Hyderabad, Feb 21: Sanskrit which was once said to be the language of the Gods, is almost a dead language now. Excepting some news bulletins in the All India Radio, no one speaks that language. Even students opting for Sanskrit in colleges, as scoring marks in the language would help build a good aggregate, are not writing that subject in Devanagari script.

The language of Valmiki, Vedavyasa, Dandi and Kalidasa, which was the mother of most Indian languages has died because people no longer speak it.

Is Telugu also going to be dead soon?

Today is the International Mother Language Day. The day was proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nationals Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1999, “to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”.

Today we find the pathetic situation that people are feeling that speaking Telugu is a sign of illiteracy. Even beggars making their children call them mummy and daddy shows the glamour we have for the language of the aggressors who ruled us illegitimately, and left behind this false glamour for their language.

It is the feeling of the Indians that wide vistas in educations and career open only through English. There is also the ill-conceived feeling that there was no scope for higher learning through Telugu.

English is however not the universal language. In Russia, France, Germany, China, Japan and several other advanced countries, the entire teaching process is only in their language and not English. Then why is this special glamour for English among Indians?

Noted writer Yandamuri Veerendranath who is also an education counselor said that when he asked a B.Tech., student if he could write the Telugu alphabets, the answer was “No”. The student said that he was never taught the Telugu alphabets.

This is the sad state of the Telugu language, known as the Italian of the East and lauded by the Vizianagar emperor Krishnadevaraya who said “Desabhashalandu Telugu Lessa (Telugu is the best of Indian languages).

Why this gross negligence of our mother language?

Tamils and Kannadigas venerate their languages in the neighboring states of Tamilnadu and Karnataka. They have researched and evolved a system where every transaction could be done without using English words. We have no Telugu word for “Ticket”. They call it “Payanachittu” in Tamil. As they have developed their language and enriched it further, Tamil is flourishing. While here we find the negative. All files originate in English and circulate in the foreign language. Schools no longer teach Telugu. Learning the language is deemed an insult or beneath one’s dignity and calling.

Rulers and education policy makers should think seriously about this issue and take steps though not to enrich the language, to at least see that it would not die a slow and painful death.