KATHMANDU, JULY 1
Nepali has remained lingua franca of all the seven provinces more than four years after the formation of provincial government though the constitution has given provinces the right to recognise languages other than Nepali as means of communication.
Article 7(2) of the constitution states that a province may, by a provincial law, recognise any other language spoken by a majority of people within the province as its official language, in addition to the Nepali language.
Article 32(3), on the other hand, states that every Nepali community residing in Nepal shall have the right to preserve and promote its language, script, culture, cultural civilisation, and heritage.
Madhes Province, which was at the forefront of federalism movement, has also failed to recognise either Maithili or Bhojpuri, two dominant languages of the province, as an official language of the province.
Writer and former member of Nepal Academy Ram Bharos Kapari Bhramar said in Madhes, no major work had been done to promote or protect languages.
There are 89 linguistic groups in Madhes, but seven languages are spoken by more than 100,000 people.
He said Madhes should have devised its policies to protect and promote languages and scripts other than the official language(s).
"We have seen that Madhes allocates Rs 250 to 300 million for road projects, but it has not even allocated Rs 40 million for the protection and promotion of languages," Bhramar said.
Maithili language activist Manoj Jha Mukti said Maithili language campaign was at the forefront of the movement for federalism, yet Maithili did not get recognition as the official language in Madhes.
He said identity was at the core of federalism, but without protecting and promoting all languages, identity could not be protected. "Nobody is paying attention to other languages of the province. Politicians focus only on building roads and infrastructure.
The Madhes government has missed an important opportunity to protect and promote languages," he added. Mukti said some schools in Mahottari district had started teaching Maithili to students, but no government agency was monitoring the progress and efforts of those schools.
If Kathmandu metropolis can recruit 172 Nepal Bhasha teacher on its own to protect and promote the language, other local governments can also do that, Mukti argued.
Former mayor of Kathmandu metropolis Bidya Sundar Shakya said it was at his initiative language teachers were recruited in government schools. He claimed that many local governments in the metropolis had followed suit. "Somebody has to show the way. Others will follow," Shakya said. He said some local governments in the Tarai were also trying to replicate what he had started in Kathmandu.
Language Commission Chair Lava Deo Awasthi said the constitution had given provinces the right to recognise other languages as official languages, but provinces had not yet enacted laws which could facilitate that.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 2, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
