Hello everyone! Welcome back to ELNI podcast. It's been a while and we're back after a break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are all healthy and fine, and we hope you all are too. In this episode we have a conversation with Bishnu Lall Bhujel on his life and work in the Bhujel community and its language revitalization activities. He is a member of the Bhujel community of Sikkim, a native speaker Linguist and a language activist playing a key role in its language revitalization activities.
This conversation is multilingual between Hindi, English, Nepali and Bhujel. So for those of you who have difficulties in following the conversation you can read the English translation of the conversation in the link provided below.
KN: Hello guys! This is Karthick
KH: This is Hima
KN: Welcome to the ELNI podcast. Today, we have with us Bishnu Bhujel, a linguist and language activist, who will be joining us for a podcast on our series of podcasts with Native speaker activists from endangered language communities. So Bishnu, before we get into the formal interaction, can you introduce yourself?
BB: Sewanung, everyone! My name is Bishnu Bhujel, a research scholar of Sikkim University, Department of Nepali, PhD scholar on the topic of Language Revitalization. I am also working in Centre for Endangered Language[s] as a native speaker of Bhujel language. My native village is Salyangdang, West Sikkim, and I [am] also one of the active member[s] of Bhujel Association in Sikkim zone. I am [the] General Secretary of [the] Sikkim Bhujel Association and also one of the member[s] of Indian Bhujel. So, one of the native linguist[s], I [am] also working in Bhujel language, because it becomes a kind of responsibility that falls on a native linguist to work on how to uplift and develop the language. So since I belong to the Bhujel Association I work on the language, and it has become my responsibility to work on my language. Both the Sikkim Bhujel Association and the Indian Bhujel Association wish for work to be done on the language. I am not an established linguist, because I have not learned Linguistics, but on behalf of the community I present myself as a native linguist because I do have some knowledge of Linguistics. In my native village Salyangdang in West Sikkim, there is a small settlement of Bhujel community, a little above 200 households. In the Indian context if you look at Bhujel, you can call it an endangered language. In my opinion it is Moribund in the Indian context. There were one or two elders, now there’s just one, he is C. B. Bhujel, he can speak Bhujel and also write it. Except for C. B. Bhujel, all the Bhujel Association or Bhujel community member[s], they don’t know how to read and write our Bhujel language. In a few domains — home domain, kitchen domain, animal domain, kinship — the lexical terms in Bhujel language are used by the Bhujel [community] in the Indian context, but they cannot speak in a grammatical way. They are not fluent speakers. I have grown up hearing some of these lexical items from childhood, especially from my mom, like relation and kinship terms, animal names, names of food items etc, so I use those when I’m in my village by code-switching—to use the Linguistics term—with Nepali. [Gives examples of code-switching between Bhujel and Nepali.]
So I used to wonder why there are no fluent speakers of Bhujel language. Is it that Nepali language has dominated Bhujel so much that it has become extinct? Or not let it develop? Day by day I [was] also growing up. So after complet[ing] my graduation--during my graduation (I did BA Honours in Nepali, from 2007 to 2010) I did not get any opportunity to work on my own language--for two years I joined the Bhujel Association. The Association was formed in 1994 and had been working since then for the Bhujel community, even though not much was done for the development of the language. Their efforts were more focussed on the cultural and traditional aspects of the community. Maybe they did not pay much attention to the language because there were no fluent speakers of the language in Sikkim. But the community members did think actively about their language. So for those two years (2010 to 2012) I had come to Gangtok from Namchi, and I got the opportunity to meet some of the active members of the community in Gangtok. Especially C. B. Bhujel, N. P. Bhujel and P. K. Bhujel--these three, I got the chance to meet.
KN: Just a minute, could you please mention the full names of the people you just mentioned--C. B. Bhujel, N. P. Bhujel and P. K. Bhujel--for the benefit of our listeners?
BB: C. B. Bhujel--he is one of the community activists
KN: His full name?
BB: Chandra Bahadur Bhujel. He is from Tadong, East Sikkim, Gangtok. He is one of the Chief Advisers of the Bhujel Association, and he knows Bhujel language. He is a fluent speaker. But during that time, he didn’t have time--he was a government employee, a government officer--so he didn’t have the time to go from village to village and do the necessary work [for development of the language]. I met him after that. He retired in 2011, I think. Another person was P. K. Bhujel. He was also one of the founder members of [the Association].
