Dr (Fr) Vijay D’Souza and Dr Dolly Kikon
Dr Dolly Kikon in conversation with Dr (Fr) Vijay D’Souza
Dolly Kikon (DK): As 2022-2032 marks the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages, I wanted to take this opportunity to focus on language to celebrate the International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples this year. I believe that Indigenous Peoples are lost without our languages. Therefore, I wanted to reflect on justice and the connection with languages. For Indigenous Peoples all over the world, orality is an important facet of our culture. If we lose our language, we lose our history.
I wanted to start with a predicament that has been bothering me. It is estimated that 50 percent of Indigenous languages around the world may disappear or become seriously endangered in less than 100 years from now. I think of my mother tongue, the Lotha Naga language, and what it means to reflect on language endangerment. I would like to refer to my colleague and friend the Indigenous Lepcha geographer, Dr. Mabel Denzin Gergan. For the longest time, her community, the Lepchas of the Himalayas, were known as the ‘vanishing’ people. However, Mabel cautions us that terms such as ‘vanishing’ and ‘extinct’ without a context to the structural violence that communities have undergone erases the reality about how Indigenous communities lose their languages. In this case, the pressure of dominant communities to swallow Lepcha identity and history as part of Gorkha culture, according to Lepcha scholars like Mabel, needs to be recognized.
Vijay, you have worked for language advocacy and have been an ally of the Indigenous Peoples in Northeast India for decades. What are your reflections on language, language endangerment, and intergenerational transmission of indigenous language?
Vijay D’Souza (VD): This subject is very close to my heart, and I am sure you are very passionate about these issues too. We have around 200 languages in Northeast India alone, and around 80% are endangered to various degrees. If the present trends continue, we are going to face a catastrophic disappearance of languages by the end of this century and maybe even earlier.
When do we say a language is endangered? The classic test to see if children of a community are being taught their ancestral language or not. When children are not learning a language anymore, such a language would disappear very soon. In fact, in many indigenous communities, fewer and fewer children can speak their ancestral language. This is a very worrying trend.
DK: I want to ask you about the perception that languages die. Some of the world’s most important languages such as Sanskrit and Latin are ‘dead.’ What is your view on dead languages, disappearing languages?Can you tell us something about that?
VD: We get this question quite often, “Many languages die, but why should we care? It is a natural process. Some languages are born. Some languages die. It is not that if your mother tongue is dead that you are going to be dumb for the rest of your life. We have other languages. So, just learn those and progress in your life. Don’t cry over these dead languages.” But languages do not die. Languages either evolve or they are killed off.
Powerful languages grow and evolve. Marginalised languages, minoritized languages, and Indigenous languages tend to be killed off. This process is called linguicide by linguistic scholars. So, what is the difference between languages such Sanskrit and Latin, and Indigenous languages? Sanskrit did not die. It simply evolved and gave rise to daughter languages. Now, in India, we have many languages that are daughters of Sanskrit, like Hindi, Nepali or Gujarati. Through those languages, Sanskrit is still living. Latin? The Romance languages came from Latin, e.g., Italian and Spanish. So Latin did not die. It evolved into its daughter languages.
What is happening in the case of Indigenous languages is quite different and unprecedented. They are actively or passively killed off. Most of the time, native speakers of such languages are led to believe that their language is not good enough and they must give up their language. Many in Nagaland too might hold this belief consciously or unconsciously. Speakers of minoritized languages or marginalised languages are shamed.Due to this shaming, they give up their own languages. They are shamed into killing their own languages in a way. This creates serious harms to such communities in the long run.
DK: I want to share my own experiences and reflections as a Naga from Nagaland. I find it sad and disturbing that many young Lotha adults, especially from metropolitan cities like Kohima and Dimapur, are unable to speak the Lotha language. Children from families of inter-tribe marriages at times find it challenging to pick up mother tongue of both parents, but one is also witnessing that children from families where both parents are from the same tribe are refusing to speak their mother tongue.
I was wondering about the consequences of losing to speak one’s mother tongue. Do you see that there is an emotional or spiritual harm that is happening to the community and the future generation?
VD: For Indigenous communities, language loss can have catastrophic consequences, both at individual level as well as community. Individually, one might feel alienated from their society. For example, inability to speak to grandparents who might not be able to understand or speak English. It may also lead to alienation from the land which is very important for Indigenous communities. This alienation needs to be viewed in the context of one’s relationship with land and its surroundings. Picture language as the umbilical cord. In our physical and biological lives, we are connected to our mothers in the womb through the umbilical cord from which we draw nourishment. Language is something like that especially for indigenous communities where languages are oral and the only connection to the past. If this is cut off, a sense of rootlessness emerges from losing the connection to the worldview into which I am born. Then, I speak some other language which is not my own. I adapt to another culture, a worldview I come to know only through books. Many people are not aware of this.
