Litfest stirs debate on English superseding regional languages

The Writers and Readers' festival which began in Goa today kick-started a debate on the state of regional languages, which are crumbling under the commercial impact of English usage in the country.
"Wherever I go, unless it is interior India, the language spoken is English. I find that really surprising. I no longer question myself as to why I write in English. Because there is something happening here. People are losing their fixed ideas about local culture and languages," said Kerala-born novelist C P Surendran, while inaugurating Writers and Readers' Festival-2014 here.
In South India, whether Tamil Nadu or Kerala, what is happening is that young generation no longer study in their local language, he said, after inaugurating the LitFest in presence of renowned Australian novelist Thomas Keneally.

The novelist-cum-journalist said that the trend is good from his perspective.
"Around 300 years years ago, all the literature in Kerala was written in Sanskrit and Tamil. But if you go to see now, Sanskrit is dying despite all the government fundings," he said.
The author noted that Malayalam language too is "directed toward the graveyard and the reason for it is that you can't actually have love of language translated into survival of the language.

"Thats not happening. An economy has to be transcripted in that language. Entire economy is slowly moving towards English and that is happening in urban India in a very big way," he said.

Surendran said due to the large human migration from rural to urban cites, people have to communicate in English.
"You have to speak or write in English. I think that in 10-20 years from now, you will have English as India's actual official language and not Hindi," he rued.
"People are moving from local affirmations to global affirmations. English is slowly stolen away from the people who invented it. It is complex kind of paradigm which is emerging in the country like India," Surendran said in his address.