Agartala, Dec. 16: Tripura’s Kokborok language is rapidly gaining ground as a medium of indigenous literature, despite the invasion of English as the medium of instruction.

A major milestone in the development and in publication of books in Kokborok language was achieved yesterday as the autonomous district council’s chief executive me-mber Ranjit Debbarma unve-iled a major research work on the growth and development of the indigenous language.

During the early eighties, the first Kokborok novel, authored by the former Speaker of the state Assembly, Sudhanwa Debbarma, appeared under the title of Hachuk Khuriyo (in the lap of hills).

Since then, hundreds of novels, books of poetry, dramas and books of essays have come out in Kokborok and as a mark of recognition the Sahitya Academy conferred the Bhasa Samman (meant for poets and authors of non-scheduled languages) on leading Kokborok poet Chandra Kanta Murasingh in 1996.

“This research work financed by ADC’s language cell cost Rs 4 lakh but it is an invaluable asset in tracing the history of the language and its development,” said Deb-barma, while unveiling the book cover in the auditorium of ADC’s library yesterday.

Debbarma said besides private publication initiatives, the ADC authority have sponsored the publication of 139 books in Kokborok over the past five years even though work on 27 more books is on.

“It is true that the development of Kokborok language is hamstrung by a script controversy with votaries of Roman script fighting with the supporters of modified Bengali script. But we held a series of workshops over the past few years asking people interested in the language to offer sample scripts and we have got a good response. These samples and findings in the course of camps held have been sent to experts in Puna-based institute of languages and we are hopeful that a new script acceptable to the people will be in vogue soon,” he said.

However, despite the growth in publication of books in Kokborok, the study of the language as medium of instruction in schools continues to suffer. “There are only 317 schools in ADC areas out of a total of more than 5,000 schools in the state imparting education in Kokborok but the problem is that once the students reach Class VI they have to switch over to Bengali and it creates lot of problems,” said a senior official in the school education department of ADC.

This has resulted in apathy towards studying their mother tongue among the indigenous students.

“Our effort is to ensure that Kokborok language survives and flourishes and the introduction of the new script being designed may help in this regard,” said the official.

There is a certificate course on learning Kokborok in Tripura Central University, he added.