Odia on Thursday became the sixth Indian language of the country to get ‘classical language’ status. The Union Cabinet approved the long-pending demand of Odisha for according the classical tag to Odia which now puts it in the same league as Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. It is the first in the Indo-Aryan group of languages to get the status.
Last year in September, the State Government had requested the Centre to place the recommendations of the committee of linguistic experts, who had favoured classical status to Odia language, before the Union Cabinet for approval. Prior to that, the State Government had submitted a 500-page report to the Centre on its demand for classical status to Odia language.
The report was compiled by an 11-member committee constituted by the State Government comprising eminent litterateurs, linguists and historians. The expert committee, headed by noted litterateur and founder director of Central Institute of Indian Languages Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, was formed on January 16 this year.
As the matter remained pending at the Centre for seven months, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik recently wrote to Union Culture Minister Chandresh Kumari Katoch with a request to expedite the formalities. Besides, Congress Rajya Sabha member Rama Chandra Khuntia had also taken up the matter with Union Minister of State in the PMO V Narayanasamy, the Union Culture Minister, Union Cabinet Secretary A Seth and Union Culture Secretary Rabindra Singh.
Pattanayak said classical tag to Odia is a huge achievement. “But it remains to be seen how effective this recognition is in generating interest among people towards our mother tongue.
These days, Odia is not used as the official language in any of the sectors, be it education or even Government offices.
This apart, the Government should ensure that the right kind of research is done in the language and not just for namesake,” the litterateur said.
Culture Minister Maheswar Mohanty said apart from the symbolic value, the status would help popularise the language whose use is becoming restricted.
This would help in increasing research and bring back its use in the education system.
“With this recognition, the State will get financial aid for setting up a centre of excellence for research in the language. Besides, two scholars in the language will get two major awards for their work in the language. We will also request the University Grants Commission to create professional chairs for classical languages for scholars of eminence in the language,” Culture Secretary Arvind Padhee said.