KN: His full name?
BB: Padam Kumar Bhujel. He is also from Tadong. He was one of the active founder members of the Bhujel Association. And another person was N. P. Bhujel--Nanda Prasad Bhujel. He belongs from South Sikkim, Bharmek. He is the current President of the Sikkim Bhujel Association. So I got the opportunity to meet these three people during 2011-12. I got completely involved, following discussions with them on the language. In 2012 when the Sikkim University’s advertisement for admissions came out, I got the opportunity to join for MA at the Nepali department. I was anyways in [Gangtok] already so I didn’t want to go anywhere else for continuing my studies.
KN: Bishnu ji, can you tell us something about the status of your language? In which places in India it is spoken, where else in the world it is spoken, how many people speak it, is it a written language or an unwritten language, etc. Could you give us this status?
BB: Okay. Very good question. Bhujel community in Sikkim--many of the villages are in Sikkim. I think there are ten or eleven villages where the Bhujel community is dominant. In Darjeeling-Kalimpong [the Bhujel population] is above 40,000. And then there is the community in Assam. I think all over India there are more than 80,000 persons, as a community survey report[ed]. Then there are settlements in Bhutan, Burma and Nepal. Nepal has, I think, upwards of 2 lakhs population of Bhujel community members. Nepal has 75 districts, I think Bhujel people are there in 70 of those. Among these, Tanahun district is where the population of the community is dominant, then Gorkha district, and Bujikot or Bujikhola in Baglung district, and Nawalparasi district. Bhujel people in Nepal can speak the language as well as read and write it using Devanagri script. However in my knowledge till now, Bhujel is an unwritten language. I think Bhujel started being written about a decade ago, but in Devanagri script. I think many scholars have also done research in Bhujel language [in Nepal]. Prof. Dhanraj Regmi also did his PhD [on] Bhujel language. Other scholars have also done their MA and MPhil theses [on] Bhujel language. In the context of India though, there are no villages where Bhujel is spoken. But there are villages where Bhujel words are understood to some extent and used. A maximum of 700-800 words are in use, in India. This has been there from a long time ago. I mean, even though people could not speak the language fluently, words have been used through code-switching even by our forefathers. That is why I want to revive the language and am working on it.
KN: Has Bhujel been documented anywhere, before now? Be it on the Indian side or the Nepal side--you mentioned there’s a population of 2 lakhs there--has any documentation been done on Bhujel so far?
BB: There has been documentation on the Nepal side by the Nepal government. Linguistic Society of Nepal has also worked on it, and Prof. Dhanraj Regmi has brought out a Bhujel dictionary and a grammar. That was his PhD, and it was published by Lincom-Europa. Similarly Ross Caughley has also done some work, and so has Van Driem. Some Bhujel scholars have also done some work, but all from Nepal side, on the Bhujel of Nepal. For example Amrit Bhujel and Amrit Yonjan Tamang together have written a grammar of Bhujel using the Devanagri script. There was one more, whose name I cannot recall right now. The point is, there is work from Nepal side. On the Indian side, I have worked on Bhujel for a chapter of the Sikkim volume of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI)--it was published in 2018--I worked on Bhujel language and culture for that. That’s all. So I think before a decade or so Bhujel was an unwritten language. There were no books written in or on Bhujel, and whatever little is available today are Linguistics work. From our [ie, community members’] side I don’t favour these Linguistics work so much. In the sense that it is quite useless to the common members of the community since nobody knows Linguistics. So the villagers in fact consider that our language has not been written till date. Nobody even got to know that many foreign authors have done work on the language. I have also done some research on when Bhujel started being written, and I find that writing in Bhujel started in around 2000. Before that I don’t know.
KN: Which script is used for this writing system?
