The last member of a 65,000-year-old tribe has passed away – and with her the ancient Bo language.

Boa Sr was the only surviving descendant of the Bo people, who inhabited the remote Andaman Islands off the east coast of India.

She died last week aged 83 after living through British rule, Second World War Japanese occupation and the 2004 tsunami.

Delhi-based linguistics professor Anvita Abbi told how Boa lost her sight and had been forced to learn a new language.

He said: “She was the only person left who spoke Bo. At times, she felt very isolated and lonely as she had no-one to talk to in her own tongue. She had to learn an Andamanese version of Hindi in order to communicate.

“But throughout her life she had a very good sense of humour and her smile and full-throated laughter were infectious.”

In a major initiative, 50 rare work of English, Persian and Sanskrit would be translated into Gojri. “Fifty rare works of English, Persian and Sanskrit are chosen to be rendered into Gojri in order to widen the access to classic and modern languages,” Dr Javaid Rahi a senior functionary of Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages said here today.

He said that this long-term project was initiated to bring world class and landmark works into Gojri to enrich this ancient tribal languages spoken by the Gurjar tribe. Under this project, 21 classics were already published in Gojri, which include world famous work like Mathnavi Moulana Rumi, “Gulistan-e-Saddi” Rubiyat-e-Umar Khayam, Karwan-e-Madina, Shakespeare’’s Othello and King Lear, Sanskrit’’s Neelmat Puran, the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi “My Experience with Truth”, Shahan-e-Gurjars and others.

“This project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2011″, Rahi said.

Contemporary Santhali literature has taken off in a big way since it became an official language of Jharkhand in 2003, but it has not come of age because the government has not added it to the list of official Indian languages, says a pioneer of the Santhali book trade.

“Contemporary tribal literature does not get government grants – and flourishes on personal and individual enterprise,” Mangal Manjhi told IANS in an interview.

His modest Adim (ancient) Book Centre — which sells Santhali works written in the traditional Ol Chiki script — was set up 15 years ago in the tribal-dominated area of Parsudih on the outskirts of the steel city of Jamshedpur.

“It was the lone tribal bookshop in the region and also the first tribal shop to take part in the prestigious Jamshedpur Book Fair in 1994. Till today, Adim Book Centre is the only tribal representative at the fair,” Manjhi said.

His shop is currently one of the two surviving tribal bookshops in Jharkhand. “All the others have downed shutters because of resource crunch over the last five years. A couple of tribal hawkers sell books door-to-door in Ghatshila in East Singhbhum,” he said.

Since 2003, after Santhali — along with Maithili, Bodo and Dogri — was put in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution, contemporary literature has witnessed a spurt of new writers, Manjhi said.

Inclusion in the Eighth Schedule means the government is now under obligation to take measures for the development of the language. A candidate appearing for a public service examination is entitled to answer questions in the language.

“On an average, 50 new Santhali books are published every year. They are books on drama, poetry, novels, historical tales and religious texts,” Manjhi said. “The number of books can go up two-fold if the government recognises Santhali as an official Indian vernacular language like Bengali, Punjabi and Oriya under Article 345 of the Constitution.

“Tribal children are not encouraged to study Santhali — even in schools — because it’s not official.”

The writer-bookseller — who has written two books, “Hasur Bera” (The Last Fence) and Molong Anol (The Circle of Fate) — is now campaigning for it, along with a handful of intellectuals in Jharkhand and West Bengal.

“Santhali should be taught in every government school in tribal pockets,” Manjhi said. “We have managed to introduce it in a few schools on personal initiative.”

Santhals are the biggest tribal group in the Chhotanagpur region of which Jharkhand is a part — they form nearly 27 percent of the population.

Talking about his shop, Manjhi said: “Classical Santhali literature is still the most popular. Two books of drama by the creator of Ol Chiki script, Raghunath Murmu, titled ‘Kherowar Bir’ and ‘Bidu Chadan’, are still in demand.”

Murmu, who was born in 1905, felt the need to create a script because Santhali was written in the Roman script before that. By 1925, Murmu created Ol Chiki, the only tribal script without any compound words. “The creation of Ol Chiki gave birth to Santhali literature,” Manjhi said.

The dream to sell Santhali books was sown in Manjhi’s mind when he first visited the Jamshedpur Book Fair.

“I wanted to buy some Santhali books but I could not get any. It was a disappointment because the state was mine, but it did not have books in our language. I decided to sell my own books. Four years later, I was back at the fair as the lone tribal book shop owner in the region.”

