The Research Project

UGC funded a major research project titled ‘Indigenous and Endangered Languages’ to pay a greater attention to the marginal languages, non-scheduled languages, languages of tribal and nomadic communities and the languages that deserve a measure of social sympathy and academic attention. The project has following objectives:

To census the marginal languages, non-scheduled languages, languages of tribal and nomadic communities in the vicinity of the National Law University, Delhi. That is in Delhi, NCR and if need be in the adjoining states of Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

To undertake inter departmental and inter disciplinary research related to indigenous and endangered languages;

To undertake fieldwork, research, analysis, archiving and documentation of smaller indigenous/endangered languages;

To produce and publish monographs, grammars, grammatical sketches, dictionaries and lexicon, ethno-linguistic and theoretical descriptions, collection of oral and folk literature and scholarly books on endangered languages;

To produce language and dialect atlases with special reference to minority and endangered languages;

To organise workshops and seminars aimed towards promoting advanced research related to endangered languages;

To train teachers and students from other departments in Field Linguistics, Lexicography and techniques for data management and documentation;

To promote and foster various domains of endangered languages to help minority/ endangered language communities in maintaining and preserving language vitality, including the development of orthographical resources like scripts, and primers.

Prof. (Dr.) Prasannanshu, Professor, NLUD is the principal investigator for this project.

'How the Gadia Lohars have been marginalised to Delhi’s roadsides' recently appeared in The Caravan. It is primarily based upon the interviews and inputs of the Team of NLUD’s Project on Study and Research Towards Preservation and Promotion of Indigenous and Endangered Languages.

Some Excerpts: ‘ The Gadia Lohar community has its own language, but it does not have a name, according to Prasannanshu, the director of the Centre for Linguistic Justice and Endangered Languages at National Law University, Delhi. The centre’s indigenous and endangered languages project has named it the Gadia Lohar Bhasha. “It is endangered because the number of speakers is small. The pressure of assimilation and educational facilities for the language are practically nonexistent,” he said. The challenge in front of the community is huge. “Gadia Lohar have to pay attention to their educational and economic development, and at the same time they have to preserve their culture and language,” he said. Reena and Sankhla are both currently working on the indigenous and endangered languages project, on a contract basis.’