'Restore status of Indian languages in South Africa'

Indian languages in South Africa may face extinction, a prominent educationist has said and called for urgent interventions to bring them back onto the country's official curriculum.
Arumugam Pillay, a retired subject adviser in Indian languages with the Department of Education, stressed that Indian languages needed to be spoken to keep them alive.
"A language becomes extinct if it is not used for ordinary communication. Young, and even older Indians in South Africa, no longer communicate in their vernacular. Only a spoken language has a chance of survival. So how do we save Indian languages from becoming extinct in South Africa? The answer is simple: use the spoken form of the languages more often," Pillay said.

He recalled how a survey carried out by the apartheid-era House of Delegates for Indians in the tricameral Parliament had shown that 91 per cent of parents were in favour of Indian languages being offered in schools at that time.
Pillay was the guest speaker at an annual reunion hosted by the Chatsworth Vernacular School Institute, which was established in 1938 by descendants of the first Indians who arrived in South Africa in 1860 to work on sugar cane plantations.
A bad period for Indian languages at South Africa schools began in 1994 when the educational systems in the country underwent changes with the advent of democracy under President Nelson Mandela.

Educational policies under successive Ministers of Education, made no provision for the inclusion of Indian languages at schools as part of the syllabus.

The focus shifted to the official introduction of English and ten indigenous languages, according to Pillay.
Schools which wished to offer Indian languages had to do so outside of the official school hours, in the afternoons, as additional classes.
This led to steady declines in learners taking up Indian languages, with less than 2,000 pupils currently registered for them, most of them at lower levels which were not continued as they progressed through high school.
"It is disturbing and disheartening that at the end of 2016, only 177 learners sat for the matric (final year of schooling) exams in Indian languages," Pillay said.