Centre’s bid to impose Devanagari on Northeast tribal tongues slammed

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has criticised the Centre’s attempt to impose Devanagari on Northeast Indian tribal languages that are spoken without scripts.

The CPI(M)’s Tripura State secretary Jitendra Chaudhury, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the 60-member Assembly, condemned Home Minister Amit Shah’s call to the speakers of tribal tongues to adopt the Devanagari script.

He told journalists in the State’s capital, Agartala, on Saturday (February 21, 2026) that any attempt to enforce a single-language script would threaten the region’s cultural diversity.

Addressing the Northern Regional Rajbhasha Sammelan in Agartala on Friday (February 20), Mr. Shah said the ‘Nagari Lipi’ would help protect linguistic identities in the Northeast, where many dialects and languages have no script. He also urged all stakeholders in the region not to politicise languages or create controversies over scripts.

‘Promoting Hindi acceptable’

“The promotion of Hindi through the Official Language Department is acceptable, but any attempt to force communities in the Northeast to adopt Devanagari script for their native tongues is not,” Mr. Chaudhury said, expressing concern over Mr. Shah’s suggestion that some languages spoken in the region should switch to the script used for Hindi, Sanskrit, and other mainstream languages.

The CPI(M) leader also said that the Centre’s push for linking the adoption of Devanagari with regional development “undermines our linguistic variety and cultural heritage”. Stressing that the speakers of each language must have the freedom to choose their script, he said the Centre’s “cultural hegemony” was aligned with the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Kokborok and Roman

Mr. Chaudhury is a Tripuri, one of 19 recognised tribes of Tripura. Kokborok is the common language of at least eight of these tribes, including the Tripuri.

The Bengali script has been used for Kokborok since 1897, but many tribal leaders and scholars favour the Roman script, which they claim is more phonetically suited to the tribal tongue that unifies many communities.

Kokborok speakers have been agitating for years to change the script from Bengali to Roman, but the Bharatiya Janata Party-led State government, dominated by Bengali speakers, insists on any “Indian script” rather than a “foreign” one. There is also a conspiracy theory that Christian missionaries are behind the push for Roman script, as a sizeable tribal population in Tripura converted to Christianity.

A few days ago, Chief Minister Manik Saha said that his government “will never allow Roman script for Kokborok because it threatens indigenous traditional and cultural values”. He advised tribal intellectuals and language experts to develop a suitable indigenous script, stick to the Bengali script, or adopt other Indian-origin scripts like Devanagari.

His assertion did not go down well with the Tipra Motha Party, an ally of the BJP in the State, which backs the Roman script. It also sparked protests from student groups, including the United Movement for Kokborok, which formed human chains to demand the Roman script.