Tulu gets official Wikipedia page, but Mumbai linguists say more is needed

Sitting in his Sunkadakatte home in Bengaluru Dr UB Pavanaja still recalls the moment when he was at the WikiConference India 2016 in Chandigarh earlier this month Academicians from all over India had gathered at the event to share their views about issues related to India on Wikipedia While the talks were still in progress Katherine Maher executive director Wikimedia Foundation USA paused to make an announcementFrom left Tulu Wikipedian Bharathesha Alasandemajalu Katherine Maher executive director Wikimedia Foundation Dr UB Pavanaja and Dr Vishvanatha Badikana during the Wikiconference 2016 in Chandigarh this monthldquoThe Tulu Wikipedia page has just gone liverdquo she boomed into the microphone ldquoIt was a moment of great joy because we were working on this project for the last eight yearsrdquo says Pavanaja programme manager Indian languages at the Centre for Internet and Society Bengaluru and one of the mentors of Tulu WikipediaUNESCO has listed Tulu as one of the endangered languages which is at the risk of falling out of use because it has a few surviving speakers Pavanaja says the Wikipedia page is a medium for people to access material on Tulu ldquoToday itrsquos the first page that appears on Google so the accessibility of the language will hopefully increase manifoldrdquo Pavanaja saysSukesh Shetty owner of Hindmata Hotel in Tardeo is part of the Bunta Sangha an organisation that is rallying for the Tuluspeaking Bunt community Shetty feels the lack of availability of Tulu literature and movies in Mumbai has led to a disinterest in the language in MumbaiThe Mumbai connectSukesh Shetty owner of Hindmata Hotel in Tardeo who is continuing the tradition of running a restaurant business started by his grandfather feels his connection with the language is restricted to his interaction at home ldquoI ensure I speak in Tulu with my children But my fouryearold speaks Marathi better than Tulu because we have a Maharashtrian maidrdquo he laughsThe 46yearold is part of the Bunta Sangha an organisation devoted towards rallying the Tuluspeaking Bunt communityShetty feels the lack of availability of Tulu literature and movies in Mumbai are responsible for the declining interest in the language ldquoYou donrsquot get to watch any Tulu films because they are never screened here We donrsquot even have a channel that telecasts Tulu movies But the Wikipedia page is a step aheadrdquo he saysThe Tulu Wikipedia page tcywikipediaorg went live this month Currently there are around 200 registered users of the pageAccessing TuluWikipedia is currently available in 22 Indian languages including Assamese Bishnupriya Kashmiri Konkani Newari Odia Pali and Urdu among others With the inclusion of Tulu the count has gone up to 23 ldquoThere are about 200 registered users editors of Tulu Wikipedia On an average we have around eight to 10 active editors Dr Vishwanatha Badikana a Kannada professor and engineer Bharatesha Alasandemajalu are the highest contributorsrdquo says Dr PavanajaTulu Wikipedia was in ldquoincubationrdquo since 2008 This term is used to describe similar online encyclopedias which are still waiting to go ldquoliverdquo ldquoTulu is written in the Kannada script but the language is believed to be 2000 years old But to create a Wiki page we needed to prove that itrsquos a classical language and deserves recognition We had to submit sizeable amount of literature ancient manuscripts and literary work for the language to qualifyrdquo he saysDr Badikana who works as a History professor at St Alosious College Mangalore University says they had to generate awareness about the language through workshops ldquoTulu is predominantly an oral language and hence people donrsquot take interest in documenting it With Kannada being staterecognised itrsquos more popular We had to hold writing workshops in Tulu to motivate peoplerdquo he saysShimantur Chandrahas SuvarnaA languishing scriptOf late Tulu mdash believed to be one of the oldest Dravidian languages mdash has been generating great interest amongst linguists and academicians alike The excavation of an ancient manuscript Tulu Devimahatme a prose work like the Mahabharata from the 15th century and two epic poems written in 17th century namely Sri Bhagavata and Kaveri by language experts in the last few years have revived interest in the languageHowever a major grouse in the community has been its noninclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution which lists the official languages of the country Presently it recognises 22 languages with Tulu being the only Dravidian language to have been left outProfessor Tukaram Poojary who was instrumental in setting up the Rani Abbakka Tulu Research Centre in Bantwal Karnataka in 1995 has sent a memorandum to Pranab Mukherjee President of India for the inclusion of the language in the Eight ScheduleldquoScholars like the nineteenth missionarylinguist Bishop Robert Caldwell have called this language lsquopeculiar and very interestingrsquordquo says Poojary According to him Tulu is one of the most highly developed languages in the Dravidian family ldquoBut it never received any royal patronisation as was seen with other Dravidian languages such as Telugu Tamil or Malayalamrdquo he saysShimantur Chandrahas Suvarna a popular Tulu writer based in Borivli has been diligently writing short stories poems and novels in the language for the last 40 years ldquoAlthough I write in both Kannada and Tulu I have been focusing more on the latter because if we donrsquot speak and document the language it will dierdquo says the 61yearold who moved to Mumbai in 1979 after his father set up an Udipi hotel called Hotel Sadanand in MazgaonSuvarna feels the lack of serious literature before the 15th century has hampered Tulursquos claim as one of the legitimate South Indian languages ldquoIn the first half of the 19th century the German missionaries popularised the language They produced the Tulu lexicon and a TuluEnglish dictionary But after the Christian missionaries started printing the Bible and related literature in Kannada the old script was discarded and the Kannada script was adopted to write Tulurdquo he saidToday there are no books or literature in the Tulu script and there are only a handful of tuluvas who can read the script says SuvarnaAccording to him during the last three years there has been a surge in literary interest with more than 100 writers contributing articles poems to a quarterly journal published by the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy ResearchLast year the University of Mumbai in collaboration with the Kannada department and the Rani Abbakka Tulu Research Centre held a series of lectures on the inclusion of Tulu in the Eighth Schedule Professor GN Upadhya head of the department of Kannada at MU who was part of the series feels the issue has now become political ldquoTherersquos no political willingness on part of the MPs and MLAs to lobby for this language because it doesnrsquot constitute a vote bankrdquo he says