By Marlan Padayachee and Rita Abraham
Language is one of the main seeds of a person’s ethnic identity
GOPIO CONFERENCE TOPIC: ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER LANGUAGES IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA AND THE REVIVAL OF OUR ANCESTRAL LANGUAGES’ PRESENTED BY MS RITA ABRAHAM, SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESSWOMAN, FINANCIAL ADVISOR, FOUNDER OF WOMEN’S GROUP FORTE SOUTH AFRICA, PHILANTHROPIST, INTERFAITH, HUMANITARIAN AND CHARITY WORKER
Mr President
Honourable Conference Chairperson
Distinguished Delegates, Guests, Stakeholders, Role-players
All Protocols Observed
Ladies and Gentlemen, I come from the land of Nelson Mandela where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi taught us the language of love, peace, tolerance, respect, self-dignity and Satyagraha (nonviolent protest).
South Africa is much as a cultural melting pot as India, the ancient land of mother tongue and ancestral languages and dialects, except that the scale of economies is much smaller as compared to the great cultural bastion that sits majestically in the South Asian bloc of culturally-enriched nations like China.
It is therefore with a deep sense of pride and patriotism that I wish to greet you in the indigenous languages of our rainbow nation that so many of you in Indian and the Diaspora communities revere and admire because of our historical ties, our love for secularism and cultural diversity and our propensity for peace, freedom and human rights.
Let me begin in my own mother tongue languages:
· Vannakam
· Namaskarumu
· Namaste
Coming back to the country of diverse languages and dialects, let me share some traditional greetings with you.
In the language of our colonial rulers, I would say to this global gathering:
· ‘Hello, how are you?’ – in English.
· ‘Hello, hoe gaan dit, boetie or sissie?’ – in the language of our apartheid rulers – Afrikaans.
Imagine, how the Gandhian teaching of tolerance has taught us to respect the two languages that were the currency of oppression, exploitation and human suffering.
Along with English and Afrikaans, we have nine other indigenous African languages.
Alongside English, isiZulu is the currency of our social cohesion, economics and politics in my homeland of Kwazulu Natal.
So, I will continue to greet, by saying ‘Sawubona, unjani? – in isiZulu.
Again, it’s ‘Hello, how are you?’
· In Xhosa, I would say: ‘Molo, kunjani?’
· Lotjhani, Unjani? – in Ndebele.
· Dumela, O kae? – in Sepedi, and the same in Sotho or Tswana.
· Sawubona, kunjani? – in Swati
· Ndaa, vho vuwa hani? – in Venda
· Avuxeni, Ku njhani? – in Tsonga.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our march to freedom and human dignity began with much frenzy and fanfare on the 27th of April 1994.
Our political leaders who were engaged in dialogue, despite the differences of languages, drew a great deal of wealth and knowledge from how Gandhi, along with Jawharlal Nehru and other distinguished Indian and African leaders had mapped out the road to self-rule from colonialism and later apartheid.
There was quite uproar, an air sceptism and cynicism when the constitutional writers and lawmakers of our fledgling, new democracy emerged with a resolution that the new South Africa shall be governed by 11 languages, including the colonial-apartheid currency of English and Afrikaans.
As some of the leading linguists and academics gathered here will attest that post-colonial India, like post-apartheid South Africa, had embarked on a major reformist agenda of realigning the local and national landscapes of our nations whose ancient history, ancestral footprints, cultural heritage, indigenous languages, were bombarded, if not bastardised, by the language of cultural imperialism.
As newly independent India began the process of creating Indian states at the start of self-rule in 1947, languages played a part in redefining the geo-political landscapes.
A bunch of some the present-day India’s states boundaries created were based on the boundaries of the main Indian languages as recognized by the Indian constitution.
But, the Indian constitution uses the term ‘mother tongue’ instead of language or dialect.
We have legislated it as ‘languages’ as opposed to ‘mother tongue’.
By definition and description, ‘mother tongue’ is the language first learned by a child; and a language from which another has evolved.
Like India, independent South Africa placed a high premium of languages and dialects as a key driver of constitutional reform and political changes.
We, too, as much as we celebrate of our sea of colour, cuisine and cultural diversity, have come to recognise and respect ‘language’ as one of the main seeds of a person’s ethnic identity.
The Indian Constitution recognizes 18 official Indian languages.
Though the process of creating states based on languages began in 1953, I understand that up to the present day, there are still demands for new states for different language speakers in India.
