Prof. D. P. Pattanayak's paper presented in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics is titled " India : A Multilingual Perspective" and focuses on the on the issues related to languages in India in the current scenario.

       Prof. Pattanayak traces the history of languages in India in the perspective of development of civilizations, chalking out the different stages of mobility of people belonging to different civilizations, development of writing, the confusions related to languages and the unwritten languages. He states that in India one language is written in many scripts illustrating with examples of Sanskrit being written in all the major scripts in India and Santhali being written in five scripts. He explains the confusion between the scripts through the examples of Gurumukhi and Olchikki, which are often confused with that of languages. He also points out the stages of development of literature in Indian languages.

      Another important issue discussed in this paper is that of unwritten languages in India . It is observed that most tribal languages are unwritten and most of them being considered to be dialects of a particular language. Prof. Pattanayak asserts that the concept of Mother Tongue is largely misunderstood, as in a patriarchal society mother adopts father's language. He stages similar confusions regarding the second and foreign languages.

     He asserts the need of the book policy in India , saying that India has a science policy, an industrial policy, an education policy but no book policy. He observes that even the government is not doing much in this regard. He asserts that in a multilingual and multicultural country English must be a partner of development and not a competitor, and states that science and technology can also be taught in the languages of such a society. Language in education is the greatest human rights violation, he claims. He quotes the current situation of Indian languages and the glorious grammatical tradition of India to prove his claims.

     Prof. Pattanayak emphasized that no discussion on Indian languages will be complete without referring to its legal and administrative use and insisted upon enacting Acts in regional languages and translated into English.

     Prof. Pattanayak elucidates that Indian education is pyramidal and follows the colonial process. He concludes this feature of language shows its undemocratic nature.

     The discussion that followed the session chaired by Prof. Christian Matthiessen, was initiated by Prof. Pabitra Sarkar, who enquired about the notion of mother tongue in the background of school dropouts because of the shift from mother tongue to another language and the competitions between the languages. In agreement to Prof. Sarkar's concept Prof. Pattanayak said that there was need to rethink the notion of mother tongue and according to him, mother tongue is what the child learns before or without schooling. In continuation, Dr. Itagi made an observation that if this notion of mother tongue was accepted, we would have lost the function and other facets of bilingualism