Kannada centre of excellence to soon go live

Three years after Kannada was conferred the ‘classical tag,’ the Central government has finally agreed to the proposals sent by the State Karnataka Kannada Development Authority to set up a centre of excellence for Kannada at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore.

The establishment of this elite Kannada centre of excellence was held back for the last three years because of an objection filed by a DMK activist, questioning the validity of the formation of the committee to award ‘classical tag’ to Kannada and Telugu.

“The CIIL will now prepare grounds for establishing centres of excellence in both Kannada and Telugu,” said chairman of the Kannada Development Authority (KDA) Mukyamantri Chandru.

The centre of excellence will take up propagation of the classical languages, research and study, and also promote and preserve the classical languages inside and outside their speech territories. The copy of the order of the ministry of human resources department of higher education in New Delhi stated that the centre of excellence will also take up documentation and digitisation of manuscripts, in addition to creating avenues for interdisciplinary research involving related studies of numismatics, epigraphy, archaeology and ancient history and explore classical music and dance forms and link classical languages and modern technology for preservation.

The centre will also take up translation of Kannada classical and modern scripts into English and other European languages.

This will open up a new gamut of activities.

“For long, the Kannada centre of excellence has remained a dream for scholars,” said Chandru. The Kannada Nudi Theru will be flagged off from Sullia on Wednesday by chief minister DV Sadananada Gowda.