By Tenzin Gelek
Prelude
The 21st of February was first proclaimed by UNESCO’s General Conference in November 1999 as the International Mother Tongue day. But what is more fascinating is the symbolism associated with this date in history. In the year 1952, on this very day, a student group was shot at in the erstwhile East Bengal or East Pakistan, which resulted in 9 casualties. These group of impassioned students were championing the cause of their mother tongue, Bangla against a govt. policy that threatened to make Urdu the national language in both East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) as well as in West Pakistan. This fateful day, also commemorated as Bangla Language movement day, went on to become the starting point of Bangladesh’s war for self-determination and eventually leading to their independence. Interestingly, the conditions that led to this inspirational chapter from history bears an uncanny resemblance to the present day situation that grips the Tibetan language and culture and thereby, relates to our struggle for Identity and Self-determination. So, in due deference to that indomitable human spirit that seeks the freedom to carve one’s own destiny, I pay homage to this day.
It is said that there are many levels of Karma (le) or what is more conveniently translated into English as the law of causality. I have often struggled with this philosophy of Buddhism; of not being able to comprehend a power above us enforcing (for the lack of a better word) this law. However, my confusion is confined within that sphere of the subtlest form of Karma that lies beyond the spectrum of our mortal imagination. What I am certain about though, is the form of Karma that relates to my tangible destiny, either acquired or obligatory. My reference here is to the karma of my speaking tongue. I am a Tibetan refugee born and raised in India. Like many first generation Tibetan exiles, I have inherited a cultural legacy that is uniquely Tibetan. And I consider the language as being the metaphorical custodian of that cultural heritage.
Before I delve deeper into this, I have to clarify that I have never seriously pondered on the significance of Tibetan Language in my own life until recently. And as is apparent, I am no expert on this subject by any measure whatsoever. In fact, I have even once been guilty of abandoning my mother tongue in the pursuit of a more romanticized language, namely English. However, events in the past few years, both meditated and unplanned, have led me to assess this often discussed but hardly resolved topic.
In my selected readings on this subject, I haven’t found a more profound argument than the one put forward by the world-renowned socio-linguist Prof. Joshua Fishman. In his essay appropriately titled “What do you lose when you lose your language?” he writes “The most important relationship between language and culture that gets to the heart of what is lost when you lose a language is that most of the culture is in the language and is expressed in the language. Take it away from the culture, and you take away its greetings, its curses, its praises, its laws, its literature, its songs, its riddles, its proverbs, its cures, its wisdom, its prayers. The culture could not be expressed and handed on in any other way. What would be left? When you are talking about the language, most of what you are talking about is the culture. That is, you are losing all those things that essentially are the way of life, the way of thought, the way of valuing, and the human reality that you are talking about.” As insightful as it is, what struck me most about this extract was how every word of it speaks to me of the urgency that our culture is facing in light of the Chinese govt.’s calculated hard-line policies and the exile communities’ unintentional neglect.
I had the amazing opportunity to listen to Prof. Fishman along with various other prolific linguists and three dedicated lecturers from Tibet at an event on minority languages. Prof. Fishman spoke on “Reversing language shift” and throughout his talk, he emphasized on starting close to home. He referred to home and family as the biggest strength a community can have towards sustaining its language. And in many ways, this holds so very true for us Tibetans in exile. Creating a favorable home environment for mother-tongue language should not just be treated as a fad but an essential ingredient of early childhood.
With the passage of time, Tibetans in exile have accommodated wonderfully well within their respective host cultures and that speaks volume of the adaptive and tolerant nature of our social ethos. However, not all transformations have been positive and in grinding through that process of subconscious acculturation, we have now reached this intersection where we are faced with a possibility of an irreversible assimilation. Not that I am suggesting a xenophobic paranoia but this is clearly a moment for us as a community to pause and rethink our journey.
Another and a more irrepressible form of cultural assimilation could be defined as the purported integration and absorption of minority groups into the larger, more dominant ethnic group in a multi-ethnic geographical situation. No points for guessing which “situation” I am referring to. Time and again, the Chinese government’s biggest challenge has been the stability of the “motherland”. And in order to maintain that stability, they have continually pushed forth these covert state policies that promise to acculturate the minorities into the majority Han population. Reducing Tibetan to an economically disadvantaged language; providing very few or no infrastructural support for the development of the language et al are some examples of such a policy. People there are faced with the daunting dilemma of whether to learn the more lucrative Mandarin or to persist with the less-profitable Tibetan. But admirably, most of the Tibetans at the receiving end of this stick have displayed an amazing strength and ingenuity in countervailing such allusive preclusions.
Few months back, I came across this inspirational story of a quiet revolution going on in Tibet. A group of individuals committed a day of every week to living and celebrating various aspects of Tibetan culture like speaking only in Tibetan, eating Tsampa, wearing traditional Tibetan garb and everything else that peacefully but out-rightly rejected any form of cultural invasion. They called it the Lhakar revolution meaning White Wednesday. In addition to that, I have also heard personal anecdotes of Tibetans from Tibet, who imposed fines or mild punishments for any accidental slip of Chinese words in their conversations. Now, one might argue that this is a tad too extreme and that the state of the Tibetan language hasn’t quite reached that stage of paranoia but according to a professor of Tibetan literature and culture from Tibet, the deterioration of a language begins initially with the casual substitution of random terms, which then ultimately leads to the permanent replacement of the term. So, such an enforced mindfulness could just be our way out of this quicksand.
Another speaker at the same event talked on the absolute necessity of inter-generational transmission of a language. And how much ever we try to shy away from it, the responsibility to do that in the exile community falls largely on us, the first generation exile Tibetans. History can attest to the fact that it takes just one or two generational gap for a language to disintegrate into extinction. I doubt if there is anyone out there who doesn’t share a certain degree of concern for one’s language and culture. Nevertheless, I do not repudiate the possibility of a few skeptics out there, for whom the common cause of preserving the Tibetan culture and language isn’t very appealing and provides very little personal incentives. And I think this is largely due to the skewed perception that stems from the notion that Culture and Language are national treasures and are separate from one’s individual domain and aspirations. When in reality, culture defines who we are as individuals and shapes our personality. And in addition, our Tibetan-ness is also deeply encoded in our culture and richly articulated through the language. Hence, with the loss of the language, one loses many more at an individual level. Not to mention the vast wealth of ancient wisdom and traditional folklore that the Tibetan scriptures and literatures hold.
In today’s globalized society, there is a plethora of threats to minority languages and indigenous cultures but the one that we should be most worried about is our own oversight. So, while we are sloganeering against the cultural genocide perpetuated by the Chinese govt. inside Tibet, let us be very mindful of the cultural suicide that is gradually sneaking upon us. For when I say karma, I mean an inescapable destiny; an inevitable responsibility of each one of us as a community to appreciate and revive the vitality of our mother tongue.
[OPINION-DISCLAIMER]
