Digest Number 190

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I read Mr Nataraj's communication related to Kannada with interest.

Born in a Madhva family (speaking Marathi, but having knowledge of

Kannada through my maternal relatives and by marital connections) and

having spent my formative years in Tamilnadu and having lived in

Bangalore, Delhi and living in Gujarat for career purposes, I have

some observations as to why Kannada has reached this sad state.

 

1. First, a pan Kannada identity has not emerged. To give a small

instance, last year I travelled with a group from Bangalore to Nava

brindavan totally consisting of people from Bangalore. Our group

came across another group of pilgrims of Kannada speaking Madhvas

from various districts of Tamilnadu. As would be obvious their accent

and grammar are not pure. Several members in our group made

jokes about the same. Compare this with Tamilians. I have never come

across one Tamil who would joke about people speaking his language,

however corrupt it may be (for instance Palghat Tamil) or Telugus

from AP joking about Telugu spoken by their kin living in other

states.

2. Recently, in my institute a programme was inaugurated by a

Gujarathi dignitary who was formerly RBI Governor, was Director of

London School of Economics and was Director, IIM Ahmedabad. Despite

this he spoke in Gujarathi. Compare this with our dignitaries in

Bangalore.

3. On the positive side I have interacted with IAS officers (of

recent years) in Karnataka hailing from north indian states who are

very fluent in Kannada who are trained for six months in the

language. But what about others? The state government should train

others by a variety of mechanisms, first by popularising the script,

distance education etc.

4. What is the state of Purandara dasa's compositions? There is no

institution in Karnataka dedicated to this saint who gave spiritual

message to all of us and whose compositions are sung in different

parts of the South. Should we not think in terms of an institution on

the lines of Music Academy in Chennai ? This institute needs to focus

on Classical music but undertake research and publications on the

lines of what is being done for Tyagaraja

5. The above does not imply that Madhva thought should only be

popularised in Kannada. In fact, Sri Madhvacharya's followers speak

many languages (Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, Tulu, Konkani and also

Hindi as in Gaya) It is also imperative to train multilingual Madhva

scholars. In a generation in places, like Delhi, we will have third

generation Madhvas who are fluent only in Hindi.

Regards

Suresh