Ao orgns oppose move to promote Nagamese

Three apex organizations of the Ao community have in a press release expressed surprise over Centre’s proposal to recognize Nagamese as an official language of Nagaland.
In a joint statement, presidents of the Ao Senden Imolemba Jamir, Watsü Mungdang Moachila and Ao Students’ Conference L Jemti Longchar said that they strongly support the stand of Naga Students’ Federation published on January 20, 2016 and those views expressed by others against the move.
They said “Nagamese is nothing but just a pidgin  and a ‘corrupt lingua franca with no proper grammar or vocabulary which evolved out of necessity to facilitate trade and commerce between the plains people and the Nagas”.
They noted that the move to promote Nagamese “is totally unbelievable, if not insulting to the Naga people as a whole”.
They further stated that as for the Ao people, over the past decades, the Ao Senden Literature Board (ASLB) under the aegis of the Ao Senden and also the active support and cooperation of the Watsu Mungdang and the AKM, had been working tirelessly to promote Ao language among the native Ao speakers.
Towards this end, the Ao Senden made notable achievement as regular Ao subject examination is being conducted every year, and a lot of Ao scholars have been awarded with different degrees, they said.
The organizations pointed out that thousands of vernacular languages around the world are also on the verge of extinction– among those languages, the vernacular Naga languages and dialects also figures in the endangered lists.
Therefore, the Ao Senden has directed all schools under the Mokokchung district jurisdiction to incorporate Ao language as subject in the school academic curriculum.
However, Centre’s move to promote Nagamese was nothing short of curtailing the noble initiative of the Ao Senden in promoting the vernacular language, they said.
The organizations maintained that so long as the school textbooks are written in English, and so long as the Roman script is used for writing the different languages, English should be the official language of the state of Nagaland.
Promoting another language, especially a pidgin language like Nagamese, would not only be against the intellectual interests of the Nagas, the intellectuals and the students, but also against the rich cultural heritage of the Naga people especially with regard to vernacular language.
They also mentioned that they had no problem about the use of Nagamese by the people in their ever day life and understands that Nagamese pidgin cannot be ignored in our society as an effective means of communication among the people from different communities.
The three apex bodies strongly censured the Centre’s move and appealed all likeminded tribal organizations, intellectuals and the state government to strongly urge the Government of India against the purported move to replace English as the official language.
They also expressed hope that the Government of India would respect the sentiments of the Naga people, and refrain from such a move, which would have adverse long-term effect on the intellectual, the Naga culture and tradition, and the development of vernacular languages in the society.