The reorganization of States undertake after the Independence after the Independence in order to make linguistically homogeneous Indian States has created substantial number of minority language groups are politically powerless tribal communities indigeneous to the States, while others are speakers of major languages, migrated from other States. In every State (except in newly formed States such as Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Arunachal and eghalaya etc.) the language of the majority linguistic community is used for official transaction and as the medium of instruction in educational institutions. Political importance attached to the regional languages in respective States has enhanced their functional value, and this has exerted enormous sociopolitical pressure on the speakers of the minority tribal languages to learn the regional languages for their social, occupational and areal mobility and for their educational development. This paper is intended to examine the extent of language maintenance and shift among the Kuruxs, and to examine factors, or lack of them, for language loyalty and maintenance.

There are over eleven lakh Kuruxs, (or Oraons) in India who speak Kurux language natively. Major concentration of the kuruxs is in the adjoining districts of Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh which formed erstwhile Chotanagpur and Central Provinces- the homeland of Kuruxs from where they have migrated to other parts of the country, and to the neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

Kurux remained as a spoken language till the advent of European Christian missionaries in the year 1845. They published grammars of language for their workers to learn it, and then prepared books on religious instruction for the Kuruxs to follow the new religion Christianity. The absence of written documents makes it very difficult to write any historical background of the
Kurux people. Roy (1915:28) opines that the Kurux migrated to up country from the Deccan Plateau. But there is hardly any substantive evidence to support this claim. Traditional stories and folktales suggest that Kurux once inhabited the Gangetic Plateau from where Aryan and Muslim invaders drove them to the hilly regions of the Chotanagpur Plateau and Central Provinces.

Kuruxs mostly live in villages and their primary occupation is agriculture, through in modern days they have entered into commercial business and white collored jobs. A typical Kurux village consists of a majority of Kurux families and a few non- Kurux artisan families who function as the helpers to the former. So in almost every Kurux village, there is a non- Kurux family of blackmails who look after their cattle; potters who make earthen ware for their domestic use; weavers who weave their clothes; basket makers who weave or plait their baskets; and the dancers who play music at their social functions (Roy 1915:68). The artisan families who assist Kuruxs in their economy speak Indo-Aryan or Munda languages. Thus even in a primitive Kurux settlement Kuruxs have contact with the speakers of other languages. However, contact with these artisan families is superficial as they are not forceful elements to effect billingual situation, mainly because Kurux in such settlements form dominant groups. Socio-linguistic set up across a Kurux village presents a complicated picture Increased social and economic developmental programmes of government and private agencies have introduced regional languages of the States in which a Kurux has to communicate with the non- Kurux government officers and social workers, and send their children to schools where the medium of instruction in a States languages , and he almost invariably uses a variety of regional language to communicate with non- Kurux. The organization of States divide the Ku*ux homeland into four different States as a result of which Kurux population is politically fragmented and culturally and linguistically divided. The impact of the three important majority State languages, such as Hindi in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, Bengali in Bengal and Oriya in Orissa is very heavy, resulting in a widespread tendency among them to shift from their native language to the majority State languages. Besides being devided into different political areas, Kurux enthic group has been devided into two major religious groups:Christians and non-Christians, and among these two groups, the latter group forms the majority. Factors contributing to the maintenance of their language must be examined aganist this background.

Since most of the speakers of the Kurux language live as minority linguistic groups in four States-Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal, the extent of language maintenance and shift among them shall be examined separately in each of them. This is illustrated in the table below:

Table 1: showing Mothertongue Returns of the Kurux people in four States (1961
Census of India)

State	Total Kurux People	Mothertongue returns
Bihar	734,625	Kurux	531,780
		Sadri/sadani	75,712
		Hindi	59,144
		Mundari	35,704
		Nagpuri	9,159
		Karmala	8,570
		Santali	4,903
		Bhojpuri	2,864
		Bengali	2,381
		Panchpargania	1,766
		Khortha	1,273
		Other Languages	1,829
Madhya Pradesh	283,068	Kurux	252,282
		Hindi	23,799
		Chattisgarhi	4,798
		Dhangari	1,070
		Other Languages	821
Orissa	129,066	Kurux	48,882
		Oriya	57,381
		Loria	14,904
		Ho	6,670
		Hindi	1,119
		Other Languages	105
West Bengal	453,686	Kurux	202,675
		Bengali	50,479
		Sadani	13,233
		Santali	11,896
		Hindi	11,555
		Adhibhasa kurukh	2,101
		Malpaharai	1,459
		Other Languages	2,987

