Socio-economic units will not only have to fulfill peoples social and economic needs, but also their cultural aspirations. Culture denotes all sorts of human expressions. Culture is the same for all humanity, though there are differences in cultural expression. The best means of communicating human expressions is through one's mother tongue, as this is most natural. If people's natural expression through their mother tongue is suppressed, inferiority complexes will grow in their minds, encouraging a defeatist mentality and ultimately leading to psycho-economic exploitation. Thus, no mother tongue should be suppressed.
The imposition of the Hindi language as the national language of India by a section of Indian leaders is an example of linguistic suppression. Hindi is not the natural language of the people in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and other parts of North India. There are many local languages in these regions, which are suppressed and need immediate encouragement. To arouse the cultural legacy of the people in these areas and raise their socio-economic consciousness, they must be made aware of who the exploiters are and the nature of psycho-economic exploitation so that they become imbued with fighting spirit.
All languages must be encouraged, but this does not mean opposing the languages spoken by others. In this context, language in itself is of secondary importance. Of primary importance are the negative cultural and socio-economic consequences of linguistic imperialism. A language usually changes every 1,000 years and a script every 2,000 years. There was no script in the time of the Vedas. The composition of the Vedas started 15,000 years ago and ended 5,000 years ago, thus the entire composition was done over 10,000 years. Script in India was invented about 5,000 years ago. In those days, people used to write on the skin of sheep. Later they started to write on papyrus, and still later papyrus became paper. Bengali was written with wooden pens and Oriya with iron pens. To prevent the paper from being cut by the iron pens, Oriya letters became round. The seed of expression of all languages is the same. Geo-racial differences were responsible for the emergence of different races, which developed numerous languages. The four races in the world are the Austrics, Negroids, Mongolians and Aryans.
The original home of the Aryans was southern Russia, east of the Ural Mountains, now known as the Caucasus. The Muslim region of the Soviet Union includes Uzbekhistan, Tadzhikistan, Azerbaijan, etc. Today the Aryans can be divided into three groups -- Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean. Nordic Aryans come from Scandinavian countries and they have a reddish white complexion and red or golden hair. Alpine Aryans come from Germany and the surrounding area. They have a white complexion, blackish blue hair and blue eyes. Mediterranean Aryans come from southern Europe and have a fair complexion, black hair and black eyes. The Mongolians have yellowish skin and little hair on their bodies. They can be divided into five groups -- the Nipponese, who have big faces and big bodies; the Chinese, who have flat noses and slanting eyes; the Malays, who have small bodies and flat noses; the Indo-Burmese, who have flat noses and comparatively big bodies; and the Indo-Tibetans, who have flat noses and are good-looking. The Austrics have medium-sized bodies and mud black skin, while the Negroids have black skin, kinky hair and are often quite tall. Geo-racial conditions produce changes in the vocal chords and other centres or plexi, and consequently the entire pronunciation and other items of language change. Thus, while no language should be suppressed and cultural expression must always be encouraged, language alone is not a sound basis upon which to demarcate socio-economic units or build an integrated society. [November, 1979]
Related articles: Socio-Economic Movements and SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROUPIFICATIONS
- * Amra Bangali (meaning "We are Bengalis") is the political party in West Bengal working to estabish a PROUT economy on the ground in that region. They work for economic and political democracy. The party works in West Bengal, and all the Bengali populated areas of Tripura, Bihar, Orissa, assam and Jharkhand. It works towards the following: (1) Restoration and development of Bengali language and culture; (2) Economic self-sufficiency; (3) Self-determination in the socio-political field; (4) Re-organization of the territory of Bengal with all like-minded people having respect for Bengali language and culture, and name this new geographical area as "Bangalistan." The Amra Bangali party is working for economic democracy based on spreading cooperatives. For this very reason, it faces direct opposition from the Communist Party in West Bengal. At present companies from outside Bengal come in and exploit the people economically. Furthermore, migrated non-Bengalis occupy major jobs in all governmental and non-governmental business and indudtrial sectors, leaving thousands of local Bengalis without jobs or means of survival. Millions of rupees leave Bengal annually. Nearly 70 percent of the land and homes of Kolkata are owned by non-Bengalis. Bengal's precious minerals such as iron and coal are sold to other states, and Bengal is forced to purchase such basic staples as oil and sugar from outside the state. These are only a few of the injustices which Amra Bangali highlights and aims to correct.
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