The Bhojpuri Language of Bihar

Bhojpuri is a language spoken in Bihar. It is thought that this language is one of the most widely spoken languages outside India after Hindi. At present it is not officially recognised as a separate language by the government of India, however there is a campaign by the Bhojpuri speaking community to get this listed as a national language.

The language of Bhojpuri is mainly spoken in the villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India. In addition, Bhojpuri has been taken outside India by the Bihari people to several other countries where it has been officially recognised as a national language. These countries include Nepal, Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago and Mauritius. In India, it is thought that there are about 150 million Bhojpuri speaking people. This makes Bhojpuri as one of the most widely spoken language in India other than Hindi. The government of Nepal and Mauritius has granted this language of national importance however in India it is still to face recognition. This is because many Indian linguists consider the language as a dialect of Hindi rather than a fully fledged independent language. However, many speakers of this language would dispute this.

The script used for writing this language in the present day is the Devanagri script, the same script used for writing Hindi. However up to the 20th century the script used were Persian and a script called the Kaithi script. Although the Persian script is no longer used, it has come to the attention that a number of villages in Bihar still use the Kaithi script. Although the number of people using the Kaithi script is dwindling, there has been virtually no attempt to investigate or even protect the script. In addition, there has been no attempt to either teach Bhojpuri or preserve the once famous Bhojpuri literature.

In recent years, Bhojpuri has become popular with the Indian film industry. Several Bollywood movies have adopted Bhojpuri as a cultural movement and hence have incorporated Bhojpuri music into the films. Bhojpuri films has too become popular than ever before. Several major Indian film stars have recognised the strength of the language in numerical following and have taken steps to enter the Bhojpuri film industry.

There is a campaign to strengthen Bhojpuri as in independent language that will bring Bhojpuri on the world map. This has to be done by bringing the Bhojpuri community together not only in India but from the rest of the world. The people of Mauritius have already taken steps to make Bhojpuri popular. They have numerous Bhojpuri forum, community meeting, music sessions and watch Bhojpuri movies. They are keen to teach the language to their children and pass it on to the next generation. However such attempts and enthusiasm are lacking in the Bhojpuri speaking community of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. One of the possible reasons for this interesting phenomenon could be that the people of Bihar and rest of India have no fear of cultural loss while Bihari expatriates would prefer to cling on to their mother culture. What ever the reasons, it is worth noting that the people outside India have done more for this language than Indian themselves.