಿರುವ ಅವರೊಂದಿಗಿನ ಸಂದರ್ಶನ ಇಲ್ಲಿದೆ.
00:00The Ramoji group proudly confers the award of excellence in art and culture upon Professor Satupati Prasanna Sri.
00:09Satupati 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.
00:23Now 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.
00:51Welcome to ETV Bharat.
00:52I am Siddharth and today we are joined by Dr. Satupati Prasanna Sri, a leading linguist and a Vice-Chancellor of Adikavi Nannaya University.
01:02She is renowned for her work in tribal languages and preserving tribal languages apart from creating scripts for indigenous languages.
01:09Namaste ma'am.
01:10Namaste.
01:11You are Andhra's first tribal women Vice-Chancellor.
01:16It'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?
01:27Most of the people, you know, they take it for granted that I am from Stuartpuram.
01:31In fact, I am not.
01:33My grandfather was a teacher and he was a principal, I mean headmaster to a school.
01:38My father started his journey at, I think at the age of 14, he came to Andhra Medical College, Vishakapatnam.
01:46And thenceforth, he has been traveling to Calcutta professionally because he is from Railway Department.
01:52So he had to move towards the various places.
01:55And that is how, of course, my parents, they don't belong to Stuartpuram.
02:00But his father and all, they belong to Stuartpuram, right now.
02:04What was the initial journey like?
02:05As in what drew you towards languages or linguistics in the first place?
02:10Because we tend to see a unidirectional way of studying in our country.
02:16It's either engineers or doctors.
02:17What turned you towards this?
02:20It was not at all a planned journey.
02:21It's a journey that I was forced to take it for.
02:28Series of issues that harass you, they mar your internal spirit of peace and then they disturb you.
02:37The 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.
02:47Then it automatically, I think I started looking into this particular concept.
02:53Why am I not treated properly?
02:55Why?
02:55It's not that somebody, I'm inferior and somebody is superior.
02:58Chalo, humbi ek hai.
03:00Even they are there.
03:02Then this kind of disparities, you know, this kind of emotional harassment in the social engineering fabric.
03:11When I have all the qualities, why am I disturbed and distracted?
03:15That was my point.
03:15So, I thought, it is not me alone, but thousands and thousands of people who had their life in the last few years.
03:26All my ancestors have been harassed and they have been mistreated.
03:33Because their identity is, they belong to that place, Srotpuram.
03:37Of 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.
03:48They have emotional, psychological education, you know, brain both achai.
03:53They can.
03:53But the thing is, they don't have an identity of their own.
03:57When they don't have an identity of their own, in terms of identifying a scripted language,
04:06then people were, are making these people think that your identity is not on par with us.
04:16Your identity is at our feet.
04:17You sit there.
04:18So, education makes a lot of difference.
04:21Script makes a lot of difference.
04:24When you are cultivating the harvest of academics, if you are not ahead in the race,
04:33automatically people, they put you down.
04:36And I don't want to be that.
04:38That's it.
04:39Languages as an identity and language as a way of, you know, treating somebody, how it changes.
04:46Is that what drew you towards these endangered languages and working on creating these scripts?
04:51When I initially wanted to do this, I was carrying myself into, without any destination, I was traveling like.
04:58But I, when I started taking control of the situation, I understood the enormity of problems, situations around.
05:06And then I thought, it's not me alone.
05:09There are so many people who have not seen this light in their life.
05:15Like, you know, their parents were not educated and they were not educated.
05:19Education, academics was not in, that was not the word.
05:22That was not their cup of tea.
05:23When I thought like this, 7% of India's population are tribals.
05:29This is the plight of all tribals.
05:31So, more importantly, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Yarkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.
05:40All these are areas, you know, we have a lot of pocket for tribals.
05:44This is the story of almost all tribals whose languages are not known.
05:48Only they have a language that they can speak.
05:51That's called oral literature.
05:52Over a period of time, I also felt that if you are able to speak one language in a particular province, the language has life.
06:03But when state-dominant languages come in, or neighbor languages come in, your original format of language, the thither of it will lose its flavor.
06:13So, you have to have your identity, then you should have a language for yourself.
06:19You should have a script for your languages.
06:21You just said something very interesting.
06:23You said these are oral traditions, oral literature, rather, without a script.
