Saturday, August 14, 2010

Do Nagas need a new script?

Kamal Attaturk’s adoption of the Latin script in place of Urdu in 1928 catapulted Turkey from a struggling Middle Eastern Caliphate state into a modern Muslim secular state with gender equality and an economy better than even some of the newly joined European Union members from Eastern Europe, Turkey is today a NATO member; a most stabilizing power in volatile Middle East. A script to record the history of a people and its thoughts is of utmost importance in the life of a people.

Nagas adopted the Roman script in lieu of the Bengali script and in just 100 years we have frog-leaped in education to a world wide script. Just a month ago, a Naga woman was one of the main speakers in the just concluded Baptist World Alliance at Hawaii, her speech was scripted in Roman script and people from some 105 nations of the world attending the conference could understand her; because of our Roman script, we can now easily communicate with people all over the world in one and the same script village teachers taught us.
Today, in literacy, we have outstripped ancient Kingdoms like Oudh –ancient name for undivided Prime Minister material state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous State of India. We are today, in literacy, very enviably placed in comparison with our neighbor Assam and Manipur, who adopted the Bengali script centuries ago. All North East Christian Hill people have progressed tremendously because of their adoption of the Roman script; the Mizos are already the second highest literate in India.

Full report here Nagaland Post

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