The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages that is spread over nine provinces, and each or more that is unique to a particular geo-political region of our small, but yet vast country that stands as the gateway to a multi-lingual Africa.
Why, may you wonder or ponder that a community that has played such a powerful role in South Africa’s freedom struggle do not have any of the one Indian languages recognized in our national language framework?
I can assure you that the Indian languages that define the South African Indian, such as Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Gujerati and Urdu are fully recognized in the South African Constitution alongside religious freedom and practice in our secular society.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I hail from a province where the common currency is isiZulu, the dominant language of the majority Zulu-speaking people whose forebears were led by the legendary King Shaka.
In terms of the dynamics of this particular language that is home to millions of Zulu-speaking Africans, it is therefore imperative and important for my fellow Indian compatriots that make up the majority Indian concentration in KwaZulu-Natal to learn to speak the language of a region where the majority of South Africa’s 1, 3 million Indians reside in the City of Durban.
Like in India, provinces in South Africa are defined on regions whose boundaries are based on languages, for example isiZulu for KwaZulu, or Sotho, Xhosa or Ndebele for Gauteng, the country’s economic and infrastructural hub, and in the Indian context, Kerala for Malyalam speakers; Tamil Nadu for Tamil speakers; Karnataka for Kanadda speakers; Andra Pradesh for Telugu speakers; Maharashtra for Marathi speakers; Orissa for Oriya speakers; West Bengal for Bengali speakers; Gujarat for Gujarati speakers; Punjab for Punjabi speakers; Assam for Assami speakers, etc.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have shared this component of our culturally enriching nation, in comparison with India, and the context of ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER LANGUAGES IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA AND THE REVIVAL OF OUR ANCESTRAL LANGUAGES’ to bring home the point that as members of the Indian Diaspora, South African Indians can no longer survive by living and working in a void or an ethno- cultural bubble of their own.
The very nature of South Africa’s constitutional and cultural reform calls on Indian South Africans to assimilate to the national psyche of an evolving, emerging, nonracial, non-discriminatory and democratic society.
We have to blend our language spectrum in order to share of legacy of language with our fellow citizens and compatriots.
If at all, we have succeeded in making a Zulu-speaking citizen, Patrick Ngcobo to sing and play carnatic music in the Indian vernacular language, then we have made a small beginning to towards sharing the richness of our language with African people.
However, Indian South Africans are a unique and colourful community which has the capacity, in line with the Indian Government’s progressive, nation-building and cultural exchange policies and programmes, to share our legacy of language with the rest of South Africa’s diverse population tapestry.
We need the global platform of GOPIO and to an extent the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas programme that honours the day Gandhiji returned to India from South Africa to ensure that a free India will transcend the barriers of language and culture so that all Indians will speak in one language, the language of progress, peace and prosperity.
So, what a better time in history it has been to share the Indian language and legacy with the rest of our nation.
Ladies and Gentlemen, 2010 marked the 150th year of the arrival of the Indian indentured labourers in South Africa.
This milestone was celebrated and commemorated throughout the country in a colourful pageantry of song, dance, culture and cuisine in which everyone spoke the language of cultural diversity, nation-building, peace and prosperity.
When ‘Coolie Number One’ 30-year-old Christian-Indian Davuram from Madras stepped off the SS Truro and set foot on the shores of Durban, a new language was born of the shores of Durban.
And when the second indentured labourer on the ship’s manifest, 18-year-old Naguram, probably his wife, and their two children, four-year-old Kubay, and one-year-old Elizabeth, the seedlings of a whole new cultural identity was to spread across the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Hidden in the treasure troves of the trunks they carried into a brave new beginning, the semi-slaves cherished the books of religious studies and teachings, the Holy Bible, the Sanskrit template, the Bhagavad Gita, the Kurrukal, and ancient literature, folklores, scripts and musical scores.
By the time the last Indian touched our soil, more than 200 000 Indians had arrived in Durban, all carrying with them the cultural and literary wealth of India.
Therefore, with much pride, on Tuesday, 16th November, 2010, Indian communities all over South Africa celebrated and commemorated these founding pioneers, who together with the other batch of Indians on board the ships, have today been judged by history for the enormous contribution to building and sustaining one of the most dynamic Diaspora communities outside India.
To the indigenous local people or the colonialists, this stoical band of sugar cane cutters spoke a strange, foreign language as they toiled from dawn to dusk under the African sun.