There is now a lot of research that shows losing one’s language, especially in Indigenous communities, results in psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage as one is cut off from their communitarian milieu. There is a recent study where two villages in Canada were compared. One spoke their Indigenous language, and another did not, having switched to English. In the village where people had lost their ancestral language, there was comparatively more alcoholism, mental health issues, and suicides.
DK: You are raising some very important points here. When I think about my Naga society, not knowing one’s mother tongue and the feeling of alienation is so deep because, like many Indigenous communities, our cultural and spiritual associations are strongly connected to language. For us, we also believe that our oral history from family and village to future generations is passed down through our mother tongue.
Let us turn to some of the causes of language endangerment. I think that in this decade of Indigenous languages, we need to recognise punishment and shaming around our languages. I went to an English-medium school myself. Since then, it was very normal to be punished for speaking our mother tongue in school. Once you enter the school compound, you are not allowed to speak in it. Imagine the life of a child. From the time you leave the home around 8am to when you come back at 2pm, to be constantly told not to speak in a particular language. Then, children from different family environments return home. I grew up with a single mother myself. Often as a child, I would come back home and there would be no adult to speak in my mother tongue. I would play with the children in my neighbourhood, then go for tuition. All in different languages, but I retained my language as my mother tongue.
VD: Language shaming is a common practice even today in the Northeast where local languages are banned in schools. Most schools justify this saying, "We want to give a better future to children by teaching them good English." However, this is counterproductive. The suppression of mother tongue, in most cases, will only prevent them from learning good English. This may seem surprising and counterintuitive, but for indigenous children, the mother tongue or the ancestral language is their first door towards understanding the world. All foundations of children's conceptual, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and communicative life are formed in their mother tongue. Even five-year old children, fluent in their mother tongue, have vast but often subconscious skills and capabilities in these areas. Our education system must build on these capabilities, not suppress them by banning their mother tongues and replace them by imposing a dominant language. Children can be scarred for life when shamed for speaking their mother tongue.
When ancestral languages are banned, children are made to learn English in an environment of fear and shame. Only a small percentage of the children who can struggle against these odds will succeed in such an environment. Many of them, unable to realise their dreams, unable to comprehend subjects like science and mathematics taught in languages they are not fluent in, return to their villages. However, they become misfits in their own villages because our education system hasn't skilled them in their traditional lifestyle or language. Thus, by language shaming, we are producing generations of young people scarred for life.
DK: Continuing with the topic of language shaming, the matter is made worse because there is a culture of shaming over one's inability to speak their parents’/community language(s). There are many good things about Naga culture, but there are also some terrible things such as elders humiliating young people who are not able to speak their mother tongue. Shaming is the worst approach to encourage and promote our indigenous languages. How can we envision ways to nurture intergenerational language conversation in a non-shaming, generous way and invite people especially children and adults who cannot speak their mother tongue?
VD: There are various types of language shaming. We just discussed one type, when children are shamed for speaking their language in external social situations, especially in schools. Your question pertains to another type, when young people are shamed for speaking their language imperfectly by their own elders. This is a problem nowadays in many indigenous communities all over the world. I was talking to a former student of mine who does not speak his ancestral language. He is about 30 years old now and says, “I feel terribly ashamed that I cannot speak my mother tongue.” When I asked him whether he was trying to learn, he said, “I never learnt my mother tongue as a child because we were told to speak in Hindi even by our parents. Now, although I understand my language, the moment I try to speak my language, my grandparents and my villagers laugh at me. I want to learn but I am shamed for making mistakes.”
Another incident comes to my mind where a grandfather told his grandchild, “If you want to speak my language, you better speak correctly. Otherwise, don’t torture my ears.” And the grandchild said, “To hell with it! I am not interested in this anymore. I know English. I will speak English.” As these examples illustrate, such shaming is counterproductive. First, elders complain that their children and grandchildren cannot speak their mother tongue. When they try, the same elders shame them. This prevents young people from learning their ancestral language. Elders must remember that the young people are the future, and no matter how imperfect, they must be encouraged to speak their languages. I know a few young people who bravely bore this kind of humiliation but are now fluent speakers of their language. However, I know many more who have tried and given up due to shaming.
