ANTARA BOSE
Jamshedpur, Nov 18: Samvaad- the five-day tribal conclave by Tata Steel Foundation served as the right platform to launch language, literature and art books on tribal languages.
Samvaad 2022 witnessed new books by three Samvaad fellows- Bangwang Losu from Arunachal Pradesh, Sumanti Devi from Chhattisgarh and Tauqir Alam from Uttarakhand who launched textbooks and art books at the event this year.
While Losu received the opportunity to launch Sedan, textbooks for elementary school children in Wancho language, which belongs to the Wancho tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, Alam launched a storybook titled ‘Van Gujjar Kahaniya’ in Van Gujjar, a language spoken by the Van Gujjar community in Uttarakhand.
Sumanti however launched the first art curation book titled ‘Evam Kala’ in the Oraon language that describes the process of Oraon art and is a handbook on the art form.
These have been Samvaad fellows who have received grants, and mentorship to come up with ideas to promote and propagate tribal languages, literature and art with an aim to preserve and conserve dying tribal languages.
Wancho from Arunachal Pradesh is otherwise an oral language but Losu who created the Wango script and is now writing textbooks to be able to sustain the language in his community. Preserving people’s mother tongue and local languages are also a priority in the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
“I have been working on the Wancho language since 2001. I realised that we need to develop a script because the Roman script and Devanagri did not have the sounds that we use in Wancho. In 2016, I managed to publish the first book Sedan (meaning The Rising Sun) with the support of many friends and well-wishers. However, through Samvaad, I received guidance on how to develop the pedagogy of this language through various workshops and grants,” said Losu who is otherwise a science teacher at the Niausa Secondary School in Longding district of Arunachal Pradesh where the population of Wancho community is around 57,000.
Similarly, Alam too has written his first book in the Van Gujjar language under Project Mari Birsa. This book is meant for children and has illustrations to make it more interesting for children to read and understand.
Through the Samvaad Fellowships, the Tata Steel Foundation has been trying to preserve and conserve dying dialects, languages and art forms of tribes across the length and breadth of the country.