 

Here we see that a sizable number of Kurux in every State have given up their native tongue and accepted other language, mainly the official languages of the States or their dialects as their mothertonge. The table below shows the percentages of Kuruxs who have maintained their languages and have shifted to other language :

Table 2: Percentage of Kurux maintaining their language and shifting to other languages

 

States	Maintained Kurux Language	Shifted to other languages
Bihar	72.4	27.6
M.P.	89.2	10.8
Orissa	33.9	66.1
West Bengal	44.7	55.3

 

It is clear from the above table that while the majority of the Kuruxs in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh maintain their language, the majority of them in Orissa and west Bengal have shifted to other languages. It is significant to note that in every State the languages to which the Kurux have shifted are the regional languages and their dialects of the respective States as mentioned above. Thus from the Table 1 above, we notice that in Bihar 10.3 per cent of the Kuruxs have shifted to Sadani, which is a variety of Bhojpuri and 8.05 percent to Hindi; in Madhya Pradesh 8.4 per cent have shifted to Hindi and 1.69 to Chattisgarhi; in Orissa 44,45 per cent to Oriya and in Bengali 11.12 per cent to Bengali.

The Kurux, who are geo-politically divided, have varied communicational needs. Kuruxs in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar need Hindi for their educational and socio-economic development, and those,in West Bengal and Orissa need Bengali and Oriya respectively. They have only two choices before them: one is to maintain stable bilingualism in Kurux and the State language, or other languages. We have seen that in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar the Kuruxs who opt for the first choice outnumber those who opt for the second. The situation in just the opposite in the case of Kurux in West Bengal and Orissa where the majority of Kuruxs opt for the second choice. Generally, the educated Kurux favour the first choice, but not all. Those who favour the second believe that the continued use of Kurux in day to day conversation would reduce the amount of practice needed by the Kurux students in understanding and using respective state languages which they need to master for their educational progress and economic and social advancement.

While examining movements for language maintenance and loyalty among the Kuruxs it is important to realize the fact they are a disunited ethnic group living across different, through contiguous States. There has been total lack of organized efforts for the maintenance of the Kurux language at the national level. Nor has there been such efforts at popular level in the States. The two main reasons for lack of any organized efforts are general lack of education and poor economy. The policies and programmes of the following agencies relating to language have some impact on the position of the Kurux language.

Church

There are four major Christian missions, viz. Gossner Evangilical Lutheran Mission (Berlin), Roman Catholic Mission (Belgium), the United Free Church Mission (Scottland), and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (London) (Mahto : 1971 : 2). The primary aim of these Christian missions was to spread christianity among the various tribes of the Chotanagpur area. They preached for renouncing traditional music, dancing, witchcraft and drinking etc.. Fortunately, they did not ask them to renounce their language. In fact churches have contributed much to the development of the Kurux language through their pioneering grammarians, such as Rev. O.Flex (1874), Rev. F. Batseh (1886), rev. F. Hahn (1898), Rev. A. Grignard (1924) and Rev. C. Bleses (1956) whose grammers and dictionaries later served as the bases for translating Christian literature in to the Kurux langauge. The policy of the church has been to preach its followers in their own native language and this has led to nativising all worship rituals. The extensive use of Kurux books such as Girija Dandi (Hymn), Kurux Negchar (Kurux Order of Worship), Dharam Puthi:

Puna Gacharka (New Testament) and other similar books on Christian workship has not only helped to maintain the language but also has induced unity among the Kuruxs living across different States. However, for administrative convenience missionaries use regional languages particularly in the multilingual congregations. Thus in the areas where the church is well established, church services are conducted in the regional languages, and in the congregations. Thus in the areas where the church is well establish, church services are conducted in the regional languages, and in the congregation of new converts who normally lack competence in the regional languages, church services are conducted in Kurux. The use of the regional languages for the religious sermons and worships relevant to their religious practice is less meaningful as not all the Kuruxs have competence of the standard variety of the regional languages in which the books are written. However, the use of the regional languages for church administration permits greater mobility of the clergy in different tribal and non-tribal language areas which is impossible if the church uses Kurux alone as its language.

