Keep your local language alive: Ben Okri

"It is not right to say that English is killing our languages. We are allowing it to die. It is our responsibility to keep our language alive," Okri said during an interaction arranged in connection with the ongoing Viswa Malayala Mahotsavam (World Malayalam Festival) here.

Okri said Colonialism gave Africa and Indian sub-continent an "impossible paradox of a problem" relating to languages. In Africa, there was threat of fragmentation if one insisted that only the local language could be used which often led to civil wars, he said.

"That Colonialism happened to us is a reality," Okri said. Keeping one's language alive through poetry, literature and ensuring that children were taught the language was important. "It is something that can be done by one's own choice and consciousness."

Union minister and writer Shashi Tharoor, who led the interaction, said in India regional languages had developed alongside English. "It is not the writer who chooses the language. Language chooses the writer based on his experiences and circumstances in which he lived," Tharoor said.

To a question whether literature could restrict enmity among different sections of people, Okri said partially it was true. "Great literature adapts itself to our consciousness, illuminates us inwardly and has the power to dissolve opposition. But it has no magic solution, it is done slowly, through generations."

Asked by Tharoor what animated his poetry, Okri said it was love and anger that gave life to his poetry. "Poetry for me is the primary way of grasping reality," he said. MORE