The Government of India is taking major steps to preserve Tripura’s tribal languages through TR&CI, national schemes like SPPEL, and digital platforms such as Bharatavani.
The Government of India has stepped up efforts to preserve and promote the tribal languages of Tripura under a wide range of centrally sponsored initiatives, the Lok Sabha was informed today. Replying to an un-starred question from MP Kriti Singh, Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey said the Ministry of Tribal Affairs is extending financial and institutional support to 29 Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) across the country, including the Tribal Research and Cultural Institute (TR&CI) in Tripura, under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme “Support to Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs)”.
The scheme provides assistance for infrastructure, research and documentation activities, training and capacity-building programmes, organisation of tribal festivals, yatras and cultural exchanges, all aimed at protecting and promoting tribal heritage. In terms of language preservation, the TRIs are tasked with preparing bilingual dictionaries and trilingual proficiency modules, developing primers for Classes I–III in tribal languages under the Multi-Lingual Education (MLE) component of the New Education Policy 2020, publishing rhymes, stories and books in indigenous languages, bringing out journals on tribal literature, documenting folklore, folktales and oral literature such as riddles, songs and ballads, as well as translating awareness material on Sickle Cell Anaemia into tribal dialects. They also hold conferences, seminars, workshops and poetic symposiums in order to safeguard linguistic traditions.
Tripura-Specific Initiatives
The Tribal Research and Cultural Institute (TR&CI), Government of Tripura, has undertaken a number of focused measures for the preservation and protection of indigenous languages and dialects of the state. These include publishing books on Learning of Tribal Languages of Tripura and dictionaries; bringing out the annual literary journal SAIMA in tribal languages; and publishing the biannual research journal TUI. The Institute, in collaboration with Tripura University, also conducts seminars and workshops on indigenous languages and dialects, and documents and publishes the proceedings.
Audio-visual documentation on tribal heritage and life in local languages has been produced, while notation of traditional folk songs is being prepared for preservation. Primers in tribal languages have already been introduced in government schools, and all books, primers and documentation are preserved in the Social Science Library of TR&CI. In addition, they have been made digitally accessible through the TR&CI e-book portal, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ repository portal and a dedicated YouTube channel.
Financial Allocations
The financial allocation for the preservation, promotion and development of indigenous tribal languages in Tripura over the past five years shows intermittent funding. While no allocation was made in 2020–21, 2022–23 and 2023–24, ₹5 lakh was allocated in 2021–22 and ₹8 lakh in 2024–25. These funds are utilised for collecting articles from eminent tribal writers, poets and authors of Tripura, printing and publishing books, and organising seminars and workshops on tribal languages and dialects in collaboration with Tripura University.
National Initiatives Covering Tripura
The Ministry of Education has also been playing a significant role in language preservation through the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL) launched in 2013 under the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru. Under the first phase of this scheme, 117 languages were identified for preservation, including Tripura’s Darlong, Ranglong and Uchai. The SPPEL aims to document endangered mother tongues with fewer than 10,000 speakers by developing primers, bilingual and trilingual dictionaries in print and electronic formats, grammatical sketches, pictorial glossaries and ethno-linguistic profiles. The local community is involved extensively in the documentation process as language consultants and participants in workshops, seminars and conferences.
The CIIL has also developed primers on 117 languages in collaboration with NCERT, while the digital repository Bhasha Sanchika hosts language resources in text, audio, image and video formats to aid pedagogy, linguistic research and technology development. These resources can be accessed at sanchika.ciil.org.
Digital India and Bharatavani
As part of the Digital India programme, CIIL is implementing the Bharatavani Project, which provides knowledge resources in 121 Indian languages—22 Scheduled and 99 Non-Scheduled—through its web portal bharatavani.in and mobile app. Several tribal languages spoken in Tripura—Kokborok, Halam, Mogh and Chakma—feature prominently in the repository. Resources uploaded include 22 in Kokborok, 3 in Halam, 3 in Mogh and 5 in Chakma, covering domains such as textbooks, language learning materials and encyclopaedic content. Two PDF dictionaries have also been developed in Kokborok.
Corpus Development for Tribal Languages
The Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian Languages (LDC-IL) is creating high-quality linguistic resources across Indian languages. Its Mother Tongue Parallel Text Corpus of India Vol. I features English and 147 Indian mother tongues, each containing 5,332 sentences systematically designed on 152 grammatical categories. Tripura’s tribal languages in the corpus include Kokborok (27,063 words), Reang (36,123 words), Paite (32,627 words) and Kuki (32,695 words).
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A Holistic Preservation Effort
Through these combined measures, both the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Ministry of Education have sought to safeguard and promote Tripura’s rich linguistic diversity. From government funding of TR&CI’s documentation and literary initiatives to national-level projects such as SPPEL, Bhasha Sanchika, Bharatavani and LDC-IL’s linguistic corpus, the preservation of endangered and indigenous languages of Tripura is being addressed with a blend of traditional and digital strategies, ensuring that tribal languages not only survive but thrive in the years ahead.
