Kolkata
A small tribal community by the name Toto with a population of just over 1600 and living in West Bengal’s Alipurduar district is in the news these days — one of its members has been awarded the Padma Shri.
Dhaniram Toto’s unflinching quest for the Toto (Dengka) language’s script and alphabets has fetched him the coveted award. While he wants an autonomous development commission to uplift the Toto tribe, the Class X pass out points out that it was during authoring the books ‘Dhanua Toto’s Kothamala’ and ‘Duemara Thitre’ that he felt the need for developing the Toto script and alphabets. For, he had to write the books using the Bengali script.
Thus started his mission in 2005 and its unrelenting pursuit took him the next 10 years to develop it in entirety. Since he is not a trained linguist, he had difficulties in matching sounds to words. But then, through hard work and sheer determination, Dhaniram created the Toto alphabet which has 37 letters, including 22 consonants, 9 vowels and 6 diphthongs.
The Toto language script possesses the ISO 15924 Code/Key Toto/294 and it officially made its debut on May 22, 2015. The ISO code is an international standard defining codes for scripts or writing systems.
Hailing from Totopara village in Alipurduar district, the creator of the Toto language script and Toto alphabet has also compiled a dictionary of Toto words.
Dhaniram’s “biggest regret in life” is not having been able to attend college and university. But he has ensured his son, Dhananjay, doesn’t miss out on them. In fact, his son is the first from the community to have a Master’s degree while there are a dozen-odd other graduates from the tribe.
At the same time, he demands reservation for his community in Government jobs, saying unless the young generation gets jobs, the community will not progress further. “Without jobs, dropouts will increase which will be a huge setback to the community. Thus, we want at least, there should be some reservation for our community in government jobs,” Dhaniram maintains.
“I request the government to create a board/commission for the Toto community to help our people progress further in their lives. I would like any educational institution to step up and use my script to preserve our rapidly vanishing language,” he outlines.
Terming the Centre’s announcement of Padma Shri to him, Dhaniram says it is like a gift to the entire Toto community. “This comes as a recognition to the people for the language they speak. It is our duty to work for our community, its people and the country. We have to work hard to preserve our language,” he emphasises.
Dhaniram is now working on creating the grammar for the Toto language.
