Linguistic Human Rights and Linguistic Ecology: An Indian Perspective

India is a multilingual and multicultural country where the sociolinguistic situation is so diverse and complex. At the same time the societal and socio-economic situation has become complicated due to the foreign rules from the twelfth century till the mid of twentieth century. Though the plurilingualism is considered to be the basic foundation of India’s socio-cultural solidarity uniquely prevalent from the very dawn of its civilization, the linguistic rights of each and every individual or each minority linguistic group or community is a big issue from the sociological, linguistic, academic and economic perspectives. This crucial issue has been becoming more and more prominent in the wake of globalization. Only some prominent languages have been brought within the ambit of the government language planning (LP) leaving a large number of languages and their dialects outside this. As a result, in course of time minority families decide to evolve their respective family language planning (FLP). Under these circumstances, we will deal with the idea linguistic human rights from the Indian perspective and try to see how the use of the (tribal) languages in education helps these communities as well as the nation revive, preserve and sustainably utilize the rich indigenous culture and knowledge system which can open up new vistas regarding the cultivation of Indian Knowledge System.