Who am I? Niranjan Kujur found himself groping for an identity when he joined Manipal University in Karnataka in 2006 for a course in mass communication. Kujur is from Lohardaga in Jharkhand and his mother tongue is Kudukh.
A member of the Dravidian family of languages, Kudukh is spoken by nearly two million Oraon and Kisan people scattered across Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Chhattisgarh as well as the Andamans. It is listed as "vulnerable" in Unesco's register of endangered languages, and only this year on Bhasha Diwas or International Mother Tongue Day it was granted official status by the Bengal government.
That year at university, amidst students from all over the country, a sense of inadequacy gripped Kujur. Not that he had much of an Oraon identity to speak of. Schooled in Ranchi, he didn't even know Kudukh - English had been the medium of instruction - and none spoke it at home either. His sense of belonging jangled. "Everyone had his or her regional identity... Nobody believed me when I said I was an Adivasi from Jharkhand... Hindi could not quite convey who I was."
As with all depleting tongues, the newer generations of Oraons do not find a fertile Kudukh environment - either at home or at school. Only in two schools in all of Jharkhand can Oraon students write their board exams in their mother tongue. In 2013, space was created for nine languages in the department of regional and tribal languages at Ranchi University; Kudukh was one of them.
Kujur himself has come a long way since. An established filmmaker, he now uses the cinematic language to communicate Kudukh to the world - as though trying to shape a presence in popular media, where there is almost none.
His filmography includes two films in Kudukh - a 10-minute fiction called Pahada (Watch) and the 26-minute Edpa Kana (Going Home), widely recognised in the festival circuit. Edpa Kana tries to represent social and personal dilemmas - Oraon boy falls in love with a girl of the same tribe but a different religion and so on. It, of course, has bits of Hindi and Sadri (or Nagpuri) too.
A specific language is indeed essential to a specific people. How else does one express core experiences? The vastness of the tribal's experience of nature translates into the nuances of Kudukh. For instance, there are different words for the act of "cutting" or " kaatna", points out Ranchi-based Oraon writer Mahadev Toppo, whose book - Jungle Pahad Ke Paath, a compilation of 44 poems in Hindi - released in January this year. Says Toppo, "So 'kaatna' in case of saag is mochna, in case of paddy it is khoyna, for a solid it's khandna, and beheading for a sacrifice is pujana."
Precious knowledge, this. Much like the oft-quoted example from the Kayapo language of Brazil that distinguishes between 56 kinds of bees, many of them not known to scientists! So each bee is recognised by the way it flies, the kind of wax it produces, or even the taste of its larva. Lose that language, and you lose a portion of the planet's life.
Toppos's own writings are mostly in Hindi but highlight the issues and angst of his people. "Given a choice, I would make films only in my native language," says Kujur. He is currently working on a documentary on Dr Narayan Oraon, a practicing paediatrician who has been instrumental in developing a script for Kudukh. The script, called Tolong Siki, came into being in 1999.
For Ravina Toppo, who's doing her MPhil in Linguistics from Agra University, Kudukh is the most poetic language. "There are no equivalents of 'sorry' and 'thank you', and yet to my ears it is the most polite form of communication," she says. There are many expressions of emotions that have no words in Hindi or English, she adds.
Imagine this. It is winter and a group of Oraon people are sitting around a fire. The fire, however, is born of the husk of paddy. And there is a distinct smell and a distinct warmth in the air and amongst those sitting around the flames. "It is a unique experience... The Kudukh word for such a fire is 'borshi'. I have used it often in my [Hindi] poetry," says Mahadev Toppo. A retired bank officer, Toppo used to compose mostly in Kudukh as a teen. "The language has a certain simplicity and fluidity," he says.
All over the world, languages are losing the tools of self-expression. Without Kudukh, it will be impossible to preserve the depth and complexity of the Oraon culture. Filmmaker Kujur, however, has his syllabus neatly laid out. "I only need to go and live in Jashpur in Chhattisgarh for about three months... perhaps when I am working on a script," Everyone speaks Kudukh and only Kudukh there, he chuckles. "I will then be able to speak my mother tongue fluently."
We hear you all right.
