MARGAO: Global Romi Lipi Abhiyan has been formed on the Historic Opinion Poll Day. The office bearers are Kennedy Afonso President, Joaquim Faleiro Vice President, Michael Jude Gracias Secretary, and Ansh Bandedkar Treasurer, and other 12 executive members. This society Global Romi Lipi Abhiyan, is primarily formed, to unite all Konknni people and associations, together on one platform, and fight to give Roman Script its rightful place in the Official Language Act. This is a split group of the Global Konkani Forum which was formed earlier.
In a press release Global Romi Lipi Abhiyan said, “It was our realisation that the Devnagri users were hardly 12 percent of the Konknni speaking diaspora, but they controlled the Konknni language, by manipulating the Sahitya Akademi Advisory Board, and the Goa Govt giving official recognition to only Devnagri in the official language Act of 1987. The other 83 percent Konknni speaking people , wrote in Roman, Kannada, Malyalam and Perso Arabic scripts. However, the Konkani diaspora were a divided house and if the rich diversity of the Konknni language had to be protected, the need to unite all Scripts of Konknni, to unitedly fight this discrimination at all levels was the need of the hour.
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The new organisation stated, “Hence we met Eric Ozario in Mangalore, to cement the ties of unity , among Karnataka Konknni Associations. Our efforts led to three Konknni Associations of Mangalore coming together, ( Maand Sobhann , Poetica, and Karnataka Lekhak Sangh)with the idea to hold the first ever Maha Sabha in Goa, a historic event that would have brought all 5 Konknni Scripts together on one platform to discuss the future of Konknni language and all its scripts.
Global Romi Lipi Abhiyan added, “However, a coterie of few members in the group we worked did not subscribe to the unification of forces and begun sabotaging our efforts of holding the Maha Sabha, we were shocked to note that a few members of GKF , were averse to sending invitations to prominent associations of Goa working in the field of konkani, for their own personal vendetta of hatred and vengeance. This led to the sabotaging of the entire activities planned, including the Maha Sabha. Under such environment, there was no hope for the Romi Script movement to grow, and therefore there we felt the need for an all inclusive movement to fight the Romi konknni Script issue, by embracing all Goans, all Konknni lovers, and all Konknni Associations spanning across the Indian peninsula and settled all over the globe.
