SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Visit to Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore,
Thursday 29 November 2007

Web page: http://www.ciil.org/

People we met:
• Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh, Director, CIIL (Ministry of HRD, Dept of Secondary & Higher Education, Govt. of India)
• Dr. R. Suman Kumari, Assistant Librarian
• Prof. Rajesh Sachdeva. Areas of interest: Languages of North-East India, Tribal Education.
• Prof. Kikkeri Narayan. Area of interest: Folklore.
• Dr. B. Mallikarjun, Research officer. Area of interest: Language education & Creation of language resources.
• Dr. Rekha Sharma, Head of Speech Science Group

The Central Institute of Indian Languages, CIIL, was established in 1969 to co-ordinate the development of Indian Languages, to bring about tthe essential unity of Indian languages through scientific studies, promote inter-disciplinary research, contribute to mutual enrichment of languages, and thus contribute towards emotional integration of people of India.

The Institute is charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to gring together all the research and literary output from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrow the gap between the basic research and developmenta; research in the field of languages and linguistics in India. The Central institute of Indian Languages also runs seven Regional Centres in the various linguistic regions of the country to help and meet the demand for trained teachers to implement the three-language formula and thereby provides assurance to linguistic minorities.
CIIL is considered to be an institution of utmost importance in today’s India, where the issue of language identity is very important. So, when the parliament discusses language issues, Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh is often called upon to prepare the government’s official answers to various motions raised in the Lok Sabha.

Our knowledge in beforehand of CIIL stems from the Indo-Swedish collaboration projects that have been carried out with the Dept. of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University. Professor Emeritus Gunilla Gren-Eklund and Dr. Anju Saxena have been involved in a project on ”Digital documentation of Indian minority languages” with the extremely dynamic CIIL Director, Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh (photo below). In the Spring 2002 this project was given a SASNET planning grant, and later major funding in the form of a Swedish Research Links grant by Sida and the Swedish Research Council. This project is now fully completed.
A major part of the research project consisted of creating an extensive web based documentation on Indian languages. A very useful web site was constructed.

Dr. Anju Saxena has later been involved in a collaborative research project, involving researchers at CIIL, focusing on Tibeto-Burman linguistics, syntax, language contact and language change in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh (more information about the Kinnauri project); and in 2006 she co-edited a book on ”Lesser-Known Languages of South Asia Status and Policies, Case Studies and Applications of Information Technology”, bringing together research on a large number of smaller languages in South Asia. It provides basic knowledge about the problems involved and some directions from which solutions could be forthcoming, for helping to shape the linguistic future of South Asia. More information.

Udaya Narayana Singh has also visited Sweden at many occasions. Lars met Prof. Singh in Uppsala already in September 2001, when he participated in the Seventh Himalayan Languages Symposium, an event organised at Uppsala University in that year. More information.
Later, in June 2003, Prof. Singh was invited to Uppsala University to give lectures on languages and the linguistic situation in South Asia, a visit partly sponsored by the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquites (Vitterhetsakademin).
More recently, he visited Göteborg in September 2007 for the 10th International Pragmatics Conference organised by Dr. Jens Allwood, Dept. Of Linguistics, Göteborg University.

Just before our visit to Mysore, a delegation from the Nordic Centre in India consortium (NCI), represented by its Director Dr. Mirja Juntunen, and its former Chairman Dr. Neelambar Hatti, had also visited CIIL. Their mission was to finalise a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NCI and CIIL on sending Nordic students to Mysore for one-year language training programmes.

When we arrived in Mysore, Prof. Singh was away in Kolkata, and we were taken care of by his colleague Dr. Kikkeri Narayana.
Once back in Mysore, and back in his spacious office, we had however a lengthy discussion with Prof. Singh, and later a meeting was also arranged for us to meet some of the researchers interested in more Indo-Swedish research collaboration projects. Besides, we were given an interesting round tour of CIIL, to see its impressive library of linguistic magazines from all over the world and a well-kept digital libaray collection. In fact, our visit to the library and the interesting discussion we had with the librarian Dr. R Suman Kumari took so much time that the rest of our programme for the day had to be rescheduled.

CIIL faculty members, from left to right: Rekha Sharma, B. Mallikarjun, Rajesh Sachdeva and Kikkeri Narayan.

The enthusiasm shown by Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh towards new projects is inspiring. During our conversation, he informed us about a major films project, producing hundreds of language related films, to be shown on TV and elsewhere. He just came back from the screening of some of the films at a festival at Nandan in Kolkata.

Another major project deals with the work to produce a new Linguistic Survey of India, a project approved by the Indian parliament. It will be the first survey of Indian languages to be conducted since 1947 till date. The previous Linguistic Survey of India was produced under the leadership of George Grierson in 19 volumes during the period 1898-1929. The new project was kicked off in April 2007. It will be a ten-year project led by CIIL, but involving around 50 institutions all over India. The total cost of the project has been estimated at Rs 600 crore and classified into two sections – besides the New Linguistic Survey of India also a Survey of Minor and Endangered Languages. Over 2,000 people from various fields will be involved in the survey and over 100 training workshops will be held to sensitise and prepare them for the task.

Another project initiated by Prof. Singh is the National Translation Mission, which is a joint effort by CIIL, the Sahitya Akademi and National Book Trust in New Delhi. The representatives of leading publishing houses, such as Oxford University Press and Katha are also involved. The project deals with the translation of books from variuous Indian languages to other Indian and foreign languages. More information.
In 2006, India was the Guest of Honour Country at the prestigeous Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. Naturally, Prof. Singh was involved in the preparations for this mega-event when Indian authors, writing not only in English but also in the 24 main languages of India, came to Frankfurtpresent their books, many of which had been translated into German.
The writers included Vikram Seth, Amitabh Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Mahashweta Devi, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Kunwar Narayin, G.P. Deshpande, Shaharyar, Javed Akhtar and K. Jayakantan.
Naturally, Prof. Singh is well aware of the Indo-Swedish Translation Project that fits well into this major translation project. More information about the Swedish project.

A final comment on our visit to CIIL in Mysore. The high ambitions prevalent in all respects at CIIL also extend to the standard of the guest house (photo to the right). Excellent rooms in a beautifully designed building makes CIIL a dream location for anyone keen on organising conferences with Indian and international participants. Or for anyone who wishes to visit CIIL and use its exellent library and other facilities.