At the audio launch of Thug Life, his upcoming film with director Mani Rathnam, Kamal Haasan looked at Kannada actor Shivarajkumar and said that you would be included in my love for Tamil because your language came out of mine. It did not seem like a concerted attempt to insult Kannada or put it below Tamil, as pro-Kannada groups made it out to be, say Kannada and Tamil linguists.
Kamal, recognised as one of the greatest artistes in India, has always spoken of his love for the mother tongue, Tamil. He did so at the audio launch of Thug Life. He brought on Kannada when he addressed Shivarajkumar, who had come to Chennai for the event. The choice of words – “Kannada coming out of Tamil” – irked groups in Karnataka, who went to the extent of burning Kamal’s effigy and asking for a ban on Thug Life in the state. Kamal refused to apologise, blaming the row as coming from those with an agenda, that his love for the neighbouring states of Andhra, Kerala and Karnataka was true, and nobody would doubt that.
That the statement and the controversy rose soon after the DMK allotted a Rajya Sabha seat to Kamal, also sparked interest. “I don’t think he intended to insult anybody, and it should be seen as a casual remark. He is not a linguist but a celebrity. But language issues in south India have become very delicate for multiple reasons, and that is why it has created a row,” says Purushothama Bilimale, chairperson of the Kannada Development Authority, apparently referring to the controversy over Hindi imposition in south Indian states.
“Having said that, what Kamal Haasan said is factually wrong. It has been established by scholars, including the founder of the Dravidian Linguistics Association VI Subramaniam, that all the languages in the Dravidian group are sister languages. It means that one was not born out of the other,” says Purushothama.
Naming three renowned linguists – VI Subramaniam of Tamil Nadu, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti from Andhra and KK Gowda of Karnataka – who agreed on a theory that all Dravidian languages came from the same root, Purushothama speaks of a proto-Dravidian language that was reconstructed. The theory was brought forth in the 19th century by Bhadriraju as well as British linguist Robert Caldwell, who wrote A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages. It is also accepted by most linguistic groups, Purushothama says.
The proto language – a hypothetical parent language – was supposed to have existed thousands of years ago during the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa cultures (of the Indus Valley Civilisation). After the fall of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the migration of people towards different parts of the country, the languages broke off, Purushothama says.
“One group of people even went to parts of [what is now] Pakistan, where a language called Brahui, derived from the proto-Dravidian roots, is still spoken,” he says.
Ajith Kanna, Professor at the School of Language Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, echoes the same thought, linking the Pakistani Brahui to the south Indian languages, both of which do not follow grammatical genders. The verbs, he stresses, retain the same form regardless of what gender they are used for, unlike Sanskrit or Hindi. Pokirein in Tamil or pokunnu in Malayalam, which means going, remains the same for every pronoun, he says, citing examples.
Both scholars touch upon the difference in roots in Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages. “Take ‘thalai’, for example – it is the same word for ‘head’ in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Tulu, and so on. But in Sanskrit, it is shir. Certain aspects, such as body parts and numbers, remain constant in Dravidian languages. Tamil retained more qualities of the proto-Dravidian language, unaccepting of modernity, while Kannada was quick to accommodate changes,” Purushothama says.
However, it does not make sense to figure out which is the oldest among them, since they all branched out from a proto-language, says Manu V Devadevan, a historian who has studied the evolution of vernacular languages in South Asia. Even Sangam literature, so far the earliest known Tamil literature rediscovered in the 19th century, used a language that is a lot different from the Tamil used today, he says.
Ajith thinks that the order in which the individual languages split does not matter. “Every language has its own history, specificities, and idiosyncrasies. Every sane linguist – I can’t talk about puritans or fanatics – would say that no language is superior or inferior to another.”
The earliest scripts discovered are elementary, and these appear to have evolved independently. Multiple reasons, including writing materials, determined what words eventually came to be used in the diversified languages. Manu says, “The letter zha, for instance, was found in early Kannada scripts, but inscribing it on copper plates or stones proved difficult, and the letter evolved into a ḷa (unstructured consonant), so rain became maḷe (ಮಳೆ). In Kerala, where letters were inscribed on coconut fronds, they became more rounded.”
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