BB: I think in the linguistic scenario of Sikkim most of the languages have their own scripts. So it is considered as part of the identity, that if it is a language it should have a [separate] script. I mean in the context of Sikkim. In our context, the context of the Bhujel community, we had a [separate] language, but (previously) we were writing using Devanagri script. Now, that is, since around 2005, I came to know that C. B. Bhujel had been developing the Kharpa script for Bhujel from the 1980s onwards. So now I am also sort of propagating it--helping and cooperating with his efforts--since 2010. So now Bhujel has its own script, it’s called the Kharpa script. We have even digitalized it to enable its use on computers. Mr. Rupesh Rai was the one who developed [the font], he is a script creator. So finally our advisor C. B. Bhujel’s dream has come true, and the entire Bhujel community of the world can now use the Kharpa script. People can write it and type it. We are also now developing formal pedagogical materials for schools using the Kharpa script. So in effect Bhujel is written in two ways now--either using Devanagri script or Kharpa script. Most of the Bhujel community members know how to read and write using the Devanagri script, so we have adopted it for the benefit of the adults. And we are also preparing to start using the Kharpa script for formal education in schools, if and when the Sikkim government gives recognition to the Bhujel language. I am already teaching children the language in Kharpa script at the community level, and using the Devanagari script for the adults because the Kharpa script may not be really necessary for them right now. The 30-40-45 year old people probably don’t need to learn the Kharpa script rightaway. Whoever is interested, though, is also learning the script by themselves. I think it is easier for them to learn in Devanagari script if they only want to learn the [spoken] language, not the script. Some phones or phonemes of the Bhujel language cannot be written or transcribed using the Devanagari script, so it is important to have our own script too. C. B. Bhujel realized this fact and started working on creating the script in the 1980s. So now we can write Bhujel in Devanagari as well as Kharpa script.
KN: That’s wonderful! Bishnu, can you explain to us, how did you start working on language revitalization? Like, you explained that you were working with the Association for two years, and then after that you came back into academics. Can you tell us more about how [did] you start working on language revitalization?
KH: Especially considering that you joined the Nepali department, and you’re able to work on Bhujel. So, if you can tell us about that...
BB: Okay, sure. I joined the Nepali department as an MA student in the July session of 2012. In those days, MA students were supposed to write a small Term paper of 20 marks. Some would write about language, some about literature, others about folk literature, etc. There was also a Linguistics paper offered during the first semester--just the basics of Phonology, Morphology etc. It was offered by Dr. Samar Sinha, Assistant Professor at the Department of Nepali. He is a linguist. He suggested that I work on my own language for the term paper. I was not aware that it was even possible to work on my language. But he said that people do work on languages other than Nepali also in the Nepali department. So I agreed, because why not? And I was very happy for the opportunity. I approached Dr. Sinha as to how to do this, what to do in my language. He suggested to me to start with collecting words in Bhujel. “Do you know anyone who speaks the language?” I replied, “Yes, there is C.B. Bhujel Sir, I can collect and record words from him.” So I recorded and collected words from C.B. Bhujel and N.P. Bhujel. I had a format that I had to follow--a questionnaire for a basic word list, similar to the Swadesh list. Then I wrote the term paper on the Phonology of Bhujel, describing the alphabet [Ed: sound system] of Bhujel, including what are the vowels and consonants in Bhujel, what are the diacritics, etc. I did the analysis with the help of Samar Sir. So this was my first work on Bhujel language. I chose the topic since I had basic knowledge of Phonology.
KN: Bishnu, could you tell us more about your experience of learning Bhujel in Nepal? Because you coming from India, another country, did the community willingly agree to help you out to learn the language or was there any difficulty?
BB: After I completed the first semester of my MA and submitted that term paper, the members of the community Association approached me and asked, “Why don’t you go to Nepal to learn the Bhujel language?” I agreed on the condition that I could not go alone, if someone was willing to go with me I would be ready to go. So finally it was a group of eight of us who finally went to Tanahun district in Central Nepal. There is an adimul [indigenous] village of Bhujel people there with a big settlement of around 600 to 800 households. I stayed there for two months and learned the language. I already knew words in a few [semantic] domains, but there I learned to speak the language fluently. We made makeshift classrooms at home and hired two teachers to teach us like students. They were not actually teachers by profession, just two villagers. One was an old guy named Sankhaman Bhujel, the other one was Bisham Bhujel. Bisham Bhujel was a literate guy, he knew how to read and write the Bhujel language. The other person, Sankhaman Bhujel, couldn’t read and write but he knew how to speak the language. So we learned the language from these two in two months. He [Ed: Bisham Bhujel] used to write on a whiteboard and we used to copy it down in our books… This was the formal part of the learning. There was also an Informal part where we would go to the Bhujel villages and speak to elder community members about the Bhujel culture and traditions and how they have changed over the years, how the language was used in their occupation, etc. But this was all eventually. Initially the people there did not want to teach us. They would say that we would learn the language and go sell it somewhere else! Because many people had come earlier who came, learned the language and went away, and the community felt cheated that they did not get anything, any benefit, out of the whole exercise. I had to show my identity card and convince them that I was a Bhujel too! I also spoke a few of the words I knew, like the greeting Sevanung, to convince them. Sevanung is Bhujel for Namaskar. So it was only after proving my Bhujel identity that they taught me the language.