Manjhi sells about 45,000 to 90,000 books priced between Rs.200 and Rs.4,500 (for the dictionaries) every year. “But it is difficult to procure rare Santhali books, though I have built a small stock of vintage texts over the years.

“As there is no help from the government, unlike in the other states, we fall back on small printing units in Kolkata to print tribal books at low cost.” He spends money out of his pocket to publish Santhali books and manage his book shop.

“Publishing each book costs Rs.16,000 to Rs.17,000,” he said.

Listing some of the most popular contemporary Santhali writers, Manjhi said: “Rameswar Murmu, Bhogla Soren, Barka Kisku, Yashoda Murmu, Joba Murmu and Barilal Tudu are now being read widely.”

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)

C.S. Yogananda, Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at the Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering has digitalised Saakshi – a quarterly literary magazine brought out by Kannada’s finest poets, the pioneer of the modernist movement, Gopalakrishna Adiga for nearly 25 years.

The digital version of this magazine which launched many new Kannada writers was launched in Bangalore recently. It was not only a platform for divergent views, but kept many a debate fuelled.

Noted Kannada writer Sumateendra Nadig recalled how Adiga went in search of writersAdiga, kept a meticulous account of every single paise as he had great concern for public money. Late Lankesh described Adiga as the poet who opened the eyes of a generation and renowned writer U.R. Ananthamurthy viewed Adiga as one of the greatest poets, because he had in him the ability to foreswear his own self. Although Adiga taught English literature, he wrote almost exclusively in Kannada except a single poem. This poet who loathed self promotion, was comfortable remaining behind the scenes. One gets to see his unyielding conviction in his poem, “Prarthane”.

In his memoir “Nenapina Ganiyinda”, Adiga chronicles the events that led him to bring out “Saakshi”. Adiga and his like-minded friends felt the need to bring out a literary magazine that would capture the literary experiments of their times, as also creating a forum for objective criticism. Saakshi stopped coming in 1992 after serving the literary community for 25 years.

After long deliberations they have decided to bring out “Saakshi” in demi-crown format. After collecting all the issues of “Saakshi”, Yoganand and his team scanned more than 6,300 pages and put them in a format that provides easy access to the user. It was with the help of Sumateendra Nadig that the first edition came out. Yogananda and his friends have provided an opportunity to the present-day writers to read and understand great literary values propagated by literary luminaries of 60s by digitalising all the issues of “Saakshi”. Releasing e-edition of “Saakshi”, Dr. Thimmappa, who was associated with Adiga said that this effort meant the re-birth of Adiga. For Ananthamurthy, this act of Yogananda accorded the “real” classical status to Kannada. Recalling the days when Adiga launched “Saakshi”, he said, while intellectuals were silent about USSR Adiga launched “Saakshi” and never did he compromise with truth. “He lived as conscience keeper of times,” he described.

India has earned the dubious distinction of having the largest number of languages in danger of extinction. For instance, only 31 people in south Andaman Island speak Jarawa, while just 138 people in Himachal speak Handuri.

According to the UNESCO Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger, released in February, more than 2.5 crore Indians stand to lose their linguistic heritage unless immediate measures are undertaken at a social and policy level.

The 196 Indian languages that face extinction include Dakpa from Arunachal Pradesh (with 1,000 speakers) and Byangsi (with 1,734 speakers), along the India-Nepal border.

Dr Udaya Narayan Singh, director of Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, said there are several reasons why languages become extinct. “The greatest threat most minor languages and dialects face is negative evaluation. People are shifting to languages of opportunity. Also, as certain populations — like tribes — decrease, their languages die out.”

In Maharashtra, Naiki — spoken in Chandrapur and Nanded — has been declared critically endangered, while Kolami — spoken in Yavatmal, Wardha and Nanded — is definitely endangered.

The Atlas lists levels of endangerment on the basis of who is capable of speaking the language in a family. A language is ‘critically endangered’ if the youngest speakers are grandparents, while it is ‘definitely endangered’ if children are no longer taught the language at home.

Worldwide, there are more than 2,000 languages that are facing different degrees of endangerment.

Singh, one of the contributers to the UNESCO Atlas, reccomends creating functions for indigenous dialects, to ensure they do not become extinct. “When they are used in the market place or are taught in schools, languages remain alive,” he said.

