Rung community
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Runglwo language
As in 2019
Ishita Mishra, Nov 13, 2019: The Times of India
From: Ishita Mishra, Nov 13, 2019: The Times of India
From: Ishita Mishra, Nov 13, 2019: The Times of India
Deewan Singh Garbyal often struggles to make himself understood. Only a handful in his town of Dharchula, Uttarakhand, can follow what he says. The 84-year-old is among the oldest surviving members of an indigenous Himalayan community called Rung and one of the few custodians of their tongue, Runglwo, which does not have a written script.
His despair is shared by a professor of languages in Delhi’s JNU. Perturbed by an article she read on the Rungs, Sandesha Rayapa-Garbiyal, assistant professor at Linguistic Empowerment Cell (LEC) of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and a Rung, took it upon herself to revive Runglwo.
“In that article, facts about the community and its culture were misrepresented. In such moments, one realises the importance of documentation,” Rayapa-Garbiyal said. She then started urging Rungs to join hands. Soon, efforts to build an online presence resulted in several WhatsApp groups where members began posting voice recordings in Runglwo. Some took to Twitter and Facebook, to post in Runglwo.
Krishna Garbiyal, a 43-year-old local businessman in Dharchula, now runs four WhatsApp groups with a combined 1,000 members. They share stories, poems and songs in Runglwo. “We’re trying to teach the language and it also serves as a platform to practise and clear doubts. Think of it as a classroom where everyone is both teacher and student,” he said.
Vaishali Garbyal, 22, founder of another WhatsApp group, has no illusions about the mammoth task ahead. “My 16-year-old brother cannot speak Runglwo at all. If these groups can spark interest among even a few to learn the language, we would have fulfilled our purpose,” said the college student.
Rungs, about 10,000 in number, are found mostly in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district and parts of Nepal, said BS Bonal, president of Rung Kalyan Sansthan. In India, Rungs are recognised as a Scheduled Tribe, notified as a sub-part of the Bhotia community. Bonal traces the Rungs’ ancestry in their folklore. He said tribesmen “had greeted Pandavas when they reached Kuti village” that lies en route to Adi Kailash and is named after Kunti, mother of the Pandavas.
Late last year, as a CSR initiative, ONGC funded Rayapa’s project to document and preserve Runglwo. UN has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. About 40% of the world’s estimated 6,700 languages are in danger of disappearing, the majority of them indigenous ones.
Not having a script makes it more difficult to preserve the language. But providing a script is no easy task. “One challenge is to choose which script to adopt. Talks are on within the community for this and for work related to lexicography (dictionarymaking). While younger people are comfortable with the Roman script, the older ones prefer Devanagari. People are now using both to converse in Runglwo,” said Rayapa.
Ganesh N Devy, who helmed the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, a government study between 2010 and 2013, told TOI, “A script can be in Roman or Devanagari or both. Punjabi language uses Gurmukhi, Persian and Arabic script while Santhali has eight types of script. But creating new script for a language in India has never been easy. In case of Kokborok — spoken by Tripura’s Borok — creation of its script led to an uprising.”
Kokborok was recognised by Tripura government in 1979 and became the second state language after Bengali. When Kokborok was introduced in schools, Bengali script was used for Kokborok textbooks. But a bulk of the indigenous educated youth wanted the Roman script and that led to a major unrest. Vaishna Narang, former professor at JNU’s languages department, said an important way to preserve language is to use it in media, be it social media or television. She cited the example of Gondi spoken by the Gond tribe with 1.2 crore members across Bastar in Chhattisgarh, parts of Telangana, MP and Jharkhand. The 2011 Census said only 27 lakh Gond spoke the language but new estimates suggest numbers of Gondi speakers have shot up.
Subhranshu Chaudhary, who runs CGNet Swara, an NGO that works to propagate and preserve Gondi, said, “In Bastar, Gondi is now taught in schools. There are newspapers and news bulletins in Gondi and its literature is being translated to other languages — such as English and French — with the help of IIT Raipur and Microsoft Research.”
Rungs, too, are determined to preserve their heritage. At a recent workshop in Dehradun, boys performed a traditional dance while judges asked questions on Rung culture to participants. At the entrance, 19-year-old Pranita greeted guests. “Gan hum eno?’ (How are you?)” said one. “It’s gan hum ino,” Pranita promptly corrected as the elders beamed approvingly.
