By Jan Brouwer
The congress was inaugurated by Mr Chiranjiv Singh (IAS) The two keynote addresses
were delivered by Professor K. Srinivasan (Mysore) and Professor Roland J.L. Breton
(Paris). From among the 150 participants, 76 papers were presented by scholars from
India, France, the Netherlands, South Africa, USA, and the former Yugoslavia. In spite
of many technical difficulties such as electricity and telecom cuts, the organizers achieved
a commendable task in getting together scholars from various disciplines in two plenary
sessions and eighteen specialized sessions. In view of the size of the congress this report
will focus on only a few highlights.
In his inaugural address, Mr Chiranjiv Singh drew the attention of the audience to three
thrust areas: the process of secularization in culture and language; the influence of science
and technology on the vocabulary of modern Indian languages; and the choice of terms
and idioms to convey news items in the English-speaking and the vernacular media. In
terms of language, he observed a significant difference in idiom and source of loanwords
between the reporting of Indian events in Indian languages and in English.
Tamil and Telugu in South Africa
The specialist sessions covered such discipline areas as folklore, the Hindu diaspora,
lexicon as source media, semiotics, and women's studies. Noteworthy contributions on
language among overseas Hindus were presented by Dr Varilaxmi Prabhakaran and Dr S.
Subramaniyan. Dr Prabhakaran showed how the Maridamma ritual among Telugu-
speakers in South Africa serves as a paradigm of living Telugu language and culture. She
observed two forces working antithetically: there is undoubtedly a language shift in favour
of English and acculturalization, but concomitantly an increased use of Telugu among the
younger generations in their religio-cultural practices. Dr Subramanyan of the University
of Durban, South Africa, states that the Tamil-speaking minority in South Africa is fast
losing its affinity with their language in favour of the use of English in all spheres of life.
He pleads for the resurgence of a strong movement in favour of Tamil as means of
communication among the migrants themselves.
Most of the Indian contributions dealt with various aspects of language in education, the
media, and the New Language Policy. Dr M.S. Nataraju of the University of Agricultural
Science (Bangalore) and Dr G. Perumal of the Tamilnadu Agricultural University
(Coimbatore) concentrated on the difficulties of translating technical terms into the
vernacular language magazines for farmers. The problem of translation here is also a
problem of the 'translation' of concept.
The papers on Indian folklore discussed data collected among the tribal communities of
Karnataka. (K. Narayan), the Santhals of eastern India (Mathur), the smiths of Karnataka
(Brouwer), and a folk epic from South Karnataka (Le Blanc). The papers of Narayan and
myself examined on the cosmology and the concepts of Time and Space, while Le Blanc
discussed the relationship between history and myth.
Holism
Although the main theme was 'Knowledge and Language's', the majority of the papers
were contributions to the wide field of language. Only a few exceptions were noted.
Kennith Lieberman of the University of Oregon, who is carrying out fieldwork among the
Tibetans in South India, evolved a socio-semiotic model to analyse the forming of
meaning, as words do more than make up a language and are more than the mediators of
ideas. My paper analyzed the concepts behind the words in the secret craft lexicon of a
group of blacksmiths in South India and argued for an approach in which concepts are
drawn from both the universal and the specifically Indian categories in order to enhance
understanding beyond a mere increase in our knowledge. This implies a fresh look at the
comparative method and a clear understanding of the Western concept of holism. In
contrast, Nita Mathur of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi,
defended Indian epistemology and the oriental concept of holism as the proper
methodology for studying Indian data.
In the final plenary session, recommendations were made that the congress should have a
follow-up in the form of a series of small workshops to which not only linguists and
anthropologists, but also philosophers of science and specialists in research methodology
should be invited.
Dr Jan Brouwer is the director of the Centre for Advanced Research on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Mysore, India