Explained: What is the Mother Tongue Survey of India and why is it significant?

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has finished the Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI) with field videography of 576 languages and dialects across India.

The home ministry’s annual report for 2021-22 states that it has been decided to create a web archive at the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to “preserve and analyse the original flavour of each indigenous mother tongue”.

The development comes amid the Narendra Modi-led government’s push for education in the mother tongues. Recently, President Droupadi Murmu had also batted for teaching Indian languages in schools and higher education institutes, saying “talent development in science, literature and social sciences can be more effective if taught in one’s mother tongue”, reports Times of India (TOI). 

What is the mother tongue survey carried out by the Union government? How many mother tongues does India recognises? How has the Union government been promoting the usage of mother tongues? We take a closer look.

What is mother tongue survey?

The MHA’s annual report describes MTSI as a project that “surveys the mother tongues, which are returned consistently across two and more Census decades”.

It also analyses the linguistic features of these languages.

NIC and National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) have been roped in for documenting and preserving the linguistic data of surveyed mother tongues in audio-video files, the report added.

The taped speech data of mother tongues will be uploaded on the NIC server for archiving purposes.

How many mother tongues are in India?

The analysis of the 2011 language census data in 2018 describes mother tongue as “the language spoken in childhood by the person’s mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person’s home in childhood will be the mother tongue.”

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It also mentioned that “mother tongue” is a designation provided by the respondent, which need not be identical to the actual linguistic medium.

Citing the report, PTI said that over 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues.

The report also found out that there are 121 languages spoken by 10,000 people and above in the country.

The report had revealed Hindi was the most spoken mother tongue with 43.63 per cent of the population saying it was their mother tongue, followed by Bengali which is the mother tongue of 8 per cent of the population.

ALSO READ: International Mother Language Day 2022: A look at mother tongues spoken in India

Modi government’s push for mother tongue

Prime Minister Modi has urged Indians to take pride in their mother tongues and celebrate India’s rich diversity of languages.

In February, during his monthly radio address – Mann Ki Baat– to the nation, Modi had asked the youth to shed any inhibition against their native language and be proud that India has 121 forms of mother tongues.

Earlier in October, Union home minister Amit Shah had said that primary school students should be taught in their mother tongues.

“The government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Centre believes that all-round development of the nation is possible by taking all the languages of the country together and a provision has been made in the new National Education Policy (NEP) that primary education should be imparted in the mother tongue only,” Shah had said, as per TOI. 

Attending an event in Delhi to mark the 147th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on 31 October, the Union home minister and BJP leader had asked parents to speak to their children only in their mother tongue at home. Further, he reiterated that basic education should be imparted in local languages.

In August, Shah had made a similar request in poll-bound Gujarat. Addressing the graduating students of the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) in Gandhinagar on 28 August, the home minister had said that “whatever language you may use for study, make sure to maintain using your mother tongue at home. We are now even promoting education in the mother tongue in engineering, technical and medical courses.”

“Preserve your own language. It is my request to you to speak, write and read in your own language at home," Shah had said, as per News18.

Education and mother tongue

Launched in July two years ago, the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, endorses teaching in mother tongues at least for primary classes. It says that “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade five, but preferably till Grade eight and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language”.

Backing the NEP, Modi had said in 2020 that the policy did not place a bar on learning any language, be it “English or any global language”.

In September this year, Union minister for education and skill development and entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan also emphasised the importance of education in one’s mother tongue.

Union Minister Dr Subhas Sarkar on Tuesday stated that with NEP 2020, the focus is on promoting mother tongue and regional languages. Defending the policy, he said it does not intend to “impose Hindi”, a charge often levelled by the Opposition.

Moreover, the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for the foundational stages of education, launched by Pradhan last month, has suggested that mother tongue should be the “primary medium of instruction in schools for children up to eight years of age”.

“Since children learn concepts most rapidly and deeply in their home language, the primary medium of instruction would optimally be the child’s home language/ mother tongue/ familiar language in the foundational stage,” the NCF states, as per Indian Express.

With inputs from agencies

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