Presentation Video
Translated in ASL by Shilpa Hanumantha
ASL edited by Kim Pudans-Smith
The first published work on research on ISL was the comparison of sign languages used in three schools in Bengal. Sign vocabularies used in three schools for the deaf (Dacca, Barisal and Calcutta) were compared. There was significant difference in signs used in the three school (Banerjee 1928). Given the limited interstate or even intrastate mobility of population during those days, lack of similarity in sign languages used in the schools is understandable. Use of sign language, according to Banerjee, was strongly discouraged in all schools, but students used sign for communicating with each other which had led to development of flourishing sign languages there. It is believed that the same was true about other schools for the deaf in India at that time. Administrators of almost all schools claimed that they are oral while students and some teachers used signs outside of the classrooms (Cross 1977). Use of sign language, a natural language of deaf people was suppressed almost all over India.
No other research work on sign language in India was done until 1977 when Madan Vasishta, Dr. James C. Woodward and Dr. Kirk Wilson from Gallaudet University in the United States visited the four major cities in India to find the answer to the question (and the belief): Is there is sign language in India? At that time, many sign languages in the world, especially American Sign Language, were already identified as bona fide languages and were used in educating deaf children as well as in social, cultural and professional lives of deaf people.
The research was supported partly by Gallaudet University and personal funds. The All India Federation of the Deaf also supported the effort. Vasishta had contacted schools and organizations in Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta and Delhi for providing local support in finding deaf consultants who met the required criteria—born deaf, used ISL since birth and attended a school for the deaf—and site for holding meetings and collecting data. The researchers had expected problems in finding consultants, however, were pleasantly surprised how the word that “three American people are trying to make a book about sign language” spread. The turnover and enthusiasm of all consultants was touching and inspiring. The researchers needed only a few consultants and had a “bench” of waiting people who socialized and provided unasked input on all issues related to sign language.
The analysis of the data collected in the four cities showed that ISL is one language with regional variations. The grammar and syntax of the four varieties of ISL is the same. The results of this study were published in the Indian Journal of Linguistics (Vasishta et. al. 1978) The results encouraged us to follow up with the plan to research further and compile dictionaries of the four regional varieties.
Dr. Woodward received a small research grant from the National Science Foundation to collect data for the dictionaries. In the summer of 1979, Dr. Woodward, Ms. Susan DeSantis and the author came to India for six weeks. They visited each of the four cities and spent over one week in each city to collect signs for the dictionaries. They photographed each sign and also made 8mm movies of signed stories for grammatical analysis. Line drawings based on these photographs were drawn by Vishnu Sharma, a very talented deaf artist in Delhi.
The first dictionary of ISL with focus on Delhi was published in 1981 with funding from Gallaudet University by the All India Federation of the Deaf (Vasishta 1981). The efforts to publish the other three regional dictionaries in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore were thwarted due to lack of support in those cities. After two years of failed efforts, limited editions of those dictionaries (Vasishta et al. 1987) were published at Gallaudet and distributed to researchers and schools.
No major research was conducted on ISL until 2000 when Ulrike Zeshan published her treatise on Indopakistan Sign Language (Zeshan 2000). Indian and Pakistani sign languages, she proposed had mostly the same vocabulary and grammar, therefore, constituted one language—Indopakistan Sign Language (IPSL). Zeshan analyzed morphological and syntactic structures and described the IPSL grammar thoroughly. This was the first major work focusing on all linguistic aspects of ISL.
It was felt that one ISL dictionary instead of the four dictionaries for each variety was needed. A comprehensive dictionary that included signs from all over India was published in Coimbatore in 2001 (Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalya 2001). This research and production of this dictionary was support by CBM International, which was involved in a lot of research and development work in education and rehabilitation of visually impaired persons and had decided to include work on deafness also. Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalya assigned Dr. Mani, a professor at the R. M. Vidyalya, to coordinate the project. Dr. Mani had no background in deafness or sign language. He organized a national seminar of educators of deaf children. In this seminar, he met and hired Mr. V. Gopalkrishanan, a deaf professional, and his son, G. Amaresh to help with the project. Signs were collected from cities all over India and were analyzed for use in various regions. Sign that were more common all over India were selected and included in a comprehensive dictionary published in 2001 and distributed to schools and organizations for the deaf (Personal Communication, G.Amaresh, 4 November 2012).
