That gypsy tongue

“I do not have a birthplace in the conventional sense. The place where I was born was known as Tanda,” says the Banjara-Marathi writer Atmaram Kaniram Rathod, in his short story of the same name. Tanda is a place where a nomadic tribe chooses to pitch its tents for a while. The one that Rathod talks about is located in the Yavatmal District in Maharashtra. It could have well been anywhere else on the Indian subcontinent.

The Banjaras, tracing their roots back to Rajasthan, are known more for their colourful attire — fitting well into the aesthetic of coffee-table books — than their language. Quintessential nomads, they are, historically, gypsies, traders and cattle herders; always on the move, never settling down in any one place. Over the years, this nomadic trait has been on the wane. Their language, called Banjara, Gooar, Lambadi and Sugali, is surprisingly alive and well though.

It is estimated that there are around 5.7 million Banjaras in India. While it’s a small number compared to the total population, and spread across the country, the community is a close-knit one. “We might not speak Banjara outside our houses very often, but in our homes, and when speaking to our people from elsewhere, it’s still the only language we use,” says Hari Singh Badtiya from Chowkhandi Gaon, a 300-families-strong settlement near Subhash Nagar in west Delhi. Badtiya, 64, is a figurehead in his community, and was a depot-master at the Delhi Transport Corporation’s Shadipur bus terminal, until his retirement four years ago. He claims that unlike several other Banjara folk, who decided to settle down permanently in the last couple of decades, his community weighed anchor in the capital three generations ago. “I remember my dadi saying that we came to Delhi when she was a child. Our settlement was originally somewhere in the Paharganj area, but around the time of India’s independence, we were asked to relocate to Chowkandi Gaon,” he says.

Badtiya is disappointed that Banjara is not spoken as freely as it was. But at the same time, he says it’s unlikely that the language is going to disappear. “For us, tradition dictates that we don’t marry within our own settlement. So to arrange for a wedding, we are in constant touch with other Banjara communities, and we use Banjara to communicate as that’s the only language all of us understand,” he adds. Badtiya’s home is a modern-day tanda, where his entire family lives in the same building with separate rooms for each of his children and their families. As we sit down and speak, with framed portraits of family elders hanging on the wall behind him, Rohit, his grandson, listens in on our conversation. Baditya says, “It is true that younger people don’t speak Banjara as much as we used to. It is impossible for Banjara to be forgotten though, because it is older than most spoken languages, and even has the same roots as Romani or the language of the gypsies in Europe.”

Ganesh Devy, founder, Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Vadodara, and initiator of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) says the Banjaras are an apt example of the ‘in-betweeners’ when it comes to languages in India. “On one hand, there are about 100-150 languages that receive some sort of State support; on the other, about 300 languages have no form of support at all,” Devy tells us when we meet him for tea at the Indian Council of Social Science and Research (ICSSR), Delhi. “Between these two ends of the language spectrum, there are many languages that are neither supported by the State nor are they endangered. Banjara is just such a case.”

Devy adds that unlike Banjara, there are many languages which have not survived the test of time: “Languages of communities, such as the Sansi in Punjab, Naths in AP and Kanjars in Rajasthan — all of who have been in the subcontinent for nearly as long as the Banjaras — are steadily declining.” “Ten years from now, it is highly unlikely that a language like Sansi might survive at all,” he says. And there are multiple reasons for the decline of these languages according to Devy. “Even though the Sansi community is mostly well off today, with many of them taking up other trades and businesses, their language is hardly being spoken, even within their own community. This is because unlike the Banjaras, the Sansis were primarily mercenaries, and when their skills became redundant sometime in the early 19th century, their language began to decline as well, the culmination of which we are witnessing today,” he says.

For the Banjaras, adaptability is their greatest asset. “They speak Telugu in Andhra, Marathi in Maharashtra, Hindi in Madhya Pradesh, and so on, but along with the regional language, they always speak Banjara as well. They have a rich oral tradition with many thousands of songs and satirical stories,” says Devy. “Today, it is also the language of their political and ethnic identity,” he adds. The organisation Banjara Prakashan has developed a script for the language as well, using the alphabets of the Devanagari script. With sites such as banjaratimes.com, awarebanjara.org, banjarazone.com, banjarapukar.in and banjaratigers. blog.com, Banjaras seem to be developing an ever-growing online presence too.

Regardless of how the situation pans out in the future, the Banjaras and their language are living evidence of the fact that the streetwise always survive.

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