Gondi dictionary to help bridge gap between communities

Four years since the initiative was launched in 2014, a group of 80 representatives of the Gond tribe from six states of Central India's forest belt, introduced the first standardised Gondi dictionary of 3,000 words at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) on Friday.

The initiative was an endeavour of CGNet Swara to create opportunities of education, administration and journalism in the Gondi language, which serves to be the lingua franca of the Indian Maoist movement. Shubhranshu Choudhary, founder of the organisation said that the standardisation of the language will collate the varying dialects of the second largest tribal population in the country, the Gond tribe spread across at least six states — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Maharashtra.

"If we dissect the Maoist conflict in India, we will find that most of the adivasis who take up arms in the Maoist movement do so because their basic issues remain unresolved. They cite lack of education and other civic amenities as the reason," said Shubhranshu.

"The Gond tribal community joins the Maoist movement because they can speak their language. This is a small endeavour to bridge the language barrier that exists between us and the tribe," he added.

The meeting that concluded on Friday with 3,000 Gondi equivalents of common Hindi words was the eighth meeting in the series since the project started. Initially, various activists across the states were approached to discuss the issue. The Ministry of Culture backed the first meeting that was held in July, 2014. "It took four long years to collect the variants of the 3,000 words across the plethora of dialects in the language. Finally, the compiled list was prepared and one standard variant of a word was chosen by 80 representatives of the community in the latest meeting," informed Shubhanshu.

"Microsoft has also agreed to develop a mobile application as an oral dictionary which will bring forth the folk lores circulated within the Gond community," he added.

However, the language is yet to attain an official stamp by the inclusion in the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution which lists the official languages of the country.