• Dr. Vandita Gautam

A country is truly vibrant when its citizens have equal opportunity to participate in nation building. It is the government’s prerogative to mandate policies that are inclusive so that voices of the minorities are not muffled. This is extremely relevant to a multicultural South Asia with multifarious ethnic and lingual groups. India has more than 500 languages with as many as 220 languages on their way to becoming extinct. This is a matter of grave concern since languages are registers to cultural identity and repositories of unique knowledge spools. If language policies lack foresightedness or are unipolar they lead to the death of languages spoken by small groups or marginalized communities especially in inaccessible/ difficult to access geographical terrains. English has been declared as India’s second largest language despite a miniscule 2.5% of Indians having declared it as their first language. English has also been promoted as a preferred medium of instruction in schools. Empowering English has resulted in the creation of a powerful market where users from language communities other than English find it difficult to get employment. The obvious fall out is not only a declining number of native language users but a state of perpetual social, political unrest. It is imperative that language experts and government spearhead strategies of lingual inclusion so that diverse voices not only survive but flourish. This paper proposes to interrogate the problems in the stead of placing English at a hegemonic centre and will suggest ways to resolving them. Providing education in the mother tongue at the primary level and creating community media platforms for the marginalised communities can go a long way in giving social muscle to them. As the hegemonic hold of English grows globally saving the local and the local language concerns all of us. We need to help languages survive by scripting them, and wherever the script is missing, by adopting an alternative script. The world cannot be reduced to a singular perspective which threatens it especially in the context of English as a language of power and pelf, especially in India.

lingocide, hegemonic, imperialism, multiculturalism, scripting, indigenous

"Language Pluralism: Breather from Anglophilia", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 2, page no.b472-b476, February-2022, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2202154.pdf

"Language Pluralism: Breather from Anglophilia", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 2, page no. ppb472-b476, February-2022, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2202154.pdf