IB, BSF cross language borders to fire in Urdu, Chinese

By :Nandini Didwania
AHMEDABAD: Intelligence Bureau and Border Security Force personnel are adding languages to their arsenal. While monitoring the country's borders, the barrel of their newly acquired linguistic guns will be trained on the chatter in Chinese, Urdu, and Sindhi. The officials have enrolled in Ramlal Parikh Bharatiya Bhasha Sansthan at Gujarat Vidyapith.
While IB officials are learning Chinese and Urdu, their BSF counterparts are taking Sindhi lessons.Dr Indira Nityanandam, the director of the institute, said that officials concerned with border and internal security approached the Gandhian varsity for the first time to take language courses.
"We have trained about 50 officers and personnel of BSF in 2019-2020," Nityanandam said. "A faculty member used to visit the BSF headquarters in Gandhinagar to teach the special course. But now the officials also visit the institute. As they protect our border with Pakistan in Kutch, they believe that Sindhi can come handy."
While the IB officials at the institute refused to identify themselves, one of them said the knowledge of languages such as Urdu and Chinese can be helpful in their job, including while studying documents. Both languages are being learnt by five officers each, the institute officials said.
In a unique initiative, the institute recently collaborated with Dhrangadhra Cantonment of the Indian Army to teach English to the wives of officers and personnel at the cantonment. "The teachers prepared a special syllabus," Nityanandam said. "All 30 women beamed with pride when they received the completion certificate."
The institute is enjoying a resurgence. About 1,000 students - from school and college students to senior citizens and MNC employees - are thronging the institute to learn Indian and foreign languages.
"We have a senior citizen couple learning French so that they can communicate with their grandchild," Nityanandam said. "And a city-based goldsmith learnt Bengali recently as most of his artisans are from West Bengal."
For people like Yogesh Gohil, 35, an Ahmedabad businessman, learning a new language was a means to enlarge his entrepreneurial reach. "I am working with a Chinese firm to expand my business and thus I decided to take Chinese lessons. It's a long-term investment for me," he said.