Language and Culture

Northeast India is home to over 200 distinct languages and cultures. Unfortunately, most of these are threatened and face an uncertain future.

Indigenous people's languages and worldviews are fast disappearing. With this, people are losing their sense of identity. Encoded in their culture is a traditional worldview, communicated through language and mainfested through mythologies, oral histories, and rituals.

Several indigenous communities in the region have lost their languages and traditional knowledge systems. Along with the loss with this, many communities are also losing their relationship with the environment. The tribal elders - their last link to their past - are fast passing away, and the youth are often grow up in a digital and globalized world where the past traditions are easily undervalued and discarded.

There is an urgency to preserve the local indigenous languages and cultures. Purvanchal Pragati Samaj is at the forefront and have recently established an institution for the protection, preservation and promotion of local languages -- NEILAC.

NEILAC, the North East Institute for Language and Culture is an initiative aimed at protecting, preserving, and promoting local indigenous languages and cultures.

NEILAC has been conducting resarch and organizing workshops that focus on the indigenous tribal culture and languages.

Recognized for its work in the field of bi-lingual education, NEILAC has already produced textbooks and other materials that make it possible to have a healthy mix of the vernacular and the medium of instruction in the foundational years of school, going upto the 5th grade.

The Center has developed a systematised way to study the local languages -- many of which are tonal -- and document them.

The focus areas of NEILAC include the following: