The first World Classical Tamil Conference held at Coimbatore should be an eye-opener to other states and regional sub-cultures for asserting their language, heritage, history, ethos, and their tradition of music, dance and song.
One significant feature of the cultural extravaganza organized by Tamil Nadu was honouring a foreigner who attempted to establish links between ancient Tamil script and the so-far undeciphered Indus Valley script. There are many scholar-critics and cultural activists who contributed to the enrichment of Telugu language and culture and who took part vigorously in the campaign to make Telugu a classical language, a status accorded to Tamil.
It is in this context that one remembers the yeoman service rendered by the 82-year-old Prof. Bhadriraju Krishnamurty, better known as BHK in academic and literary circles. Doyen of linguistics and literary activism for over fifty years now, he was the driving force behind other Telugu litterateurs in disseminating the relevant information, collecting and collating the write-ups on the 2000-year-old inscriptions and presenting the needed data to the government with factual account to prove the ancestry of the Telugu language.
Born in Ongole in 1928, Dr. Bh. Krishnamurty took his Ph.D from University of Pennsylvania in 1957. For his contribution to Dravidian Linguistics, he received Hon Dlitt. from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati (1998), and Dravidian University, Kuppam (2007). Earlier, he worked as Professor of Linguistics (1962-88), Osmania University; Dean, Faculty of Arts (1973-6), Member, University Syndicate (71-75); Director, Southern Regional Centre, Indian Council of Social Science Research (1978-82); Vice-Chancellor of University of Hyderabad (1986-93).
BHK has written over 25 books and over 120 research papers, both in English and Telugu which include Telugu Verbal Bases: A Comparative and Descriptive Study , Comparative Dravidian Linguistics: Current Perspectives , The Dravidian Languages . Gold Nuggets: An Anthology of Selected Post-independence Telugu Short Stories in English Translation (ed. with C. Vijayasree).
One only wishes the saga of BHK continues forever.