Education

Before Independence, there were very few schools, mostly run by the church to cater to the educational needs of the Christian Kuruxs in the Chotanagpur area. Today there are several schools in the area run by both government and private agencies. Medium of instruction in these schools is invariably the regional languages of the States. Though there is constitutional provision to use minority and tribal language as medium of instruction where majority of the students in a school come from one linguistic background, Kurux has not been used as a medium of instruction. It is often argued that the use of the Kurux language as the medium of instruction will hamper learning of regional languages which would be the only language used in the higher education. This fear is justified when there is no systematic language teaching material for gradual switch over to the regional language. There are problems of non-availability of teaching particularly in the government schools. Unfortunately the Kurux language is associated with low socio-economic status, backwardness and ignorance and so time it has failed to provide adequate facilities for learning regional language as a result of which the Kuruxs continue to remain deficient in the regional language in which they have to complete for jobs.

The Kurux language has been introduced in the degree courses as one of
the Modern Indian Languages at the Ranchi University recently. It is however too early to say wether it has any favourable impact on the maintenance of the Kuruxs language.

Press and Radio

Most rural Kuruxs have very little access to general information on national event, employment etc. Those who have, generally get it from newspapers published in the regional languages. There is complete lack of periodicals and news bulletins published in the Kurux from time to time, such as Bij Biinko (Morning Star) published for only six months in 1940 ; Dhumkuria (Dormitory or House of Learning) published for about a year and a half during the years 1962-1963. The publication of these monthly magazines had been stopped for want of adequate finance. Another major factor responsible for the discontinuation of these magazines is their very low circulation which seems to be natural for a speech community whose literacy rate is 10.56 per cent. Besides monthly journals, there is some creative literature written by the Kuruxs. These include Munta Pump Jhumpa (Bunch of First Flowers) by Dawle Kujur (1950) ; Innelanta (Present day0 by Ignes Kujur (1962); Kurukh Sanni Kiiri (Kurux Short Stories) by Julius Tigga (1962). There are a few other books for adult education, such as Pardikarge Angitana Puthi ( book for adult literary ) by C. M. Tiga (1939), Luurgahi Mahba (the importance of learning) by C. M. Tiga (1940?) Bolo Ganit (elementary Arithmatic) by C. M. Toppo (1940?).

The All India Radio, Ranchi, presents programmes in the Kurux language which include broadcasts of Kurux songs and discussion on current topics.

Organisations

The Kurux leaders, both clergy and political, who are most influential in representing their people have almost invariably abandoned their language and switched over to the regional languages. Organizations and institutions developed by such leaders are directed almost entirely toward impressing upons their followersabout the importance of the regional languages. Their goal is to promote effective fluency in the regional languages. This is done at the expense of Kurux by either ignoring or condemning it. The Christian associations under different church denominations, for example, conduct their activities in the regional languages, and in the mission schools the use of Kurux for day today communication among the Kurux students is prohibted.1

1The author was once denied permission to address the students of Loyola High School, Kunkuri, Madhya Pradesh in the Kurux language. In this school only a handful of students are non- Kuruxs.

Traditional youth organisations are deteriorating (among the Christian Kuruxs) and have been replaced by youth organisations under the direct control of the clergy. But they do very little to the language. The Catholic Sabha is the Central Catholic organisation dealing with the educational, social and economic problems of the Catholic Christians in the Chotanagpur area, but this has done nothing for the development of the Kurux language. There have been some efforts to from a Kurux language and culture society to safeguard the linguistic and cultural interests of the Kuruxs. But no tangible results have been achieved yet. There is an increasing trend in all organizations to acknowledge that power in the state or national scene requires fluency in the regional languages. But this tends to negate many positive values in the Kurux language and culture and overlooks the possibility of maintening the Kurux language without hampering the economic and educational interests of the people.

To conclude, a sizable number of Kuruxs (that is 565,526 out of total 1,600,345) have abandoned the Kurux langauge. There has been total lack of organized efforts for the few educational Kuruxs who understand the value of maintaning their languages. However, these efforts could not be sustained because of the low literacy rate and poverty. with the speedy spread of education among the Kuruxs, there is steady growth of political consciousness and there is hope for the maintenance of tribal values, customs and language.