Sign Language Classes and Interpreter Training
No formal classes for teaching ISL were conducted until 2001 when Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Impaired (NIHH) established the ISL Cell in Mumbai. The ISL Cell was the result of a very bold step taken by then Director in-charge of NIHH, Dr. M. N. Nagaraja. Dr. Nagaraja was a visionary administrator and despite his strong background in audiology and speech, recognized the importance of sign language in education of deaf children. He noticed that most deaf children did not have the benefit of early education—oral or manual—and fell through the cracks as illiterates. He registered the support of some deaf leaders, notably Mr. Chauhan from the AIFD, to raise the question of why sign language was neglected as an educational tool. Dr. Nagaraja took a professional risk in providing support for Indian Sign Language even though his advisory board was totally against it. He asked the author to develop a master plan for ISL instruction and interpreter
training. The author was not very optimistic as his earlier efforts to get NIHH involved in ISL research and use were totally neglected and openly ridiculed. However, Dr. Nagaraja was true to his word. He followed up on the proposal and asked Dr. Zeshan to develop the curricula and Ms. Meher Sethna to coordinate the project. Later had Mr. Sibaji Panda work as the teacher and master trainer in the program. All this work was done within a few months. This bold move was historical in nature, but might have cost Dr. Nagaraja the permanent position as the director of NIHH (Nagaraja, personal communication, November 2012).
Later, these classes were offered in NIHH’s regional centres in Hyderabad, Bhuvaneshwar, Kolkata and Delhi. However, these efforts were just a drop in the bucket. There is a huge need to offer such classes all over India.
The three levels of ISL instruction developed in 2001 were appropriate as initial efforts and were approved by the Rehabilitation Council of India. However, these are very basic in nature and there is a huge need for revision of syllabus and addition of higher-level classes—both for ISL learning and interpreting. The present classes only give lip service to interpreting and need to expand the curriculum and include experienced interpreters to teach interpreting. NIHH has started some efforts to revise the curriculum recently.
Despite the lack of a formal and comprehensive interpreter training program, two national interpreter organizations have been established in India. Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) was established in 2006 by Arun Rao, founder of the National Association of the Deaf. Another organization was founded by Monica Punjabi from Indore in 2008. It is called Indian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ISLIA) (M. Punjabi, personal communication, November 2012), Both these organizations have a modest membership representing the small but growing profession of interpreters (A. Haji, personal communication, November 2012). Both provide some training to its members once or twice a year. This is a laudable effort, however, we need a concerted thrust and hope that both organizations join forces and work as one group.
Recent Research
There has been a welcome spurt in research on ISL during the last decade and is impressive keeping in mind that 35 years ago, educators of deaf children did not even believe that there was a sign language in India. Mr. Arun Rao, a tireless advocate of ISL approached Dr. Vaishna Narang at JNU to involve her students in sign linguistics. She was the first Indian academic who encouraged research on ISL. Later, Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya also initiated research on ISL at Delhi University. Both of them did not have any background in sign languge, but being visionary scholars, they were able to spearhead meaningful research through their students.
According to Andesha Mangla (personal communication, December 1, 2012), several M. Phil and Ph.D. theses and dissertations in on ISL have been written and some of them are also published. For her M. Phil. 2002, Melissa Wallang did a general survey of language use in education of deaf children. Her Ph.D. thesis focuses mainly on the development of Shillong Sign Language: A Multi-media Lexicon variant of ISL. Wallang also published a book, Sign Linguistics and Language Education for the Deaf: An Overview of Northeast Region. (Wallang 2007). Samar Sinha’s M.Phil dissertation at JNU in 2003 was the second M.Phil dissertation with ISL focus. Sinha (2003) analyzed ISL grammar at skeletal level. Sinha’s Ph.D dissertation still in progress and focuses on “A Grammar of Indian Sign Language”.
