Benjamin Bara, a tribal from Jharkhand, heads UNESCO Asia committee promoting special decade (2022-2032) to protect tribal languages. Speaking to AsiaNews, he urges missionary schools to do more to preserve tribal identities.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Catholic educational institutions must do more to promote education among tribal children in their native language, this according to Dr Benjamin Bara, an Indian Catholic activist appointed by UNESCO to its Global Task Force for Making a Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages 2022-2032.
Bara is an educator in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India. A tribal rights expert at the Jesuit-run Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, he teaches at the University of Delhi and is a member of several Indian national bodies like the Adivasi Ekta Parishad, Adivasi Samanway Manch Bharat, and India Indigenous Peoples.
“I belong to the Kurukh tribal community from Pandrani village in Gumla district, Jharkhand,” he told AsiaNews. He is also a member of the Global Task Force and head of its Steering Committee for Asia.
His job at the UN agency is “to raise awareness about the importance of tribal languages and to create sensitivity towards the protection, promotion, and revitalisation of tribal/indigenous languages in Asia.”
To this end, he is involved in the “training on digital archival, script generation, and language learning workshops with the tribal/indigenous peoples in Asia.”
In India, indigenous languages are a very important issue. Unfortunately, “Most of the countries in Asia do not recognise indigenous peoples. Therefore, indigenous languages face an identity crisis. This results in language assimilation.”
By contrast, “According to the New Education Policy 2020, the Government of India has taken an excellent step to teach students in their mother tongue/regional-local languages till fifth class. I hope this step will bring new change to promote and revitalise Adivasi/tribal languages in different countries.”
Bara grew up attending Catholic schools, like St Francis' College in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, followed by a PhD at the Xavier School of Management in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.
“I noticed that the values taught in missionary institutions, such as love, care, generosity, coexistence, compassion, forgiveness, adjustment, etc., are tribal values,” he explained.
“What concerns me is that most missionary institutions are not imparting education to tribal and Adivasi children in their tribal/Adivasi languages. This results in the alienation of tribal children from their roots, identity, knowledge, and culture.”
“Changing the curriculum and imparting education in tribal/Adivasi languages in missionary and non-missionary institutions could bring change and become a milestone to protect, preserve, and revitalise tribal/Adivasi languages, their traditional knowledge, identity, and culture.”