English rising

What is the mother tongue of Parsis? Is it different from their first language? This is a question that an article in The Times of India (ToI) of July 8 put to readers in trying to determine who in the 2011 census termed English their mother tongue. According to the article, 41% (or 1,06,656 persons) of 2,59,678 Indians who listed English as their mother tongue in the 2011 census live in Maharashtra. In the 2001 census, 2,26,449 persons had noted English as their mother tongue.
"The number of Parsis who can read and write Gujarati has dwindled,” Parsi Times editor Anahita Subedar told ToI, estimating that about 80% of Bombay based Parsis read only the English section of her newspaper, and just "five to eight percent of their correspondence with readers is in the community’s mother tongue, Gujarati.” Four of the weekly’s 24 pages are in Gujarati "and those are targeted at readers who are 70-plus or based in Gujarat,” she noted.
"A great deal of the Parsi ethos is encapsulated within the Gujarati language. Gujarati will always be our mother tongue,” Jam-e-Jamshed editor Shernaaz Engineer wrote to Parsiana.
"However, with westernisation, many within the community no longer read and write Gujarati. Why neglect the language, especially since we have a wealth of literature and historical treatises written in it?” she asked.
"Jame has huge readerships in both English and Gujarati and we address both sections with equal seriousness,” she said.
The ToI report notes that many individuals differentiate between first language and mother tongue. Historian Dr Simin Patel who spoke Gujarati as a child, "but forgot it once she started going to school,” told the newspaper that today she can understand Gujarati but struggles to express herself in it. "Yet, she’d still put it down as her mother tongue but not her ‘everyday tongue,’” said the report.
In 1980 when the Committee for Electoral Rights (CER) started enrolling Parsis onto the Bombay Parsi Punchayet’s electoral rolls, CER co-founder Jamsheed Kanga had observed that 80% of the forms had been filled in English.