The government of Nepal has identified 59 different ethnic groups in Nepal as aadibasi/janajati (indigenous peoples/nationalities). Almost all of them have their own mother tongue which they consider to be an important element of their ethnic identity as well as to be a means for enhancing their development. This perception is a motivating factor for them to work for the preservation and promotion of their language. The preservation and promotion of mother tongues, however, cannot be carried out by each indigenous group alone. The process needs dual efforts: from the ethnic groups themselves as well as from the government.

As aadibasi/janajatis are convinced that their languages could be used as a means to further their education and enhance their socio-economic development, they have been calling for the government to allow their language to be used and taught in schools. Furthermore, they are advocating with the government to introduce a provision which will allow mother tongue languages be used in government offices, thus enabling indigenous people to understand policies and to express their concerns and problems in a proper way. The voice of aadibasi/janajati is as such directly concerned with the use of mother tongues in education, government offices along with the general public bureaucracy, and media.

Education in mother tongue

Many aadibasi/janajatis of Nepal find that their socio-economic conditions are lagging behind those of other people in Nepal because of the lack of possibility to get education through their own mother tongue. If children of aadibasi/janajati had the opportunity to learn, read and write through their own language, it would help reduce the dropout of aadibasi/janajati children from the schools – at a rate which is currently the highest in the country. At present, children of indigenous background are often discouraged from going to school because they are being bullied when speaking their own language. Aadibasi/janajati are advocating for the principle that rather than suppressing mother tongue languages, schools should allow and even encourage children to speak their own mother tongue besides nepali.
During the making of the democratic Constitution in 1990, the aadibasi/janajati vigorously lobbied for the introduction of mother tongues in schools. However, their demands were not incorporated, and the Constitution only says that people can impart education through their own mother tongue up to class five (primary level). But this provision of the Constitution has not even been implemented properly as the shifting governments decided to accommodate the claims for education in mother tongues through the provision of allowing them to be an “optional subject” in the curriculum of primary education. This provision is not at all satisfactory to aadibasi/janajati, who had wished to see the possibility of teaching all or at least a majority of subjects in mother tongues up to SLC level, and even after. The current provision of “optional subject” in primary education is of course adopted to give room for specific needs of local people. However, this is totally against the spirit of the Constitution. Although aadibasi/janajati know this, they have nevertheless chosen to take the provision as “little is better than nothing” and tried to benefit from it.

Mother tongue in government offices

Government offices are the places where people should find support and facilities to become empowered to overcome their problems. This concept does not materialise for a large number of people in Nepal; not least for people who have their own mother tongue. Because of non-fluency when speaking in Nepali language, indigenous people have suffered from a lot of problems related to government official work. There are many examples of how non-fluency in Nepali has had grave consequences for people with a mother tongue other than Nepali.

People from the indigenous groups of Limbus often have the problem of distinguishing their pronunciation between the two consonants ‘Kha’ and ‘Gha’. One Limbu tells how during the time of land registration, the local government office asked him which type of land he wanted to register. Instead of saying ‘Gharbari’ (household land), he said ‘Kharbari’ (land of one type of grass used to make roofs for houses), due to his difficulties with pronunciation. As a result, his Gharbari was not registered, and he later encountered numerous problems when trying to remedy the error.

This kind of situations has made government offices alienated places to many indigenous people. Psychologically they feel these places burdensome and they associate them with suffering and hassles rather than with service provision.

The notion of development is related to empowerment of people. This relation can be well established only when the mother tongue speakers are allowed to use their own language for expression and for getting all needed information related to their development. Freedom of expression and right to information of mother tongue speakers have for long been violated by not allowing people to use their own languages in government and other public authority offices.

Mother tongues in media

“Information is power” – few are those who disagree. For people’s development today, the perhaps most important issue would be access to information. Access to information is directly related with the medium of language to deliver the information. Due to the Nepalese media’s ignorance towards using mother tongues, access to information is lacking for many people. Most media – print as well as electronic – are using only the official Khas Nepali language. This ultimately leads the mother tongue speakers deprived of receiving information in various fields of interest and importance to them. Moreover, in geographical areas where access to print media is limited due to low literacy rates, the electronic media has an even greater responsibility to provide educational programmes. Otherwise, the people who only speak their mother tongue, can use radio and TV solely as means of entertainment, and not as means for empowerment and development.

It is often heard that the use and national management of mother tongues are subjects of political interest. However, the mother tongue issue has, indeed, at least one more aspect, namely the one of being a “means of development” – something which has been ignored all the time.

Arjun Limbu is advocacy programme coordinator for Kirat Yakthung Chumlung (KYC), a Limbu indigenous people’s organisation.