A National level Bhili Workshop was organised to safe guard the educational lingustic and cultural rights of the third largest tribal ethnic COMMUNITY of India, in Udaipur (Raj.) from Oct 1-8 2010 under the leadership of Dr. Rakesh Sachdeva, Director of Central Institute of Languages(CIIL) of Mysore, Karnataka(India). First two days sessions of the Bhili workshop a wider consultation was held with the Bhili speaking delegates, teachers, language experts and others coming from various places in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. including other experts from NCERT(Delhi) and CIIL. In all some 80 participants were present in the first two days workshop and the rest of the days were spent in finalisation of The Bhili Grammar and The Bhili Dictionary being worked out under and eminent Linguist Dr. J.C. Sharma a retired Profssor of CIIL, at Mysore.
First day Dr. Rakesh Sachdeva director of CIIL, Prof. Ravindra Director of NCERT (Delhi), Dr.Sastry Director of engangered anguages of India, Dr. J.C. Sharma in-charge of Bhili Project and others addressed the innaugural session utmost pride and great enthusiasm. Dr. Sachdeva stressed the need of promoting Bhili initially as a means for encouraging Bhili speaking into primary schools education while Dr Sastry upheld the tribal or human rights of vanishing tribal languages even though some of them are being spoken by less than 10 thousands persons.
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Dr. J.C. Sharma an expert of Bhili spoke very convincngly and generously in favour of Bhili the language of the Bhils of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharshtra and of Madhya Pradesh that among all the 22 major and schduled languages spoken in India Bhili ranks 14th s the speakers of Bhili as their own mother tongue and hence Bhili has all the rights to be listed in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India. He further mentioned that there are over all 17 variety of Bhili dialects spoken in the four states according to the Census of India 2001 and total number of Bhili speakers are 95,82,957. Actually some people in these four states by mistake returned in the Census their mother tongues as the speakers of regional languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, Rajasthani, Marwari, Malavi, Nimari, Hindi etc. So we can convenienty add to the list of speakers another 95 lacs of Bhils whose mother tongue is Bhili and the Bhils who are on the fringe of these linguistic regions of the regional languages whose mother tongue is Bhili some 50 lacs if not more. These faulty enumerations are due to some unexpressd personal problems of Bhili speakers and other internal strategies of the returning persons of the Census apparent in some places like Chhatisgragh tribal regions, also appearing in other places in the Census 1991 and 2001. This fact is of no exception to Bhili speakers and Bhils eitheir wose mother tongue is Bhili . Actually one can say boldly that Bhili is the language of neanly 300 lacs of Bhils homogeniously scattered in these four states. They are either erroniously and discriminately denied their Human Rights ,or for the convenience of major ethnic groups such as Marathi, Gujarati and Rajasthani speakingpeople. the Bhili speakers or the Bhils divided unjustly in four states deniayng their linguistic, cultural and other human rights. The cultural and inguistic rights of the Bhils should be restored sooner and human rights of this vast majority of the ethnic community of the Bhils so far denied and ignored be respected
Dr. Ganesh Devy of Gujarat strongly feels and is of the opinion that that Bhili language can easly be a convenient language of instruction in schools beginnng from primary to higher Secondary schools and even up to collegesand universities where many subjects can be easily taught in Bhili and this language is capable of. It is only this wayDr. Devy feels that the education in all the Adivas ares will be a success. Otherwise we are denying them of the education. It is very true and actually n the grass root levels only denial for their basic rights for education, language and culture is on rampage. If the language is denied, culture is denied and their social existence as a community is denied, be sure their annihilation and assimilation as shudra is socially and biologically geared. Can the denial of their human existence and human rights be egitimaley accepted....?
A week long Bhili language consultation ended with immediately hope for the development of Bhili as an mportant language of India capable to entr into 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India.
After Oct 2 the Gandhi Jayanti, few days were spent by Dr. Sharma to revise Bhili Grammar and Bhili dictionary with a team of Bhili experts where Mahipal Bhuriya Director of Centr for Tribal Culture and Art Society and Bhili Resource Center was a resource person for Bhili, the great language of India.
