'Marathi official' demand out of ignorance: Bhembre
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 11 February 2013 19:55 IST
Adv Uday Bhembre
Eminent Konkani writer Uday Bhembre says the demand to make Marathi official language of Goa is made out of ignorance.
He has urged the government not to touch the official language as the issue is resolved after state-wide agitation and deliberations.
He also said the Konkani Parishad is not opposed to any script of Konkani, but working towards one Devnagari script ultimately.
Demands are emerging from different corners once again to make Marathi also the official language of Goa while granting official status to Roman script in Konkani, besides Devnagari.
The issue of making Marathi language and Roman script in Konkani came up during the press conference held today regarding the All India Konkani Sahitya Sammelan.
Bhembre said the criteria for official language is the one spoken by majority people and neither education nor literature.
He said the same criteria adopted while making Hindi of majority-spoken the official language of the country was extended to all the states while granting official language status to the state languages.
He pointed out that Karnataka not only has Kannada speaking population but also Tamil, Tulu, Konkani etc. But Kannada is the official language since it is spoken by the large majority.
Similarly, he observed that Marathi is the only official language of Maharashtra though the state has sizeable population speaking Gujarati etc.
In a similar manner, Goa's large majority speaks Konkani though new settlements speak other languages like Kannada, Urdu, Hindi etc and thus Konkani is the only official language of Goa.
"The issue is resolved in 1987 after a long-drawn out people's agitation and I don't think the government would reopen the issue", felt Bhembre.
Regarding the issue of Roman script, Bhembre said Konkani had five scripts used in four states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra.
However, he said, the use of Malayalam script in Kerala and Perso-Arabic script in Karnataka has been stopped by those same people, who now write and even teach their children in Devnagari Konkani.
Tanaji Halarnkar of All India Konkani Parishad said the Parishad has never stopped anybody writing in any script, but has taken a firm stand that it would eventually arrive at one common script of Devnagari.
"This has been our stand for the last 75 years and the spread of Devnagari has increased due to the tireless efforts taken by the Parishad to bring together the whole Konkani community under one script", added Halarnkar.
Aravind Bhatikar, chairman of the Konkani Parishad, refuted the argument that Roman script helps the users of internet.
While admitting that the older generation found it difficult to learn Devnagari script for computers, the younger generation widely uses Devnagari script on computer, social networking sites like Facebook and even while writing emails.
Jose , GOA(UK)::
Sorry ,but Mr PArrikar has put a "DO NOT DISTURB" sign on his door.
He is too busy with the Mining issue,desperate to get Mopa constructed and find additional measures in the Lokuykta to protect his corrupt Ministers & Bureaucrats.
Forget Zero Tolerance....instead try Zero results.