Q1.
As a class activity, make lists of (1) the birthplaces of at least 5 classmates and the birthplaces of their parents; (2) the students' mother tongues and other languages known to them. Discuss the results in terms of diversity.
Answer
How to do it. Make one table on the blackboard with five columns and fill it in by asking each classmate in turn. Ask politely, write down exactly what the person says, and never comment on anyone's answer — a language or a birthplace is not better or worse than another.
| Ask for | Why it belongs in the table |
|---|---|
| Student's birthplace (town/village and State) | Shows how far the class itself has travelled |
| Mother's birthplace and father's birthplace | Shows movement across one generation — usually much wider than the students' own |
| Mother tongue | The language spoken at home |
| Other languages known | Most Indian children know two or three; some know four |
Sample answer (your class's real table will look different — copy the shape, not the names):
| Student | Born at | Mother born at | Father born at | Mother tongue | Other languages known |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ananya | Nagpur, Maharashtra | Amravati, Maharashtra | Nagpur, Maharashtra | Marathi | Hindi, English |
| Ibrahim | Nagpur, Maharashtra | Hyderabad, Telangana | Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh | Urdu | Hindi, Marathi, English |
| Tenzin | Bylakuppe, Karnataka | Bylakuppe, Karnataka | Leh, Ladakh | Tibetan | Hindi, Kannada, English |
| Sujata | Rourkela, Odisha | Sambalpur, Odisha | Rourkela, Odisha | Odia | Sadri, Hindi, English |
| Karthik | Nagpur, Maharashtra | Madurai, Tamil Nadu | Chennai, Tamil Nadu | Tamil | Hindi, Marathi, English |
Discussing the results — the three things to point out.
- The parents' column is wider than the students' column. Five children born in one city may have parents born in five different States. This is exactly what the ‘People of India’ project found: many Indians “may be called migrants, in the sense of people not living near their birthplace or with their original community” (page 126).
- Almost every student is multilingual. Count the total number of different languages in the last two columns; in most Indian classrooms of 40 students it comes to eight or ten. The country's 325 languages are not somewhere far away — a sample of them is sitting in the room.
- And yet the class works as one class. Everyone follows the same lesson, plays the same games and shares the same tiffin. That is the ‘One’ in which the ‘Many’ live — the point of the whole chapter.
Take it further: add a sixth column, ‘a word for water in my mother tongue’ — pani, jal, thanni, neeru, vellam, jol, paani, chuu. Some of these words are visibly cousins and some are not, and that single row shows both the diversity and the families behind it.