How Vidarbha Keeps Its Non‑Marathi Languages Alive

thenewsdirt
13 minutes ago
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Vidarbha, the eastern region of Maharashtra, demonstrates a striking linguistic paradox. Despite Marathi being the dominant language spoken by the vast majority, the region simultaneously preserves a remarkable collection of minority languages across its tribal and nomadic communities.

These languages belong to groups that have inhabited these lands for centuries, long before contemporary political boundaries were drawn.

The story of their persistence reveals complex patterns of community determination, institutional initiatives, and the ongoing tension between pressures for assimilation and cultural continuity.

The survival of these languages challenges the assumption that linguistic dominance automatically leads to the extinction of smaller speech communities. Understanding how Vidarbha maintains this linguistic diversity requires examining the specific communities, the mechanisms they employ, and the substantial obstacles they face daily.

Linguistic Diversity Across Vidarbha's Districts

The linguistic landscape of Vidarbha extends far beyond standard Marathi. Census data from 2011 reveals the distribution of languages across the region.

In Yavatmal district, whilst Marathi is spoken by 67.57% of the population, significant communities speak other languages as primary tongues.

Lambadi speakers comprise 13.29% of the population, Urdu speakers represent 5.41%, Hindi speakers make up 4.99%, and, notably, Kolami speakers constitute 2.77% and Gondi speakers account for 2.41%.

This multilingual reality exists in nearly every Vidarbha district. The data demonstrates that minority languages are not marginal phenomena but constitute substantial speech communities numbering in the hundreds of thousands across the region.

The mechanisms that allow these languages to persist despite Marathi's overwhelming institutional dominance operate at multiple levels simultaneously. Community commitment to daily language use within families remains the foundation, but preservation also depends on educational initiatives, documentation projects, and specific policies that acknowledge minority language rights. These mechanisms function imperfectly, constantly challenged by economic migration, educational policies that privilege Marathi, and wider societal pressures favouring dominant languages.

The Gond people, constituting the largest tribal community in Vidarbha, speak Gondi, a Dravidian language with ancient roots in the region. Census records from 2011 document 2.98 million Gondi speakers nationally, a figure that reflects the language's broader importance. However, speaker fluency tells a more concerning story than raw numbers suggest. Only approximately one-fifth of ethnic Gonds actually maintain fluency in Gondi.

In Gadchiroli district, where Gond populations concentrate, the tribal population comprises 38.71% of the total district population, with Gonds forming approximately 85% of this tribal majority.

The presence of this substantial Gond population might suggest secure language preservation, yet linguistic reality proves more precarious. UNESCO classifies Gondi as a vulnerable language, a designation reflecting genuine concerns about intergenerational transmission.

Educational systems in Gadchiroli conduct instruction almost entirely in Marathi, meaning Gond-speaking children encounter their schooling in an unfamiliar language medium. This educational barrier contributes to lower academic achievement among tribal students. The census records show a significant gap in literacy outcomes.

Within the Gadchiroli district overall, the literacy rate stands at 70.6%, but gender gaps prove pronounced, with notable disparities between male and female literacy rates. Moreover, tribal students face systematic disadvantage when learning in a non-mother-tongue medium.

The research indicates that children learn foundational concepts most effectively through their first language. When tribal students must simultaneously acquire linguistic competence in Marathi while grasping subject matter, they carry a cognitive burden that their Marathi-speaking peers do not experience.

This disadvantage accumulates throughout their educational trajectory, contributing to higher dropout rates and lower educational attainment for tribal populations overall.

Kolami, a Central Dravidian language, represents another significant minority language in Vidarbha facing preservation challenges. According to census data, approximately 128,451 people speak Kolami as their mother tongue, concentrated primarily in Yavatmal and Wardha districts. The language exhibits characteristics distinct from neighbouring languages, reflecting centuries of separate development.

UNESCO's classification of Kolami as definitely endangered reflects its vulnerability despite maintaining a substantial speaker base.

