Promotion & protection of ancient Indian Languages is need of the hour: Vice President

I heartily welcome all the renowned scholars who are keeping alive the traditional knowledge and who are acting as the intellectual bridges between the past and the present.

The great Indian poet Acharya Dandi, had said that if the light of language does not exist, we will be groping in a dark world.

Language is a tool for intellectual and emotional expression.

Language is a vehicle of intergenerational transmission of culture, scientific knowledge and a worldview.

It is the vital, unseen thread that links the past with the present.

It evolves with human evolution and gets nourished by constant use.

I have always emphasized the importance of protecting and conserving our linguistic heritage. Our languages are a crucial part of our history, our culture and our evolution as a society. In fact, they define our identity, traditions and customs. They play a significant role in creating and strengthening bonds among the people.

Ours is a multilingual country where more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken. However, almost 97 per cent of the population speaks one of the 22 scheduled languages.

The modern Indian languages have ancient roots and are derived in some way from the classical languages.

The classical languages provide the window to our past, to the civilizational values of yesteryears, to the knowledge and wisdom of our ancient thinkers, scientists, poets, sages, doctors, philosophers and rulers.

If we don’t preserve and sustain this link, we lose a very precious key to the treasure house we have all inherited.

Studies by experts estimate that almost 600 languages are on the verge of extinction and that more than 250 languages have disappeared in the past 60 years.

When a language dies, an entire culture dies. We simply cannot let that happen. Protecting our cultural heritage, including languages is our constitutionally mandated duty. Studying ancient texts and propagating them to modern audiences in the need of the hour.  I am glad that today we are recognizing scholars who are engaged in this sacred mission.

Since studying the classical languages and literature would provide access to authentic sources of history, National Mission for Manuscripts was set up when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister.

The major objective of the mission is to unearth vast manuscript wealth in India and use modern and indigenous techniques to conserve them. It is estimated that India possesses about 10 million manuscripts, probably the largest collection in the world.

Preservation of ancient texts is only the first step.  What we need to do is to encourage scholars to do research using these primary sources and unearth new nuggets of knowledge.  We must keep on adding to the knowledge and illuminate our present and future.

I am happy to note that the Indian government’s scheme seeks to reward dedicated scholars both in India and abroad for the development of various classical languages.

I am told that the purpose of the scheme is to recognize the life-long work of the scholars and talented scholars of Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Arabic, Persian, Classical Telugu, Classical Kannada, Classical Oriya and Classical Malayalam languages.

Dear sisters and brothers,

Language preservation and development needs a multi-pronged approach.

It should begin at the primary school level and be continued to higher levels of education. Functional literacy in atleast one language should be ensured.

More and more people should start using their native languages at home, in the community, in meetings and in administration.  More people should write poetry, stories, novels and dramas in these languages. We must accord a sense of dignity and a sense of pride to those who speak, write and communicate in these languages. We must encourage Indian language publications, journals and children’s books.  Dialects and folk literature must be given adequate focus.

Language should become a catalyst for inclusive development.

Language promotion should be an integral part of good governance.

Sisters and brothers,

Today we are living in a rapidly changing world in which technology is transforming the way we live and work. We must harness the power of technology to preserve and promote our languages and culture.

I am glad that today we are taking an important step in that direction.

I am delighted to release Linguistic Data Resources for Artificial Intelligence.

This fills in a major gap in our existing IT architecture.

The resources required to develop language technology and artificial intelligence based tools are inadequate or unavailable for many Indian languages. To fill this gap, the Government of India has launched the scheme of Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian Languages (LDC-IL) in 2008 and has been preparing high quality linguistic resources since over the last eleven years in all the scheduled languages of India.

Today we are releasing 31 large text and speech datasets in 19 scheduled Indian languages. These are the largest corpora for these languages available so far in the public domain.

Along with this, I am happy that a Data Distribution Portal is also being launched where more and varied datasets will be added in the coming days using several types of Artificial Intelligence based technologies such as automatic dictation, speech recognition, language understanding, machine translation, grammar and spell check.

While these datasets are available for free to the academic and not-for-profit research organizations, these are also available to industry at a very economical cost.

I am sure that the release of these resources marks the beginning of new era for the availability of cutting edge IT tools in Indian languages and breaks the language barrier in the digital domain.

Dear friends, our lives are impacted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) on a daily basis at every level.

If we can use AI and build capabilities and tools in local languages, it can certainly help us to democratize knowledge acquisition as well as knowledge preservation and development.

We must have many more technological tools for communication in local languages to serve the needs of all our people speaking different languages.

The mission of “digital India” can be a mission for a literate India and a mission for an inclusive knowledge society.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages has been doing commendable work to provide the linguistic resources in Indian languages. I do hope they will continue these efforts with renewed enthusiasm.

With a total of 31 datasets in 19 scheduled languages presently available for download, I hope that all the technical and research institutes, start-ups and researchers will be able to take advantage of these databases.

I would like to once again congratulate all the distinguished scholars. My best wishes to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, and the institutes engaged in the preservation, propagation and popularization of Indian languages.

मैं आप सभी विद्वत्जनों को राष्ट्रपति पुरस्कार से सम्मानित होने की हार्दिक बधाई देता हूं।

बहनों और भाईयों

भारतीय परंपरा में माना गया है कि सृष्टि का निर्माण ही शब्दनाद से हुआ है। मानव का व्यक्तित्व और विचार संसारभाषा से ही बनते हैं।

भाषाई विविधता का अपना सौंदर्य है। भाषाओं के उपवन में ही विचारों और अभिव्यक्ति के फूल खिलते हैं। किसी भाषा केसमाप्त होने के साथ एक संस्कृति, उसका संस्कार बोध विलुप्त होता है। मानव चेतना की विकास श्रृंखला में एकअपूरर्णीय रिक्तता आती है।

यदि हम विदेशी भाषाऐं सीख सकते हैं तो हम भारतीय भाषाओं को कहीं आसानी से सीख सकते हैं। उनके समृद्ध साहित्यको आसानी से समझ सकते हैं। साहित्य अकादमी, नेशनल बुक ट्रस्ट जैसी संस्थाओं को विभिन्न भारतीय भाषाओं केश्रेष्ठ साहित्य का सरल, सुगम अनुवाद उपलब्ध कराना चाहिए।

हमारे संस्कार एक हैं, हमारी संवेदनाऐं समान हैं। सदियों का सांस्कृतिक आदान प्रदान हमारी प्राचीन भाषाओं के साहित्यमें झलकता है।

सम्मानीय विद्वत्जन,

भारत की अद्भुत भाषाई विविधता, हमारी साहित्यिक धरोहर के संरक्षण में आपका महत्वपूर्ण सहयोग अपेक्षित है। आपभारत के साहित्यिक और सांस्कृतिक पुनर्जागरण के पुरोधा बनें, समाज आपसे मार्गदर्शन की अपेक्षा करता है।

जय हिन्द!”

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