Kokrajhar, June 18: Trouble is brewing again in the Bodo heartland, this time over Dispur’s alleged apathy towards the tribal community’s language. The Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS) today warned of a mass agitation if the Tarun Gogoi government did not lift the ban on appointment of teachers and provincialisation of venture schools in which the tribal language is the medium of instruction.
“The Bodo language is still at the nascent stage, and the ban on appointment of teachers and provincialisation of schools has affected its very foundation. In the district of Golaghat, there is no provincialised middle or high school for Bodo students. Even Guwahati has none. The venture schools are in a bad shape and dying a slow death for want of attention,” BSS secretary Rajen Kaklary told a news conference.
Kaklary said the state education department formed a consultation committee in 2002 to evaluate the applications for grants, but the panel still did not have a convener. “If the government’s attitude does not change, we will not hesitate to launch a mass movement,” he added.
BSS president Brajendra Brahma urged Dispur to appoint a deserving person to the vacant (sanctioned) post of Bodo lecturer at Gauhati University and regularise the services of Bodo teachers in colleges under Dibrugarh University. “Colleges affiliated to Dibrugarh University do not have regular Bodo teachers. Apart from teachers, more translators of Bodo books need to be appointed in the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).”
Kaklary said people without the requisite qualifications were being asked to translate books, resulting in a plethora of mistakes. “The SCERT has only one employee to oversee the translation work, though the number of Bodo-medium schools and students are second only to Assamese institutions. Is it possible for a single person to handle all the subjects and different streams?” he asked.
The BSS secretary said books in the Bodo language were often being published late because of the delay in releasing the Assamese versions. “Bodo translators are given the original books later than scheduled and told to finish the work in a month.”
He demanded that books be made available at the start of the academic year and not in the middle of the session, as is the practice at present.