The Kolam Adivasi community, traditionally farmers, has historically maintained Kolami as their primary household language. Yet younger generations increasingly shift toward Marathi, perceiving it as offering greater access to employment and education. Community elders in villages of Yavatmal actively maintain the language through daily conversation and deliberate intergenerational teaching, yet this transmission occurs despite rather than because of institutional support. Educational materials in Kolami remain scarce, and schools offer no instruction in the language.

Recent preservation initiatives have begun producing bilingual picture books in Kolami and Marathi, providing written materials that grant the language visible legitimacy to younger readers.

These bilingual publications represent crucial interventions, as children encountering their language in published form receive explicit cultural messaging about that language's value and worth.

Korku language, concentrated in the Melghat region of Amravati district, presents a unique preservation situation. As the sole representative of the Munda family languages in Maharashtra, Korku possesses linguistic distinctiveness that makes its preservation particularly significant. With approximately 700,000 speakers nationally, Korku might appear secure, yet UNESCO's classification as vulnerable reflects legitimate endangerment concerns. Unlike Gondi or Kolami, Korku lacks a written script tradition developed over generations.

The language transmission has occurred through purely oral means across centuries, creating both historical strength and contemporary vulnerability. The absence of literacy infrastructure means Korku communities cannot draw upon written texts to reinforce language knowledge or create reference materials for younger generations.

Yet Korku speakers have adapted preservation strategies to overcome this constraint. Digital archiving projects have begun documenting Korku folktales, creating recorded repositories that can serve educational functions and preserve linguistic knowledge even as spoken transmission weakens. Exploration of podcast and radio formats for Korku content represents another adaptation to contemporary media landscapes.

These initiatives demonstrate that language preservation methodologies can evolve with technological change, providing new pathways for communities without strong literary traditions.

The smallest linguistic communities face the most acute endangerment in Vidarbha. Naiki, associated with the Pardhan community historically known as bards who served the Gond tribes, represents a critically endangered status with only approximately 1,500 speakers.

The language survives primarily in ritual song contexts rather than everyday conversation, creating dependency on ceremonial occasions for transmission. Nihali, described as a language isolate with no established relationship to major language families, faces even greater vulnerability with approximately 2,500 native speakers concentrated in small settlements of the Buldhana district.

The speakers of Nihali, who identify themselves as Kalto people, maintain the language despite social pressures and economic incentives favouring a shift to dominant languages. Both these critically endangered languages represent the final generations of native speakers. Without intervention, they face extinction within decades.

The documentation efforts currently directed toward these languages thus acquire particular urgency, as recorded materials may constitute the only remaining linguistic knowledge once native speakers pass. This situation illustrates how language preservation becomes more challenging as speaker populations contract toward extinction thresholds.

Varhadi, the regional dialect of Marathi spoken across Vidarbha, represents preservation operating within a dominant language family. Varhadi exhibits distinctive phonetic, lexical, and grammatical features that differentiate it markedly from standard Marathi. The dialect replaces standard Marathi case endings with distinct morphological forms, incorporates loanwords from Hindi reflecting Vidarbha's proximity to Hindi-speaking regions, and preserves archaic Marathi words found nowhere else in Maharashtra.

Estimated at seven to ten million speakers, Varhadi remains linguistically vigorous despite standardisation pressures from educational institutions and media that promote standard Marathi. Its preservation demonstrates that linguistic variation persists even within dominant language families when speaker populations remain substantial and cultural identity becomes attached to dialectal distinctiveness.

The survival of the Varhadi dialect illustrates that preservation mechanisms operate at multiple linguistic levels simultaneously, protecting not only distinct languages but also valued variations within established language families.

Institutional and Community-Based Preservation Mechanisms

Institutional preservation efforts in Vidarbha operate through multiple channels and funding mechanisms.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs supports preservation activities through the Support to Tribal Research Institutes scheme, allocating substantial budgets for language documentation and preservation work.

The Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages, implemented by the Central Institute of Indian Languages under the Ministry of Education, specifically targets languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers. This scheme has produced comprehensive dictionaries, phonetic sketches, grammatical descriptions, and detailed ethno-linguistic profiles.