Amit Khare, a Ministry of Human Resource and Development official, said the government does not recognise “endangered” as a category of languages. A scheme — the Bharat Bhasha Vikas Yojna — to develop and promote minor languages, formulated in 2007, is yet to be implemented.

The 2001 census recognised 122 Indian languages, including 22 major ones (scheduled in the Constitution of India) and 100 – spoken by 10,000 people or more – as minor languages.

The once flourishing publishing business of Cuttack city, called the Banipeetha of Orissa, is now staring at a bleak future. Not very long ago there were more than 500 publishers doing good business here. Now they have dwindled to a handful.

Ever since the first publishing house in the State – Orissa Mission Press – came up here way back in 1822, set up by the Baptist missionaries, the lanes and by-lanes of the city opened up new vistas for Oriya writers, publishers and readers alike.

But now, hardly about 25 of them continue to remain in this sanctified profession.

“While a handful of publishing houses still continue to print and publish reading material despite a slump in demand, most others have converted their publishing houses into retail counters to eke out a living,” says Sudhansu Mohapatra of the famous Friends Publishing House.

The downslide of publishing houses could be attributed to many reasons like limited market and lack of purchasing capacity, but other factors like poor reading habit among youth and absence of quality writing have contributed emphatically for it, says another publisher.

Although Orissa had about a dozen publishing houses in 1884, the State currently has over 700 presses.

“But this is not a positive trend, looking into the fact that over 600 such publishing houses cannot even print an error-free paragraph, forget about printing books,” says Dr S K Kar, a college teacher.

Moreover, the printing quality and getup of books have gone down over the years, he feels.

Tracing the history of publishers in Cuttack, Sreedhar Mohapatra Sharma of Grantha Mandir pointed out that only textbook publishers survived to some extent during and a little after Independence but there were few takers for literary and magazine publishers.

He also feels that ever since the Board of Secondary Education in the State, textbook bureau and other Universities began publishing their own textbooks, publishers suffered a great deal and decided to closedown their houses.

It was the last nail on the coffin of publishing houses when the Government Press came up in early 60s and started publishing government stationeries, Mohapatra feels.

Sounding optimistic, he however, suggests that the State Government should come forward to revive the publishing houses by way of patronisation.

The oldest outlet of the Majestic Book Depot – as old as the Quit India Movement – hasn’t changed much with the passage of time. Since July 1942, this little bookstore in Girgaum Naka, a bustling traditional precinct in south Mumbai, has catered to the city’s Marathi bibliophiles. It began life as a hub for tomes and pamphlets on India’s freedom struggle; now the life story of US President Barack Obama and Harry Potter books are the hot favourites. But it hasn’t grown in size or gone digital.

In the age of big retail chains and virtual bookstores, Majestic is a little piece of the city’s history and a testimony to the survival of the humble bookstore. Moreover, Majestic’s sales figures, along with those of the few other shops in Mumbai selling Marathi books, suggest that the Marathi bookstore is indeed not dead. The store’s manager says they sold 18,000 copies of their current best-seller, a biography of Obama by Marathi writer Sanjay Avte, in two months.

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Telugu may have attained classical language status, but very few people will get to read any of its literary texts, if current translation trends continue. At present, translation of Telugu literary works is taken up sporadically, and that too only into English and not Indian vernacular languages.

In view of the recently accorded classical language status for Telugu and Kannada languages as well as the establishment of a Translation Mission of India, the ninth CLAI (Comparative Literature Association of India) biennial international conference held at the University of Hyderabad acquires significance.

Speaking of the grim Telugu translation scenario, M Sridhar, a Telugu translator and professor of English in the University says, “Given a choice, people would prefer reading Adiga or Chomsky novels rather than Chaya Devi or Raavi Shastry. “Texts and literature sourced from English are still perceived as windows to the world.” Most other Indian languages face a similar situation,” he added.

Market dynamics go against cross vernacular translations, so publishers and authors are also drawn to higher sales and wider exposure that English provides. Then there is the problem of publishers playing favourites when selecting the recipient language, with Kannada, Oriya and Bengali being popular languages.

“Translation can be an important medium of networking the country and also gives an insight into the linguistic heritage and shared values of different regions,” says Tutun Mukherjee, head, department of Comparative Literature in the University of Hyderabad adding that the conference will also take up travel writing, literature of the marginalised, tribal literature, philosophy, religion and women’s writing.

However, recent Central government grant of Rs 90 crores to the Mission towards translation of knowledge-based texts into 23 vernacular languages is raising hopes of translators.