Writers for making future Sammelanas more worthy

KALABURAGI: Even as the three-day Akhil Bharat Kannada Sahitya Sammelana held at Kalaburagi was a grand success with an estimated 4 lakh people attending the event, writers and academicians have made suggestions on making the annual literary convention more meaningful in the future. Central University of Karnataka Vice-Chancellor HM Maheshwaraiah on Saturday said the Kannada Sahitya Parishat (KSP) should think of bringing in a sea change to the whole structure of the event.

He said the chief minister should be invited to the concluding ceremony instead of the inaugural so that the head of the state government can attend the open house session in which resolutions are adopted on the development of the state language and burning issues. It will enable the chief minister to speak on the resolutions taken at the conference, he opined. Maheshwaraiah said ministers or senior officials of the government should be invited to the symposiums or seminars during the Sammelana so that they can address the concerns raised at the event.

Senior writer Prof Vasant Kustagi who helped in selecting topics for the symposiums in the just concluded Sammelana suggested that the Parishat should list out all the resolutions passed since 1914 and find out how many of them are implemented. They should separately enlist the resolutions which have not been implemented and submit it to the government along with suggestions to materialise them. He said the literary body should constantly pressure the government to implement the resolutions within a period of one year so that it can adopt new resolutions in the subsequent Sammelanas. 

“As KSP represents 6 crore Kannadigas, it has all the right to adopt resolutions every year and pressure the government to implement them,” he said. On resolutions adopted at the Sammelana this year with regard to the border dispute with Maharashtra, Kustagi said Karnataka should urge the Union Government to make the neighbouring state accept the report of the Mahajan Commission which was formed on the condition that both the parties should accept its recommendations. 

He said instead of making Kannada mandatory in primary schools, the government should make learning of three languages (state language, mother tongue and a foreign language like English, French or German) compulsory and allot equal marks to them. Parishat president Manu Balegar said the literary body has been implementing the resolutions which it can and asking the government materialise the rest.