Copyright thehindu
The Centre is suppressing people’s languages in its bid to promote Sanskrit, regretted scholar Hampa Nagarajaiah, also known as Hampana, while speaking during the inauguration of the two-day Samajamukhi Literary Conference in Bengaluru. “The Union government is pushing for One Language, One Nation, One Election while systematically stifling people’s languages. A major portion of the language funding is being used to promote Sanskrit alone,” Prof. Nagarajaiah said. Funding issues He pointed out that over the past 11 years, the government has spent ₹2,532.59 crore on Sanskrit, while Dravidian languages have received a fraction of that support — ₹113.4 crore for Tamil, ₹12.65 crore for Telugu, ₹12.28 crore for Kannada, and ₹4.52 crore for Malayalam. He called this skewed and unfair, according to a release. “Sanskrit and Hindi are not our enemies,” Prof. Nagarajaiah clarified. “They are both rich, classical languages. But they must not be imposed upon others. We must collectively and strongly oppose this biased approach of the Centre.” He further noted that while there are 14 Sanskrit universities in the country, there are none for Prakrit or other ancient Indian languages of antiquity. Prof. Baragur Ramachandrappa, chief guest, expressed concern over the erosion of moral responsibility in public discourse. He said that we are living in ‘an age of distorted interpretations’ and ‘madness has replaced dialogue, irrationality has replaced reason, communalism has replaced humanity, and falsehood has replaced truth’. In intellectual community Cautioning against divisive tendencies within the intellectual community, Prof. Ramachandrappa added, “The power of voice should not be destroyed by the politics of division.” Cultural thinker H.S. Shivaprakash, guest of honour, emphasised that India has always been a land of multilingual and multicultural traditions — both in poetry and religion. “Attempts are being made to break this pluralistic heritage and impose a single culture,” he warned. He noted that linguistic diversity exists not only in the South but across North India too, yet most regional languages do not receive due recognition. “This is the direct result of linguistic domination,” he said. Jayaram Rayapur, Commissioner of Income Tax, Andhra Pradesh, and the founder of Samajamukhi magazine, in his introductory remarks said the idea behind Samajamukhi was to create an independent platform for Kannada’s intellectual space.