DK: As an anthropologist, I have often come across this shaming in Nagaland to ‘speak correctly.’ It happened to me as well. I was born in Dimapur. I grew up in Dimapur. I speak my mother tongue, Lotha Naga. Sometimes, when a term goes here and there or I am not able to pronounce some deep words, I am told that that is incorrect. Of course, given my qualification, I tell them that I am a researcher and then I go deeper into the word. If we can find a path, a community or forum to bridge between the shaming one (you must learn) and invite young people who face this humiliation. I also feel that many young people who are unable to speak their mother tongue are asked or ordered to go to churches where the sermons are in their mother tongue. They just sit there, Sunday after Sunday not understanding a word because they want to be part of the community. As much as they are seen in those community spaces, there is a very real alienation going on.
To continue our discussion, as an adult, I reflect through the human rights and justice work that I do with communities. Vijay, guide us or reflect with us on language loss and imposition of a dominant language. I speak in English, I know. It is not my first language. Nevertheless, today, the world is richer for me because I know my mother tongue and I can conceptualise ideas. I think it benefits both my English reader and my community as well when I go for community work.
VD: Dolly, you bring in a lot of your introspection as a Naga to anthropology. I think that is possible because you have taken the trouble of going deeper to your roots. Bringing your own culture into your writings and your way of being would not have been possible if you were taught only English. I see your work is enriched by your personal knowledge of Lotha culture and language. This is a good model where you are fluent in two languages at the same time.
There is nothing wrong in saying English is a beautiful, amazingly rich language but the problem comes when we say English is better. In my own work, I have learnt that there is no language better or worse than any other language. No language is primitive. I study the Hrusso Aka language of Arunachal Pradesh. I am very grateful that I got to study this language because I am enriched by the complexity of this language. I often wonder how the human mind is capable of such complexities. Complexity of tones and concepts not found in English or in my own mother tongue or other languages I know. All languages are beautiful. When we realise this, we will stop language shaming.
As you rightly point out, English is necessary and important, but not at the cost of one's ancestral language. So, I am not advocating an either-or approach. We don’t have to say, it is either the mother tongue or English. Our message should be—the better you know your mother tongue, the better English you will learn. That is, we are advocating a multilingual model. Learn as many languages as possible but do teach your language to your child. It will make your child rooted and it is very likely that, other things being equal, such a child will better succeed in life.
DK: You raised important points about Indigenous language and multiple ways of seeing the world through language. In my work, and the way I look at the world, I feel mother tongues are a window to the world, a living dictionary, a living archive. I went to a market in Dimapur two weeks ago and I was asking Indigenous traders about a particular leaf that Naga people forage for food from the forests. I asked for its name in Nagamese. One of the traders told me, “This is napa pata.” As I was listening to her, I started translating the name in my head. Napa pata would translate into English as a leaf that is not found. So, there is no word for disappearing. The leaf that is visible in front of my eyes is also a leaf that is not found anymore. As somebody who is working on Indigenous food justice, it opened an entire ecology of loss and forests.
There is another wonderful plant that we forage as Lotha Naga people and many other Naga tribes. It is known in my language as nanghan. Translated into English ‘nang’ would mean to push and ‘ohan’ is curry. The name nanghan is so childlike, and it is joyful to know that an Indigenous translation in English would be known as push curry. “What did you eat today?” “I ate push curry.” I think it is also cool that I can make this kind of translation.
I want to reiterate your point of being open to multilingualism. In my own family, my grandparents and both my parents spoke at least three Naga languages. Wherever they went in whichever district, and tribal communities they worked with, they could pick up those languages because there was no inhibition. They had a respect for languages. So, how can we look at our elders who worked in a multilingual world? How can we—this generation and future generations of Indigenous communities in the Northeast—who are not even able to speak one Indigenous language, dream of a future like that?
VD: Again, we must once and for all give up the monolingual model of parenting. Multilingualism is the way forward. Multilingual childhood tremendously enriches a child's life. Parents are worried that children's small brains get confused with too many languages. This is false. Children have a special capacity to learn multiple languages, and recent research shows that being multilingual is very good for brain development.
Multilingualism is not a new phenomenon. We can see in our villages In Northeast India, people who were never formally educated in schools speaking 3-4 languages. I know a person who speaks seven languages fluently and never went to school.
