Written by Pathi Venkata Thadhagath
The Karnataka government is likely to make Tulu the second official language of the state after Kannada. A committee has been already constituted regarding it and it will soon submit the report to the state government.
Karnataka’s energy and culture minister Sunil Kumar tweeted, “Regarding the declaration of Tulu as the second official language of Karnataka, a committee has been formed under the leadership of Dr. Mohan Alva to conduct a study and give a report with appropriate recommendations.”
The demand to declare Tulu as the second official language is longstanding and in 2008, former CM BS Yediyurappa also said that Tulu will be declared as the official language. There were also many campaigns regarding the need to make Tulu the official language as a large section of the people speak the language in coastal Karnataka region such as Udupi and Mangaluru districts.
Apart from Kannada and Tulu, languages like Kodava, Byari and Koraga are also spoken in different areas of the state. Currently, there are 22 official languages in India which include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.
