Your blood should boil with pride when you think about mother tongue, exhorted Justice V R Krishna Iyer during a passionate speech on the ‘Message of the Malayalam day’.
He was speaking at the official Malayalam Day Celebrations held at the district collectorate on Thursday.
Delivering the message, Krishna Iyer said every form of knowledge must be made available in Malayalam if the language has to survive.
“Today, even if we are sentenced to death, we won’t know about it unless we know English, for the court order is available only in English,” said Krishna Iyer, while emphasising that everything from judgments to government orders to every form of knowledge must be available in Malayalam for the common man to use it.
“Making available all the information and knowledge in the local language is an essential part of democracy. ‘Swaraj’ is not complete unless we make all our information available in the local language,” he said. The former minister said the language must also able to adapt with time. He lauded the establishment of a Malayalam University but emphasised that unless there is pride in the language, it won’t move forward.
Kendra Sahitya Academy winner M K Sanu said that for Malayalam to survive, the common man’s version of the language must gain importance. He lauded the work of the Christian missionaries who chose the common language for the translation of the Bible and the catechism. If a language has to develop, the version used by the common man must be brought about and used.
The writer said, however, institutions will not be able to make any significant contribution to the development of language. “What is important is the interest and passion among the people. Herman Gundert was able to single-handedly create an entire Malayalam dictionary within a span of 10 years, a feat which our state institutions have not been able to achieve so many decades after independence. He did not have his eyes on any award or any encouragement from any university or even the hope to be remembered by the generations, the effort was taken due to the sheer love for the language,” he said.
Veteran journalist K M Roy, District Collector P I Sheikh Pareeth and artist Marad also spoke at the event.