These national frameworks provide resources that resource-constrained tribal communities alone could not develop independently. Yet institutional support remains insufficient relative to preservation needs across the region.

The Mohagaon Gondi school in Gadchiroli district exemplifies community-driven preservation initiatives reshaping educational possibilities for tribal children. In October 2019, fifteen gram sabhas, or village councils, passed formal resolutions asserting community rights to reclaim Gondi language instruction in their schools. The school that resulted, named Paramparik Koya Dnyanbodh Sanskar Gotul, literally meaning traditional Koya educational institution for knowledge and culture, operates with Gondi as the sole medium of instruction.

This represents a radical departure from state-mandated Marathi-medium education in tribal areas. Teachers selected from within Gond communities undergo intensive training at specialist institutions. The curriculum incorporates traditional knowledge about farming techniques, medicinal plant identification, forest management practices, village administration customs, and community history.

Students learn the Gondi script alongside developing English language proficiency. Crucially, the school functions through innovative community financing mechanisms. Five percent of annual tendu leaf collection profits, generated through forest resource sales, funds school operations. Individual Adivasi families provide essential supplies through collective contribution rather than monetary payment.

This financing model demonstrates that preservation can operate through existing community economic systems when communities maintain collective control over natural resources. The school's operation reflects constitutional provisions granting gram sabhas in scheduled areas decision-making authority over educational matters, powers that the Gond community deliberately invoked to reclaim language instruction.

Dictionary development and standardisation projects provide essential preservation infrastructure. The first comprehensive Gondi dictionary, completed in 2018 after intensive workshops spanning 2014 to 2017 across seven states, represents a watershed achievement. Previously, no unified reference existed despite Gondi being spoken across multiple states with significant dialectal variations.

The dictionary development process itself functioned as a preservation mechanism, bringing together Gondi experts and speakers from diverse regions to identify shared vocabulary and negotiate standardisation questions. The resulting reference tool provides foundations for educational material development and linguistic scholarship.

Script revival initiatives have contributed additional critical infrastructure. The Gunjala Gondi script, discovered in manuscripts dated approximately 1750, was formally recovered and researched by scholars. These manuscripts, previously known but undocumented, contained knowledge of seasonal cycles, community history, ethical codes, and literature.

The Masaram Gondi script, developed in 1918, represents an earlier standardisation effort. Both scripts have been actively revived, with signboards and published materials appearing in Gond-dominated districts. Written presence and visibility prove significant for languages that have become primarily oral, providing tangible evidence of linguistic legitimacy.

Educational integration mechanisms operate at multiple levels across Vidarbha districts. Maharashtra has introduced bilingual education in fifty-two tribal schools, incorporating English alongside Marathi instruction in selected classes of Eklavya Model Residential Schools. These initiatives benefit over 2,000 tribal students annually.

The establishment of Tribal Studies Centres in Gadchiroli and Amravati provides institutional anchors for research and education related to tribal languages and cultures. Translation workshops have produced bilingual picture books in languages like Kolami, with dual-language narratives enabling children to encounter their mother tongues in print form.

These material interventions prove significant, as children encountering their language in published form receive explicit messaging about language value. Collaborative translation projects between tribal communities and educational organisations have begun generating teaching materials in tribal languages, creating resources where institutional systems previously offered none.

Documentation through digital media extends preservation beyond traditional written formats. Korku communities have initiated digital archives recording folktales in the original language, creating repositories for research and community consultation. Exploration of podcast formats and radio programming in tribal languages represents an adaptation of preservation to contemporary media ecosystems.

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, awarded the UNESCO Literacy Prize in 2022 for contributions to mother tongue-based literacy development, operates the world's first Language Lab specifically designed for tribal languages.

This institutional capacity, though located outside Vidarbha, provides research and pedagogical frameworks applicable to Vidarbha languages. Development of AI-based translation tools has commenced, funded through government schemes and implemented by technology institutions.

These tools aim to convert English, Hindi, and Marathi text and speech into selected tribal languages, potentially increasing accessibility of digital resources to tribal communities. Such technological approaches represent recognition that language preservation requires innovation beyond traditional methods.

