NESTED LANGUAGES AND MOTHER TONGUES IN THE CENSUS OF INDIA 2011: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THETHI

Language sustenance and language extinction arguably and exceedingly depend on (in) formal language policy of a place or community. Most discussions on language endangerment project the depletion of the number of speakers, interruption in intergenerational transmission and lack of pedagogical resources as the most significant factors driving languages towards endangerment and extinction. However, these factors are natural concomitants of the inadequacies in the language policy. Further, it is also possible that a design flaw in the policy may lead to the birth, growth and death of a language/mother tongue. TheThi (also spelt as Thati, Thenthi, and Thethia) is often classified as a variety of Maithili, spoken in the state of Bihar and also in the valley regions of Nepal. However, as the name suggests and the local communities believe, TheThi may not be a variety of Maithili. Rather, it may refer to the unacknowledged rural styles/varieties of all the major and minor languages spoken in the state of Bihar. Therefore, committed research is essential to arrive at material facts. Interestingly, the Census of India (2011) classifies TheThi under the dialects of Maithili and states that it has 1,65,420 speakers. It appears that, in the coming years, the speakers' number would further dwindle and the name TheThi would disappear from the linguistic map of Bihar/India. Therefore, a comprehensive examination of TheThi is required to understand whether TheThi is just a variety of Maithili or it refers to Angika and Bajjika in a different guise or that the entire state of Bihar speaks TheThi without acknowledging it. This paper critically examines these proposals in relation to the language data from decadal censuses,