Cops fighting Maoists in Naxal hotbed of Bastar will now learn ‘Gondi’, the lingua-franca of Abujhmad region.
“We have decided that for enabling jawans to better understand Bastar and its people they will be taught the native language of Bastar region,” Chhattisgarh Director General of Police DM Awasthi told The Pioneer.
The first batch of 50 policemen has already started learning ‘Gondi’ in Dantewada district, he said.
“Apart from Gondi soon we will also train our security personnel in Halbi and other local dialects spoken in Bastar,” he said.
According to police, currently about 30,000 security personnel are deployed in different districts of Bastar for fighting Maoists.
“A huge section of police force is not aware of the local language spoken by people in the hinterlands of the Bastar which makes communication and interrogation a difficult task,” Superintendent of Police Dantewada Dr Abhishek Pallav said. Gondi is more akin to south Indian languages which Hindi or Chhattisgarhi speaking person cannot understand easily.
“In police stations, when local people come with any problem the police staff over there doesn’t understands their language which makes policing difficult,” he said while adding that a capsule course of three months has been designed for training our people in Gondi.
According to the SP, the knowledge of Gondi language will also make easier interception of Maoist messages, which has to be now translated.
