Assam's Tai Communities Fight to Save Dying Languages Amid Election Promises
In the upper reaches of Assam, the election season has arrived with the usual fanfare of loud promises—roads, jobs, and development projects dominate political speeches. Yet, in the quiet villages inhabited by the Tai Khamyang, Tai Phake, and Singpho communities, a deeper anxiety lingers, not in the noise of campaigns but in the silence of fading traditions.
This anxiety lives in the fading words of elders, in lullabies interrupted by time, and in children who now answer their grandparents in languages not of their ancestry. For these three small communities, whose roots trace back to migrations from present-day Myanmar and China centuries ago, the biggest poll issue is not infrastructure but the preservation of their mother tongues and cultural identity.
The Singpho Struggle for Autonomy and Education
The Singpho language, with approximately 10,000 speakers in Assam, faces an uncertain future. In Margherita, a small town near Arunachal Pradesh that hosts the largest concentration of Singpho people, the language survives primarily in homes through oral teaching. Manje La, a leading citizen of the community, emphasizes that their numbers are too small to sway election outcomes for MLAs or government formation.
"We want an autonomous council to protect our identity, language, culture, and traditions," Manje La told reporters. "We also advocate for an upper house in the Assam assembly, where smaller communities like ours could gain representation through nomination." He insists that without formal introduction in schools, the future of Singpho remains precarious. The language uses Roman script, and the community urges the next government to integrate it into classroom curricula to ensure its survival.
Linguist Warns of Impending Extinction
Palash Kumar Nath, a linguist from Gauhati University, issues a stark warning: all three Tai languages are steadily moving toward extinction. "Each of these languages carries a rich repository of ecological wisdom, oral history, ritualistic practices, and indigenous knowledge systems that have evolved over centuries," he explains. Nath points to the National Education Policy 2020 as a critical opportunity for intervention.
"The government must act decisively by introducing these languages in primary education, supporting community-driven documentation efforts, investing in teaching materials, and building digital archives," he adds. This proactive approach could stem the tide of cultural loss.
Tai Phake and Tai Khamyang: Similar Fears, Different Challenges
In Namphake village of Naharkatia, the Tai Phake community shares a similar worry. With only around 2,000 speakers, they initiated efforts in 2018 to teach the language to younger generations, but the pandemic disrupted this momentum. Paim Thee Gohain of the Tai Phake Language Study and Research Centre notes that children still learn the language through prayers, folk songs, and rituals, yet without textbooks and formal school support, these efforts are weakened.
"Tai Phake should be introduced in schools in at least nine villages across Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts," Gohain asserts, highlighting the need for institutional backing.
The Tai Khamyang community faces an even sharper crisis. Though their population numbers around 4,000 across Tinsukia, Charaideo, Jorhat, and Golaghat districts, the language now survives mainly among about 300 people in Pawaimukh Khamyang Gaon in Tinsukia. Pyoseng Chowlu, secretary of the All Assam Tai Khamyang National Council, laments that the language has been moving toward extinction over the past two generations, overshadowed by the dominance of larger languages.
"Many speakers now insert only one or two Khamyang words while conversing in Assamese. A language that once fully lived has been reduced to mere fragments," he rues, underscoring the urgency of preservation efforts.
Election Priorities: Culture Over Conventional Promises
As political parties canvass for votes with promises of tangible development, these Tai communities remind us that some issues transcend roads and jobs. Their fight is for cultural survival—a battle against the erosion of identity that threatens to silence centuries of wisdom and tradition. In the quiet corners of Assam, the election is not just about who governs but about what endures.
