BHUBANESWAR: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’ completed 10 years on Sunday, one of the heroes who featured in the special edition of the broadcast was Odisha’s Ramjit Tudu.
A techie who works as an assistant revenue inspector under Jashipur tehsil of Mayurbhanj district, Ramjit has been providing a digital platform to Santali literary voices from across the world to express themselves.
TNIE in its Brightside section had recently featured Ramjit who for the last one decade has been digitising his mother tongue Santali and giving it an online identity.
Stating that mother tongue is the first language that a child identifies with, the prime minister said Ramjit has started a campaign to give a new identity to Santali language with the help of digital innovation.
“Ramjit ji has prepared a digital platform where literature related to Santali language can be read and written. A few years back when he started using mobile phone, he was saddened by the fact that he could not send messages in his mother tongue. After that, he started exploring the possibilities of typing ‘Ol Chiki’ script of Santali language. Today, due to his efforts, articles written in Santali language are reaching millions of people,” Modi said. Ramjit had launched Ol Chiki Tech - a platform on Facebook - with two other language activists R Ashwani Banjan Murmu and Bapi Murmu to promote and share tools to type in the script. He continues to upgrade these tools and guide Santali writers on how to use them even today.
After Santali Wikipedia was formed in 2018, he along with Wikipedians contributed over 11,000 articles in Santali language on various topics. With very little Santali literature available on the web for people of the community to read online, Ramjit also founded and designed ‘Birmali’ (www.birmali.com), the first literary e-magazine in Santali language four years back. This magazine is aimed at giving a platform to Santali writers to publish their works online for a wider reach.
“There is no greater joy than being recognised by the prime minister. It further strengthens our initiative in bringing Santali language and literature to the digital space,” said Ramjit.