Obstacles and Challenges to Language Preservation

Substantial structural obstacles challenge language preservation despite multiple institutional and community initiatives. Educational outcomes reveal the consequences of language barriers in schooling.

Children in Gadchiroli who speak Gondi as their first language encounter classroom instruction entirely in Marathi, creating simultaneous learning demands that disadvantage tribal students.

Research demonstrates that children learn foundational concepts most effectively through mother-tongue medium instruction.

When tribal students must simultaneously acquire linguistic competence in an unfamiliar language while grasping subject matter, they carry a cognitive burden that their Marathi-speaking peers do not experience. This disadvantage accumulates throughout educational trajectories, contributing to higher dropout rates and lower educational attainment overall. Within the Gadchiroli district, school completion rates for tribal students remain substantially below those of non-tribal populations.

The gender gap in educational attainment proves particularly pronounced, with girls from tribal communities facing compounded disadvantages.

Infrastructure limitations shape possibilities for language preservation initiatives. Among habitations in Vidarbha classified as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group settlements, approximately 67% possess mobile network coverage, leaving significant populations without basic digital connectivity. This digital divide becomes particularly consequential as preservation efforts increasingly leverage technological solutions. Whilst urban centres in Vidarbha achieve smartphone penetration exceeding 80%, rural tribal districts remain largely disconnected from digital services.

Teacher capacity limitations compound these challenges. Only a small percentage of teachers in Maharashtra's tribal schools have received training on tribal cultures and languages, whilst research indicates that over three-quarters of teachers express a need for pedagogical support to manage multilingual classrooms effectively.

Language instruction materials remain scarce, with textbooks produced almost exclusively in Marathi. The limited availability of teaching aids and assessment tools in tribal languages constrains the expansion of mother-tongue instruction even where community support exists.

Social stigmatisation contributes to language decline independent of institutional structures. Individuals from communities historically associated with particular vernaculars report deliberately avoiding their mother tongues in public contexts due to fear of judgment or discrimination.

Some have shifted to Hindi or Marathi, perceiving these languages as more neutral than dialect-marked varieties. The psychological and social pressures associated with linguistic stigmatisation function as powerful displacement mechanisms, pushing speakers toward dominant languages even when institutional structures do not mandate such shifts. Families sometimes discourage children from speaking minority languages, viewing dominant language competence as more valuable for economic opportunity. This social dimension of language change proves difficult to address through documentation or educational interventions alone.

Linguistic standardisation itself creates preservation challenges. Gondi exists in multiple dialects across different states, exhibiting significant variation within Maharashtra between districts. Dictionary and script development projects must navigate these variations whilst creating unified tools. The process of standardisation, whilst enabling educational material development, risks erasing dialectal diversity and imposing external order on organic linguistic variation.

Community voices in these standardisation processes remain insufficiently represented, creating potential for standardised forms to diverge from community usage patterns.

The preservation of Vidarbha's languages amid Marathi dominance ultimately reflects ongoing negotiation between external pressures favouring linguistic homogenisation and community commitment to cultural distinctiveness.

The languages survive because speaker communities continue daily language transmission within families, because institutions provide partial support through educational frameworks and documentation projects, and because linguistic identity remains meaningful to community members despite economic incentives toward shift.

Varhadi thrives with millions of speakers who view it as integral to regional identity. Gondi, Kolami, and Korku persist through community determination despite speaker population decline. The most critically endangered languages face potential extinction but receive documentation efforts that capture knowledge even as spoken transmission weakens.

Kolami preservation efforts in Yavatmal have produced tangible outputs demonstrating community resilience.

Korku communities document folktales through digital media. Gondi script revival and dictionary projects provide infrastructure for educational expansion.

These varied approaches demonstrate that preservation occurs when multiple mechanisms function simultaneously, when communities possess sufficient autonomy to make language choices, and when institutions recognise minority language legitimacy as worthy of resource allocation.

The future of Vidarbha's languages depends upon continued community commitment, sustained institutional support, and willingness to prioritise linguistic diversity as a cultural value worth protecting.