Mother Tongue
My mother tongue is Dogri
Describe the poet's attachment to her mother tongue and the situation of languages without their own script.
Padma Sachdev wrote in Dogri and Hindi. She won the Sahitya Akademi award at a young age for her first collection of poems in Dogri.
The book's note explains that Dogri lost its old script. Today it is written in the Persian or the Devanagari script.
Dogri is spoken mainly in Jammu, and in nearby areas of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. It is one of the languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of India's Constitution.
The poet's urgency to write, and her picture of Dogri as a beloved, generous mistress whom she proudly serves, show her deep love and loyalty to her mother tongue.
Several other Indian languages are also written in borrowed scripts, such as Konkani, Bhojpuri and Bodo.
Writing in your mother tongue keeps it alive.
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