Tribal Affairs Ministry to host National Conclave on tribal languages in Mysuru

Tribal Affairs Ministry to organise National Conclave on tribal languages, museums in Mysuru

New Delhi, August 23

The National Conclave advances the Prime Minister's roadmap for a Viksit Bharat @2047, under which reviving India's traditional knowledge systems and ensuring no community is left behind remain key pillars of inclusive national development.

India's tribal communities are custodians of several hundred languages and dialects, a large number of which remain unwritten, are absent from the classroom and are no longer being passed down to the next generation. Recognising that the loss of a tribal language takes with it an entire body of ecological, medicinal, agricultural and cultural knowledge, the Ministry, through the network of Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) and State Tribal Welfare Departments, has convened the National Conclave to place community priorities at the centre of the agenda and arrive at a national roadmap for tribal language documentation, preservation and revitalisation, the Ministry said in a release.

The Conclave will also carry forward the vision announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 2016 Independence Day address, recognising the contribution of tribal communities to India's freedom struggle. Pursuant to this, the Ministry has sanctioned 11 Tribal Freedom Fighter Museums across 10 States, of which four have been inaugurated. The Conclave will deliberate a common vision for Tribal Museums and TFFMs as vibrant institutions of contemporary curation, storytelling and community-rooted heritage representation.

This reflects the Prime Minister's broader conviction that language is not merely a medium of communication but a living repository of a community's culture, heritage and traditional knowledge, a vision in which tribal languages occupy a central place.

The conclave will be inaugurated by Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey in the presence of Karnataka Tribal Welfare Minister Raghumurthy, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Anant Prakash Pandey, Secretary, Tribal Welfare Department, Karnataka, Kanagavalli, IAS, and Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Prof Basavaraja Kodagunti.

The inaugural session will see the release of Karnataka Primers in tribal languages, the signing of an MoU between the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and CIIL, the launch of Chatbot, and a major update to the Adi Vaani platform, including its new iOS application, addition of five new languages and multiple new features on the platform.

The day's proceedings will include panel discussions on the current status of tribal-language documentation and community-led revitalisation models, language technology including ASR, text-to-speech, machine translation, corpus building and associated data-protection and commercialisation concerns, and multilingual education (MLE). TRIs from across the country will present their language-preservation initiatives.

Day Two will open with a panel on what tribal communities themselves want from language revitalisation efforts, featuring grassroots and community-linguist speakers, followed by the drafting, adoption and signing of a possible Declaration on Tribal Languages.

The day will then transition into the Museums track, with sessions on representing tribal freedom narratives with authenticity; museums as living institutions of memory and identity; the museum planning process from building to exhibition; contemporary display techniques and digital technologies, including AR/VR and interactive kiosks; and community participation in museum-making, drawing on experiences such as the Tribal Museum, Bhopal, the statement added.

The Conclave will bring together senior officials from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and State Tribal Welfare Departments, TRIs and implementing agencies, tribal linguistic experts, museum professionals, curators, conservation and technology experts, historians, anthropologists, tribal community representatives and traditional knowledge holders from across the country.

Expected outcomes of the Conclave include a consolidated national picture of tribal-language documentation; a shortlist of community-led revitalisation models identified for scaling; a working approach to multilingual education in tribal schools; the adoption of the Declaration on Tribal Languages; and a shared national vision for Tribal Museums and TFFMs strengthening research, curation, conservation and community participation.

— ANI