Offtrack: Word Of Mouth

HAVING STARTED DHOL IN FOUR GUJARATI AND MARATHI DIALECTS, PROFESSOR DEVY NOW WANTS TO PUBLISH EDITIONS IN MANY OTHER TRIBAL LANGUAGES.

HAVING STARTED DHOL IN FOUR GUJARATI AND MARATHI DIALECTS, PROFESSOR DEVY NOW WANTS TO PUBLISH EDITIONS IN MANY OTHER TRIBAL LANGUAGES.

The flickering flames light up the weather-beaten faces gathered around the open fire as a young tribal boy -- one of the few literates in the remote south Gujarat village of Morjira -- starts reading from a magazine. The 300-odd tribals sit in rapt attention as the singsong voice carries on. Some of them start clapping and dancing as the boy sings a folk song from the magazine in a wavering voice.

As the last page of the magazine is turned, there's a sense of contentment. There is one thought in the minds of the tribals: here at last is a magazine we can call our own. Evocatively named Dhol -- a drum, the vehicle of communication between various tribes in Gujarat -- the publication is proving a godsend to the mostly illiterate tribals fast losing the means to preserve their culture. They speak the Kokana dialect, which resembles Marathi but uses the Gujarati script. But there are editions of the magazine in other tribal dialects.

"The magazine will bring different tribal groups closer by informing them about each other's customs and traditions," says Dahyabhai Vathu, who edits the magazine's Kokana version. Following its launch last year in Morjira village in Dangs district, Dhol has become very popular among the tribals. "It's a step towards saving the 80-odd tribal languages in the country," says Professor G.N. Devy, a Sahitya Academy award-winning English writer, and the man behind the magazine.

The experiment is indeed unique. Dhol is published by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre (BRPC), an organisation founded by Devy. BRPC runs on donations, and literate tribals manage the magazine, with Devy restricting himself to a coordinator's role. Dhol is published in four languages: Kokana and Rathwa which are spoken in Gujarat and for which Devy uses the Gujarati script, and Dahevali and Pawara which are spoken in Maharashtra and for which the script is Marathi.

The four editors -- one from each of the communities -- send their editorial matter to Devy. It typically contains traditional tribal stories, folk songs and reports of cultural events. Devy then gets the Marathi material translated into Gujarati and the Gujarati material into Marathi. Sets of both are sent back to the editors, who use diacritic marks (linguistic symbols) to make the scripts as phonetically close to the dialects as possible. After the translation work, printed copies are sent to the editors who sell them at Rs 10 each in villages where the concerned language is spoken. The current circulation of the black-and-white magazine is about 3,000 copies. Often it is the village sarpanchs who procure. They also select a literate tribal in eacg village to read it out.

"Dhol is selling well in these villages and other villages are interested. They see it as something of their own," says Devy. Adds Nathubhai Vathu, the sarpanch of Morjira: "We are prepared to do anything to keep the oral magazine alive. It gives new meaning to our lives." Among the ardent supporters of this experiment are playwright Vijay Tendulkar and Vadodra-based painter Bhupen Khakhar.

Given his interest in the subject, Devy was quick to accept his appointment as coordinator of a Sahitya Akademi project on the 80 spoken tribal languages across the country, from Kokana in Gujarat to Ao in Nagaland over a period of about five years. The project was undertaken by the academy at the behest of Devy, whose job is to network with and utilise the services of people involved in the promotion of tribal literature.

How did a professor of English venture into tribal language development? Pat comes the reply: "I liked interacting with tribals. And because their culture -- apart from its richness -- remains largely unexpressed in the written language." Devy wants Dhol to cover more tribal languages in the future, but right now his problem is getting funds as "people are not willing to donate for a cause like tribal language development". But he is determined. And often that is all it takes to see a dream fulfilled.

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