When Sheetal Chheda says that she is more Tamil than Kutchi, she is possibly representing the cultural influence every other Kutchi in Chennai and Tamil Nadu has had in the last 200 years.
Chheda says, “During my schooling in Madurai, my parents insisted that I learn Tamil, though we spoke Kutchi at home. The current generation, somehow hasn’t picked up the language. They are either speaking Hindi or Gujarati, or the State language wherever they are settled.”
Interestingly, Chheda can read and write Tamil.
She adds, “ However, every family tries to teach the languages in the order of their mother tongue, followed by the State language and English.”
The Kutchi language is classified as an Indo-Aryan language. As the Kutchi people have often been travellers and traders, their language has influences of almost every surrounding dialect and is thus very difficult to learn and translate. Kutchi is technically a dialect of Sindhi (an official language in Pakistan), but is heavily influenced by Gujarati, so much so that when written, it uses the traditional Gujarati script.
U K Shah, a Kutchi Jain, adds, “We have not done anything to preserve our language. Classes are not conducted because after migration, the upcoming generations have been conversing or speaking in Gujarati.” Kutchi is a very difficult language and since the people are from one of the main districts of Gujarat, their mother tongue has shifted from Kutchi to Gujarati. “Even though I am from a Kutchi family, from my birth I have been taught to speak in Gujarati and not in Kutchi,” says Mukesh Shah, a member of the Kutchi community in Chennai.
This is the fifth generation and from the time the Kutchis shifted their base to Chennai they had either switched to conversing in Gujarati or Hindi.
Another small community that has adopted the Kutchi language is the Halai Memon group of Chennai. Hailing from the modern day Kathiawar in Gujarat, which is close to the Kutch region, the community has a population of over 300 families in Chennai.
Abdul Azeez H E, president of the Madras Halai Memon Association, says, “As part of the principles of the association, we insist that every family teaches its children the language. Since we don’t have a Kutchi script, it has to be imparted only by speaking. It is close to extinction and we hope that we are able to stop that.”