2 days ago
From The Hindu, August 19, 1975: Jatti suggests use of Nagari as common script
New Delhi, Aug. 18: The Vice-President, Mr. B.D. Jatti, to-day pleaded for the use of Nagari script as an effective instrument to bring about unity, understanding and integration between different regions.
He said the use of Nagari script as the link between the South Indian languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and between the southern and northern languages would prove of the utmost benefit both to the south and to the north.
Inaugurating the Nagari Lipi Parishad here, Mr. Jatti said the South Indian languages were close to each other but were almost rigidly confined to their respective regions, because of difference in script. For a similar reason northerners were unable to understand Malayalam or Kannada even though 70 per cent of the words in these languages were in Sanskrit.
Mr. Jatti said the Devnagari script was currently in use in the languages of Marathi and Hindi and with slight variations this script was being used in many other languages prevalent in the north. It was also used in the ancient languages of Sanskrit, Ardharmagadhi and Pali.
'It need hardly be said that the Nagari script is not needed to learn one's own language but to learn a language other than one's own. This is necessary if we are to be united and conscious of our common literary and philosophic heritage,' he observed.
It had been widely recognised that Devnagari had advantages as a script which roman and other scripts did not possess. In it there was no ambiguity in utterance as there was no divergence between spelling and pronunciation.
