English can be seen as a colonial language all over India including the Hindi speaking belt. Hindi can be seen as a colonial language in non-Hindi speaking areas, even in places like Odisha. Oriya can be seen as a colonial language over Kui speaking Adivasis and other Adivasi languages. The philosophy of `big fish eating the small fish' need not apply in this context. The truth is that the language spoken by the powerful wipes out the languages of the weak, however large their numbers are.Linguistic colonialism is still an unrecognised concept to most of the activists.
Well, I think language is not just a means of communication. It is also an integral part of culture, politics, sociology, philosophy, art and many other areas. More than anything else, language is also a means of power. Death of a language means death of a culture and death of people. I have come across some good work on this issue by UNESCO long time back. When I was in Kenya a decade back, I met a lot ordinary Africans who were bothered about dying and dead languages in Africa. But, I am still searching for studies on dead and dying languages in India. This is a serious area where both politically sensitive academics and activists should be able to focus on. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
