In a remote village close to India’s frontiers with Bhutan, one of the country’s most ancient tribes, Toto, has won the battle to save its dying tongue from extinction. Their language, which did not have a script, was declared critically endangered by the UNESCO. However, some neo-literate members of the community led by Dhaniram Toto recently gave birth to the script of their native language comprising 37 alphabets.
Boosting their efforts further, an Australian linguist Toby Anderson is developing fonts for the script and making it adaptable to computers. Totos are endemic to the village of Totopara in North Bengal.
The village is nestled in the foothills of forested Himalayas. It is intersected by six rivulets which get flooded during the monsoon, cutting off the village from the rest of the country. The border of Bhutan is about three kms from the village.
The architect of this success story, Dhaniram Toto, a poet and writer, has written two books on Toto folk culture and poems called lokeshwar and Uttar Banga lokpath.
He was awarded by the West Bengal Government in 1997 in recognition of his writings. However, this did not give him the desired satisfaction as the books had to be written in Bangla, in the absence of a native script. “Since the language and expressions were borrowed, my work lacked the characteristic aroma of our native soil,” rues Dhaniram.
It took Dhaniram nearly eight to ten years to finalise the alphabets, but he nailed it three months ago. The script has nine vowels, 22 consonants and six diphthongs. According to Dhaniram, they have been inspired by Mother Nature and her various forms, including streams, trees, hills etc. What is striking is that the script bears no resemblance to Bangla which is the commonly spoken language there.
Even the Toto dialect Dingshu Yea Waa is fast losing out to the influence of Bengali. Since it did not have its own script so far, it is not taught in schools either. "The language is barely used when mutually communicating to each other within village," says Dhananjay Toto, son of Dhaniram. Dhananjay is the first Toto youth who is studying in the University of North Bengal for a Master's degree.
However, spread in education in the community, gave little time to the children to learn their mother tongue. Their medium of instruction is in Bengali. Further, the language is also largely spoken in the village having a mixed population of Bengali, Nepalese and others, says Satyajit Toto, aide of Dhaniram.
In a last attempt to save their dying language, a group of upcoming Toto literates formed the Toto Bhasha literacy Samiti (Toto language literacy Committee) in 2013. Dhaniram became its president.
With the new alphabets in hand, Dhaniram, along with the members of the committee, got the help of 'Three Strands Consulting Services' of Siliguri to make a font for using the letters he designed for the Toto Script. Toby Anderson of Three Strands Consulting Services made a Unicode font using Inkscape and FontForge as software tools. He has also made a keyboard mapping for KeyMan in Windows and KMFl in linux to enable the user easily type the new letters.
The committee has even started a primary education centre in the village where Toto language will be taught to the children. The members of the committee are being on how the new script can be taught in the young children. Sanchita Toto, first Honours graduate in the community is taking lead in this regard. A graduate in English Honours, Sanchita says that the committee will demand for the inclusion of Toto language in the schools in the days to come.