Promotion of a Tribal Language in Indian Education: A Case Study of Santhali Language from West Bengal

School of Applied Sc. And Humanities, Haldia Institute of Technology,Haldia, WB

Being a multilingual country India has seen several language movements in the recent decade. These movements have created separate state boundaries but the languages itself did not get high recognition and promotion in government’s language education policies. Though several languages made it to the VIII scheduled as the scheduled languages, the indigenous or tribal languages of the country remain unaffected and are struggling to survive. The Government’s recent efforts to promote tribal languages in school seem to be somehow positive but the different language policies and the widespread acceptance of English and Hindi put a shadow on the efforts. The scenario of the language situation in India is quite complicated and dynamic; incorporating languages in Indian education has always been a centre of both debate and controversy. The central issue in the recent decade is the medium of instruction in schools or in higher education. Educational planners have, by and large, committed themselves for an inclusive education system without questioning the elitist framework of education followed from the British era. In this multilingual setting with a federal polity, one can find a wide variation in states’ Education curriculums as far as the medium, content, duration, and nomenclature of educational stages are concerned. The present paper aims to focus on the role of a tribal language, which is Santhali, in Education in the light of the education system in West Bengal. A case study on Santhali which explores the situational and attitudinal aspects of the language in education is the central work of the present paper, where Bangla plays the dominant role. It also tries to find out whether Santhali can be a medium of instruction in a class of heterogeneous learners.