KH: Yeah, Bishnu, that’s a very interesting story about the I-card and you having to prove yourself as a Bhujel to the Bhujel community. I wanted to ask you, so there must be a lot of things that you have learned through this experience. And how did this experience push you or inspire you towards working on revitalization of Bhujel from an academic point of view, not just as a language activist but also as… as your research topic?
BB: See, the first thing is that the Sikkim Bhujel community had already had the desire, from the beginning, to revive the Bhujel language. That is why the Association sent me and my team to Nepal in the first place. So I had gone with the object of learning to speak the language fluently. I hadn’t thought at that time about doing research on the language or on the revitalization of the language. So by the end of two months I had learned the language, we had hired two teachers for an honorarium of Rs. 400 per day and learned whatever they taught us.. It was good, there’s a lot of history as well that we got to learn about. After we returned from Nepal to Sikkim, we first put together an informal type of book… we put together all the words that we had collected and made a small booklet
KH: Is it like a dictionary?
BB: Not [exactly] a dictionary, just listing Bhujel words on one side, and the Nepali [meaning] next to it. So not a proper dictionary. Just a list of words and their meanings.
KH: Like a glossary then.
BB: Glossary. Glossary, booklet. So we made that, it was the first thing I did. C.B. Bhujel had written before that, he had written in English also, and Nepali also. So we referred to his work as well. And in the end we also put in a list of basic sentences, like “What is your name? -- namko məiŋ dzoma?”, “My name is Bishnu.--ŋap məiŋ biʃnu (in Pugal)” [Ed: Pugal is the endonym or name the Bhujel community calls itself and its language.] So we put together this booklet with a glossary and then a little background. After that, during my MA time, there came again the opportunity to work on my language, when my professor Dr. Samar Sinha suggested that I could work on the language attitude [of my community] in Sikkim for my MA Dissertation. I didn’t know what ‘language attitude’ even was! I asked him and he explained to me that it is basically what attitudes and opinions the community has towards and about their language. Does the Bhujel community in Sikkim wish to develop their own language or not? What is their attitude? Are they positive towards using their language or negative? I was hearing about all this for the first time--the linguistic terms I mean. So I thought, yes, why not? It will be an experience and a valuable opportunity to know the opinion of my community, whether it be positive or negative attitude, to our language. So I travelled to all the villages in Sikkim. There are only some 8-10 villages with Bhujel population. My own village is the one with the biggest population with more than 200 households. The other villages have about 50-60 households each. There were ten villages, and I picked a random sampling of 5 people each from each of these ten villages. I was able to interview about 40% of the intended sample population -- about 45 people or something. I had prepared a questionnaire with questions like, ‘what is your language?’, ‘do you speak the language or not?’, ‘if you have a language and you don’t know how to speak it, would you like to learn the language?’, ‘if you want to learn the language, how do you think you can do that?’ etc. All the respondents said that they had their own language called Pugal ŋur--Pugal is the endonym used by the community to refer to themselves. So they said they do have a Pugal language but they have all forgotten how to speak it. Their fathers and mothers, their ancestors used to speak the language, even in Sikkim, but since the Nepali language started dominating all walks of life, there was nothing to be gained from using Bhujel language. So they have all shifted, even their forefathers shifted to Nepali. But they would definitely like to learn if someone--the government or the Association or some linguist, or anyone at all--would initiate the effort towards teaching it. The respondents in my survey included people from age 10 to 70. About 90% of them showed positive attitude, aspiration and desire. Only 10% of them--the elderly people--said that even if they wanted, how would it be possible for them? “We are too old, we can’t even see properly, nor can we read or write. But we will be happy if our children and grandchildren learn the language. It is after all our language! So if you can come and teach, please do come and teach. We (as a community) will only be happy to learn.” So this was what the 70 year-old elders said. That is how I submitted my MA Dissertation in the Nepali department on Bhujel language attitude. This was my second milestone--the first was the term paper in the first semester of MA, then this dissertation.
