Kavinder Gupta Calls for Safeguarding Mother Tongues and Ancient Scripts

Kavinder Gupta, a noted advocate for cultural heritage, emphasized the urgent need to preserve India's myriad mother tongues and the ancient scripts that record them. He warned that without concerted effort, many languages and their writing systems could disappear, eroding the country's linguistic diversity.
Gupta called on government bodies, academic institutions, and community groups to launch coordinated documentation and revitalisation programmes. He suggested allocating resources for research, creating digital archives, and promoting the teaching of endangered languages in schools.
The appeal underscores a broader concern among scholars that rapid urbanisation and the dominance of a few major languages are accelerating the decline of lesser‑spoken tongues. Gupta urged that preserving these linguistic assets is essential not only for cultural identity but also for the knowledge embedded in traditional literature.
He concluded by inviting policymakers to view language preservation as a national priority, comparable to heritage conservation in other domains, and to act before further loss becomes irreversible.