Kerala - Thrissur   

‘Languages row fomenting hatred’

Thrissur: Writer Sukumar Azhikode has said that the controversy over the conferment of classical status to languages is fomenting inter-State hatred and jealousy.

He told The Hindu here on Wednesday that the controversy was taking an ugly turn and urged authorities to find an amicable solution. “The former Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer had warned us against the seed of linguistic jingoism lying dormant in the controversy.”

Prof. Azhikode observed that linguistic or literary studies did not warrant classification of languages as classical or non-classical. “Languages are conventionally divided into families such as Dravidian or Indo-Aryan. Or the division may be decided by morphological differences such as Agglunative or Analytic. No linguistic study classifies languages as classical, romantic or non-classical. Scholars such as A.B. Keith refer to classical Sanskrit in order to differentiate it from the preceding Vedic language. The usage, ‘classical,’ in similar contexts has only limited application. It does not apply to languages in general. Encyclopaedia Britannica is silent on the subject, classical languages. But it deals with classical literature. The word, classic or classical, is generally used in relation to literature and not languages,” he said.

No Government, he maintained, had any call to elevate a language to a status or position that was not recognised by literary thinking. “Such exercises foment hatred among people. Works in Greek and Latin in the West and Sanskrit in the East got the classical literature status not on the strength of any royal decree, but by universal consent.”

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