KH: Can I interrupt? So within India is Bhujel spoken only in Sikkim? Or are there other areas too?
BB: In my research…[I found that] there are people who can use words from Bhujel, in India. But fluent speakers, I think there’s only one in Sikkim, that is CB Bhujel.
KH: I was asking, is the Bhujel community settled only in Sikkim?
BB: Apart from Sikkim the community is also settled in Darjeeling and Kalimpong [ed: in West Bengal], and also in Assam, Manipur. There’s around 80,000 or more of population in India.
KH: Okay… And your research is about Bhujel in Sikkim.
BB: Yeah. That’s right. In my MA I focused on Bhujel in Sikkim, after that when I got admission to the MPhil programme I wanted to continue and do more about my language. I wanted to learn more of my language, and I felt this MPhil was an opportunity for that. My professor Dr. Samar Sinha also encouraged me, saying the MPhil work has to be on a bigger scale than the MA work, so since you have covered Sikkim during the MA work, why don’t you extend your area of study to Darjeeling and Kalimpong? You can work on the language attitude of the community in these places. So I chose my MPhil research topic as Language Attitudes and Revitalization [of Bhujel] in Sikkim and Darjeeling. So I had earlier done language attitudes in Sikkim, now I went to do the same in Darjeeling and Kalimpong too. There also they have a community association called the Bhujel Kalyan Association. I got in touch with the Association president and went there to do my fieldwork. I found the same linguistic attitude scenario there as I had found in Sikkim: most of the members of the Bhujel community wanted to learn the Bhujel language. They expressed their happiness and encouragement on learning that I was working on the Bhujel language. They also asked me to teach them the language if I was working on it, to write books so that they can read them and learn the language. I agreed, that if I have their support I would work on the language and I would teach them and write books for them, because they have the desire to learn. So I included twenty two people from Darjeeling, I already had forty five respondents from [Sikkim]. I did something on revitalization too, like I had questions on what needs to be done to revive the language, what policies the Sikkim Government had to revitalize the language, so I included some things on Planning and Policy as well [in the dissertation]. Sikkim had already given recognition to eleven languages, so we also wanted recognition for Bhujel language. The Sikkim Akademi had passed the proposal to recognize Bhujel language in 2012. It basically said, “Bhujel language is fit [to be a] state language.” However, the government has not recognized it until now. So we were going to focus on this matter. So I submitted my MPhil dissertation on the language attitudes from two states: Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal, and Sikkim. This was the second milestone in my academic research. After MPhil again I took a gap of one year. During that time I worked along with the [Bhujel] Association to bring out some pedagogical materials in Bhujel. I have written books for students in formal education as well as for adults in informal education using the Devnagari script. These were also collaborative works.
KH: Could you give us the titles of the books?
BB: “Laiko ŋur nokmai” which means “We have to speak our own language!” We made pedagogical materials for class 1 and 2, and after that a dictionary--”Pugal chhangkrung” or Bhujel dictionary--this was written by me and C.B. Bhujel. We distributed these from village to village, we gave it to all the Bhujel villages in Sikkim. We went from village to village and taught as well as distributed the books. So then what happened? Community members in the villages said, “these are long sentences, it is also difficult to learn the pronunciations. So why don’t we hire teachers? You people should come and teach, train some teachers.” So that’s what we did. We implemented what the community wanted. Because it wouldn’t work if community members want one thing and we do something else. This became an important experience for me in working with an endangered language, during the three-four years I worked with the community. Only if we work taking into account the desires and opinions of the community will the language develop fast. Therefore we went to the villages and gave teacher training to four-five people. Not formally but informally, sitting down with them, making them write down all the things, explaining and clarifying the things they did not understand, etc. The teaching would go on for fifteen days, then they would go home and learn it for themselves and come back. This was how the teacher training went. Those teachers are now teaching in their villages. So this is basically the history of my academic venture. Currently I’m doing my PhD, and also going to villages and teaching the language. I’m also developing learning materials in Bhujel, as well as learning the language myself. Whenever I run into difficulties I try to think of ways to overcome them as well as how to deal with the same issues when the learners who learn from me face them. The only area I face problems is in financial matters. I’m only a research scholar, there is only so much I can do using my small scholarship amount. Nor does our Association have money to finance the whole revitalization project. The Association is also small in size: the community population in Sikkim is only about 6,000. So I end up having to spend from my pocket even to pay the teachers who are ready to go and teach the language to the community members. The children need notebooks and pencils, sometimes I buy them sweets as well, to ensure that they stay interested and stay in the programme. Lots of the community members want to learn the language, but cannot afford it due to economic difficulties. The issue is that a majority of them are daily wage labourers; taking time out for learning the language will mean no income for that day. Even if the classes are after work hours, they would be tired after a whole day of manual labour. In my opinion, if any government department or linguistic society or other organization working on languages could fund these kind of revitalization efforts, they could be more effective. There’s no such funding body, at least in my knowledge, that I could approach for this. It would really be good to have such support, since language revitalization is something that needs grassroot level work. If the community members can be given some small stipend then they will surely come forward to learn the language. I’m not talking about an incentive to lure people into the programme, rather if their daily wages that they would lose by coming to class one day is say, Rs. 300, we could offer them Rs. 100 as a kind of compensation for losing that day’s wages, you know. The government should actually include such things in their policy planning. Because I know that most Bhujel people want to learn the Bhujel language.
