Preserving Local Languages in Cosmopolitan Cities
What goes on in your mind when someone asks you a question? What language do you think in? Is it your mother tongue, is it any other language you find comforting, or is it English? Take a moment to ponder over this thought.
While we might most often than not prefer thinking in one particular language, multilingualism has been a key characteristic of India’s diversity for centuries now. As per Census 2011, we boast of more than 19,500 raw mother tongues and dialects spoken across the country, which are further grouped into 1,369 distinct mother tongues and 121 major languages. Simply put, mother tongue is the language that we are exposed to since birth, and grow up hearing and speaking throughout our formative years. The beauty of multilingualism is that an individual can have more than one mother tongue, and more so, they may have picked up different languages through their life experiences, thus giving them an edge in their interpersonal relations and social contexts.
India as a country has always been big on oral learning traditions, dating back to the gurukul systems. Naturally, mother tongue too was passed on from generation to generation orally, by means of conversations at home, and social interactions with one’s extended family. Let us bring in some history of human settlements at large. There has always been a push and pull between our species choosing to be movers or settlers given the socio-economical or geographical circumstances. From my perspective, I believe the settler approach would have worked well in how deeply rooted and widely spoken a mother tongue would have been in an individual’s immediate surrounding, given that their larger community had chosen to settle in the same place. Cut to the present day, where we predominately see a large number of Indians aspiring to migrate to cities that are cosmopolitan in nature, I believe a parallel can be drawn between the socio-cultural characteristics of today’s migrating workforce with that of hunters and gatherers in early days of civilization. With people always on the move, they are continuously posed with new challenges on the language front, wherein there is a regional expectation on migrants to interact in the local language to have an ease of living across various activities essential for survival – from buying groceries to commuting, and even to be successful in making inroads among new social circles.
Take a city like Bengaluru, a true melting pot where multiple ethnic groups have coexisted for decades. Here, average residents speak two or more languages as a matter of daily life. But language is much more than a survival tool; it is the key to understanding how a community thinks, lives, and behaves. Lately, though, we see a growing rift between locals and new migrants. With digital convenience bringing everything straight to our doorsteps, people rarely feel the traditional push to learn the local language, and organic public interactions have faded.
Yet, learning Kannada or any local tongue isn’t just about courtesy. It’s a civic and cultural responsibility that builds deep respect and empathy. Children make this transition effortlessly. Early multilingualism acts as an introduction to multitasking, enriching overall cognitive development and keeping young minds open to future learning. This is where Dhee Grantha steps in, aiming to make language learning fun, tactile, and visually engaging through children's storybooks. By sparking this love early, we ensure that our languages and generational values stay alive, one story at a time.
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