Srinagar: IGNOU as the people’s university is in a unique position to support and promote Indian languages due to its vast reach, affordable fee structure, accessibility of study materials, and enrollment of students not only in India but worldwide as well.
NEP 2020 envisions and lays stress on using Indian art, culture, and language as the medium to kindle the creative spirit and believes that integrating the mother tongue into the curriculum leads to better understanding. Multilingualism is increasingly sought after in the global marketplace and international institutions are establishing mother tongue programmes. It is therefore in the fitness of things that IGNOU has designed and developed a number of programmes and courses which have this concept at their core.
The School of Humanities offers programmes in four disciplines: Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, and English. In addition to these disciplines, the School has an elective basket of Modern Indian Languages on offer to undergraduates: Malayalam, Marathi, Odiya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Manipuri and Nepali. Each of these is a 6-credit course and is a compulsory component of the BA programme wherein learners opt for a language course of their choice. These courses touch upon the linguistic features of the language concerned, the history and culture associated with it, various genres of writing, and some landmark pieces of literature.
The Centre for Modern Indian Languages (CMIL) has been established in the School with the purpose of conducting seminars, lectures, panel discussions, readings, etc, inviting scholars and experts from various languages to speak about the literature, culture, films, music, and history of their language. This has been done keeping in mind the priceless treasure and legacy that each region and language have to offer to the country.
While there were Foundation courses in the Bachelor’s Degree Programme (BDP) earlier, it is for the first time that Modern Indian Language Kashmiri has been put on offer.
It is due to the continuous support of the Vice Chancellor, Prof Nageshwar Rao, and the efforts of the then Director of the School of Humanities, Prof Malati Mathur, that it has been possible to offer such a vibrant bouquet of languages to the students of BA General (BAG) first year.