KN: Bishnu, you just told us that linguists, or anyone who is working on language documentation or revitalization, should go along with the community’s desires. As you pointed out, if we go along with the community’s desires then we would have better results and that would mean a larger participation of the community. You informed us [earlier] that you are working in the Centre for Endangered Languages as a Native Speaker Consultant for their documentation efforts. Do you feel that the Centre for Endangered Languages or any other linguist who is coming from outside and working with your community, do they take into account the community’s desire? Do they try to address the community’s needs at all?
BB: Okay. In this context, I think one side is good. Another side is… how do I put this… In one way it is good, especially from the perspective of a community linguist like me. For instance, if a good linguistic grammar is produced and published from our language, it is good for linguists from our community. It would be accessible and helpful to the linguists from the community. However, on the other hand, the grammars written on the basis of Linguistics are not exactly accessible to the young students of eleven-twelve or sixteen-seventeen years. They wouldn’t even know anything about Linguistics! I myself came to know about the academic discipline of Linguistics only after I reached my Masters level; how would school kids know? That is why from this perspective it is not advantageous. The linguists who come from outside and conduct research on the community’s language are actually helping only one section--the educated section of the community. But the benefits they themselves reap from such research is comparatively much higher. Right? This is what I think. So the linguist gets the advantage, and the literate section or the community linguists get some advantage, but the community members at the very grassroot level, the common people, get nothing out of it. For the efforts to be really fruitful and useful, the linguists need to first ask what the community wants or needs. Right? If any linguistic association or society or organization wants to work on any language, first of all they should go to the community members, the common people, and ask what they want in relation to their language. If the community feels that they need a script to write their language, then the work on scripts should be taken up. If the community desires pedagogical material, then that should be taken up. This is how it should happen, ideally. But linguists always come directly to the people who can speak the language, collect their data, and write grammars and dictionaries that are not useful to the community in any way. Okay, if they can come again later and develop more accessible books and materials accessible to the community, even that would be helpful. But they don’t. They only prepare their grammars and make use of it in their own research work. This is one part. The other thing, I’m repeating from before. If any linguistic organization or institution wishes honestly to work for the linguistic upliftment of the community then they have to approach the linguistic community directly and help them achieve the things that they need and desire, and through their willing and active participation. The linguistic community must directly get the benefits of such an endeavour. Linguists do not do that. They work in a top-down fashion, and that does not percolate to the primary or grassroots levels of the community. We don’t even understand the grammars produced by the linguists!
KN: The Centre in which you are working, did that Centre approach your community in that way?
BB: Actually, no. No one asked the community what they wanted. I don’t think they would, because right now the Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University is currently working on the preparation of a dictionary of Bhujel. From one point of view it is good, the dictionary will be very useful to all. But if a grammar is published, we would need a basic-level grammar. I think only I would have any use for a Linguistic grammar [ed: i.e., a grammar that uses terminology and analyses from Linguistics, written in English], since I know a bit of Linguistics. The Centre has never produced any basic level grammars written in a language and manner accessible to the common people of the community, which in my opinion the Centre should.
KH: You have been working in this Centre for some three and half years now. And you are also a member of the Bhujel community. I am sure you have encountered many situations wherein you would discuss with the community members about the kind of work the Centre is doing in your language. So in those interactions, are there discussions and explanations about what is it exactly that you do as part of your work at the Centre and what the community feels about those particular things?