06:29So, when you take a language with oral literature that has evolved and has been passed on by word of mouth through the generations,
06:37and then you decide to make a script for it, anybody who is doing the study, what is the process like?
06:44Because it is something that you have to start from scratch.
06:47Yes.
06:48You have to start from scratch, Mane.
06:51That's what I was trying to tell you, Siddharth.
06:53There were the days, you know, where tribals lived in a particular province.
06:57And 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.
07:08But over a period of time, you know, these days, we have the pressure of other languages also on our identity, of tribal languages.
07:17Then what happens is, these are the days where people are not able to identify themselves as tribes.
07:24Because once I, my identity is revealed to the world, that I am a tribe, everybody starts looking down upon me.
07:31They say, because they know their mindsets are so dominated by the fact that they don't look at me as an educated tribe.
07:40They only look at me as a tribe who used to stay in those jungles, you know, with all the traditional system like that.
07:48They only look at me like that.
07:50But I say, even those people were more intelligent and more grasping towards, they had a special power to attract the language of the universe.
08:01They were able to transform this to their generations after generations.
08:06But these days, today what happened, what you ate, you don't remember tomorrow.
08:10So, we are more and more dominated by different kinds of influences.
08:15Under the shade of too many influences on our mind and our lifestyle, I thought that we need to have an identity that gives you a peculiar feel that you belong to this particular clan.
08:30You belong to this kind of tribe.
08:32This is your culture and this is your identity.
08:35Each one of us have to have our own identities in terms of our culture, retention of our culture because India is a secular state.
08:45And why do Americans and why do all Western society, they look at us because 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.
08:59Whenever you go there, they don't ask me whether you are a tribe or a Hindu or a Brahmin.
09:03They only look at me, they say, you are from India.
09:05That's it.
09:06So, I want that identity.
09:08But here, when it comes, your identity is your unique force.
09:12You have to have your identity and your identity is represented by your language, your way of assimilating the culture that has been given to you by forefathers.
09:21You said a very powerful thing, your identity, about how language is an identity and 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.
09:35It's language ties you because that's what connects you, right?
09:38Yes, yes.
09:38And 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.
09:52And 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?
10:02Yes.
10:03What are your thoughts on it?
10:04Yes, yes, very much.
10:05When these are the days where, you know, people are more and more attracted towards the language English, which is not our own.
10:12But yet we speak English, we think in English, but our native feel is in our native language.
10:19We translate our emotions into a language that is more suitable for everybody to listen.
10:26So, do you think your language restores your own pride?
10:32Yes.
10:32You as an individual who's from certain communities.
10:36Having worked on so many languages, you speak 22 languages.
10:40Which one was the hardest for you to learn and why was it?
10:43Because South Indian language, there's a question word start with A sound.
10:47In North Indian, it's with Ka sound.
10:49So, there are elements like this.
10:52So, what did you find fascinating and what did you find the hardest?
10:55Bengali was very far, very hard for me to understand.
10:58Why?
10:59I went into schooling in Bengal, Eden Garden, Calcutta.
11:06Then, you know, those were the days I used to speak Telugu English, Hindi somewhere else.
11:11When I went into this language, I was not able to understand between the shh sound, the consonants and vowels and all sort of things.
11:19You know, there were lots of variables in the thither that I could speak up.
11:25So, Bengali was a little difficult.
11:27At the same time, Tamil was also difficult.
11:30And when I come to tribal languages, Gond was very difficult for me to understand.
11:36The frequency of sound was so different.
11:39And it took me many years to understand, many months to understand the basics of Gond language.
11:44How has your personal identity coming from a tribal background and as a woman from a tribal background helped shape your journey?
11:51Apart 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?
12:02My forefathers, they were all very conservative people.
12:06But my father was very liberal, you know.
12:09Academics, girls should be educated.
12:11That was his idea.
12:12A 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.
12:24And then a woman venturing into a concept like this, where it was not accepted by the men, patriarchy, was always.
12:31And they used to see this phenomena as a taboo.
12:35Socially, there were so many people who have ostracized me and my identity.
12:39But I never bothered about all that.
12:42Whatever I want to do it, I did it.
12:45And again I tell you, when I did it, Mane, I think Cosmos wanted me to do it.
12:52God in Heavens wanted me to do it and I did it.
12:54That's it.
12:55I am only a catalyst.
12:55So that was Professor Sathwati Prasanna Sri on her journey, on her research in languages and on language as an identity.
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