Orphaned Languages

Over 600 languages are on the verge of extinction. Among them is Raji, spoken by a tribe of erstwhile 'Kings of the Forest' who today live on the margins

- Rakhi Bose

"JAMNA-gari, naukriyu, khojileyuu hangkaathe," Tulsi Rajbar, 30, sang in her mother tongue as she patched up the blue walls of her ravaged mud hut in Chakarpur village on the foothills of the Kumaon mountains of Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand. It was a song about migration and search for work in foreign lands, written by Rajbar herself. It is one of the first and only songs ever to be composed in her language, named after her endangered tribe, Raji. "Language is intrinsic to our identity," Rajbar insisted. A fifth grade passout, Rajbar started learning to read and write in Raji-written in the Devanagari script-in 2021 and soon earned an international fellowship to teach Raji to local children of her community. She had even started writing songs in Raji and had performed them at an event in Dehradun. "I got many invitations and offers from other states at that time, and I thought I could become the first known Raji singer in India," says Rajbar. That was in 2023.

All that seems to be a distant memory now. Her diary of Raji poems and all her textbooks were washed away in the recent floods that struck her village in July. With no state support for the Raji community or employment opportunities, Rajbar had no option but to return to daily-wage labour, the only work that has been available to her and her forefathers for generations. "Our ancestors left their primitive mountain caves and migrated to the plains for a better life, more farm land and education for our children," says Rajbar. "We still don't have pucca houses or jobs," she says, pointing at her inundated patch of paddy. As an added irony, she says that though she remembers the Raji word for water (ti) and rain (barsaat), she could not recall the word for "floods". "Maybe they (her ancestors) never faced floods in the hills," she jokes.