Demands for Tulu in 8th schedule, Heggade plans Delhi meet

Mangalore Today News Network

Dharmasthala, Dec 4, 2016: Dharmadhikari, Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala, D Veerendra Heggade, has invited all members of Parliament from Karnataka for consultative meeting on inclusion of Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The meeting will be held at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi on December 7, a communique for the Sri Kshetra stated, adding Heggade will seek cooperation of the MPs in a collective endeavour to get recognition for Tulu language.

M Janaki Brahmawar, chairperson, Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, members, registrar and other stakeholders will take part in the meeting. To be chaired by Heggade, the meeting is continuation to an August 31 meeting of a delegation led by the dharmadhikari with PM Narendra Modi, and home minister Rajnath Singh in this regard. They had impressed on Modi and Singh the need to include Tulu, one of the five Dravidian languages, into the Eighth Schedule.

Both Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh, who had responded positively to the issue, had assured the delegation that the Union government will take a positive view on their request shortly. Heggade had explained to the PM and home minister, that the demand to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule has been a long pending demand of people of the coastal region.

The delegation had drawn the attention of the PM and home minister to over 2,800-year history of Tulu. In their discussions, it was pointed out that using techniques of Lexico-Statistics, scholars concluded that this language was developed as an independent language since 8th century BC. Highly stylized classical literature has also developed in Tulu language. However, despite this pedigree, Tulu is not there in the Eighth Schedule, which currently has 22 scheduled languages.

While 18 of the languages belong to other parts of India, remaining four languages — Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada belong to South India. Recently, Tulu Wikipedia was activated, where over 1,500 articles were uploaded.

The delegation had also handed over a detailed memorandum to the PM and home minister.