Dharwad Sahitya Sambhrama, a prestigious literary event, was inaugurated by Jnanapith awardee UR Ananthamurthy in Dharwad on Friday.
The survival of Kannada as a language and the influence that English has had over it were the focal points in the inaugural session of the event. Noted critic CN Ramachandran emphasised that the language, “which never fails to provide food for its speakers, will loose its importance as autonomous colleges are shutting down optional Kannada department.
Taking exception of media such as newspapers and art movies, he analysed that Kannada graduates are becoming jobless in the current scenario. Though he stressed on the need to adopt Kannada as the medium of instruction, he remarked that those educated in English medium have contributed considerably to their mother tongue.
“Kannada has no future and it will become a museum language in next 50 years. English medium schools should not be treated as our enemies, but they should be instructed to adopt Kannada as the first or second language in their syllabus,” he remarked.
Responding to Ramachandran, Ananthamurthy stressed on the need for unified education system and classifying languages as home language, street language and balcony language. “In the context of Karnataka, Kannada is street language and a person who comes here for schooling should be taught in Kannada. Creation of knowledge should happen in street language. English is balcony language here and it should be taught as spoken language. Though it is not a scientifically developed language, Indians won’t learn English properly and they just blindly follow it. Eventually, they will loose their native language,” he said.
Challenges faced by young writers
A session on the challenges faced by young writers provided a platform for hot discussion between youngsters and experienced litterateurs during the Dharwad Sahitya Sambhrama in Dharwad on Friday.
Presenting a key note on the topic, journalist Raghunath Ch Ha sparked off a debate when he said his counterparts are filled with false confidence owing to the flood of awards that are given out in the current scenario. “It has created egoism and false confidence among writers, which is not good for the growth of literature,” he said.
Gazal writer Chidanand Sali emphasised that “young writers are silently observing the goodness of rightists organisations and the badness of some leftist organisations”.
Story writer TS Gorwar alleged that works expressing feelings of lower communities are being ignored.
Sali stated that literary movements curb works that have a different or opposing view on them.
When the discussion turned to the usage of local dialects, veteran scholars like MM Kalburgi, OL Nagabhushanswamy, Giraddi Govindraj, Chandrashekhar Patil (Champa) and Hema Pattanshetti spoke in favour and contrast of using different dialects in literary works.
Taking the example of Devanur Mahadev’s novel Kusuma Baale, which was termed as a literary innovation and was honoured with various awards, Kalburgi and Champa said a similar experiment of by Chennanna Walikar was played down by critics.
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