The International Seminar on Endangered Languages in India Back
The International Seminar on Endangered Languages in India was held on 22-23rd Oct 2009 at the India International Centre. This path breaking initiative of the organization marked the silver jubilee celebrations of INTACH. The seminar was a big success with attendance by young people from universities, school teachers and INTACH conveners, apart from participating national and international scholars.
The two day seminar highlighted the key issues of language endangerment, revival, documentation and implementation of collective recommendations. The impetus was the increasing frequency of media reports, the UNESCO report on endangered languages worldwide, and the interaction with minority indigenous communities in the interior of the country, which showed up the abysmal neglect of “small” languages in India, simple because they were spoken by small numbers. This finally leads to a dangerous fading of many of these languages and finally to their death and loss of a rich treasure of culture, knowledge and identity. These trends resulted in the Human Resources Development Ministry constituting a “Round Table” for the Endangered Languages in India, chaired by the Hon. Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of HRD. INTACH became a participant when the director of the ICH division was made a member of this Round Table and the first meeting was held on May 26th, 2010.
