A response to the article by Prakash Belawadi: While I appreciate the pro-Kannada stand taken, I would like to point out a few errors which might have inadvertently crept into the article
Firstly, Belawadi has said that ‘a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in May 2014, held that the state did not have the power to impose the regional language on linguistic minorities.’ I hereby quote the relevant portion of the judgement (extracted from http://bit.ly/1vyKk4p): “Article 350A therefore cannot be interpreted to empower the State to compel a linguistic minority to choose its mother tongue only as a medium of instruction in a primary school established by it in violation of this fundamental right under Article 30(1). We accordingly hold that State has no power under Article 350A of the Constitution to compel the linguistic minorities to choose their mother tongue only as a medium of instruction in primary schools.” Clearly, the Supreme Court is not speaking about imposing “regional language on linguistic minorities” as Belawadi mentions.
I must mention here that the case the state government had put forth before the Supreme Court is that all children should be taught in their ‘mother tongue’ at the primary school level. By ‘mother tongue’, the state government did not mean only Kannada. Instead, it gave the option for all the 22 languages recognized by the Constitution of India, including English, as the medium of instruction in case the child’s mother tongue was English. The stand of the government had received immense support from many leading Kannada writers and thinkers.
Secondly, Belawadi says “Dr Devanur Mahadeva has been demanding that Kannada be made the sole medium of instruction in Karnataka at the primary school level.” I am sorry to say Belawadi is way off the mark. If he had bothered to read the small booklet written by Mahadeva (about 1,200 words) and distributed by activists at the Kannada Sahitya Sammelana, Belawadi would have come to know that Dr Mahadeva has insisted that the medium of instruction at the primary school level should be the ‘mother tongue’ of the child. In fact, he makes it a point to mention that, in Karnataka, the medium of instruction can also be in Tulu, Konkani, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil, etc., including Kannada. He also mentions that English should be introduced from the first standard itself as a language. One fails to understand what made Belawadi presume that Dr Mahadeva was insisting only on Kannada.
Thirdly, Belawadi says Dr Mahadeva has asked the “Parishat to bring pressure on the state government to prevent the setting up of primary schools by private institutions”. Again, I regret to say Belawadi is wrong. What Dr Mahadeva has stressed for is this: “everyone should bring political pressure and ensure that the Constitution of India is amended so that ‘common schools’ become a reality.
Government and aided and unaided private schools should be made to strictly follow the ‘common school’ policy.” Clearly, amending the Constitution of India does not come under the ambit of the government of Karnataka.
Finally, Belawadi says “women speakers at the Kannada literary meet slammed S L Bhyrappa’s latest novel Yaana over his treatment of progressive female characters. Yaana was the most popular book in the Kannada language (in 2014).”
As one of those women speakers who took part in the meet and spoke about Mr Bhyrappa, I would like to clarify a couple of points.
I immensely admire Mr Bhyrappa’s novel Gruhabhanga (written in 1970). The travails of the protagonist of that novel — Nanjamma — will wrench any heart. However, 40 years after Gruhabhanga, Bhyrappa penned another novel Kavalu (published in 2010) in which he portrays modern, educated women in extremely poor light. Bhyrappa concludes Kavalu by implying that in order to have a happy domestic life, men should marry mentally challenged girls instead of educated modern girls. If that was not regressive enough, in his latest novel Yaana (published in 2014), one woman character says, “Lots of women desire to be raped. To say that a raped woman is not sexually satisfied is wrong. The rapist gives up after fulfilling his sexual desire. Instead, the rapist should understand that he should also satisfy her sexual needs.”
In these times, when all of us are shocked at the increasing number of rape cases on women and innocent children, it is shocking that a leading writer in Kannada pens such thoughts. Is it any wonder that most of the women speakers at the Kannada Sahitya Sammelana expressed their outrage against Bhyrappa?
