Did you ever hear a Mahua tree sing Vande Mataram? Or its neighbour, a sal tree, sing songs in Chaudhari, a language I didn’t even know existed? These ‘singing trees’ and ‘speaking trees’ are part of Bhasha Van, or ‘forest of languages,’ started in 2013. It is an open museum of voice, where, with the aid of an audio guide, if it’s working, trees sing songs and tell stories in 60 living languages. Such an original idea: the metaphorical forest represents both the diversity of trees and languages of India. It is part of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre (BRPC) and its arm, the Adivasi Academy (AA), that I visited recently, two hours by road from Vadodara, Gujarat. And all the while, mahua blossoms were drying in the sun, their intoxicating fragrance sweetening the air.

Dr Ganesh N Devy, linguistic scholar and cultural activist, is a Founding Trustee of the BRPC, along with Dr. Surekha Devi and Sandhya Gajjar. Former Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, he gave up his academic career to work with the Adivasis, indigenous people, Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNT), totalling about 160 million population, 2011 Census. He founded the BRPC at Baroda in 1996, and the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh in 2000. He also spearheaded the landmark Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India, a study of 780 Indian languages, in 2010.