Lost words: Without protection, Soura language dying
Samra Soura, 85, the oldest resident of Soura village is forgetting his mother tongue. People of the Soura community mostly speak Bangla, Oriya and Sadri languages.
Oriya and Sadri communities are bigger than Soura in the tea estates.
"I can't speak my mother tongue even in my family. I am forgetting many words of the Soura language. Soura people can only speak a few words of their language," Samra told this correspondent recently.
International Mother Language Institute identifies Soura as one of the 14 endangered languages of Bangladesh. Only 70 families of the community live in the country.
Twenty-two of the families live in a village in Rajgat Union of Sreemangal, Moulvibazar. The neighbourhood near no man's land is only around 200 yards away from a border gate of India.
The families are tea estate workers and there is not a single member of the families who went to college. They say that their language, culture, and history are disappearing.
Article 30 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Bangladesh is a signatory, states that individuals should not be deprived of the right to use language with other members of their community.
Aarti Soura, 65, said, "I got married watching the stars in the sky. It was part of our culture. But nowadays our culture and our language are being lost.
"This ritual of marriage was called Sungkra," she said. "We want to teach our children our language and culture but they do not want to learn."
Three other members of the community said it won't be long before their language gets lost forever.
Jamini Soura, another sexagenarian, said, "Only two elders could speak our language to some extent. One of them died one and a half months ago. The other is always sick and can't even speak properly. Our language will disappear when he dies."
Alkumar Soura, 52, said, "We have been demanding the government to protect our mother tongue, but nothing has been done."
Austro-Asiatic language Soura is also found in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar in India. There are written forms of the language. There is also a textbook called Soura Primary in Andhra Pradesh.
Researcher Porimol Baraik said Bangladesh's International Mother Language Institute Act (2010) stresses on preservation of languages and introduction of written forms of all the languages of the ethnic groups.
Mesbah Kamal, professor of history at Dhaka University, said there are only three books in five languages of the minority communities.
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