The ROMAN SCRIPT MOVEMENT is now gaining awareness like never before. After the President of the Dalgado Konknni Akademi posted the memorandum on 19th and 20th August 2005 the issue to all the 40 MLAs of Goa Legislative Assembly, and the 3 Members of Parliament representing Goa in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, most MLA's and MP's thus far approached have been "sympathetic" to the cause but when asked to bring the issue during the current session of the House they seem to develop cold feet or pass on the buck - a la " who will bell the cat"
This is the litmus test to ascertain the calibre of our supposedly Goan centric Members of the Legislature and the Members of Parliament. If the MLAs and MP's do not reflect the aspiration of the people of Goa or the vote bank on whom they depend to come to power -- they could as well pack their bags and sit at home --- Excuses of backlash, or too late, etc mean nothing. Whether its the High Command or the Low Command of the Party to decide is all balderdash. For too long the lovers of Konkani in Roman script have been taken for granted ---first by the Konkani porjecho Avaz which had mainly protagonists of the ONLY DEVNAGIRI SCRIPT who provided the "logistics for the movement albeit clandestinely -- while our present MP Mr Churchill Alemao who was made to play the role of "Robinhood" was hoodwinked to compromise on the script. Today he sings another note -- he believes in BOTH SCRIPTS Devnagiri and Roman, but is yet to make a statement on the floor of the Parliament. But notwithstanding the muted silence of our legislators and MPs Goans world wide viz; from Canada, Doha Qatar,Kuwait, Macau, Melbourne, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh,U.A.E., Dubai, U.K Abudhabi, Mumbai, Udupi Karnataka, Pune, U.S.A. The prominent ones like Bishop of Pune, ex Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha Mr Eduardo Martinho Faleiro and associations have rendered great support. Let the emails continue. It is hoped that the Goans world wide will keep up the tempo becaese it is you who have the power to make the legislative members and our Parliamentarians perform on the floor of the Parliament and the Goa Legislative Assembly. This writer has been making efforts to get an MLA to raise a "Calling Attention Motion" and despite initial reluctance the issue is recieving "activeconsideration before the end of the session. Wait and watch for this moment. Meanwhile here is a write up to energise one's thought process on the merits of our movement. It is the endeavour of all those recieving these posts to ensure wide circulations. The members of the RMS (which is a collective of all you lovers of the Roman script beginning with those who have sent emails faxes and letters besides other associations etc) are ready to give clarifications on any doubts raised by the lovers of Konkani in Roman script. Meanwhile there have been requests to send the 3 part report on "Konkani and Roman script" (written in Roman script Konkani) by Fr Pratap Naik sj to individuals in WORD format. This writer is therefore willing to e-mail the same to those desirous free of cost. Kindly therefore direct your request There are some positive hopes that the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman may come out with a statement in support of the demand for amendment to the Official Language Act 1987 with inclusion of the words "in Roman script" for definition of Konkani besides Devnagiri. It is certain that contrary to the common belief of a Marathi protoganist back lash, the Bahujan Samaj (non Hindu Brahmins ) will rejoice if Roman script is accepted for they have been consistently annoyed with the Catholics playing second fiddle nd being gullible to the chicanery of the "Only devnagiri script Konkani lovers" and getting duped in the process only to realise later when the harm has been done as in the present case -- i.e after 18 years" The stoic silence of the "only devnagiri script " has surprised many but this writer has authentic information from friends of "only devnagiri script Konkani' that rectifying the MISTAKE will further the growth of Konkani -- meaning they realise the need for bot scripts in Goa Devnagiri and Roman. ******************************************************* KONKANI VERSUS SCRIPTS - Dr. Matthew Almeida In his latest book The argumentative Indian the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen speaking about the argumentative tradition of a loquacious nation, says: [P]ersistent arguments are an important part of our public life. We, the Konkani people, are no exception to this. Once adversaries tried to belittle Konkani saying that she had no script. Now protagonists create an uproar about Konkani scripts, dialects, literature and society. There is utter confusion in their minds between the Konkani language and the scripts employed to write it. High time we learn from specialists to distinguish language and script. Central Hindi Directorate of Govt. of India brought out an official book, written by eminent linguistic scholars like Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterji, titled Devanagari : Development, amplification and standardization. They give their learned opinion on language, alphabet and script as a summary of their book thus: * Language is something that is intrinsic to personality. * Alphabet has a certain relation to language and some alphabets express different sounds more successfully than others. * Scripts are an abstraction thrice removed from direct experience. * Any alphabet can be written in any script and therefore it follows that any language can be written in any script, provided the alphabet has the necessary sounds. If it has not, such sounds may be added and visual symbols invented or adopted to represent them. * The only basis on which to prefer a script should therefore be clarity, legibility and capacity for easy manual and mechanical manipulation. Speaking, listening and communication are of the essence of language. Writing is one of the means of recording speech, and script is only a means of reducing speech to writing. Script is just like a garment with no absolute value. The claim that Devanagari is the natural script does not seem to make much sense, because any script is a set of symbols arbitrarily chosen to represent speech sounds. If Devanagari script was created expressly to represent Konkani sounds, the term natural script would make good sense. Some seem to identify language with the script in which it is written. Konkani language can never be identified with Devanagari. Just knowing Devanagari script does not mean that one knows Konkani. It is strange how some Goa school managements could ask Marathi teachers with only a smattering of Konkani, to teach Konkani just because they knew Devanagari well. ***************************************************** GODFREY J I GONSALVES BORDA MARGAO GOA [EMAIL PROTECTED] 9822158584
