LITERESI BILENG AVANSE - boukie banane

ON BHOJPURI
For quite some time I hesitated to write this note on Bhojpuri for fear of upsetting some people but
eventually I decided to say what I have in mind for I would fail in my duty if I didn't.
Bhojpuri is a dialect of Bihari and is widely spoken in the region of Bhojpur, part of the state of Bihar
from which a great number of our ancestors came.
Initially Bhojpuri in Mauritius was a vibrant rural lingua franca spoken not only by people of Indian
origin but by Chinese and AfroCreoles as well. However it was despised by the rural Hindu and
Muslim intellingensia who used to call it 'motia Hindi' and who preferred other oriental languages
such as Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu or Marathi over and above English and French. At the same time
an urban lingua franca was developing fast to become the Morisien of today. It enjoyed a greater
prestige being an urban linguistic expression. Within less than a century, the urban lingua franca has
become the de facto national language of the Republic of Mauritius.
Today Bhojpuri is the mother tongue of less than 15% of the population and shows clear signs of
degeneration and degradation specially in lexical terms. Can the process be reversed? I am not sure.
Some of these questions must be considered?
1. If lexis has undergone degradation, is the same true of syntax and/or phonology?
2. Has the syntax of Mauritian Bhojpuri been described?
3. Has a choice been made concerning orthography? Will Devanagri be used or the Roman
alphabets?
4. Besides folk songs is there any prestigious literary creation in the language?
Instead of just paying lip service to the language or using it to stop or slow down the march of
Morisien, some people would be well advised to saddle themselves to some hard and honest work.
18 June 2010
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