Tripura reiterates demand to include Kokborok in 8th schedule

Agencies
AGARTALA, MARCH 6

Tripura government has reiterated the demand to include Kokborok, a dialect of Tibeto-Burman group and mother tongue of more than 1.3 million Tripuri population of Northeast in 8th schedule of Indian constitution.
Tripura Tribal welfare minister Aghore Debbarma said here on Thursday that the proposal for inclusion of Kokborok in 8th schedule has been sent several times form Tripura Legislative Assembly, Government of Tripura and Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous Council but these did not yield any result yet.
“CPI-M MP from Tripura Jitendra Choudhury has raised the issue in the parliament yesterday seeking attention of the central government and we hope Narendra Modi led government will consider the demand to recognise the sentiment of the people of the region,” Debbarma said.He, however, pointed out that a large number of indigenous inhabiting of Tripura, Mizoram and Assam had been speaking Kokborok and Left Front government in Tripura had recognised Kokborok as official language in 1979.
Tripura was ruled by Kokborok speaking royal dynasty for more than 1300 years.
‘Though Kokborok is one of the rich languages in eastern India by its treasure of folklore, folktale, voca-bulary and cultural heritage. But, it could not flourish to that extent due to inade-quate policy framework of the Union Government.
Like Kokborok hundreds of dialects of distinct minority linguistic groups in India could not devel-oped,’ Mr Debbarma said.
He also stated that the government in Tripura has set up a separate direc-torate for development of Kokborok and other mino-rity languages under the Depar-tment of Education. And Kokborok is being taught now in Tripura, as one of the language subjects up to degree level and Tripura University has also intro-duced short-term course in Kokborok.
As many as five top Indian universities in Mumbai, Karnataka and Delhi have also started short-term Kokborok learning course recently with the initiative of Tripura Governor P B Acharya, he added.