One of the reasons why educated parents teach their children English or other dominant languages instead of their ancestral language is due to their misplaced anxiety about their children's education. They believe, “My language is not going to take my child anywhere. So, I need to give the best opportunity to my child by teaching a language which gives them a better future.” I had this experience in Arunachal Pradesh when I went there for the first time in 1999. An Aka couple taught their child Hindi. The parents themselves were both very fluent speakers of Aka. And I asked them, “Why Hindi?” The young father, about 25 years old, retorted saying, “My language will not give bread and butter to my child in future. The future is in Hindi. Therefore, I am preparing my child for the future.”
But this is flawed and unscientific thinking. Actually, you can learn very good English without sacrificing your own language. Knowing more than one language makes your children smarter! There are many advantages to being multilingual. You are enhancing your children's social capital by increasing their ability to communicate with a larger number of people. It is good for the brain too. When a multilingual person thinks of a word, their brain is active in all the languages they know. So, the brain is in a constant state of activity and exercise. It is even said that a multilingual person predisposed to dementia in old age typically delays it for up to four years compared to a monolingual person. Research also shows that multilingual people are generally more creative and good problem solvers. Why would one deny their children such advantages? Why would one impoverish them by teaching them only one language like English? Let us teach our children our ancestral language at home, better still, two ancestral languages in case of mixed marriages. They will learn English, Hindi, Nagamese and other languages in school or from their surroundings. This is one of the best gifts we can give to our children.
DK: Returning to the topic of killing languages like you correctly said, I think again about banning languages. I think it is a universal Indigenous experience. I see that very often. I think what you are signifying is this very strong backdrop of colonisation. So, maybe can you tell us something about the role of colonisation in creating these hierarchies and how they still exist. How in this decade, do we need to awaken both morally and spiritually and embrace this?
VD: Colonisation is active at various levels. It’s not that the British left our country and colonisation went away. The effects of colonisation still haunt us, and such processes continue to exist. Language colonisation—when the dominant community imposes their own language on a marginalised language—must be challenged. You recently stated that colonisation of the mind is the cruellest form of colonisation. The end goal of colonisation, in whichever form it exists, is erasure:“You are not good enough as you unless you become me (coloniser).” Then, you are erased as an individual or as a community for the coloniser to take over your space.
Killing languages by shaming is cruel in this sense. In language colonisation, the marginalised language is erased so that the coloniser's language can claim its space. Such a process is a major contributing factor in what is called the 'self-shame spiral' in indigenous communities. I am shamed into giving up my language and that makes me ashamed of my own identity. Consequently, I do not pass that identity on to my children. This spiral of negative self image continues from generation to generation and creates a historic trauma.
DK: That is so profound. What you are saying reminds me of Steve Biko, the South African visionary leader and thinker. He defined colonisation as a process of digestion. A dominant culture/community/power digests and absorbs the other. So, I think on one end, you talk about alienation, but from the perspective of dominance, the empire and colonisation are really swallowing. I am beginning to think about decolonisation right now as an anthropologist. Decolonisation of the curriculum, decolonization of perhaps the academy in this community that I am part of.
Lastly, I congratulate your team for starting the North Eastern Institute of Language and Culture (NEILAC) this year. I believe the institute is a gift for the region in this International Decade of Indigenous Languages. As people are reading this exchange between us, what message do you have for Indigenous communities, and researchers from this region and from across the world who come to Northeast India to work.
VD: Thank you, Dolly. It has been wonderful talking to you. One thing I can reiterate is—teaching your mother tongue is the best gift you can give to your child. If that is taken care of, languages will survive. Every parent, no matter where you are, no matter what you do, even in mixed marriages, teach your ancestral languages to your children. Our ancestral language is our cultural umbilical cord from which we all are deeply nourished at many levels.
DK: That is so important! Thank you very much for the wonderful introspection on the International Decade of Indigenous languages. I really look forward to your institute’s amazing work.
Dr. Dolly Kikon is a senior lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies Programme at the University of Melbourne. She received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University in 2013. Her research focuses on resource extraction, militarisation, development, human rights, migration, gender, and political economy. She is author of two books: Life and Dignity: Women’s Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Dimapur (Nagaland),andLiving with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India; and co-author of two books: Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India, and Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur.
Rev. Dr. Vijay D'Souza is a Jesuit priest and Director of North Eastern Institute of Language and Culture (NEILAC), Guwahati. He has worked with the Aka (Hrusso) language of Arunachal Pradesh for the last 23 years.He is currently researching on language endangerment and revival throughout the North East. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from University of Oxford and is an Associate Member at the Faculty of Linguistics, University of Oxford.
