Tribal Languages Working Group Meets for the First Time

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs convened the first meeting of its Working Group on Tribal Languages on 15 October 2026, running it as a workshop in hybrid mode. Smt. Ranjana Chopra, Secretary in the ministry, was in the chair. Linguists, academics, researchers and community language practitioners took part, among them Padmashree Chamu Krishna Shastry, Chairman of the Bhasha Samiti, and Dr. K. Sreenivasa Rao, a former Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi.

Who sits on the Working Group

The ministry drew the members from leading institutions. They include the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), the Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi, Dharwad and Kanpur, Tezpur University, Manipur University, Assam University, Sikkim University, the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, the Council for Diversity and Innovation (CoDIN) and the Bhasha Samiti. Their task is to steer the documentation, preservation, research and promotion of tribal languages across the country.

Adi Vaani as a national repository

The group reviewed Adi Vaani, built by IIT Delhi along with the ministry, which is now being positioned as the National Tribal Language Repository. The platform translates text to text in nine tribal languages and also offers speech, Optical Character Recognition and video subtitling. More than 300 primers prepared by Tribal Research Institutes can be searched on it. State institutes have handed over about 13.9 lakh sentences in ten languages and roughly 300 hours of speech data. Android downloads have crossed 48,000 and the platform has close to 6,500 users a month.

Seven pillars for an Indian language

Shri Chamu Krishna Shastry listed seven pillars on which the growth of any Indian language rests: sound command of the mother tongue among its speakers; its use in education, administration, communication and entertainment; fresh literature and knowledge content; the steady coining of new words; the adoption of technology; teaching and learning material both online and offline; and backing from governments, companies and society. He recalled the Prime Minister's words that every mother tongue of India is a national language, and said no language should be called small or big.

The road ahead

Dr. K. Sreenivasa Rao proposed searchable state-wise and language-wise directories of writers and scholars, district-level community resource groups staffed by trained tribal youth, community digital archives hosted on Adi Vaani and a two-year action plan reviewed every quarter. Representatives of the National Education Society for Tribal Students said the platform could be used in more than 525 Eklavya Model Residential Schools, which together teach over 1.7 lakh students. The Secretary closed the meeting with the assurance that language resources built with communities will keep belonging to those communities.