THE PEOPLE

LANGUAGE

As many as 52 languages have been returned as mother-tongue spoken in the district during the census of 1961. A mother tongue defined for the census purpose is the language spoken childhood by the person's mother to the person or mainly spoken in the household. A number of these mother-tongues returned at the census of the district are but dialects or caste dialects, principally of Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati and Hindi. Arranged in the order of total speakers who number more than 100 each to claim a mother-tongue of their own, the following information relates to 20 languages and dialects of the district returned at the census of 1961: (1) Marathi 8,66,932 (m. 4,39,547; f. 4,27,385); (2) Urdu 90,302 (m. 46.194; f. 44,108); (3) Lamani 14,920 (m. 7,660; f. 7,260); (4) Marwadi 8,261 (m. 4,420; f. 3,841), (5) Telugu 6.550 (m. 3,438; f. 3,112); (6) Hindi 4,941 (m. 2,654; f. 2,287); (7) Vadari 1.790 (m. 930; f. 860): (8) Banjari 1.495 (m. 801; f. 691); (9) Kaikadi 1,144 (m. 579; f. 565); (10) Gujarati 973 (m. 510; f. 463): (11) Bhili 674 (m. 313; f. 361); (12) Rajasthani 651 (m. 297; f. 354); (13) Kannada 531 (m. 268; f. 263); (14) Pardhi 454 (m. 228; f. 354); (15) Kahari 304 (m. 148; f. 263); (16) Punjabi 177 (m. 119; f. 58); (17) Ghisadi 174 (m. 87; f. 87); (18) Multani 156 (m. 81; f. 75); (19) Sindhi 135 (m. 79; f. 56) and (20) Tamil 119 (m. 65; f. 54). These languages together have 10,00,918 speakers who form 99.94 per cent of the district population.

The other languages and dialects which have been returned with but insignificant number of speakers are Afghani, Ahirani, Arabic, Arvi, Beldari. Cavrasi, Dhiwari, English, Gadaria, Gujari, Gujaru, Irani, Jagannathi, Jain, Kacchi, Khandesi, Kristi, Kolhati, Mahesri, Malyalam, Mewari, Nepali, Pancali, Pardesi, Park, Rajaputana, Takari, Tuiguli and Vaidu.

A mother-tongue pattern comparing the censuses of 1951 and 1961 in terms of the most widely spoken language in the district indicated in the following table: —

TABLE No. 10

A COMPARATIVE MOTHER-TONGUE PATTERN, BID DISTRICT.

Marathi mother-tongue speakers who account for about 86.57 per cent of the total population of the district in 1961 have a similar distribution all over the tahsils. Marathi, which is usually written in the Devanagari script, or as some may in the Modi script is, therefore, the principal language of Bid district as that of the other Marathwada districts. However, in these five districts the highest percentage (at the 1951 census) reached by them was 86.6 in Bid, the other districts showing 83.7 in Osmanabad, 83.5 in Parbhani, 76.2 in Aurangabad and 65.5 in Nanded.

Comparatively, the proportion of Marathi mother-tongue speakers in the district in 1961 has decreased from that of 1951 though the difference is as slight as 15 in 10,000.

Urdu mother-tongue speakers account for 9.02 per cent of the total population of the district and thus constitute the second. most numerous of the lingual groups of the district. Though Urdu is not necessarily the mother-tongue of the Muslims, Urdu mother-tongue speakers in the district are predominantly Muslims. This looks obvious from the close correlation noticed between the number of Muslims and that of Urdu mother-tongue speakers in the district. While at the census of 1951 the percentage of Muslim population in the district was 9.38, that of Urdu mother. tongue speakers was 9.24, the corresponding percentages at the census of 1961 being 9.15 and 9.03 respectively. Similarly, as the Muslims are concentrated in urban areas of the district, the percentage of Urdu speakers in the district is found to be considerably higher in urban than in rural areas, e.g. at the census of 1951 while the Muslims in the district were 9.38 per cent of the total population, 6.95 per cent of the rural and 29.9 per cent of the urban population, the Urdu mother-tongue speakers were found to be 9.24 per cent of the total population, 6.80 per cent of the rural and 30.1 per cent of the urban population.

The number of Urdu mother-tongue speakers has decreased by about 2.4 per cent in 1961 from that of 1951. Urdu, which was in the Nizam's regime the medium of instruction at all stages of education, general and technical, and employed in official correspondence, has now ceased to prosper in the Maharastra State.

Though Lamani or Lambadi mother-tongue speakers constitute the third most numerous of the lingual groups of the district, their total population in 1961 accounts for only 1.48 per cent of the district population. The Lambadi speakers are concentrated in rural areas. In 1951, of the total 11.902 Lambadi mother-tongue speakers in the district. 11,817 or 99.2 per cent were returned from the rural areas, about 33 per cent in Gevrai tahsil, about 26 per cent in Manjleganv tahsil and about 24 per cent in Ambejogai tahsil. Lambadi is essentially the language of the Lambadis. For want of caste-wise statistics, nothing could be said as to how many of the Lambadas returned Lambadi as their mother-tongue.

Marwadi, Telugu and Hindi mother-tongues are spread by sporadically all over the district. At the census of 1951, Marwadi, which had 0.86 per cent speakers, was spoken by 2.4 per cent of the urban population of the district. Telugu, which has 0.80 per cent speakers in the district, was in use for 6.1 per cent of the rural population, while Hindi, which has 0.38 per cent speakers was the mother-tongue of 2.6 per cent of the urban population.

Bilingualism

In the district, 84,743 (m. 57,980; f. 26,763) persons or 8.46 per cent of the total population — 11.39 per cent of the males and 5.43 per cent of the females — spoke a language in addition to their mother-tongue. The extent of bilingualism in respect of the major languages spoken in the district is given in the table below.

TABLE No. 11

BILINGUALISM—1961

As the table shows, 29,039 or about 3.35 per cent of the total Marathi mother-tongue speakers were conversant with a subsidiary language, out of whom 16,031 or 55.27 per cent knew Hindi, 3,769 or about 13 per cent knew Urdu and 336 or 1.1 per cent knew Marwadi. Of the Urdu mother-tongue speakers, 30,811 or 34.1 per cent were bilinguists of whom 29,127 or 94.5 per cent knew Marathi but only 748 persons i.e. 2.4 per cent declared that they knew Hindi. Of the Lamani mother-tongue speakers, 7,490 persons or 50.2 per cent spoke a subsidiary language of whom except for only 22 persons all claimed to know Marathl. Of the Marwadis, 5,365 or 64.8 per cent were bilinguists, 4,595 or 81.8 per cent speaking Marathi, and 628 or 7.6 per cent Hindi. Of the Tamil and Hindi mother-tongue speakers nearly 50 each were bilinguists who were chiefly Marathi-knowing.

TABLE No. 12

 MIGRANTS— 1961

As the figures in the above table indicate, in 1961, about 90.8 per cent of the people enumerated in the district were born within its limits and the remaining i.e., about 9.2 per cent were born outside the district. About 91 per cent of the total immigrants of the district were born in other districts of the Maharastra State. 5.12 per cent were born in India beyond the State of Maharastra and only 172 persons were born in countries beyond Asia and elsewhere.