Dr. Richa compared possessive reflexives and pronominals in Hindi-Urdu with those in ISL. Her research in this area has been published recently ( Dr. Richa 2011). There are several students conducting research on ISL. One of these is Hidam Singh who is doing his doctoral research on word order in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. (Singh 2010). All these research projects were undertaken by student as part of their degree fulfillment. Very little research has been done on ISL outside of the academia. Dr. Morgan an American researcher published two articles on problems and awareness of ISL and typology of ISL verbs (Morgan 2009, 2010)
One of the major projects launched with the support of the Government of India is on corpus creation at FDMSE in collaboration with Central Institute of Indian Sign Languages in Mysore and Ramakrishna Vidyalya in Coimbatore (ISL Corpus 2012). The goal is to provide corpus of annotated Indian Sign Language in digital video format in order the have the Central Government recognize ISL as a language of minority people. At present the project is in data collection stage. They are using deaf people to elicit signs and video recording them. This is interesting as many Western nations still have to initiate or corpus projects (G. Amaresh, personal communication, November 4, 2012).
Other Developments
In 2009, IGNOU and University of Central Lancashire collaborated on starting a B.A. program in Applied Sign Language Studies (BAASLS) on IGNOU campus. It is the first post secondary program in India for deaf people which uses ISL as the main language of instruction. There are about 80 students in the program and the number is growing. This program is indirectly encouraging use of and research in ISL. This will help ISL evolve into an academic language as well.
The government of India through the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment provided funding for establishing a research and training centre on ISL in its 11th Five Year Plan. Since IGNOU was operating the BAASLS program, it became the logical choice for establishing the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC). The ISLRTC was inaugurated on 4th October 2011 and will play a major role in research on ISL and bilingual education as well as training of interpreters.
Conclusion
During the last 40 years, ISL has evolved from a non-entity to an accepted and recognized language of deaf people in India both by the government and educators. The recent interest by academics in ISL in few universities indicates that ISL research on ISL and training in the areas of bilingual education and interpreters will increase dramatically. This was long overdue and a very welcome development.
REFERENCES
Banerjee, H.C. (1928) The sign language of deaf-mutes. Indian Journal of Psychology 3: 69-87. (quote from p.70)
Banerjee JN. India. International Reports of Schools for the Deaf, 18-19. Washington City: Volta Bureau, 1928.
G.Amaresh (2012, November 4). Email communication.
Haji, Atiya, (2012, December 1) Email communication.
ISL Corpus. Retrieved December 21, 2012 from http://indiansignlanguage.org/ongoing-projects/
Mangla, Andesha. (2012, December 1) Email communication.
Morgan, MW (2008) Deaf and Sign Languages in India: Problems, Awareness and M3. In Delyth Prys & Briony Williams, editors. GUM3C: Global Understanding in Multicultural, Multimodal and Multimedia Contexts (Proceedings of GUM3C Conference, Bangor University, 22-23 August 2008). 95-104.
Morgan, MW (2009) Typology of Indian Sign Language (ISL) Verbs from a Comparative Perspective. In Rajendra Singh, editor. Annual review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2009. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 103-131.
Nagaraja, M.N. (2012, November 25) Email communication.
Punjabi, Monica (2012, November). Email communication
Richa, Dr.(2011). Possessive Reflexives and Pronominals in Hindi-Urdu and ISL: A Minimalist Perspective. Lambert Academic Publications.
Singh, Hidam Gourashyam (2010). Incorporation in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. M. Phil dissertation, University of Delhi. Sinha, Samar (2003). A Skeletal Grammar of Indian Sign Language. Unpublished M.Phil. Dissertation. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Ulrike Zeshan (2000). Sign Language of Indo-Pakistan: A description of a Signed Language. Philadelphia, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Vasishta, M., J. C. Woodward, and K. L. Wilson (1978). "Sign Language in India: Regional Variation within the Deaf Population". Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 4 (2): 66–74.
Vasishta, Madan. Woodward, James, DeSantis, Susan. (1981) An Introduction to Indian Sign Language: Focus on Delhi. New Delhi: All India Federation of the Deaf.
Vasishta, Madan. Woodward, James, DeSantis, Susan. (1987) An Introduction to Indian Sign