The 10th district Kannada Sahitya Sammelan began here on Monday expressing concern over issues of indigenous language and culture missing from the dialogues on development.
Delivering the presidential address at the inaugural session, writer Shivamogga Rajendra Chenni said it was a pity that such issues were being omitted from most of the debates on development held on different forums.
Illusion
Such a trend was helping the promotion of a corporate culture and creating an illusion that it was necessary to achieve development in modern times, he said.
“Development models based on Europe’s monistic culture will prove disastrous for a pluralistic society like India. Moreover, experiences in recent times have shown that such development models will ruin the life of the marginalised sections and fail to address their woes.”
Pluralistic model
Mr. Chenni said it was high time that the people of the State, particularly the residents of north Karnataka, demanded a development model that would be complementary for the promotion of the local culture and language which was pluralistic in nature.
He said the Supreme Court order on medium of instruction would harm the interests of vernacular languages in the near future.
“It may help those classes which are reaping dividends from the policies of globalisation. There is a danger of all vernacular languages losing their official language status and getting reduced to a kitchen language. All linguistic groups of India should consider this seriously and chalk out plans to save the Indian languages,” he said.
Bifurcation opposed
Earlier, inaugurating the sammelan, writer Guruling Kapase opposed the demand for the bifurcation of the State.
He said focus should be on preserving the existing lands in Karnataka. Recently a study team from Maharashtra visited some districts in the State and submitted a report saying that Marathi-speaking people had a majority in 865 villages in Karnataka. A similar study should be conducted from this side and we would have to prepare the list of nearly 1, 100 Kannada majority villages spread over in different districts of Maharashtra, he added.
