Official language status for Tulu: Govt forms panel

The Karnataka government has constituted a committee under educationist Mohan Alva on declaring Tulu as Karnataka’s second official language.

“The committee has been asked to study and submit a report to the government within a week,” Kannada & Culture Minister V Sunil Kumar said.

The decision to constitute the committee comes with just three months left for the Karnataka Assembly election.

Tulu, spoken especially in the coastal Karnataka region, is said to have a history dating back 2,500 years, making it one of South India’s oldest spoken languages. Tulu speakers have been demanding inclusion of their language in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.

Recognising Tulu as a state language in Karnataka could give a major boost to the demand to have it under the 8th Schedule, which lists official languages of India.

Dr Ganesh Amin Sankamar who is a member of the Tulu committee formed said, "Once the Tulu language is declared as the second official language of the state, then the demand for including Tulu in the 8th schedule will get prominence."

Academics and litterateurs in the Tulu-speaking region have welcomed the move.

Litterateur K Chinnappa Gowda said, "If Tulu becomes the second official language of the state, it will be established as an administrative language as well." The decision will also help in the increase in the recruitment of Tulu teachers, he added.

Writer Purushottama Bilimale said that there have been several examples of states considering more than one language as its official language. "The government's move complements the provision in the Constitution to accept more than one language as the official language of a state," he said.

At present, there are 22 languages under the 8th Schedule: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.