Gondi Standardization Conference 25-29th October Amarkantak, MP

The Gondwana Royal Emblem

 

From the 25th-29th October 2014, CGNet will be jointly hosting a conference about the standardization of the Gondi language at the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in Amarkantak, MP. This will be the third time we have met to discuss the pressing issue of standardizing the Gondi language. 

 

 Gondi is spoken across much of central India. Estimates of the number of speakers place it somewhere over two million. This figure is difficult to establish exactly because the Gond people often live in isolated communities, some of which are affected by the Maoist-associated internal security issues, that often make accurate information collection difficult. Gondi is not, however, a Scheduled (protected) language under the Indian constitution and this means that speakers who speak it face serious difficulties in accessing education and government services and maintaining their basic democratic rights. 

 

This is further complicated by the regionally diverse nature of the Gondi language. Gondi varies from place to place: the Gondi spoken in Northern India and influenced most by Hindi, for example, may be quite different to the Gondi spoken in Telengana. Common words may be completely different in different parts of the country. Our work at the conferences has been focused on establishing form of the language that can be mutually understood by all who speak it as well as serving as a platform for pan-Gondi cultural organisation.

 

Delegates at the last conference discuss different Gondi words from across India

In the last session – held 24-29 August at Kannada University in Hampi – we made significant headway with the assembly of a working Gondi dictionary. The work of our delegates has now contributed towards the collation of over 2100 words.

 

The work of the conference will be posted on this blog and across the wider CGNet family so keep checking back to see how everything is going. For more information on the status of the Gondi language, please visit our website www.adivasiswara.org/standardization.

 

The goals we are working towards remain as pressing as ever: without a fully standardized language (and associated goals such as entering the Schedule of Indian languages and becoming a recognized language of primary education) Gondi-speaking people will continue to endure systematic barriers to personal and community development; Gondi culture will remain vulnerable to erosion from more dominant language groups and basic rights and citizenship will continue to be denied to a section of the Indian population that numbers at least two million.