BB: The Centre has developed Android applications for the dictionaries it has prepared. That’s a good step. I have distributed the copies of the App to community members who have Android phones. So they feel good about the work we are doing at the Centre. Yes, some part of the language can be learned through such initiatives, but we don’t even know the basics of the language. So I think the Centre should also take up such work that enable the people to learn to speak the language. For instance, contribute to the ongoing revitalization efforts that the community is already doing, classes that the community is already conducting. Androids apps and such things benefit the people who do have Android phones, but there are so many adults and senior citizens who don’t even know how to operate a smart phone.They also want to learn the language. But the Centre’s efforts are not of any use to them. Of course, in this digital age the Centre is putting commendable effort in using technology to reach the people, but I think there must be other types of more direct contribution also on the part of the Centre towards the language teaching that we are doing.
KH: As an insider-outsider, that is, you are a community member as well as a part of the Centre’s team, so what is your personal feeling about the usefulness of the Centre’s work for the community?
BB: First of all, the Centre’s work is basically documentation. It is under a Government scheme and that is good. But I would quote a local saying here, “Collect all your implements and artefacts from your home, pack it in a bundle and put it on one side.” [laughter] It means that you leave it in one place, until someday you have need of it, and then you can open it and use it. Documentation works in this way. Document the Bhujel language, store it in an archive, and that’s it. Who gets to make any use of it? So what the Centre needs to do instead is to bring all these documented material back to the ground, to the community. Make it public, tell people that this is what we have done, this is how you can use it to preserve your language. If this type of effort is made, whether on the initiative of the government or the Centre, the community will also be satisfied and the efforts of the Government or Centre will also be really fruitful. Just documentation does not help in the development of the language. This is my opinion. It’s like the bundle I mentioned: who knows when the bundle of goods will be opened? Maybe in some two hundred or three hundred years when someone feels the need for the goods. But who will open it after that long? The community would already have forgotten the language; who will know where to look and how? If the community does not even know about the archive, of what use is it even going to be? It is too much to hope that someone will come forward after three hundred years saying my community had an ancestral language they used to speak once upon a time, when already the language is dying! So what needs to be done, needs to be done now. This needs to be kept in mind by the linguists and the linguistic or government organizations working with the communities. Whatever archiving of the language is done, it needs to be made available and accessible to the community. They need to go to the people and make them aware that see, this is your language, these are your resources, created for you. We have put new technology into use so that it becomes easier and more accessible for you. This is your wealth, your inheritance, and for you to put to good use. This is how it should be, in my opinion.
KH: Since you mentioned the government at various points, have you received any sort of support from the government for the development and revitalization of your language? Also, what is your expectation about the kind of support you would want from the government?
BB: The Centre for Endangered Languages is probably the first project of its kind working on Bhujel. There are Android apps being made in the Heritage Lexicon of Bhujel. That is a good step, but it needs to reach the public as well. And like I said, the Centre is only concerned with documentation; the government should support such projects for revitalization as well. In my knowledge, nowhere in India are there any such schemes to support revitalization of the Bhujel language, from the Central government or state government or any other government body. So in my opinion the government should provide some sort of funding or extra grant to the communities or the community associations to revitalize their languages. That will help community members to develop and revive their own languages themselves.
KN: Bishnu ji, what are your future goals, for your research as well as your community’s language activism?
BB: As a community linguist and as an active member of the Bhujel Association, I want to do the following: I want to supplement and carry forward the work being done in a unified manner by my community, the Sikkim Bhujel Association, the North Bengal Bhujel Kalyan Association and the Bhujel Language Board to develop, to revive Bhujel language. So that it may be taken up for teaching in schools, so that it may be granted Sikkim government recognition, etc. The other side is to try for funding from state and government sources or even sources like linguistic associations or research centres outside India, for the fast revitalisation of the language. This is the desire and aspiration of the Bhujel community. I am doing it at my own level for Bhujel. But not only Bhujel language, there are many other languages here, endangered languages, of which some have got recognition, they are being taught in schools, there are teachers to teach them. But there are also others which are not [taught] in schools, which do not have teachers to teach them. Those communities also wish that their languages were taught in schools too. So if a government funding or project is made available it will benefit such communities, they can take up teaching and other required activities by themselves, language activists of those communities can take up such development work for their own languages, people like me will also get employed. Of course, I’m going to work for my language forever, whether I get support from the government or any other agencies or not. I have already been working for eight years--since 2012--and I’ll continue. But any such opportunities for receiving support could make this work easier for me. And that is my hope for the future.