Through the ancient language of Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu, these Indian sub-groups survived the most horrendous human drama in living history to maintain and sustain these ancient languages and dialects; galvanise the community against naked racism and exploitation, erect monuments of worships to the Gods of language, peace, love, build schools to teach in the vernacular, sing in the vernacular and play from vernacular musical notes.
Even Christian-Indians prayed, praised, worshipped and sang in the vernacular, rendering religious songs and hymns in Tamil and Telugu.
In the broader picture of one community’s struggle to hold on to its language. not even the language restriction of apartheid for Indians to learn and speak the language of Afrikaans did not deter Indian South Africans from excelling in the mother tongue language.
English was, and still is, a currency of the economy to earn a living and get a better education.
But running almost parallel to the foreign languages and dialects of Africa, Indian South Africans continued to maintain the cultural link with Mother India or Thai Nadu, as we say in Tamil or Telugu, and we continue to seek religious and cultural succour from what many of Indian South Africans may still refer to India as the ‘motherland’.
Despite successive attempts to take Indian languages off the curriculum of the South African education system, the promoters and purveyors of the Indian languages and dialects have become the diehard custodians of an ancient language that defined the arrival and survival of Indians in South Africa – thanks largely to the skilful communication of the language the indentured labourers used to articulate their fears, hopes and expectations during one of the darkest periods in modern civilisation when indenture replaced slavery.
As part of the Indian Diaspora, we need to look to India and the 20-million Diaspora communities to maintain the language of our indentured and trading forebears.
India gave us more than a new nation outside the ‘motherland’.
Collectively and culturally, we have benefited from somen of the Indian languages that have a long literary history, such as Sanskrit, literature that is more than 5 000 years old, and my own mother tongue, Tamil that is 3 000 years old.
Therefore, Mr Chairperson, ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER LANGUAGES IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA AND THE REVIVAL OF OUR ANCESTRAL LANGUAGES’ has to provide us with a new road map to navigate how generations of Indians to follow will learn to embrace the ancient languages and dialects that have come to define our progress, peace and prosperity in the post-modern economy and civilization.
We therefore have a moral or socio-religious responsibility and civic duty to hand down the legacy of this language that was first heard on the shores of the Bay of Durban on 16th November 1860 to future generations of Indian South Africans.
After all, India is extremely rich in languages.
India is blessed by an uncountable number of languages and dialects that are spoken in towns, villages and cities across the sub-continent.
There are no less than 30 different languages along with 2 000 dialects that shapes and define India’s uniqueness as a cultural melting pot.
Like South Africa and many nations in the world, commercialism, industrialization and a bustling influence of multinationals in the local economy has made English into the most common language, after Hindi, from Sikkam to the Silicone Valley.
Quite fascinatingly, Hindi is spoken by more than 337 million people in India. The second most spoken Indian language is Bengali, being spoken by 70 million people.
In his evaluation and assessment of the Tamil Language and Murukan Worship in South Africa, 
Professor S Subramaniyan, wrote: “The life and breath of every individual are his mother language. This may be identified with signs or words which help to communicate. Language attains its real strength, power and divinity by its relationship with the Supreme One through prayer and the philosophy of worldly life.
This relationship between the individual and God guides one to attain power and strength for material and spiritual purposes, for which language helps. It also becomes an effective tool to all people in their various walks of life.”
I trust through my story-telling and narration that I wish to conclude that the topic of ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER LANGUAGES IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA AND THE REVIVAL OF OUR ANCESTRAL LANGUAGES’ is as relevant and appropriate for the Indian Diaspora, alongside India and South Africa, to embark on a cultural journey across the world to promote and perpetuate the ancient languages, mother tongue and dialects that have come to define our collective cultural richness.
I thank you for this privilege of addressing you and may I leave these inspiring words with you: “As I age with, my maturing and wisdom has inspired me to read Buddhist teachings, the compassionate chapters of the Holy Qu’ran, the parables of the Bible and beautiful verses of the Bhagavad Gita.”
Language is one of the main seeds of a person’s ethnic identity.
Thank you
Nandrie
Dhanyavadalu
Dhanyavaad
Shukriyaa
Ngiyabonga
Ends
Speech researched, conceptualised and written for Rita Abraham, managing-director of South Africa Insurance, founder of Forte, South Africa’s women empowerment lobbying group, and leading motivational speaker, member of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), by Marlan Padayachee and GreenGold Africa Communications, greengold@mtnloaded.co.za, marlan.padayachee@gmail.com, + 00 27 31 266 4293; 266 2134; facsimile: 00 27 31 266 8592; PO Box 346 Pavilion 3611 South Africa.
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