As a preamble to what I going to comment, please read Dr.Debi Patnaik’s article in Sambad which appeared in Sambad around December 9, 2011, which can be translated:*Multi-lingual education in Odisha :Plenty of opportunities taking leadership in bi-lingual/multi-lingual education in Odisha”. Earlier Dr.Patnaik vehemently argued about unilateral linguistic character of Odisha, and was opposed to recognising relevance and identity of Koshali language as a separate language. This was in response to our posting (Purohit and Karmee) in this forum about the advisability and possibility of inclusion of Koshali in the 8th schedule. I wrote a four part series as rebuttal to Dr.Patnaik’s assertion. So here is my response to Dr.Patnaik’s posting under question.
First of all, I heartily appreciate Dr.Patnaik’s main themes in this article (1)Odisha is multi-lingual state, with two major languages, Odia and Koshali, and (2) Odisha should provide education through the languages prevalent in the state. I also applaud Odisha government’s recent announcement re provision of instruction through some of the Adivashi languages. This is good. I hope Dr.Patnaik will join me and fellow Koshalis in our quest for inclusion of Koshali in 8th schedule as soon as possible. I understand that recently Odisha government has recommended Ho to be included in the 8th schedule. As to why Odisha government is reticent in recognition of Koshali as a language in its own right is beyond me. This as you can imagine has caused severe bitterness in Koshal or Western Odisha region.As you know when in 1993 High level Commission was established, Indian government specifically asked the commission to exclude Bodo from deliberation because it had already promised Bodo people that Bodo would be included in the 8th schedule to quell the agitation of the students of the area.In the words of the Parliamentary committee,”3.2 However, in the light of the Bodo Accord signed between the Government of India on the one hand and All Bodo Students Union and Bodo People’s Action Committee on the other on 20 February, 1993, the Government decided to delink the matter of inclusion of Bodo language in the Eighth Schedule from the issue of setting up of High Powered Body for evolving criteria for inclusion of more languages in the Eighth Schedule”. Eventually Bodo along with Maithili,Dogri and Santhali were included in the 8 th schedule.So what one expects the Koshalis to do ? Become militant? violent? Rasta Roko,Rail Roko? Learn a few pointers from Naxalites ? Is that the only way? In what way,claims of these languages are any better than Koshali ? Is not the government indirectly encouraging Koshalis to go the way Bodo people took? So far Koshalis are going through all the civil channels,such as, writing memorandums, providing documents of authenticity of our claim,producing literature, making movies,conducting seminars, engaging in debates, launching newspapers and periodicals and everything imaginable but to no effect. Odisha government should listen to Dr.Patnaik and act on his advice to have a dialogue with Koshalis re use of Koshali in primary and secondary education. or democracy to survive in India, population needs to be literate and all the impediments must be eliminated. The primary goal of education must be to prepare the population for the 21st century. As it stands now, aggressive Odianisation with a missionary zeal has resulted in putting huge part of population in a disadvantage in education and consequent huge drop-out rate in schools.Many provinces have more than one recognised language, and such measures enhances the cultural mix because of mutual respect between the language groups. Behind the opposition to recognition of Koshali, there is an oft repeated assertion that Koshali is nothing but a dialect of Odia. This is patently not true, and worse, it is paternalistic. Most coastal Odishans can’t speak Koshali, nor are they familiar with any Koshali literature. They are much more familiar with Bengali in northern coastal area and with Telegu in southern area. So why this pretence ? Why not celebrate the linguistic diversity in Odisha instead ?
