Since last month, Surajit Pal, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Chennai, has been spending one day every month teaching Bengali to children from his community. Pal’s daughter, who is in class 8, is one of the students.
“We are trying to introduce our children to Bengali culture and literature,” says Pal. His wife and her friends are among the volunteer-teachers . The free classes began two months ago in the Bengali Association in T Nagar.
February 21 was celebrated as ‘International Mother Language Day’ across the city, and several organisations are trying to popularise regional languages among youngsters of their communities.
“We hope more students will join the classes. Most Bengali children in Chennai cannot read or write the language. That’s a pity because Bengali is so rich,” says Anjan Prasad Chakraborty, president of the Bengal Association.
The Kerala government has made a concerted effort to encourage Malayalis outside Kerala to learn their mother tongue by starting the Malayalam Mission. “We have learning centres in various cities where volunteerteachers , mostly housewives, teach the language,” says M Nanda Govind, president of the Malayalam Mission in Tamil Nadu.
With 150 centres and 2,650 students in Chennai, the Malayalam Mission will soon extend to Coimbatore , Madurai, Tirupur, and the Nilgiris. “We are overwhelmed by the response and that is why we are expanding,” says Govind.
Other regional associations are also trying to popularise their languages, albeit with a little less success. The Punjab Association has an arrangement with the University of Madras for students to learn Punjabi. “But there aren’t many takers. It could be because Punjabi families in Chennai feel that knowing Hindi is enough,” says Ramesh Lamba, general secretary of the Punjab Association of Chennai.
The Coorgi community may not have set up formal classes, But the community members try and get their children to imbibe the culture by speaking the language at home, says Smitha Kuttaya, who has been living in Chennai for the past 11 years. “We do not have a script, but we get our children to speak the language,” she says.
The community that seems most worried about the younger generation’s lack of interest in the culture is the Sindhis. “Hardly any of the children want to learn to speak or write the language. They think speaking Hindi is more than enough. We don’t know how to tackle this,” says Prakash Vaswani, member of the Sindhi Hindu Mandal Association.
source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / City> Chennai / Home> Collections> Regional Languages / by Kamini Mehta / TNN / February 22nd, 2012