KH: It was very interesting to talk to you! And there’s one final thing I want to ask. So we have been asking questions to you [so far], as a language activist etc, do you have any questions for us--as, in the sense, not just as interviewers but [as part of] the linguist community as a whole…
KN: ... and also to the ELNI group?
KH: Yeah.
BB: Okay, I know that you guys are linguists, like, full-time linguists. But you are probably not from endangered language [communities]. Your languages are big, spoken in large areas by a lot of people. Unlike smaller languages like ours, your languages are dominant languages in your places. I’m very glad that you have interviewed me today about my language, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to express myself and talk about my language journey and the trajectory of my work. What I want to ask you, to share with you today is that it would be better if linguists (in general) worked on revitalization too and not just documentation. And that too, revitalization not only on paper, but also if they went themselves to the field and did it, with the direct and willing participation of the linguistic community. What we are all currently doing is only paperwork. We sit at a table and “look” at the language of the community. There may be a few who go to the field and collect data from the community, and then it is sent to someone else who works on the data.This kind of work does not finally benefit the community in any way. We will have to go and work with the community and in ways that would directly benefit the community. The community must be made aware of how their language can be uplifted, what needs to be done for it. If the objectives of the linguists are turned around in this way, obviously it will lead to the upliftment of endangered languages. I have got the opportunity to participate in a few workshops on Language Revitalization, especially with Prof. Peter [Austin] and Prof. Julia [Sallabank], who are experts in this field. So there is something I want to emphasise. People say that one should work to revitalize one’s language, and I am working on revitalizing my language, but it creates a financial burden. A person would be more than ready to work for revitalizing their own language if they also have the financial means for it. When a person like me who is really motivated to pursue language revitalization does not have enough financial capacity, the work that can be done then shrinks to some 50% of what could have been done. Instead, if linguists who get these projects and grants decide to work with the grassroot level community members, then the financial barriers to revitalization can be broken. So what I would like to ask you is the following: are there government agencies that can support our efforts? If yes, what is the process of approaching them and getting financial support? I want to ask on behalf of not just my community but other endangered language communities of Sikkim as well, how we can get support for our revitalization efforts and how it can make these efforts fruitful, faster. Please do let me know if you have such information.
KN: Right now there’s no… I don’t know any such agencies that support such community action directly. So in India as such there is no funding [available]. There are funds that support community activism, for example, Endangered Language Funds gives a small amount, not a big [amount], that can be used for language revitalization. But again, Endangered Language Funds requires a set of proposals to be made and sent to them. That’s one thing that I know of. It’s a good question… Even I’m wondering what are the possible avenues where you could get support for language revitalization. So I can’t answer your question apart from this vague answer, right now [at least]. We will try and find out…
KH: We assure you that we will find out and we will get back to you…
KN: We’ll get back to you, not just to you, to all the people of Sikkim and also to all the other people of endangered language [communities]. We will find out those answers and probably we will write about it to you and also to others as well. We will put it out as a full [piece of] writing on what are the scopes and what can be done. We will try to do that.
BB: Why [I’m] asking you about [financial support] for language revitalization [is] because nowadays there are a lot of discussions, workshops and seminars, even online. However more often than not, these remain only as lectures and discussions and almost never translate to actual tangible efforts on the fieldwork. It is easier to talk about it, but difficult to implement. This is something I’m facing right now, I’m speaking from experience. How I’m handling it right now is that we have established four ‘centres’ where the language teaching takes place. We have to treat the kids to sweets or other things, give the learners some incentive to keep them coming back to class every time. These are invisible expenses that are not foreseen; and if we can get funding from some source it will really be helpful.
KN: We will try our level best to find out what all are the possibilities, and we will communicate to you personally as well as to the rest of the world. We will reach out to all the audience who’ll be listening to us: please, if you have any scope [to help Bishnu], you can find Bishnu Bhujel’s email id and contact details in the podcast notes, you can also contact him directly or you can contact one of us and we will put you in touch with Bishnu as well. It will be a great help. It’s a question not just to us; it’s a question to you as well! So, thank you! Thank you, Bishnu.
KH: Thank you very much, Bishnu.
BB: Okay, okay, la.
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