Chhattisgarh police personnel to learn Gondi in insurgency-hit Bastar

The first such batch of 50 police personnel started their training in Dantewada district to learn Gondi (Gōndi), a South-Central Dravidian language.

Police personnel deployed in Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-hit Bastar will be taught the Gondi language spoken by tribals to bridge the gap between the force and locals and boost its intelligence gathering process in the region.

Police personnel deployed in Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-hit Bastar will be taught the Gondi language spoken by tribals to bridge the gap between them. (Representative Image)

The first such batch of 50 police personnel started their training in Dantewada district on Monday to learn Gondi (Gōndi), a South-Central Dravidian language.

“There are about 30,000 state police personnel deployed in seven districts of Bastar division out of which a large part is unaware of the local language, Gondi, which was a concern for us,” Chhattisgarh’s director general of police DM Awasthi said while speaking to Hindustan Times.

“This drive will help police personnel to understand tribals. The language will be taught to all the non-Gondi speaking police personnel by local policemen in seven districts of Bastar,” Awasthi said.

Bastar division, spread in 39,117 square kilometres and with a population of about 15 lakh, covers the Kanker, Kondagaon, Jagdalpur, Dantewada, Sukma, Bijapur and Narayanpur districts.

Most of the police personnel posted in Dantewada are from other districts, where the main language is Chhattisgarhiya.

“It is very important for a policeman posted in the region to understand Gondi, which is the main language of tribals of Bastar. Some of them are posted here for about ten years but they are unaware of the language which creates a gap between tribals and police,” Dantewada’s superintendent of police Abhishek Pallav said.

Pallav also said that the knowledge of Gondi will be “very helpful” to the police force as it will improve its process of interrogation and collection of intelligence.

“The police officers posted in deep jungles are unable to understand the complaints of tribals which creates a grudge in them. Secondly, most of the interrogation is not fruitful because the officer does not know the language … The language will also help us to boot our interrogation process,” added SP Dantewada.

Officers also said that learning the Gondi language should be part of the basic training of Chhattisgarh police.

“When any Maoist comes here to operate from another state, he or she learns Gondi in a couple of months because it is sort of compulsory training. The aim of Maoists is to spread their ideology which can only be done by understanding the local language. On the other hand, a large part of our force is unaware of language apart from police personnel who are recruited locally,” said another police officer posted in Bastar region.

“This is a major flaw in the training of the Chhattisgarh police force. Now, when they have started teaching the language, it will surely give positive results. I believe that Gondi language should be made compulsory in police training,” the officer quoted above said.

According to data with the police, about 5,500 Maoist cadres from its political and military wings live in the jungles of Bastar. More than 300,000 people including women and children in Bastar are Sangham Sadasya of CPI(Maoist).

Dada Jokal, who teaches Gondi to primary teachers posted in Bastar region, said the language training will help both the police as well as tribals.

“This is a very useful initiative by the police and will help winning hearts of Bastar tribal. Language connects people and surely police, which is mostly unaware of the Gondi language, will be understood by tribals,” Jokal said.