JKS fights against attempt to destroy script variety in Konkani'

Mangalore, June 30: Jagotik Konkani Songhotton has condemned the move of Karnataka State Konkani Linguistic Minorities Institutions (KSKLMI), which had recently raised voice against considering Konkani works written in scripts other than 'Devanagari' for Central Sahitya Akademi awards.

Addressing a press meet here on Saturday, Eric Ozario, General Secretary, JKS, lamented that despite the fact that Devanagari is only the third most prolific script, after Kannada and Roman scripts, the Akademi has been squarely ignoring and neglecting Konkani literature in other scripts.

“Though Konkani is written in five different scripts, namely – Kannada, Roman, Devanagari, Perso-Arabic and Malayalam – the Sahitya Akademi (Central), since the very beginning, has been conferring Awards, Assignments and Projects only to the literature in the Devanagari script”, he said.

Mr Ozario, said that he himself along with two others (Vally Vagga, Mysore and Marcel D'souza, Mangalore) on behalf of all Konkanis had approached High Court of Karnataka with a writ petition demanding the Court to issue a direction to the Sahitya Akademi to recognise all the five scripts of Konkani Language viz., Kannada, Roman (English), Devanagari, Arabic and Malayalam as eligible for grant of Awards, Research funding and all other incidental works, for which assistance is rendered by the Akademi.

He said while the High Court was considering this petition, the KSKLMI pleaded the same Court to consider 'only Devanagari for recognition'. Together, they have issued a press statement with false information. Their statements claim that 1) 'Devanagari is the official script of Konkani', 2) 'The Constitution has given prominence to the Devanagari script', 3)'Konkanis use only the Devanagari script and not Kannada or Malayalam', and 4) 'If any script other than Devanagari is recognised, it will be detrimental to Konkani Langauage'

Brushing aside all these four claims, Mr Ozario questioned how does Devanagari become the official script, just because the Devanagari lobby declares so? “Such a decision has to be taken in a democratic process, at an assembly of representatives of all scripts. Such an assembly has never been convened in Konkani, he said.

“Moreover, this is not a question of the 'Official script'. The Question is whether the Sahitya Akademi's mandate is to honour and support the 'literature' of a language or the 'script' of a language. If it is literature, then how can the Akademi pamper and patronize the literature in one script alone and completely ignore and disregard the literature in other scripts?” he questioned.

He also clarified that Constitution has never given prominence to Devanagari script over other scripts.

“In its reply to our petition the Sahitya Akademi itself has admitted to the Court that 'the mandate of the Akademi is fully to recognise and support the literary traditions of the given language. The literary traditions of Konkani being that it is in five scripts, the Akademi has no option but to recognize and support literature in all five scripts”, he said.

Stating that Konkanis are confined to Devanagari script, he said that the truth is – according to the 2001 Census, of the total Konkanis in India, 31.82% Konkanis live in Goa. 31.73% live in Karnataka. All Konkanis living in Karnataka read and write Konkani in the Kannada script. Goa is divided between Roman and Devanagari. A Study conducted in 2011 reveals that only 12.7% Konkanis in India use Devanagari script; the remaining 87.3% use other scripts. The use of Kannada script is the highest – 58%, he said.

However, Mr Ozario clarified that JKS is not fighting agaginst Devanagari. “We are not demanding that Devanagari be neglected. Our demand is that the other four scripts also be considered”, he said.

“Their attempt is to destroy all script variety in Konkani and impose their variety on everyone. This is detrimental to the unity and development of Konkani. We condemn this and seek legal remedies”, he said.

KK Utharan, Vice President (India) JKS, Dr. Pratapananda Naik, Linguist, Goa and Vally Vagga (Valerian Dsouza), writer, Mysore were also present in the press meet.