The Telugu carnival -- 4th World Telugu Conference -- came to a close here on Saturday night after three days of festivities and literary/cultural programmes, with the response remaining overwhelming till the last minute.
In the end, a sea of humanity thronged the main and all the remaining 10 sub-venues of the WTC in the Veterinary University campus in spite of rain in Tirupati and its vicinity throughout the day, which left the ground slushy.
Whether this was indicative of a new awareness and love for the mother tongue and its culture/heritage, promising a renaissance at least in the near future, will be known in the next few years.
The end result was that more sammelans or avadhanams by poets could be held along with as many mini-conferences on various measures required to ensure the Telugu survival in the face of daily onslaught on it in the Internet age. More than 200 books were released on the occasion and exposure of the language and culture was ensured to the present generation for the first time in the recent years.
At the concluding function, a weaver from Sircilla in Karimnagar district, Nalla Vijay, pulled out a six-metre long decca muslin sari, an age-old weaving art in the State, from a match-box, much to the delight of the vast audience.
The function was delayed by over three hours as Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah had to reach the city by road from Chennai. Messages sent by Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were read out and representatives from countries -- US to Nigeria -- said they were overjoyed at the turnout which was “unseen and unheard of” for a language-based conference.
Resolutions were adopted to compliment Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy for the successful conduct of the WTC, hold the event every five years, organise one in the US in 2017, implement Telugu down to village level, bring academies and Telugu NRI problems under a separate ministry and supply free textbooks to their children.
The Chief Minister complimented all his predecessors, including NTR and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, for efforts they made for the promotion of Telugu. The WTC would be organised down till the mandal level for one year and international convention centres provided to Visakhapatnam and other cities.
Mr. Rosaiah asked Telugus to speak their mother tongue at home and outside, emulating Tamils. Mr. Reddy announced that an AP Bhavan would be built in Chennai on 26 cents of land just allotted for the purpose by the Tamil Nadu government. Union Minister of State for Tourism K. Chiranjeevi appealed to Telugus to replace “mummy-daddy culture” by that of “amma naana”.
Present on the dais were Union HR Minister M. Pallam Raju and a number of Ministers, including Galla Aruna, Vatti Vasanth Kumar, K. Parthasarathy and S. Shailajanath.
