Any takers of Tulu textbooks in Dakshin Kannada?

Express News

Mangalore, 31 May 2011: Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy president Palthadi Ramakrishna Achar is spending sleepless nights worrying about the reaction that awaits 12,000 Tulu textbooks in the new academic year.

 

Having achieved a feat in getting the Department of State Educational Research and Training to approve Tulu as an optional language from Class VI onwards, the academy’s euphoria was punctured by the muted reaction from society and teachers.

 

Explaining the objective to introduce Tulu as an optional language, he said, "Due to a ’communication gap’, the present generation has stopped learning Tulu. In order to prove wrong UNESCO’s prediction on Tulu becoming a dying language, we had decided on textbooks."

 

 

"After a lot of effort, the academy printed 8,000 textbooks to be distributed free of cost among students in the previous academic year," Achar said, adding their accomplishment was noticed by academicians in Mandya, but had gone unnoticed in their own backyard.

 

However, it is the lack of enthusiasm among parents and headmasters that pained Achar. ’Tulu bodchi (we need no Tulu)’ was the common refrain when they had begun approaching schools with the offer to teach Tulu.

 

Recollecting an incident, he said Moodbidri Block Education Officer had said ’there was no indent for Tulu text books from any school’.

 

"Can you believe it came from Moodbidri, which is regarded as the cultural capital of Tulu?" he said at a recent programme organised to release the first CD of Tulu Kritis in Carnatic music in an academy premises here.

 

"12,000 text books will be arriving this week and I am unsure of the reaction this time," Achar rued.