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Campaign to get official language status for Tulu gains momentum on social media

ByArun Dev
Jun 17, 2021 05:08 PM IST

Tulu is spoken in the Tulunadu region, which consists of coastal Karnataka and parts of Kerala. However, according to the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, published by Unesco, Tulu is now considered a vulnerable language.

Bengaluru: The demand for official language status for Tulu was trending on social media in Karnataka on Sunday. Spoken by over 1.8 million people in the state, Tulu language is yet to get its due, activists said, adding that the social media campaign was part of a larger movement.

The campaign has been reignited as the Tulu film industry is celebrating its 50th anniversary.(HT Photo)
The campaign has been reignited as the Tulu film industry is celebrating its 50th anniversary.(HT Photo)

Even though Tulu is considered one of the Pancha Dravida Bhashas (the five prominent languages of South India), it never found a place in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution as an official language, while the other four – Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu – made it to the list.

Tulu is spoken in the Tulunadu region, which consists of coastal Karnataka and parts of Kerala. However, according to the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, published by Unesco, Tulu is now considered a vulnerable language.

Mahesh Mulki, one of the volunteers who organised the online campaign, said more than 400,000 tweets demanding official status for Tulu were published on Sunday. “This was to show that there is a big demand for this (official recognition). People from various organisations and in their private capacity, have joined this campaign,” he said.

Mulki added that apart from the social media campaign, they have also approached legislators and parliamentarians from the region to highlight the demand. “One of our first demands is to make Tulu an official language in Karnataka itself. For which, the MLAs and MPs have agreed to take up the matter with the government,” Mulki said.

Dayanand Kattalsar, president of Tulu Sahithya Academy, said Tulu is often misrepresented as a dialect, which is far from the truth. “The script and the language are different. One of the reasons why we are demanding official status is so that we are able to preserve our identity and our literature,” he said.

Kattalsar added that there is a big push to promote the language in the region where the language is spoken. The Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy has been promoting Tulu as the third optional language in over 200 schools in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts in coastal Karnataka, he added.

The campaign has been reignited as the Tulu film industry is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Enna Thangadi in 1971 was the first movie made in Tulu and now, more than 10 movies are made in the language every year. Devadas Kapikad, one of the prominent Tulu theatre artistes and filmmaker, said movies have been a uniting factor for this movement.

“In Tulu speaking regions, there is an increasing demand for good Tulu movies. There are issues with getting theatres whenever a big Kannada movies release, but people’s response gives us teeth to demand more screens. Over the years, many youngsters are coming with fresh ideas to make good Tulu movies and it is inspiring. However, the industry has been hit badly due to the pandemic,” Kapikad said.

According to experts, the irony is that the end credit of Tulu movies always rolls out in the Kannada script. Although the script of Tulu is available, it is not very popular, and people continue to write it in the Kannada script.

“Tulu was predominately a spoken language, and as Kannada was taught from a very young age, the practice of writing Tulu in Kannada became common. Very few in the Tulunadu region can read or write in the Tulu script,” said Tulu writer Vaman Nandavar.

However, there are some developments on this front as well. An attempt is currently underway to revive and standardise the Tulu script. At the same time, a Tulu script keyboard has been created to make writing Tulu on the computer easier.

Activists argued that official status for the language will help in reviving Tulu, which is struggling to find its place in the language politics of the state.

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