Mysore/Mysuru: Maintaining that the Centre is committed for further strengthening Mysuru’s CIIL (Central Institute of Indian Languages), Neeta Prasad, Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Government of India, asserted that the Department will support the CIIL in all its future endeavours. She was delivering her virtual inaugural address as the chief guest of the two-day 54th Foundation Day celebrations of CIIL located opposite B.M. Hospital on Hunsur Road here this morning.

Pointing out that the CIIL is engaged in ‘Shikshan and Bhasha Samrakshan’ activities, Neeta Prasad said that the CIIL has chalked out its future plans, which the Government will support in their implementation.

Contending that the NEP-2020 (National Educational Policy) advocates teaching in mother tongue, she said that this will help in forging national unity and promotion of Music, Dance and such other arts.

Prof. D.P. Pattanayak, Founder-Director of CIIL, who was a guest of honour, said that the CIIL was designed to train and nurture human resources in Linguistic Sciences and help implement language projects in collaboration with the State and Central agencies. Stating that the CIIL will also help in promoting Linguistic Studies in Universities and Institutions, Prof. Pattanayak said that the CIIL has participated in Literacy programmes in Karnataka and other States and also produced literacy instructional material in several Indian languages.

Bemoaning that  despite such glorious tradition, the CIIL, which is a sub-ordinate office of the Union Ministry of Education, has been permitted to degrade and the Government has sought conversion of the CIIL into a University, Prof. Pattanayak observed that when there is a greater need for interdepartmental co-ordination and interdisciplinary study of Social Sciences with Linguistics as the centre piece, degradation of the CIIL is bound to destabilise education and communication.

Prof. Pattanayak also released a souvenir marking the 54th Foundation Day of CIIL.

CIIL Director Prof. Shailendra Mohan, who presided, said that the CIIL has the Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian Languages, which is a Centrally funded scheme that works for building digital corpora of Indian languages.

He also noted that Bharatvani Project (BvP) is one of the flagship programmes of the CIIL, which works for digitisation and web-hosting of published resources in Indian Languages. The CIIL is also planning to start a series of makers of Indian Linguistics, which contains biographical monographs on Linguists who have made significant contributions to the development of Linguistics in India and abroad since ancient times, Prof. Shailendra Mohan said adding that the CIIL is also going to launch various MA, Ph.D and Post-Doctoral fellowships in different areas of Linguistics, Languages and Literature.

Earlier, CIIL Assistant Director Dr. Narayan Kumar Choudhary welcomed the gathering.

CIIL former Directors Prof. Awadesh Kumar Mishra and Prof. Rajesh Sachdeva, staff Dr. Tariq Khan and others were present during the programme.

The first day of the programme today featured a series of lectures  followed by a cultural programme and a music and dance performance by ‘Jenu Kuruba’ community. The second day of the event tomorrow (July 18) features Panel Discussion on the topic ‘Re-imagining of Language Courses of RLCs’ at the CIIL Council Room.