Tale of a tongue
On the weekend, the lobby of Romi Konkani backers made a point. They came out with a book specially focussed on the literature of this form of writing Konkani. The book is authored by the prolific government official-scholar, the late Prof. Dr. Olivinho Gomes, whose life unfortunately ended too early, not long after he got into retirement and was offering an consistent output of academic, popular and creative writing.
Dr. Gomes’ book is published by the Romi-supporting Dalgado Konknni Akademi, and is a must-read for anyone, whether a Romi supporter or not.
The fact that it is published in English makes it accessible to a wider audience, which is a good thing in itself. It is priced at a reasonable Rs 190, and is titled ‘Konkani Literature in (The) Roman Script: A Brief History’.
In his introduction written in March 2009, Dr Gomes uses strong words to say he took on this “daunting task” as a “labour of love, to dispel the cobwebs of ignorance and prejudice that have blinded the detractors of Konkani in the Roman script to heap scorn on it without even reading what is being written in it.”
The Romi-Devanagari dispute of recent years is unfortunate to say the least. Goa Today editor Vinayak Naik was outspoken, at the release function, in criticising those who were hostile to Romi getting its place under the sun.
In his usual, academically sound yet very reader-friendly style, the former acting vice-chancellor of the Goa University Dr Gomes makes his point strongly. Romi has been around for long, contributed much in adding to the diversity and richness of Konkani writing, and has indeed kept the community of Konkani speakers connected even in places like Karachi, Africa and Mumbai.
But, we believe a language cannot get ahead by antagonisms or by blocking others. If the Devanagari camp might be accused of the latter, the Romi supporters sometimes speak with the bitterness — maybe justified — that comes from years of feeling sidelined. As Dr Gomes put it, “No amount of crumbs of grants thrown at it, can undo this unconstitutional injustice that has banned it from government jobs and cultural institutions that are supposed to represent it, for the past twenty-one years now.”
Ironically — and this is not meant to be a criticism — using the government grants it has received of late, the Romi networks, such as the DKA and the Goa Tiatr Academy, have gone into an overdrive of activity. They’ve been holding cultural programmes, book releases, contests, theatre events and more. This is the way to go ahead, to make a language relevant to its speakers… and not just stop there, but to go beyond that.
At the programme on Saturday, some speakers felt Konkani needs to compete with languages like English. There was a fear voiced about the increasing role of English, whether it felt by way of birthday songs, or wedding invites. (Some years back, the target was English education.)
But can a language grow by raising we-are-in-danger slogans? Does it make sense to focus on a state of siege, and raise linguistic Berlin Walls to keep out other languages?
Konkani — whether Romi or Devanagari — is rich in many ways. Specially in the spoken idiom, in the cultural field, in the creative sphere. But much is still lacking when it comes to encourage the production of new ideas, specially in non-fiction, through Konkani. Likewise, so much remains to be done by way of translations to and from Konkani.
Konkani cannot, and should not, remain an island. It needs to build bridges with other languages, exchange its riches with them, and grow in turn. One pressing task is the need for more language-learning material in Konkani, whichever script. Similarly, a lot remains to be done to boost the visibility of the language in cyberspace. On this front, Mangaloreans and Konkani communities from the south-west coast of India have probably done better. Besides this, given the fact that Goans have among the highest out-migration ratios in the world, building up bridges between Konkani’s “lost tribes” — new generations who have lost touch with the language — is an especially important task.
